Needless to say, street heroin is more dangerous now than ever. When I first tried it, finding fentanyl in heroin was a real risk but still uncommon enough that specific hot batches made the news.
Fast forward a couple years, and anyone can order dozens of fentanyl analogues. It can and should now assumed that you will encounter acetyl or carfent cut in dope, or even sold as H. Carfent is so much stronger than fentanyl that it is not used legitimately except for very large animals or as a chemical weapon. Carfent has been showing up this year in major metropolitan areas all over the country.
Now the question is not so much if one should try heroin, but if one play Russian roulette.
Everyone knows that heroin is absurdly addictive in an insidiously subjective way. It happens gradually. We all know acute withdrawal is disabling and torturous. We all know the danger of overdose and know people who have had their souls destroyed, jobs lost, friends and family lost, and lives lost.
What most non-users do not understand until too late is that acute withdrawal or overdose or legal risk are actually secondary to the real reason we suggest not taking this road. It is so hard to escape this life because heroin addiction is purgatory, but P.A.W.S. is the 9th circle of hell.
Those who manage to get clean, whether medically assisted or on their own, will usually relapse within a year even with support. You will never forget how it feels, and opiates are the perfect psychiatric drug...until it stops working. Anxiety, depression, stress, boredom...all gone, at doses that leave you functional and not visibly messed intoxicated to others. But when you eventually need to stop, and you eventually will because it is not sustainable, you are left with every mental symptom it initially cured.
The acute withdrawal is nothing compared to the reality of PAWS. For a year or more after the physical withdrawal, you will lose the ability to feel anything but depression, existential dread, and loneliness. You will have little or no interest in anything besides curing yourself with more drugs. No motivation, no comfort, and no end in sight. Your life will lose all color. And you will be profoundly alone.
You will eventually heal. There is hope. But every time you relapse, it will get worse. The clock will reset and it will take even longer for your brain to recover. Meanwhile, your relationships never will, and many people resign themselves to addiction. You will be married to this drug for the rest of your life. You can attempt a messy expensive divorce, but there is no annulment. You can rebuild your career, and you can rebuild your body. 20 years may pass, but you will never forget. I used to idolize Phillip Seymour Hoffman as a story of hope. Clean for decades, he went on to talent and success, bringing joy to millions and humanizing the imperfect. When he relapsed and died during the height of his career, part of me died along with him.