Heroin Addiction

• Heroin addicts will often change their friends, casting aside old friends for new and seemingly less savory peers.
• Heroin addicts may start wearing sunglasses at inappropriate times or wearing long sleeved shirts even on hot days.
• Changes in behavior may indicate a heroin addiction, and aggressiveness, sullenness and widely oscillating behaviors should be considered as suspect.
• A constant need for money, borrowing small amounts regularly without paying back, lying and stealing may all indicate the financial need of a heroin addiction.
• Abnormal weight loss and odd sleeping patterns, as well as a sedentary lifestyle, a loss of interest in the opposite sex and a disregard for personal appearance may be considered signs of abuse.

The signs of abuse vary by the addict, but if a loved one is demonstrating a drastic change in personality, social behavior, financial behavior and appearance, they may be abusing heroin.

Regular heroin use causes tolerance to the drug and physical changes in the neuro chemical activity of the brain. Heroin use causes the brain to produce less of endogenous neuro transmitters like endorphins that are responsible for our sensations of pleasure and pain; and when heroin is no longer present in the central nervous system, the user will start to feel the absence of these endogenous neuro chemicals through the pain of withdrawal.

Heroin withdrawal, although rarely fatal in itself, is very unpleasant; and few addicts can get through the pain of withdrawal without professional help. Some withdrawal symptoms are nausea, physical pain, irritability and depression, hard constant coughing, diarrhea, insomnia and a host of other symptoms.

These symptoms will peak within 48 hours of the last dosage, and begin to subside after this point. Heroin maintains its hold over an addict through the understandable fear and avoidance of withdrawal. The longer an addict uses and the greater the tolerance that is developed, the more severe the withdrawal and the harder it is to break the addiction.

Heroin: a downwards spiral

Heroin is never sold in its pure form, and the percentage of heroin in a dosage as sold at the street level can vary greatly. The heroin is cut with another substance, and this substance may be relatively benign, such as talc, or a more harmful substance, such as brick dust or even strychnine. The addition of a diluting substance can be very harmful when consumed with regularity.

Heroin addicts may suffer from collapsed veins, or blocked veins from impurities in injected heroin. Abscesses from injection are common, and bacterial infection from impurities and unclean injection methods can lead to bacterial damage of the heart, and eventual heart attack or stroke.

Injection is obviously the most destructive form of administration, but snorting or smoking heroin can lead to nasal damage and respiratory infections such as tuberculosis, from the decreased respiratory rate induced by the drug.

Heroin users also suffer the ravages of physical neglect as caused by the drug. Weight loss is very commonly associated with heroin addiction, and users suffer lowered immunity to infections due to their bodily neglect. Although heroin is not toxic in itself, the effects of heroin usage are extremely physically damaging.

With injection administration, also comes the greatly increased probability of HIV and Hepatitis C infection; and as such heroin users are considered to be a very high risk group to contract HIV AIDS.

Usage of heroin can kill, and if the physical degradation of abuse doesn't shorten the lifespan of an addict, the likelihood of accidental overdose might. With increasing tolerance, heroin addicts are forced to take ever increasing amounts of the drug simply to avoid sensations of withdrawal; and since the potency of the drug as sold at the street level is so variable, the risk of an accidental overdose is high. Heroin causes far more accidental deaths than any other drug.

Socially as well, heroin devastates the addict. Heroin becomes central to the existence of an addict, and lying, stealing and cheating friends and family are justifiable to secure the next needed dose. Friends and family are abandoned in favor of the drug, and other drug using peers, and the personality of the user can change dramatically. A heroin addiction changes a person, and forces previously unthinkable behaviors through the desperation for a fix.

Heroin, once thought to be the domain of inner cities and older addicts, is invading the suburban communities of the country. The profile of use has changed, and now there is no "average" user. The addiction affects people from all walks of life and devastates equally.

With tolerance and dependence comes an ever increasing need for the drug, and the cycle of addiction and withdrawal avoidance deepens the hold of the drug over time. The longer heroin is used, the tougher it is to get off of it. The longer heroin is used, the greater the damage to the body and the soul; and since most addicts will ultimately progress to the injection administration, the odds of serious health complications, the contraction of a fatal disease, and accidental fatal overdose, all increase the longer the drug is used.