HEROIN

Heroin

Heroin

The nature of this abused drug (its basic characteristics)

Heroin is a narcotic and an illegal drug that is typically injected or snorted by users though it can be smoked. The manner in which the drug, from the opiates family, is ingested has little bearing on the potential for addiction. The fact is that repeated use leads to addiction, whether you are using needles or not.

A person who is a heroin addict continues to use the drug, even though they are experiencing negative consequences in their life as a result. They are not able to choose whether they are going to use heroin. Instead, they experience a "need" for it that becomes a driving force in their life.

Heroin is a central nervous system depressant that relieves pain and induces sleep. It produces a dreamlike state of warmth and well-being. It may also cause constricted pupils, nausea, and respiratory depression, which in its extremes can result in death. Heroin activates brain regions that produce euphoric sensations and brain regions that produce physical dependence-hence its notorious ability to produce both psychological and physical addiction. Its addictiveness is characterized by persistent craving for the drug, tolerance (the need for larger and larger doses to get the same results), and painful and dangerous withdrawal. Withdrawal symptoms include panic, nausea, muscle cramps, chills, and insomnia. Heroin use during pregnancy increases the risk of miscarriage and stillbirth. Infants exposed to heroin in the womb go through withdrawal at birth and exhibit various developmental problems. Besides the danger of overdose, addicts are susceptible to malnutrition, hepatitis, pneumonia, and AIDS.

Heroin addicts have similar experiences when they have become dependent on the drug, including:

Cravings in between uses

Spending time thinking about the last time they got high and what the next high will be like

Focusing on where and when they can get the next dose

Sudden financial difficulties and erratic behavior

Track marks around injection points

The neuroscience of this abused drug

Heroin enters the brain, where it is converted to morphine and binds to receptors known as opioid receptors. These receptors are located in many areas of the brain (and in the body), especially those involved in the perception of pain and in reward. Opioid receptors are also located in the brain stem—important for automatic processes critical for life, such as breathing (respiration), blood pressure, and arousal. Heroin overdoses frequently involve a suppression of respiration.

After an intravenous injection of heroin, users report feeling a surge of euphoria (“rush”) accompanied by dry mouth, a warm flushing of the skin, heaviness of the extremities, and clouded mental functioning. Following this initial euphoria, the user goes “on the nod,” an alternately wakeful and drowsy state. Users who do not inject the drug may not experience the initial rush, but other effects are the same.

With regular heroin use, tolerance develops, in which the user's physiological (and psychological) response to the drug decreases, and more heroin is needed to achieve the same intensity of effect. Heroin users are at high risk for addiction—it is estimated that about 23 percent of ...