Heroin

Heroin is a well known and widely available drug that has been used and misused for generations.

Heroin use often leads to heroin addiction.

People try heroin for a variety of reasons.  But first use is often about experiencing a rush or high, and fitting in or social bonding.

Many continue to use the drug because they discover that heroin reduces physical or emotional pain.

Heroin can be a seductive form of self-medication because it can offer some temporary relief from difficult emotions and feelings, especially for people with problems related to trauma, grief/loss, anger, anxiety or depression.

The body adapts to regular heroin use, and the regular user becomes physically dependent on the drug.  Once a person is physically dependent on heroin, they must continue to use heroin or similar substances just to feel normal.  If they do not maintain their heroin habit, they will go into painful physical withdrawal.

Symptoms of withdrawal or detox include muscle aches, nausea, cramps, diarrhea, runny nose, sweating, irritability, hot flashes and chills.  Symptoms usually peak two to three days after the person stops using, and most physical symptoms of heroin withdrawal will be gone after a week.   But some symptoms like depression and insomnia can continue for much longer.

Powerful drug cravings continue even after heroin use has stopped and withdrawal is over.  This makes it very difficult for many people to maintain abstinence from heroin even after they have detox.

People who are physically and psychologically dependent on heroin often find that they can’t stop using even though they want to stop using.  People who are addicted to heroin feel physically and psychologically compelled to keep using.  Free will is compromised.

Regular use of heroin also causes physical tolerance to the drug.  This means that it takes more of the drug to get the same level of effect.  As a result, heroin use becomes more and more expensive as regular use continues.

Heroin use can quickly become financially unsustainable.  In desperation, many turn to crime or other ways to make money that are harmful to themselves, their families or their communities.  Many people feel shame because the need to get money to fund their addiction has lead them to compromise their deeply held ethics and morals.

Compulsive use of heroin in spite of serious negative consequences is the hallmark of heroin addiction.

Negative consequences linked to heroin use include risk of fatal drug overdose, incarceration, loss of child custody, and loss of relationships with family/friends.  For people who use heroin by injecting, negative consequences may include HIV infection, hepatitis C infection, abscesses or other injection-related infections or injuries.

Heroin is the same family of drugs as prescription pain medications like Oxycontin, Vicodin, Percocet, and Dilauded and morphine.  In fact, heroin is made from morphine, which is itself a substance extracted from a plant called the opium poppy.  And the body converts heroin back into morphine.  Medications in this family of drugs are called opiates or opioids.

Prescribed Heroin Used to Treat Heroin Addiction