Agreed the physiology of heroin addiction is horrific - I'm getting a lesson on that now, myself - but addiction and dependence are primarily psychological and any mood altering substance/activity can be a vector.
It's reckoned that there are 7,800,000,000 humans on this planet. Each with a unique genome. Maybe the day will come when every child is born into a world that understands its needs and vulnerabilities at the genetic level and has systems in place to maximise that child's chances of meeting it's genetic potential. Optimised for happiness, why not, like the Tibetans.
That sounds nice, and plausible. Maybe a few generations from now our descendants will inherit such a world.
That may be the direction we're heading in but that's not the world we inhabit today. The world we inhabit today is one in which, well, I feel like I've said too much about that already, the only thing I'll add is that I recently heard Jamie Wheal of Recapture the Rapture say that currently about 40% of pregnancies are unplanned. It seems reasonable to assume that many of us aren't getting the best start in life.
I know such people exist as can just stop using heroin like it's nothing but the fact that Alex Honnold exists doesn't give everyone the right to expect others to be able to free solo El Capitan. Neither does it absolve them of responsibility for the deaths of those who would yet live but for having heard them say "I saw Honnold solo el Cap therefore I'm pretty sure anyone could do it" Unless you're going to be at the bottom of that cliff to catch them when they fall then don't even suggest it.
The rest of us have to channel our inner David Goggins
And for me, personally, I found rock climbing to be something that I looked forward to enough to keep me from wanting to do anything else. This is going to sound weird and it's not something I'm desperately keen to admit to but in the off chance someone out there reads this and is kind of like me then I guess I owe it to them to admit that when I did free solo rock climbing and got to the summit and checked my emotions I was always like "hmm, I'm actually confident that I'm glad that I'm still alive" which doesn't sound like much but that's about as good as it gets for me and as weird as it might sound, that was priceless. Rock climbing and volunteering. I'm a construction guy so groups like Habitat for Humanity are the sorts of places that I can feel more useful and whatever you might think of Jordan Peterson when he says that life is pain and it's either meaningful or it's not I think he's on to something. I'd rather be in pain and have spent my day helping the less fortunate of the world than not be in pain having spent my day on the sofa with a syringe hanging out of my arm.
I'm almost as sorry that you started using heroin as I am that I did and while I would never say this to anyone who doesn't know what addiction is. Let me rephrase. Someone who hasn't embodied the spirit of withdrawal, someone who's internal monologue has never railed at a mutinous body that seems to be acting of it's own volition, someone who hasn't sat in what feels like a pool of their own body fluids thinking "I'm pretty sure I'd rather be dead than go through any more of this, oh yeah, that's why I started using in the first place isn't it? because I felt like this all the time. Great, what reason have I to believe that I'm actually going to want what's left when I come off this stuff?" e.t.c. e.t.c. ad nauseam. If you are addicted and have decided to face that battle sooner rather than later then kudos to you, my only humble suggestion is that you decide that you have a reason. It doesn't even matter what it is, but find something to believe in, a hope, it doesn't matter what, just dare to hope for something then beast your way through. Be open to change but have a starting point to believe in then be the Goggins.
Best of luck to you, there are great people out there and the best way to find them is by starting on a path of daily becoming one of them.
For everyone else, please be sensitive of the fact that these are strange days, the biggest recession in 300 years or so, I think I heard. Desperate times, desperate measures and all that