My own ramblings on heroin for “research” help for someone writing a story, mostly from personal relationships and (some) experience. This is not meant to be a statistically analyzed.
Emphasis on modern times, a women, different scenario’s and levels of addiction. Abusive boyfriend, or similar, perhaps.
Intro
Heroin is your master, lover, fucker, beater, womanizer, knight in shining armor, your escape from reality, your ticket out of circumstance, your environment and your God. There is nothing BUT heroin. You will sell your new born baby for a baggie of black tar. The market is cheap of heroin since the war on Afghanistan (fact, another day..), heroin is the latest and greatest high even among even white collar school children (as is meth, cheapness and a lack of education), bored of Weed, told Weed is the same harmful level of Meth and heroin.
Heroin is a Depressant. It makes the person un-workable. You cannot move, speak..but, you feel, the greatest Euphoria in the world. The greatest calm, the most relaxed muscles, the best possible Peace, where Everything is in order. Nothing is wrong, “I have no fears of money, women and/or men, sex, marriage the Future, all is present Now, all is here Now, all is within the Dragon.”
I chase the Dragon because it is powerful. It holds me, chills me and numbs me, peace, is numbness is stagnation. Heroin is stagnation. The Dragon is associated with heroin and Opium (more opium, which is smoking Heroin (without being “cut” to Black Tar) as it is cleaner) as it is a Very, very old human archetypal model of power and godliness. The Dragon that is.
We feel Nothing when chasing the Dragon, and the Dragon can Never be caught. If you catch the Dragon, you die. If you COULD catch the Dragon, you would be enlightened. This is an impossibility and perhaps those who OD on heroin do feel that, dancing that “cuff” of death / enlightenment.
Form:
Heroin addicts form their lives around heroin. They need $20-$60 / day. This is not much money unless you are not working. Heroin addicts cannot keep down jobs (were talking high-percentage generalizations, those who can are on a minute percentage scale and are probably only “starting” out with heroin, or “just” smoke opium, don’t inject, etc.) Tolerance builds, so this could rise to a few hundred of heroin / day.
Meth is an even more destructive drug as it encourages action, movement and that same feeling of euphoria, but with that, the best realization of your dreams. Heroin, makes you love a mattress, piss soaked shit and ejaculate laden room of crack addicts sharing a $20 dream to nowhere. Meth, is the same, but, most people are “productive” in art, craftsmanship (or just taking things apart and putting 3x things back together into that singular piece they took apart). Productive only in furtiveness and movement, the movement of the body and mind.
Meth and heroin share the same Dragon technique (chasing the ultimate high). Though. Meth is called the Demon, due to its even more destructive nature. They both, have a singular effect of ONE dose is normally, in nearly EVERY single population, addicted for life. This does not mean you cannot STOP meth / heroin, but it will always have an effect on your brain chemistry and desires for the drug will be with the user to varying levels, for a lifetime.
People in fact have visceral, physical reactions to needles after much usage. Orgasms, at the sight or tough of a hypodermics (even in a doctor checkup) become the norm in Junkie Status.
From prison: “I still feel the pull whenever I see a needle, a pill or powder or anything…your receptors are FRIED, your dopa / other chemicals are taken over completely by these hard dangerous drugs, and it will NEVER go away. Getting a checkup for tuberculosis, a cellmate told me he came (orgasmed) without his own conscious thought, a COMPLETE and utter Physical reaction. How strong is your Animal mind over your “Ego” mind after heroin? It is all purely physical. Hence so many women on these hard drugs are sexually promiscuous, if the guys even care. “I have no money, can I suck your dick.” This is reality, this is the hard drugs, this is the poison floating in your system.
A graphic depiction of brain receptors would be interesting.
Starting slow:
Some can start slow..first, smoking. Doing heroin with coke as a upper/downer type thing is also done, but I have not enough knowledge on such things over here.
Smoking typically done with tinfoil, whether on a sheet, or “bundling” the heroin in a pocket of foil and smoked in a pipe. You inhale the smoke, and viola.
Graduating
Most people can smoke heroin and “keep it together” to a degree..when you mainline or Shoot up, you ARE addicted, done, dead, in the grave, the Dragon has won, what do you do when you find the Dragon you have been chasing? Kill it? Choke it out? The Dragon is greater, it has claimed a million lives (ref back to the addiction above, of course you Can quit, but the odds are against you).
Sometimes, you feel the most euphoric and beautiful connection to the world around you, the person, but not really with heroin. You are centered, chasing, always chasing, drooling into a disgusting couch; you fly for a number of hours. For only a few moments, your euphoria lasts, the world is at peace your life is Gone, you have no Life, no Money, no Family, no Friends, only the Beautiful self, You and not even You, you is a fallacy of the illusion of life. Next, a lethargy of peace..lack of movement, lack of caring, decrease of pain receptors.
In your head, you may be doing things, flying, floating (not visual hallucinations, normally body hallucinations), nodding to beautiful music (which is actually playing, NON hallucinatory), but you are just a lump of flesh, a pumping vessel of blood and molecules sustaining itself just barely while the poison courses through your body. Repeated use of the needle in a singular spot can lead to flesh rot.
From the movie Requiem for a Dream (dumb song, good snapshots of heroin use / spiraling out of control):
comments on the types of heroin below is good:
they are snorting white herion which is diamorphine hydrochloride, that herion is water soluble, so it is commonly snorted like cocaine. diamorphine base which is brown herion, is not 100% water soluble so it is hardly snorted, its more manufactured to smoke, afgan brown in its most soild form is brown, its what we get in the U.K. cony island N.Y.C which is where the film is set, get white heroin the lucky bastards haha
Injecting poison is never a good idea, and most heroin’s problems are not that it is inherently poisonous (morphine is a derivative I believe and opium is pure), but what is is “cut” with, to “step” on a drug to make it less potent / pure and more Profitable.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutting_agent
I have no experience ala what is in / stepping etc.
Addicts (sometimes vehemently) argue that it is due to the cutting agent that OD’s typically (typically) occur.
Experience from an addict:
The stages will vary for different users. Mine went like so: first was nausea, but that only lasted about 5 or 10 seconds until I got the "rush" or "hit". The "rush" is a period of about 10 to 20 minutes (varying with the strength of the user’s addiction) when you feel what people often class as "high" – a sensation of well-being or happiness accompanied by your body going a bit jelly-like. Y
our skin heats up and you feel warm inside out and you fidget a lot because you get "butterflies" and can’t keep still. After these initial effects, the mouth starts to dry and usually the lips chap a little – the jelly feeling turns into heaviness, especially in your head, hands, and legs (or just from the waist down). Sometimes your arm starts burning (if you’ve injected), or your skin itches. For first-time and irregular users the nausea can come back, making you vomit and get quite dizzy, occasionally fainting. This second stage lasts about half an hour to 2 hours.
These next symptoms can overlap with the second stage – the existence of a clear third stage is debatable. Users begin to alternate between severe drowsiness and alertness, continue to be shifty and restless, and then your breathing starts to slow. It’s sometimes really difficult to breathe. When that happens your heartbeat is also quite soft, maybe irregular, and if it is a case of an overdose then it’s possible to slip into a coma at this point and medical attention is necessary.
Common visible signs of being "high" are the constricted pupils, dark circles around the eyes, pale skin and chapped lips. The rest is down to how the user used.
Life / Associations
Addicts tend to only associate with other addicts, or let’s say, Junkie’s associate with other Junkie’s (we are still talking about Heroin, not other drugs). Their common denominator is the heroin itself. Getting clean, one has to cut these people off, and, they normally aren’t missed. Heroin is your family now.
Family ties may / may not exist, excepting the perhaps frequent cries for help or moreso, the cries for money (just another $20!) Stealing things, anything, for the daily dose.
Lots of thievery / bartering. Men will steal Stuff, and sell / exchange for heroin. Women are not as adept (physical / cunning whatever) at stealing and fall to the Easiest (redacted somewhat below).
Heroin = What is the EASIEST route to getting a hit (so, not that women suck at stealing actually, more, once again, what is the easiest route?)
Junkie’s as “people” become hallow, a shell, selling themselves physically, or even a child, for just a Hit, it is all encompassing and the utmost of addiction, your brain is taken overtaken like a cancer, Heroin is one of the most difficult and deadly addictions (along with meth).
Most heroin addicts live on the streets, with “friends” at parks, churches sometimes, parking lots, parks, then spend the next day “hustling” (women, sex, men, stealing (The Wire HBO show examples below)), and live in abandoned houses, hence the difficulty in finding them.
Finding
Family may try, but who are they? The Dragon is larger, bigger, stronger, faster, Powerful, family means nothing, another Shadow memory of what life once was, your life Now is the heroin, chasing.
Mostly, you find bad heroin addicts when they are dead or OD (end up in a hospital / center).
Normally if you OD, people won’t call the cops, since they will get in trouble (or they just don’t care, too numb, like, a fly landing in a beer, will have the same resonance to them), they leave them to Die as their shell of a person, finally meeting the Dragon.
To actually find a junkie, you need to be In that circle of junkie’s, or have a mean’s in.
Junkie’s will find you (if you are a person of the past) for money, etc.
Hanging out in specific hot-spot area’s also a potential.
In LA / Hollywood, N – Hollywood is decadent, weirdo’s (can find video’s) of people hustling – millions (over time) of children / runaway teens CHASING THE DRAGON OF A DREAM IN HOLLYWOOD (kinda funny to think about / write more) succumb to prostitution and drugs (male and female) after the dream becomes less and less viable. They die, unspoken for, unspoken for.
Control / Scenario’s:
Those with the heroin “hookup” (dealer or junkie) tend to gain control over the addict, but, it’s not loyalty, a separate source when the original source is “dry” for even a day, send them off to the other source..temporarily or permanently.
-Sex slaves, Russia, China, US etc. They are controlled by dosages. Injected once, twice, thrice, they are Gone. They will do ANYTHING (including never talking to authorities or complaining about being gang banged by 18 men in a night, bleeding from orifices damaged beyond belief shattered bodies, poisoned blood, just for that hit).
-“Abusive boyfriend or husband” you may never leave a person if they are your source(s) for heroin. So, abusive boyfriend or husband doesn’t really factor, they just become the Source. As one or more of the couple becomes junkified, the relationship of humanity between them becomes more entwined around the drug versus their past emotional / physical connection.
-The story of a middle class gal in college could be one of experimentation gone awry, like 2 months of a sequence of being in love with the guy, doing it for the man, and hence going there.
-Less compelling: kidnapping and injected for control, or just because the Kidnappers themselves enjoy the Heroin.
-Experimentation gone awry via acquaintance, whether friend, boy, husband, which translates into “for you, I do this [heroin] for our relationship”
EG’s of Video’s / Movies:
Women with junkie addict:
From a fantastic (realistic) show, The Wire (probably rated youtubes R in movie terms) with a main heroin addict character.
(less Rated R)
(Rated R)
The Local is a brilliant movie (not centered on addicting, but focused on a man hustling heroin for $30 / day, and becomes centered in “rescuing” an addict from a hardcore dealer.
The Local follows Noname, an enigmatic man running from a tortured past. He is trapped in a violent Brooklyn underworld as the lowly drug runner for a gang of crazed veterans. There, Noname is approached by a wealthy out-of-towner who offers him a large sum of money to "rescue" the man’s heroin-addicted daughter from his employer’s drug lair. Noname soon realizes that saving the girl is more than a payday. It will grant him a way out of his purgatory after a lifetime of wrongdoing, and open a path toward personal redemption.
Graveyard of Honor is a Miike (ultra crazy violent director of foreign flicks) with a brilliant representation of an “innocent” wife turned into an addict by her addict husband. I cannot find clips, but the notable Heroin scenes (could fast-forward in Netflix / rental):
1:12:00 good scene of heroin junkie going nuts post violence / sex spree / spiraling down, shooting his gone in all directions, slothing across the floor, in underwear, screaming / whining like an animal..
1:49:00 more weird heroin action – plays a flashlight over his girls body (whom is high) 1:50:00 – she goes through withdrawals later
, smashing herself / physically into walls, the car, etc.
Detoxing
Detoxing is another story. Shakes, shivers, demons, physical wracking pain, like being strung from a thousand needles, told to die, yet never being allowed, ligaments pinned, muscles aching, sweat, sweat, can’t eat, sleep, water, can’t think, Only the needle only the smoke, only the Dragon exists…but, locked up or without money, your chase is now a crushing vice of sorrow.
It isn’t that people coming off of heroin think Spiders are all over them (though they may say / could think that), it is that their Skin is uncomfortable, the Dragon found THEM found them, it is killing them, the detox is POWERFUL – your skin burns, crawls, crawls, you can try to itch, you puke, die inside, the only thing to chase it away, is another Chase of the Dragon / heroin – chase it away.
Treatment / Appearance / Physical
http://ajph.aphapublications.org/cgi/reprint/62/10/1397.pdf
more comprehensive and interesting on treatment / Numbers.
Junkie’s are known to get addicted to methadone, which can be even more (controversial) addicting and dangerous then heroin itself. Methadone is a “alt” treatment to try and bring heroin addicts down.
A different discussion would be the use of high-potent psychedelics as 1-shot cures for addiction (completely illegal in the US, with addicts traveling to South America for treatment).
Heroin addicts even on healing / detox (jail) are always sickly. Heroin becomes more important then nutrition or food, sometimes supplanted with other chemicals, pills, alcohol, you go insane…This means they neglect their bodies, so, not NECESSARILY the heroin that fucks up their body, its that their body is now only a vessel for the heroin itself.
Even those detoxed still dream about it, those memories fight the memories of lost love ones, lost dreams of a lives potential. They tend to have a hallowed look to them (soul husks), and, in rare moments of (those long-time kickers of the habit) can snap back into addiction mode at the sign of any trigger.
Hallow cheeks, light bones, or rather, pronounced bones..women are Not pretty after heroin, they look anorexic / skeletal, are shadows of what a healthy being should be.
“Shadows..chasing a Dragon, a shadow in the smoke or drug, a shadow in the mist, sucking the life out of your humanity.”
Sex becomes meaningless after a point of junkification.
That’s hard drugs.
Meth is an upper, much, much different, glassy eyed, scabs (your hands want to DO something) – movie, Salton Sea and the party scenes are pretty representative.
Centers
Different levels for treatment exist (I would see that PDF), but, if you are over 18, you can typically check yourself out at any time unless this is a “jail vs treatment” deal with the courts for possession or some other crime. Sanitized, interaction w/ other addicts (can be dangerous in itself, putting other addicts in contact with each other, sometimes they find better hookups 
)
Typically group, sometimes one on one therapy, etc.
Junkie’s will NOT respond to treatment unless they THEMSELVES wish to get off of the drugs. Hence the low rate of success in treatment..it would be hard to leave bliss at the cost of living on the streets (heh).
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