Heroin.  What is it?  What’s it like?  What are the symptoms of addiction?  Here we’ll share some of the most important facts we know about heroin.

First, things first…it’s important to know a little background of this drug.  Heroin is an opiate (drugs that have a sedative, pain-killing effect), produced from the sap of the poppy plant, which is grown in places like South America, Afghanistan and Mexico.  The Latin name of the plant is Papaver somniferum, which means “the poppy that makes you sleepy.”  Opiates are felt by the brain very quickly, and produce an intense feeling of pleasure, followed by drowsiness. 

Raw poppy sap is processed to produce opium, and then put through a chemical process to produce yet another potent drug called morphine.  Morphine, though illegal to possess, is a controlled substance used as a painkiller in hospitals for patients who are in extreme pain and discomfort, such as cancer patients.  When used properly for medical purposes, opiates don’t produce feelings of pleasure, and patients aren’t likely to get addicted.

Finally, morphine is put through yet another chemical process, which produces heroin as its final product.  Heroin in its street form can range from an off-white color to an almost black-tar like substance.  All three of these substances, opium, morphine and of course heroin, are highly addictive and have very similar effects and withdrawal symptoms.

As mentioned earlier, heroin is felt by the brain quickly, and its short-term effects include: drowsiness, slow and shallow breathing, watery eyes and runny nose, constricted pupils, a feeling of heaviness in the arms and legs, nausea and vomiting.

Often, new users may begin their exploration by snorting or smoking heroin because they may feel that injecting it is “dirty” or “scary”—but after getting hooked (which happens once you start to build tolerance, a process that may happen in a matter of days), users may not be as hesitant to try injecting.  Also, new heroin users quickly graduate to injection because as their bodies become conditioned to the drug, the effects produced are less intense. Injection becomes a desperate measure to attain the more intense effects they experienced when they first began using the drug. As with any drug addiction, a person’s mind tells them that “maybe if you take more, you may reach that feeling again”…but it never happens.  The initial, first feeling that a person experiences with the drug is never felt again, no matter how much of the drug they take or how they take it. 

Heroin users who inject the drug expose themselves to additional long-term risks, including contracting human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), hepatitis B and C, and other blood-borne viruses.  Chronic users who inject heroin also end up collapsing their veins. This process begins when an abscess forms on their skin where they insert the needle (it resembles a huge, infected mosquito bite), and ends with an open wound, which means that they have killed the nerves and veins in that area. This area often ends up getting severely infected, leaving unattractive, nasty scars (or what are known as “track marks”).

Heroin use can also cause infection of the heart lining and valves, pneumonia, tuberculosis, liver and kidney disease, and the most severe constipation one can ever experience.  There are cases where addicts of heroin who have overdosed and were found dead had a couple of pounds of feces in their intestines.  Why, you ask? Because heroin constricts your veins, arteries, blood vessels…and your intestines are made up of an intricate network of blood vessels, it makes the body unable to function properly.

For those users who say, “I can stop whenever I want,” they may not know that an addicted individual who stops using the drug often experiences some severe withdrawal symptoms. These include, for starters, an intense heroin craving along with sweats, chills, restlessness, muscle and bone pain, diarrhea and constipation, cramps, insomnia, depression, involuntary muscle spasms (where the name “kicking the habit” comes from), severe vomiting, and more.

But that’s not the worst part of being addicted to heroin - overdosing on heroin happens often.  The purity or impurities in heroin can both be responsible for an overdose in both new and experienced users because it is practically impossible for them to know the purity of the heroin they are using.  Heroin sold on the street often is mixed with other substances such as sugar, starch, quinine or with strychnine—rat poison.  Heroin overdoses can result whether the drug is snorted, smoked, or injected—can cause slow and shallow breathing, convulsions, coma, and even death, which includes users choking on their own vomit.  An overdose can occur even when someone has used it for the first time.

Heroin is one of the most highly addictive drugs available on the street, but the vast majority of youth have never seen heroin, much less tried it.  If you have even the slightest concern that you (or someone you know) may be drug dependent or are misusing drugs, we suggest you talk to someone at a counseling center about your drug use.  If this is an emergency, please call 911, or for more information contact a TeenLine Peer Listener Monday through Friday between 2:00-5:00 p.m. or call the Crisis Response System Project at 833-7382 or 484-2970.  For information on treatment programs, contact Drug-Free Hawaii at 545-3228 ext. 34.  You can also email them at prc@drugfreehawaii.org or log on at www.drugfreehawaii.org.