Heroin: a curse or a source of meaning?

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bit_pattern

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Heroin: a curse or a source of meaning?

FOR a substance that started out as a family-friendly cough suppressant and non-addictive morphine substitute, heroin has certainly gained a fearsome reputation since the late 1890s, when Germany's Bayer Company first marketed it.

There are still some elderly retired midwives around who fondly recall heroin (available legally here until the mid-1950s) as a near-perfect sedative for labour pains.

From pain-free birth to painful death, heroin has become one of our most reviled and misunderstood substances.

I continue to meet people who assure me that heroin isn't just a drug, it's an open invitation to crime and degeneracy, a squirt of anarchy concentrate in a hypodermic.

Despite the fact that it is other substances such as alcohol and speed that tend to fuel violent behaviour, it is heroin that has acquired the sinister status.

And this is why many people become edgy when it is suggested (as it is every year or two) that heroin is making a comeback.

In the late 1990s, as many as 80 per cent of the people we met sleeping rough on the streets were heroin-dependent. Their homelessness was often a byproduct of their addiction and these were the days when the drug flowed so freely that the heroin overdose toll was printed alongside the road toll in the local tabloid.

Collingwood's Smith Street was dubbed Smack Street, many young women took to street sex work to support their dependency, and middle-class families made a concerted effort to avoid the corner of Russell and Bourke streets, then Melbourne's epicentre of drug dealing.

Are those days returning? Did we learn anything from the last heroin crisis?

This decade, heroin has had more putative comebacks than John Farnham, but open street dealing has never quite returned with the same vigour. Until now.

Many community workers are reporting a notable increase in heroin use among clients of housing and health services.

Evidently, the poppy fields of Burma and Afghanistan are fertile with product and the road of supply is open again. Some commentators believe that in recent weeks the purity of the drug has risen from 30 per cent to 70 per cent.

Heroin is stupidly expensive: five kilograms of it has a street value of $9 million (although according to one drug educator I know, the substance would cost about as much to manufacture commercially as sugar).

For the user, a single hit or "point" usually costs about $50. Because the purity varies, they never know what they've got until it's inside them. Sometimes they overdose, sometimes they die. A regular user may need to raise somewhere between $800 to $2000 a week to support their addiction. Hence the rise in prostitution, petty crime and dealing during heroin's ascendancy.

It's this expense that creates many of the drug's social problems. Scoring and paying for heroin becomes the user's entire focus. Finding money for food, clothing or housing may no longer be a priority. Homelessness and malnutrition are frequent side-effects for long-term users.

But all this has been said before. What isn't understood often enough is why some people find heroin so seductive. Heroin may have been conceived as a painkiller, but it is also extremely effective in killing emotional pain. Users I know have described the drug, not as a curse, but as a source of meaning. "Without it, I would have topped myself years ago," one 26-year-old woman told me.

Society is fragmented and it's painful to acknowledge that many people experience sexual, physical and emotional abuse. Overcoming such trauma may be a lifetime's journey. Some never manage it. I have no doubt that the stoned serenity heroin promises is seen as a solution, a tangible pathway out of despair. When he was director of Jesuit Social Services, Peter Norden memorably observed that young people use drugs in response to pain, suffering and isolation — not because they are aiming to be villainous.

In other words, heroin addiction may be best understood as the consequence of profound social dislocation, rather than an individual's weakness. Children do not ask to be traumatised and they do what they can to survive the despair. This is why we've got to reach out to users and offer more constructive therapies to address their psychological injuries.

Ten years ago, widespread heroin use created pervasive outrage in Melbourne and many people were contented with the short-sighted premise that all problems begin and end with the drug user. Heroin users I knew were bashed, spat on and called names such as "junkie" and "dero". Ironically, the perpetrators were often young intoxicated males.

It might help if we abolished words like "drug addict" and "junkie" from the lexicon of social comment. Pejoratives do nothing but efface the humanity from a situation where compassion, not condemnation, would better suit the debate.

If heroin is back to stay, we need to be prepared to look past the substance itself and recognise that this addiction is really a symbol for more formidable problems. Heroin use isn't just the product of crime, it's also the product of family breakdown, neglect and intense feelings of hopelessness.

Chris Middendorp is a program co-ordinator at Sacred Heart Mission.
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http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/heroin-a-curse-or-a-source-of-meaning-20090621-cshv.html?page=-1
 
Many things in life can be considered a blessing and a curse...
I used opioids to manage emotional pain and it really isn't the right way to get through your personal problems. Nonetheless, I've become hopelessly addicted and now on Suboxone. And like the lady said in the article, I would have offed myself if opioids had not come into my life. I really enjoyed using but did not like the byproduct that came from it, which were withdrawal, wreckless behavior and hurting my family and friends around me.
 
Wow, 50 bux for 0.1 ? come to Jersey, and divide that price by 10 and now you can support a even huger habit on that 2000 a week! ;) :\

Anyways, i dont relly understand the point of this article at all. it says nothing while still takin up a bunch of paragraphs. how did this person manage to write this and not actuall SAY anything at all? its amazin!
 
lacey k said:
Wow, 50 bux for 0.1 ? come to Jersey, and divide that price by 10 and now you can support a even huger habit on that 2000 a week! ;) :\

Anyways, i dont relly understand the point of this article at all. it says nothing while still takin up a bunch of paragraphs. how did this person manage to write this and not actuall SAY anything at all? its amazin!
Click to expand...

The point is clear to me: heroin is usually used to escape emotional pain which comes from societal problems.
 
"I used opioids to manage emotional pain and it really isn't the right way to get through your personal problems. Nonetheless, I've become hopelessly addicted and now on Suboxone. And like the lady said in the article, I would have offed myself if opioids had not come into my life. I really enjoyed using but did not like the byproduct that came from it, which were withdrawal, wreckless behavior and hurting my family and friends around me. "

Ditto.. I've thought more than once if heroin didn't exist I'd just say fuck it and kill myself.. I didn't start ou using to kill my emotions but once I started trying to quit I noticed once I was over the physical wd's I hurt inside and in my heart and shit.. and so i keep using to kill the pain inside.. weird how that works out.. i mean i started using to have fun with my close friends who all used dope, then it just became nessacery to live..
 
a thing said:
The point is clear to me: heroin is usually used to escape emotional pain which comes from societal problems.
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And that we need to take a fresh, more compassionate view of addiction. A remarkably progressive view to be published in the mainstream media, and from a catholic nonetheless.
 
The article tries to explain why some people use.

In other words, heroin addiction may be best understood as the consequence of profound social dislocation, rather than an individual's weakness.
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Too bad it's extremely topical; with no real legwork done to flesh out the premise. How about a little research? Hell, even a couple interviews with abuse counselors and current/former addicts would have made for a better piece. :|


Oh, and I don't know what's up with Australia, but I don't think there's a country where heroin is more feared... Every half year or so I see articles about heroin epidemics and comebacks, etc. You'd figure they'd be more concerned about methamphetaime, which from what I've heard is a bigger issue there.
 
The Western world has been soft on Amphetamines up until the very end; despite knowing since the '30s that psychosis is all but gaurenteed with repeated long term administration. Recreational and habitual abuse/use gave examples of the modern 'Speedfreak', meth rage, etc.

Maybe it has something to do with the timeline of medical science discovering the basis of opioid addiction (i.e. that it applies to all opioids, not just the natural Opiates, but also the semi-synthetics) and the racial/social/classist calls for prohibition of narcotics. Heroin was the main target of the first national drug prohibition laws. First the Harrison Act in 1914 then the Heroin Act of 1924. Heroin was the first illicit drug to become an international criminal enterprise: originally it was all medical supplies (diverted or prescribed): then with the Heroin Act, there started the first black market syndicates. China grows poppies, processes Opium and manufactures Heroin then ships and smuggles it to the US black market.

Due to these and other factors it seems like the history of Heroin is simply the archetype of what would become the War On Drugs (arrest and harrass users and dealers, use military and diplomatic means to attack source countries, use a very tiny fraction of the available funds for the issue for education and even less for treatment of users).

It seems like this archetype simply stands out in the Western social/political psyche.
 
phrozen said:
Too bad it's extremely topical; with no real legwork done to flesh out the premise. How about a little research? Hell, even a couple interviews with abuse counselors and current/former addicts would have made for a better piece. :|
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The author IS an abuse counselor, or at least heavily involved on the front line of addiction and homelessness

http://www.sacredheartmission.org/
 
GlassAss420 said:
"I used opioids to manage emotional pain and it really isn't the right way to get through your personal problems. Nonetheless, I've become hopelessly addicted and now on Suboxone. And like the lady said in the article, I would have offed myself if opioids had not come into my life. I really enjoyed using but did not like the byproduct that came from it, which were withdrawal, wreckless behavior and hurting my family and friends around me. "

Ditto.. I've thought more than once if heroin didn't exist I'd just say fuck it and kill myself.. I didn't start ou using to kill my emotions but once I started trying to quit I noticed once I was over the physical wd's I hurt inside and in my heart and shit.. and so i keep using to kill the pain inside.. weird how that works out.. i mean i started using to have fun with my close friends who all used dope, then it just became nessacery to live..
Click to expand...
are you blaming certain problems stemming from society (withdrawal, wreckless behavior, hurting family and friends), on the heroin itself?
 
Phrozen, back in the late 90's heroin was everywhere and of extremely high purity. Although the later trend of abusing high purity methamphetamine probably resulted in more violent crime than the old heroin days, back then A LOT of people were dieing from heroin overdoses.

In the paper they keep track of the years road toll, back when this was going on they literally had heroin deaths next to the road toll. So basically I think it has a lot to do with that time period where heroin was killing a lot of people why Australian media can make a big fuss out of smack.
 
No I'm not blaming heroin at all.. I'm thanking heroin for releiving the stress from problems completly unrelated to the heroin itself..
 
Yeah Australia, like the UK, launched a public education campaign against heroin in the late 90s that was pretty effective. The result is that a lot of young people who grew up during those times see heroin as an incredibly addictive and "evil" drug.

Ironically they haven't been taught that smoking meth can be just as addictive and so meth has been a bigger problem here for the last few years. For a small country of 20 million people, drug "epidemics" tend to last in the collective conscience and the flood of heroin in the late 90s brought this issue into almost every suburb and city in Australia.

I guess that is where the fear of a "national relapse" of sorts comes from. :\

See films like Candy and Little Fish; the heroin epidemic of the late 90s is a deeply interwoven chapter of Australia's recent urban social history.
 
It would seem to me that it isn't heroin itself but rather the phobia of the needle, the dirty injecting drug user, images of used fits with blood in them scattered across the street that seems to be the bigger issue.

Pot smokers can roll up a socially acceptable joint and smoke away. Speed, well you could always just bomb it (roll it up in some paper and ingest it).

I remember once shooting up as a school kid and my peers looking on in horror. They had insisted on following me and at the time my shivers weren't far behind me.

If only I had smoked it on some foil or such then my crime would of never have never have been remembered. I'm sure they, even 15 years later tell that story to all their friends and colleagues as a example of why heroin is so evil (though i don't recall anything negative about the experience).
 
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