the ups and downs of heroin

how has heroin invovlement affected your life?

it got a little heated but this is certainly related reading:

H, the shitdrug from hell, is coming around

alasdair

how has heroin invovlement affected your life?

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That's such a loaded question.

I learned a lot about myself.... my weakness... and after 10 years of on and off use, I am happier now to have put it behind me.

I married my heroin dealer at the ripe old age of 19. I had our child by the time I was 21. At the age of 28, I don't know if I can honestly say I've quit... because for some reason, every once in a while it still sneaks back into my life. But day to day use is long behind me. I still struggle. Narcotics in general are my biggest crutch. It just makes me feel like everything is going to be okay.... and for a little while, the pain goes away. I don't recommend using it, but it did carry me through some of the toughest times of my life... times I think I would have had an emotional breakdown if I wasn't using. Would I have married my ex-husband if I wasn't high? Hell no. But at the same time I wouldn't have had his child, my son... who's presence in my life has effected and changed me much more profoundly then heroin.

I don't regret my time with heroin.

ups and downs

i have not used much compared to many, but here's what i found:

ups...

numb
less thinking
less depression
exciting lifestyle/less boredom
~the rush~ of scoring, shooting, etc..
ice cream while high (how i imagine heaven)


downs...

loneliness
put myself in risky situations
harder to hold a job
cottonfever (blah, that sucked- most painful experience ever)
jail (close calls, never been)
less caring
lying/hidden lifestyle
fucks up veins
withdraw (a real bitch)
overdosing (blah, that really sucked)
friends who lie, steal, die, and live in jail
panhandling


i have never stolen or hurt anyone for my drug.

happiest days: when i started using, warm summer days of euphoric, dreamy highs.. listening to pink floyd lying next to my friend stella on my twin bed with a fan blowing on us and my kitten dante amusing us.

worst days: a year later, shooting up everyday. going to a Greenpeace interview at 9 am.. nodding out in the interview, going back to ask them if i had lost my cigs there, finding a nice chick to give me a cig and talk to me on the el train, puking on the train, all over myself... being lonely.

im not sure overall how it has affected my life, its just been a learning experience so far. an observation on the nature of human beings. maybe i can better answer that when im done and farther away from using.

Yeah H can be fun while it lasts, but unless you've got an unlimmited supply of cash, an easy enough job where you can be nodding out every once in a while, or family and friends who are so out of it that they have no idea what you're doing, eventually you'll have to quit.

And that's where the fun begins.

Immediately after you stop using, atleast for me, all of your bones and joints start to ache. My back and my knees bothered me especially. I had mood swings, I never became angry, but just switched back and forth from very VERY sad to bland/out of it. Unless you can get your hands on some Valium or something I wouldn't expect to sleep if I were you. The first night I was clean, I tried to drink myself to sleep with benadryl on top of it, in order to make me drozy. Instead of getting some sleep I just ended up puking up all the booze and writhing in agony all night long while my body felt like my bones were hurting from the inside out. Now mind you I was in all of this pain, even though I was probably taking 800 mg of Ibuprofen (4 advils) and 220 mg of Sodium Naproxyn (1 Aleve) every 3 to 4 hours. That's how bad you're going to feel. Even after I would down all those pills I wouldn't feel normal, I would just feel decent enough to get up and out of bed for a short while without feeling like complete garbage.

I don't think I even got a wink of sleep till the my 3rd or 4th day of detoxing, but it was odd because through these several days of being awake I wasn't drinking any caffeine or anything, and I didn't feel drowsy at all. I did however become a tad bit jumpy and irrational at the tail end of all of this.

Even once you get over the hill so to speak and you're no longer going through the acute period of withdrawl, you still won't feel normal for a few weeks.

Immediately after I got over being dope sick, I still didn't feel that good. I was constantly getting headaches and anxiety.

Even after all of this is over with you're still going to have to pick up whatever pieces of your life are still left intact, and start putting them back together.

heroin has effected my life on every level

it creates you and it destroys you. heroin is giving up on life. its locking up your pain and letting it starve in the pit of your soul--it eventually knaws itself out, devoring your entire being. a person that has been eaten by their inner demons is barely human--and this type of struggling existence is hardly bearable. heroin is unlike any other drug i've tried, heroin is the devil--but a friend of the devil...is a friend of mine

This question really make me laugh....and feel a whole lot of different things at once...

I can honestly say heroin has both ruined my life and also added the missing piece to the puzzle thsat completes me (sad isn't it?)...that missing piece is filled by a lot of different things but heroin is the easiest thing to put in it...that's how i explain it. However, it put me on the front page of the local newspaper and got me a criminal record for not even being physically caught with it EVER....ask me abouth ow mucch i love the legal system and how much i love US drug laws...(lol).

I really don't want to go on a rant so I guess that's all I will say about that.

If heroin were legal and easy to get, that would be a different story, but most people have to drive to some pretty bad neighborhoods they don't belong in to get it. No thanks...it isn't worth it. I'll stick to my cheap, easy to get, and slightly less illegal poppy pod tea. Same great buzz, no visit to the ghetto to get it.

been doing heroin on and off for 3 years, i have never had a habit as i only use it now and again i got into it for soming down off E after going raving, its a nice high & the "gouge" is nice but it does not give you anything to learn from as with LSD, ketamine, mushroms etc you learn from the trip heroin just makes you boaring.

never been there
but i must say "trainspotting" and "requiem for a dream" have sort of put me off.....even if they arent that realistic.

Heroin has had many many negative effects on my life and a few positive, and I've never even touched it. I grew up and still deal with heroin addicted parents, aunt, 2 uncles(one who passed from an OD), cousin and brother. It was really tough when I was young. From age 7-10 my parents had close to $1000 dollar a day habit between the two of them, which made them boost(steal) from opening hours of dep. stores till close. I think the worst memory I have is wearing dirty clothes to school when my parents were stealing outfits for our nieghbors to by off of them for their kids. Had to raise my two sisters who are 3 and 4 years younger than me, whom I have had custody of since 18 and still do. Was in the house of a drive by shooting at the age of 9 because my uncle was one of the biggest dealers in our town and it was an attempted robbery. All have had their clean phases and went back to using. First I had anger and then learned that addiction is something that one cannot help, and something I cannot change, so I learned to accept and let them know that no matter what I still love them.

If I hadn't grown up in that environment, I wouldn't be as strong, independant, understanding, street smart and intelligent as I am today.

I've never touched H but i used to live in a really affected part of town a couple years ago. Anyway, some people told some junkies round that area that there was a little H in my home. My gf and i were alseep one night and awoke to junkies breaking through our window. We got up and they charged at us with knives, they missed me but they punched my gf in the face and slashed who wrist with a knife. All this cause they thought there was some H in our house, they got away with a bag of fucken weed. Its fucked ya know, the promise of some little white powdery shit can drive grown men to do some fucken low shit. We're allright now and hae moved to a much nicer part of town. I've got nothing aginst heroin users. But junkies, and by that i mean the kind of fucks who commit agravited assaults for petty cash and tiny amounts of substances can fucken rot in hell. THese cunts think that just because they've had shit a little be tougher than others they can do what they fucken well like and throw civil rights out the window. I used to have a 2gram a day speed habit as well as about $300 a day of other substances but I'd never steal from or hurt other to support my habbit. Heroin is 1 of the few drugs tha can turn good people into murdering thugs and i think people should just avoid it. I mean, if you can handle it , then thats fine. But I've seen too many "strong-willed-people" turn into pathetic zombies who'll roll their grandmother if it ment getting another hit. THeres so many other drugs out there that don't turn people into axe-weilding maniacs, please people, don't gamble your life away with this shit. Just smoke some opium or something.

I won't make a speach about the ethics or pro/cons of addiction or misuse of the stuff, but I consider it a bad drug.
As for medical purposes, it is far too strong, but was intended to replace morphine. In that aspect it is a good drug, and actually the most effecient painkiller there has ever been. Though medical staff never uses it due to the downsides, and every government in the world has made it illegal.

lsdod said:

But I've seen too many "strong-willed-people" turn into pathetic zombies who'll roll their grandmother if it ment getting another hit.

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If that ain't the truth I don't know what is, I've had to hear my grandmother cry so many times because her own daughter and grandaughter steal from her every day.

on the road said:

heroin has effected my life on every level

it creates you and it destroys you. heroin is giving up on life. its locking up your pain and letting it starve in the pit of your soul--it eventually knaws itself out, devoring your entire being. a person that has been eaten by their inner demons is barely human--and this type of struggling existence is hardly bearable. heroin is unlike any other drug i've tried, heroin is the devil--but a friend of the devil...is a friend of mine

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i have never heard anyone talk about any other drug the way most people talk about heroin. And they all say something along the same lines --"it's incomparable, it's beyond comprehension. The feeling is like no other. 'Why is it that? i bet because it feels like it's coming from inside you --that it's organic' Yea, like that." I'm amazed by this outcome.
What specifically makes heroin so unique in comparison to the rest of the opiates or opioids? Eurphoria is subjective, so that wouldn't qualify as a reason. There are other opiates and opioids stronger than it. what really makes it so dramatic?

every government in the world has made it illegal.

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Whoa, i did not know that. There is so much politics tied up with heroin, i think that's why it is singled out so much as "the drug of all drugs." just observing bits and pieces of the history of heroin is astonishing --it was used for such different purposes and controlled in such bizarre ways. Did anyone see the History Channel special on heroin?
i don't think it's the actual effects that make it so extraordinary. Like i mentioned, in its class there are drugs stronger than it. What i never hear about is if those stronger drugs have the same strong withdrawal effects that are commonly found with heroin....


lsdod, the same character profile you apply to junkies can be commonly applied with just as much accuracy to meth addicts. I hear more about the freakiness of meth addicts than i've ever heard about for heroin addicts. Once again, i am in wonder as to why heroin gets singled out as the one drug that can turn an addict into the more negative junkie more than any other drug does.

If heroin were legal and easy to get, that would be a different story, but most people have to drive to some pretty bad neighborhoods they don't belong in to get it.

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i think that because heroin is so criminalized, and so singled out among all criminalized drugs as being "the druggiest drug of them all," the effects and "powers" of the drug are greatly distorted. Everything about heroin is depicted as extreme, because everything criminalized about it is too extreme. Like the way it's noted for being a "hard" drug (in some cases the most hardcore drug to do) when it is one of the least harmful on your body and mind.

I enjoy doing heroin, to me its one of the best Opiates out there right next to Poppy pods... I too have seen many people become addicted to this drug, but I guess it all boils down to someones will power. If you don't have a strong will power and you can get the drug anytime and you always have money, I guess you shouldn't really be fucking with it. With me, I can basically get it anytime I want to but I would have to make a drive that I really dont like to make into a ghetto, plus I'm broke so that helps out... But honestly, I have more friends that are addicted to Alcohol, I think that alcohol is a bigger problem in our society and people don't realize it because it's so socially accepted.

Everybody is so quick to jump on all the downs and the way it destroys your life.

You do it, you like it, you do it more often.

But there is a reason you're doing it right? I mean I've never seen anyone addicted to the first bag they did. obviously, if you're doing it that frequently, you've got some issues, stresses, life situations, whatever it is that heroin seems to make seem more manageable at the moment.

Heroin doesn't destroy your life, you do that on your own.

Escaping, hiding and running from your problems destroys your life, not a bag of dope. If you find yourself in the gutter, pick yourself the fuck up and get yourself some help. And take some responsibility for the path you've chosen instead of blaming a drug you put into your own body.

Dazzle said:

And take some responsibility for the path you've chosen instead of blaming a drug you put into your own body.

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I agree, i have never had a problem some people are just to quick to pass the blame onto other things such as drugs

Dazzle said:

Escaping, hiding and running from your problems destroys your life, not a bag of dope.

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yeah exactly, drugs shouldn't be used to solve problems

^^Exactly.

So once again, i wonder why the majority singles out heroin as causing the most damage, when it is used and abused like any other drug.