What's it like?
-It's like an opiate. Warm feeling, blissful feeling, relaxation, quite potent compared to morphine depending on quality obtained.
Is it similar to other opiates/opioids?
-Sure, but it is it's own beast, which is why it has a following unlike any other. Different opiates/opioids vary on feel due to being derived from different alkaloids from the opium poppy: morphine, codeine, and thebaine. Where heroin is derived from morphine (it's diacetylmorphine), oxycodone is derived from thebaine. All opiates/opioids are very similar and heroin is no exception to the bunch, it holds its own and isn't particularly overwhelmingly strong (in comparison to others like methadone, oxymorphone, fentanyl, etc.), but it definitely isn't weak either. It's the middle of the road and I'd almost say it's the "happy medium" of sorts when it comes to opiates/opioid comparisons.
Just HOW addictive is heroin anyway?
-It's blanking addictive mate. Read the "should I try heroin" sticky in the OD forum for more. Your first use of heroin doesn't alone have the power to make you instantly physically/mentally addicted, but as many say, it is in-effing-credibly rare to almost non-existent of a chance that someone uses heroin only ONE time, ever. Once the feel has been felt, the brain says pooh! Again! Again! And honestly I was that way just a tad but it doesn't happen overnight.
However, once one is physically dependent and mentally used to the effects, one will constantly recall that FEEL of the rush, the taste, the warmth, the nod, etc. when not on it. This releases a bit of dopamine in the pleasure center and starts the craving for more dopamine release through opioid receptor stimulation. Often times thinking of the feeling was all I needed to get my ass out the door and on my way to the dope man, and this was for the lengthy period of time that I was NOT physically dependent (needing it to function and waking up sick and in withdrawal each day).
It will grab ahold of you and all of your money and assets and drag you away from everyone and everything you love(d) and you won't give a shit until it's too late. Your brain eventually places your heroin dependency/addiction over other needs, causing you to behave under this new change that getting heroin and consuming it is ESSENTIAL for your survival, rather than hydration, eating, working, etc. Just as if you were about to die, you go into "survival mode" and fight will everything inside you to stay alive, this becomes the same mechanism that powers your heroin addiction, and it is an unbelievably powerful force.
So yeah don't do it kthx.