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What is Heroin or Smack?
Heroin
Heroin is a painkiller. The brown powder starts life as the milky sap of the opium poppy Papaverum Somniferum. The sap is collected and dried to form a gum. The gum is washed and becomes opium. Opium contains two painkilling alkaloids, codeine and morphine. Morphine that has been extracted from opium can be further refined to create diamorphine, or heroin. Weight for weight, heroin is about forty times more powerful than raw opium. It is one of the most powerful painkillers known, and will cause tolerance and a withdrawal syndrome relatively quickly.
Heroin is an analgesic drug with depressant qualities. As the drug takes effect, breathing and heart rate decrease. Most people feel 'a warm glow' when the drug first starts to take effect, and any anxiety or concerns become insignificant. This experience is followed by a period when the user is conscious but looks like they're falling asleep. Once this time has passed, the user is able to interact normally with other people, although to them their experience will have taken on a dream-like quality.
The first time someone uses it they'll usually notice how they just feel a bit sleepy, and warm, and a little itchy. They'll usually vomit a fair bit, too.
For some people, once is enough and they'll never use it again.
Other people go back to it again...and again...and then again...and then after a while they find that they keep going back to it, having another little toot, noticing how comfortable it makes them feel...wrapped up in cotton wool...all their worries and anxieties going away for, well, time...and by then, already, the habit is becoming pretty well established.
Ashes to ashes, funk to funky...
Nobody sets out to get a heroin habit. Everybody believes they're in control, right up to the moment they realise that they've been kidding themselves. Recreational heroin use is possible, but it's ever so easy to sway over the line between occasional and habitual without really noticing. You're tickling the tail of the dragon...every so often just splitting a bag with someone else, getting stoned with your mates, and then your occasional use easily become a £10 bag every week. It's only a tenner, right? And then, after a while, you get to wondering why should you be straight on Sunday when you can be stoned again? And why shouldn't the weekend start on Friday night, after all? It's not like you've got a habit or anything. And it sets you up nicely for the weekend...
It's all too easy to slip into a mid-week toot. After all, you deserve it. And it won't hurt, just this once.
The important thing to remember about tickling dragon's tails is that you can only do it for so long before they turn round and bite you. Hard. And they don't like to let go, once they've got you. And it hurts. It hurts like hell.
Regular heroin use will cause a physical dependence. Period. No ifs, no buts. It's nothing to do with 'will power' or being 'hardcore' or any other crazy thing. You stick your hand in the fire, it burns. You take heroin regularly, you get dependent. Once the last hit wears off, you get ill until you have some more of the drug. You get sick. You get crazy. You hurt. Some people dabble with heroin for years before getting a habit, others pick one up in a few months. Slowly, subtly, your pattern of use changes until, one day, you wake up…and you aren't in control any more.
We know Major Tom's a junkie...
And then you've got one of the most obvious motivations for carrying on using. Avoiding withdrawal. If you can't get yourself sorted out, you're going to get ill. You start to feel the beginnings of withdrawal. Runny nose, aching muscles. Diarrhea. Forget about sleeping, the pain of withdrawal will be with you twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, for anything from three days to a couple of weeks. For some people it can be months before they feel right, and get back to 'normal' patterns of sleeping and eating.
Of course, if you want to avoid the withdrawal, you just need a little more brown...
And of course by then, you're mostly only hanging out with people who also use it. Every other person you know is doing it. They're phoning you, knocking on the door, dropping in, serving up...helping you out...easing the pain...sorting you out...making it all better agin...back on the merry-go-round...
But that's not you. You won't get a habit. It's not like you inject or anything.
I'm never going to inject, so I'll never get a habit, right?
It doesn't matter whether you inject heroin or smoke it. If you use it regularly you will start to need more to feel the effects. Every time you use it you'll be reinforcing the belief that doing heroin feels good. You'll be learning how to enjoy the effects of the drug. You'll develop a tolerance, need more, and pretty soon you'll need to take it just to get straight.
Just this once…
Really, strange as it seems, many people who get a habit for the first time don't even realise what they've done. It's not like smack's a problem. It's just that they feel like they've got the 'flu if they don't have it. And they don't want to travel too far from a toilet. The moment that realisation strikes you could almost draw a gigantic light bulb going on above their head with a "pop!"...swiftly followed by gentle waves of "oh shit"iness as right behind the realisation, waves of nausea herald the onset of the withdrawal starting to take hold, and the urgent need to take more smack becoming an overwhelming priority.
oh shit, indeed.
Fuck it. It's just a needle, right?
Some people just leave it there. They see a future littered with debt, damage, despair, and the detritus of broken homes, hearts and hope. A constant lurching cycle from stoned to stark withdrawal, from buzzed to busted, and back again. They see the invariable destiny of that choice, and choose a different one. And some people don't have that vision. They don't see beyond the end of the next hit. Or they see where it's going, and get stoned to avoid how that feels inside. Over the last twenty years, heroin use has increasingly been something that people start off by smoking, chasing or having the occasional boot. It's rare to find people still smoking heroin four or five years down the road. It usually comes down to a simple matter of economics. I've got a limited amount of money, and the important thing in my life is brown. I'm sitting with two half-gram bags in front of me...two days before I'm getting more cash... and weighing up the options...if I can afford to smoke enough brown to take the edge off the withdrawal, I've got enough to get stoned if I inject it. Fuck it. It's just a needle, right? Nurses do this to people every day. It's probably cleaner than smoking it, huh? Injecting can cause complications like abscesses, septicemia and the transmission of blood-borne viruses like HIV and Hepatitis B and C.
Some of these are just very unpleasant. Others can kill. Injecting anything is a really effective way to introduce organisms into your body. If a recent injecting site is sore, red or inflamed you should definitely get it checked by a medically qualified person. Especially so if you have a temperature, or any other signs of infection. Sure, it's personal. And it might save your arm, your leg or even your life...
And so I face, the final curtain...
When people talk about 'overdose' they're often talking about drugs with depressant effects, like heroin. People overdose when they take more than their body can tolerate. Overdosing with a depressant drug can cause respiratory failure, loss of consciousness, and ultimately death. It's much easier to overdose on heroin if you inject it instead of smoking it. Maybe because sometimes the heroin is more pure than usual, or you've not used for a few days and your tolerance has dropped, or you're also using drugs like alcohol, methadone, temazepam or other tranquillisers, or someone else makes up the hit...
If you're with other people who will call an ambulance for you then another drug can be given to you at the hospital to bring you back out. If you're on your own, you're on your own.
...but then again...
Even when you're not injecting, regular heroin use can mean lifestyle choices that will quickly affect your general health. It's not unusual for someone with an established heroin habit to find themselves using £25-£80 worth of the drug each day. If you're spending all your money on brown, chances are you're running up debts, not eating and not paying the rent. When you run out of your own money you'll find yourself making choices that seemed unimaginable last year, or the year before.
Doctorin' the house?
This information refers to the UK drug treatment system. Seeking help from a GP, community drug team or drug dependence unit could relieve some of the symptoms. Medication can be given to help to alleviate the symptoms of withdrawal, and other support may be available. Longer term users may be offered a substitute opioid prescription, usually methadone. Some people swear by methadone, others swear at it. It's usually prescribed as a liquid to drink, although it can also be prescribed as an injectable ampoule (or a tablet, which you shouldn't even consider injecting). It's clean, it can stop you withdrawing for up to 36 hours and it costs a lot less than smack. Just like heroin and other opiates (from the poppy) or opioids (synthetic), if you take methadone regularly you'll become dependent.
A word or two for female heroin users
Women who use heroin regularly can experience irregular menstrual cycles, as heroin use can suppress ovulation. It's still possible to become pregnant, and if your cycle is irregular you might not notice for some time. If you do have sex with men, it's important to use contraception to avoid unwanted pregnancy. Using condoms for penetrative sex will protect you and your sexual partner against the transmission of Hepatitis B, HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases.
Let's be 'avin you...
In the UK heroin use is illegal. Heroin, or diamorphine hydrochloride, is controlled by the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 as a Class A, Schedule 2 drug.
Other Class A drugs include LSD and cocaine.
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January 30, 2024 at 12:37 pm
