When I was in residential rehab I noticed a pretty big difference between the behavior of drug users of different drugs. This was a woman's only unit. It seems that today users of each particular drug seem to follow different patterns of behavior. I might be off in my observations, but this is what I have personally noticed after getting to know multiple users of addictive drugs on a pretty intimate basis.
So out of the 18 women that I got to know, 1 was there for methamphetamine, 5 for heroin, 11 for crack and 1 for crack and heroin. Out of the 11 women that were there for crack 6 were prostitutes. None of the women who were there solely for heroin were prostitutes except for girl that used both crack and heroin. The women who did heroin relied mostly on support from their family, jobs, boyfriends and from what they told me they rarely relied on theft to support their habits. Whereas the crack using women were down to doing anything to get their next fix. Also, when funds ran out the heroin addicts were much more willing to stop and not use than their crack using counterparts who were pretty much willing to do anything to continue getting high.
I realized that this is a small group, of just 18 girls, but what I wrote here is only what they told me. Since, crack and heroin are well known for their addictive potential I wanted to give my experience with the users of these drugs. This is obviously not going to be true for all users but there might at least be some truth to the differences between the users of these two highly addictive drugs.
Both, crack and heroin, can make their users do some horrible things for the next fix, but I noticed that crack can do that much faster. I don't know why that is so but from what I have seen the users of crack get addicted extremely fast and are quickly willing to do pretty much anything to get their next fix.
This might be the reason I saw such a big difference b/w the users of crack and heroin:
by ownx0rz
That is because cocaine and crack have much quicker comedowns. One might have an opiate hangover the next day, but not withdraw for two to three days after their last high. I have never had a cocaine/crack withdrawal, but I might have done some fucked up shit when severely withdrawing from opiates...especially fentanyl and heroin.