Ask any heroin/opioid addict the reason they began using drugs and how they ended up in the current state, I will guarantee you that inevitably you will get the same answer over and over again, that is; every heroin/opioid addict began their journey innocently enough with over 90% of all users looking to try LSD, mushrooms, mescaline, or MDMA. Everybody wanted to experience that LSD-ish world that we were brought up in, to believe in pink elephants & melting walls, or believing that we too could find mystic knowledge in a hit of LSD or a dose of mushrooms along with a cartoonish world. Every dope addict didn't wake up thinking 'Man that heroin...what a drug; syringes, vomiting, sweats, isolation...damn this shit has been on my mind for a while'!! That may be true for 5% of people but not most of us users whom have always wanted to seek the knowledge, inspiration, and illumination that the hippies talked about! People who are dope addicts began thinking 'Man I whish I could one day go to India and drop LSD or take mushrooms, take a hike through the jungle and see life with new eyes, relax by the mountains or by the beach with some nice hash, some nice weed, maybe a beer or *maybe* some opium if available and if the hash and beer aren't satisfactory enough. This is what we begin as and you see what we end up as!
Other people are from formerly communist countries, when communism fell in 1989 like Eastern Europe or the former U.S.S.R. where drugs where taboo, thus the drug knowledge of these users is no longer than 26 years of democracy, while other nations are just now emerging as democracies and having first contact with drugs. These users in comparison to their North American or Western European counterparts have only recently, since the invent or rather the spread of the internet around 1999-2000 cultivated true uncensored 1st and 2nd hand drug knowledge. I come from one such country where nation wide only in 1997-1998 was marijuana available in high schools (8-9yrs after communism in 1989) but even then it was looked at by young people with suspicion in the same class as heroin, and quite expensive for an average salary. Now these users have found out the hard way that there is in fact a huge difference between heroin and marijuana, however the mentality of these nations has remained in a 'Bolshevik style' to this day where legally speaking there is no differentiation between soft and hard drugs and where 1g marijuana can land you 3yrs in prison while trafficking 12yrs, the same as heroin.
Once the needle is used there is no realistic way of coming back, plain and simple! Prescription or heroin, the needle is the needle, heroin snorted or smoked is one drug and heroin injected IV should be called something entirely else as it doesn't resemble *ANY* opioid taken oral, snorted or smoked.....its something completely different IV. Other MOA aren't anything like it, they are much more morphine like and normal characteristics of opiates but IV should be called something else! Heroin is nothing special if you are used to opioids its just a very strong opioid that is very morphine like with the exception of being slightly more euphoric and 'uppy' then morphine.....but IV its a different entity.
Another thing is Prescription vs Heroin the difference being that one is limited (the first) while the second is unlimited and everywhere in the world.........big difference worth noting!