What is Heroin?

Heroin is the most abused and the most rapidly acting of the opiates. Use of this illegal drug results in addiction. It is processed from morphine, a naturally occurring substance extracted from the seed pod of the Asian poppy plant. Heroin usually appears as a white or brown powder. Because heroin abusers do not know the actual strength of the drug or its true contents, they are at risk of overdose or death. Heroin also poses special problems because of the transmission of HIV and other diseases that can occur from sharing needles or other injection equipment.

How extensive is heroin use?

According to the 1996 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, which may actually underestimate illicit opiate (heroin) use, an estimated 2.4 million people use heroin at some time in their lives, and nearly 216,000 of them reported using it within the month preceding the survey. The survey report estimates that there were 141,000 new heroin users in 1995, and that there has been an increasing trend in new heroin use since 1992. A large proportion of these recent new users were smoking, snorting, or sniffing heroin, and most were under age 26. Estimates of use for other age groups also increased, particularly among youths age 12 to 17: the incidence of first-time heroin use among this age group increased fourfold from the 1980s to 1995.

How is heroin used?

Heroin is most commonly injected, smoked, or sniffed/snorted. A heroin abuser may inject up to four times a day. Intravenous injection provides quickest and most intense onset of euphoria (7 to 8 seconds), while intramuscular injection produces a relatively slow onset of euphoria (5 to 8 minutes). When heroin is sniffed or smoked, peak effects are usually felt within 10 to 15 minutes. NIDA researchers have confirmed that all three forms of heroin administration are addictive.

Medical consequences of heroin use

With heroin, the rush is usually accompanied by a warm flushing of the skin, dry mouth, and a heavy feeling in the extremities, which may be accompanied by nausea, vomiting, and severe itching. Heroine abuse can lead to all types of problems such as lung diseases, infections in the blood vessels, and blood clots to major organs. The sharing of injection equipment or fluids can lead to some of the most severe consequences of heroin abuse - infections with hepatitis B and C, HIV, and a host of other blood-borne viruses, which drug abusers can then pass on to their sexual partners and children.

How can you find a drug rehab center to help with heroin addiction?

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