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  • TDS Moderators: AlphaMethylPhenyl | paranoid android

Friend is starting to get into heroin

is this your friends first time experimenting with opiates? i can say from personal experience that opiates (especially heroin) will become the most important thing in your life if you keep using. if she is aware/ok with that...there really isn't anything anyone can do, and you're going to have to wait until she truly wants to stop. fortunately, it sounds like she has just started getting into it. people just starting with heroin can get high every now and then, or "chip", for a period of time, some longer than others. for some it takes weeks and for others it takes years but if you use heroin on any type of regular basis (good luck using heroin once or twice a year lol) you will gradually start needing it. the gradual part was what caught me off guard. even when i first became dependent, it was fairly easy to detox. but eventually, it got to the point where withdrawal was not an option for me because it felt so horrible in every way imaginable. people don't go to the methadone clinic every single day at 6am or drop 10k on ibogaine because getting off heroin is easy. truth is, heroin addiction becomes a fucking nightmare if you can't support your habit, which is difficult because your tolerance will go up 10 fold. the lifestyle gets tough, when your dealer runs out or is mia for the day, you can only miss so many days of work until you get fired and then boom, no income...but still a costly drug habit. you also have the police to worry about, your health, damaged relationships (everybody hates a junkie, sucks but true), etc.

so basically 99.99% of people can't use heroin without getting addicted at some point, and it is really tough/risky to support a heroin habit. at the moment i am not using heroin, but the detox was so bad i wouldn't wish it on my most hated enemy, and i am still dealing with drawn out withdrawal symptoms (lethargic, depression, fatigue, crazy mood swings, no motivation, constantly uncomfortable etc. etc.). basically all i can think about is heroin because that is the only thing that makes me feel normal. and something tells me your friend doesn't want to end up like that.

sounds lame (especially if she doesn't have a serious issue with it right now) but to be perfectly honest, my advice would be to quit while you're ahead, or at least take a long break.

good luck with your friend i wish you both the best
 
Unfortunately fear never seems to stop the train from rolling right up to the station. I would ask her about her motivations and try to keep the talk focused on those rather than on all the horrors of heroin per se; because IME--formed here on Bluelight and IRL-- people are not only not deterred by fear but in fact can sometimes be drawn in by the sheer riskiness of what the idea (maybe from a sense of subconscious fatalism or even a desire to show the outside world what pain they are in--similar to the syndrome of self-harm).

And as much as you want to help and support, keep your own boundaries solid. It can be a horrific feeling of helplessness to be a friend or family member and to watch someone head off on this path. Take care of yourself while you support your friend. I hope she finds a way to address the pain some other way. Heroin is no way at all.
 
imean, how could she NOT have been informed already about the dangers of heroin? It's like the most publicized media-sparked belief about drugs ever, heroin has an even worse public image than cocaine or meth. I see billboards around where i live just focusing on heroin ods and telling people not to try it.
If she still does it after all of that campaigning, then you have to wonder either about her common sense capabilities or the effectiveness of the anti-heroin campaingning
heroin is the worst drug after IV coke, and it turns on its users
 
herbavore said:
Unfortunately fear never seems to stop the train from rolling right up to the station. I would ask her about her motivations and try to keep the talk focused on those rather than on all the horrors of heroin per se; because IME--formed here on Bluelight and IRL-- people are not only not deterred by fear but in fact can sometimes be drawn in by the sheer riskiness of what the idea (maybe from a sense of subconscious fatalism or even a desire to show the outside world what pain they are in--similar to the syndrome of self-harm).

And as much as you want to help and support, keep your own boundaries solid. It can be a horrific feeling of helplessness to be a friend or family member and to watch someone head off on this path. Take care of yourself while you support your friend. I hope she finds a way to address the pain some other way. Heroin is no way at all.
Click to expand...

This. This this this.

And also, that video... that, that that that. So much of both of these. QFT.
 
You might as well be talking to a brick wall. Everyone thinks they're invincible when they start.

You can't scare users with stories of death and loss. Most users want to die. Most people only learn by going thru it.

+1 on that video though. That explained my jump exactly. MDMA into heroin. Wondering why people have to do it every day?
 
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^ I liked your post but I disagree with 'most users want to die',
nah they get sucked into the glorification of using and that instant gratification when the first high hits. Most users turn to horse when all other opiates have failed they're expectations, they want to experience a greater high. Unfortunately IV'ing your drugs looses its sparkle too.. tolerance builds up quick and then that's when some people run into a problem they end up upping the dose way to high and end up having a OD.

Me I never had the lust or desire to use H. I don't trust what's being sold as H on the streets. The drugman might be cutting it with something harmful to make it more bulk =more money. IDK id stick to pills if your popping them...fuck its a loosing battle.

I already cut ties with my cousin using the H he ended up nodding being non human and greedy, I do love him and wish him recovery soon. But it's a fucking hard habit to quit, not only are you using a hard opiate obviously addicting itself but then you'll have a bond to that needle too.

End the cycle before it's too late.
 
Stories! I'll tell my story. I'm incredibly bored and it's a rainy day and all that.

I've had treatment resistant depression for as long as I can remember. I first tried to kill myself around 8 (very confusing, knowing you're so different and not knowing why). So, I hopped from addiction to addiction during primary school and high school (self-injury, anorexia nervosa, other self injurious habits) and started smoking pot around 11 or 12. Then I met some older friends who were into pills and meth, so by the time I was 15 I was smoking a ton of weed every day and doing pills and sometimes meth. I started art school at 17. I went nuts. "my life got flip turned upside down" as the Fresh Prince would say and I had a dissociative attack, ended up in the psych ward. After that, I met a guy who was a heroin dealer. Woohoo! And we started dating.
I probably snorted heroin 3 or 4 times before I asked him to shoot me up. I think I had this romantic idea about the junkie artist in the dimly lit room, writing poetry and nodding off and making love and eating fruit and all that shit, like a lot of us do I think. And it's true. It's like that. It's fucking beautiful and dramatic and tragic for a while, until it's just dramatic and tragic, and then after a while it's just tragic and sad.
I started stripping to support my habit (and his). Luckily I'm pretty and I had dreadlocks down to my ass and I was good at it, so I made a lot of money and never had to start hooking. But it also allowed my habit to get a bit out of hand.
The first time I quit, cold turkey, I left him. I moved back with my parents. It lasted maybe six months. And then I went back, and the rest is blurry. Using, dancing, quitting, using, quitting, dancing. I managed to finish my AA in all this and graduate with honors, and even occasionally hold down a second job. But by the time I was 21 my habit was getting bad. I was experienced by that point and had lots of regulars so I was averaging $500-700/night and it was all going into my arm.
I met a wonderful boy at work. We started dating, we fell in love. We had an awful habit together for a while. Eventually, I decided that quitting on my own hadn't worked for me and that I was incapable of holding myself responsible because I had become so fucking good at manipulating myself and everyone around me. I had watched three friends die and my boyfriend almost die (I had to keep him alive until the ambulance got there, breathing into his icy lips, only one side of his chest working from a collapsed lung). I went to the methadone clinic.
I cheated a lot at first. But eventually my back hurt so badly I couldn't work anymore, so I couldn't afford dope. And then I actually got into the program, and life got better. We got a nice apartment and my boyfriend was working regularly. I started working as the VP of a startup company in an office with my own desk and everything.

We moved to California. I stayed clean. The last year, though, I've been back in the Midwest. I got sick, see, and now I have lots of chronic pain. So there's the struggle all over again, with the pain (I've always had back pain, and it's most of the reason I started. I'm 27 and I have osteoarthritis and four herniated discs squishing my spinal cord, and fibromyalgia). When they give me painkillers now they barely work because my brain is rewired for opiates.


It starts out beautiful but it never ends that way. It ends messy and sad and pathetic.
 
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