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I'm an upper-middle-class, white, software developer with a CS degree from a top university. I do not drink a drop; I do not "get high." But I used to be a her

I'm an upper-middle-class, white, software developer with a CS degree from a top university. I do not drink a drop; I do not "get high." But I used to be a heroin addict. Before then, I used Oxycontin - crushed up and snorted - which was a great kick and very, very easy to fall in love with when you first try it. The Oxycontin pill formula switch had ominous effect. In short, my pusher had no clients anymore and switched straight to heroin. Turned from kids snorting pills for highs into a shooting gallery almost overnight. The last "classic" Oxycontin I remember hearing about went for $160 a pill. Like Scudo, I started with brown heroin. Snorting it also. And under the same delusion that somehow snorting it made me "not a heroin addict." Nothing like the cognitive dissonance of a dozen middle-class white kids making their first casual acquaintances with heroin. But drug has a noxious, subtle allure. One night, with only a few $20s in my pocket and the ATM just out of walking distance, I chased down a bit more rush. Someone showed me how to shoot it. "You put the needle in your arm." Casually as ever. Like explaining how to pull a good espresso. "You're new to this so your veins are easy to find. Not like mine. When you pull back the plunger - like this," drawing blood, "you know you've found it." Had it done for me, because I was scared and couldn't hit. I threw up a lot and felt better than uninitiated will ever comprehend. Months passed. Then something started happening, something I hadn't dealt with before: People started dying. Kids who had futures started dying. I won't bore you with the howls of addiction and disaster that followed, nor with my own personal triumph of escape. But I will leave with one point: This article is spot-on; the elephant in the room for many a community of parents who can't stomach much longer watching more of their kids die. Heroin is not just in the underbelly of the world anymore. We need to stop treating it like a pariah and start actually trying to fix it.

tim333 12y ago
It's always seemed to me the fix is technically quite easy even if politicians find it hard to vote for - provide safe heroin or similar to addicts for free / low cost at addiction treatment centres while at the same time keep supplying drugs on the open market illegal. That way the dealers lose most of their income and get other jobs, the addicts are at least safe and the general public don't get their stuff nicked. I don't know why it's so hard to get that implemented. It has been done in the past in the UK and it works.
- netcan 12y ago
  I'm generally in favour of drug legalization and I think we should carefully experiment with even legalizing heroine/opiates. However, I don't think this is a "fix" any more than legal alcohol is a fix for alcoholism. Legal or not, there will be user and there will be addicts. Legality might be an improvement but it doesn't solve the problem. I don't know if there is a solution. An effective treatment for addiction is the only thing I can think of. We don't even have effective treatments for eating disorders.
  - rwmj 12y ago
    There is a difference: alcohol can kill you in various ways, both acute and long term. Heroin can too, but by knowing what you're getting and your own tolerance you can avoid overdoses and then the side effects are pretty mild (constipation).
  - valarauca1 12y ago
    A quote I like to fall back on is the one from Portugal, which no longer has (edited) criminalized substances. "If you realize addiction is simply a symptom of a deeper underlying mental illness. Treat the illness, you solve the addiction." But yes there will be addicts.
    - kcole16 12y ago
      Recreational drug possession is decriminalized in Portugal, but still illegal. You will still be fined if caught, and if you possess over a certain amount, charged with a crime. That being said, addiction has declined since the decriminalization.
      - jfrm 12y ago
        If caught consuming (under a certain amount), the drug will be apreend and you can be required to present yourself before a comitte formed by a lawyer, a doctor and a social worker. It's possible to be fined but that it's not the primary objective.
    - 12y ago
bigbugbag 12y ago
This site provides much help and information about dealing with heroin: http://www.heroinhelper.com/ http://www.heroinhelper.com/
lmg643 12y ago
thanks for sharing your story. based on your experience, what do you think can be done to address the situation?
- onelittlepoint 12y ago
  Social stigma is a huge problem. The people who won't get help because "A bum sitting under a bridge with a needle in his arm, robbing houses to feed his addiction," c.f. the article, is what people think of when they think of heroin. There are people who won't seek help out of fear they will be thrown away by society. Nobody wants to stop being who they are and start being "an addict." Part of what can help this is education. To most people, heroin is a mythical creature. It's either glamorized or demonized, but neither of these things have any grounds in reality. There's obviously nothing glamorous about being so broken that you need to turn to powerful opiates to solve it. And there's obviously nothing so demonic about it, either: it's some sort of cognitive or emotional failure on the user's part, but it's not evil. While I share some of the concerns of others about it, I think "safe heroin or similar to addicts for free / low cost at addiction treatment centres" is still worth consideration. I think "not heroin" is the reasonable choice, though picking something (eg opiate replacements) completely devoid of pleasure fails to solve the real problem. People tend to neglect that money is a big part of the reason that drugs turn up in a community. We're a society built on money and illicit drugs are a profit area that huge corporations, by law, cannot capitalize upon. But that doesn't mean that people won't, and those people have profit motives to do things that encourage use of their product. It's clear that killing these people or putting them in prisons doesn't help. This is why the "war on drugs" is a failure: it just opens up the market for new players. In truth, heroin is no more strange or evil than alcohol. In fact, they're fairly similar: they both feel good, hobble your senses, and dull "pain." But drugs carry with them certain cultures, and the culture of alcohol is a reasonable one. An obscure and "dangerous" substance like heroin carries with it an obscure and dangerous drug market. That is what's truly dangerous; moreso than even the drug. So some combination of (1) educating the public in a sane way rather than fearmongering and (2) using the newly-earned social support to open doors for tactics that destroy the black market are my idea of a solution. I could be wrong, though. I'm just one data point.
fixurUNpolicy 12y ago
"just in the underbelly" fuck you. sideways. with a rusty hypodermic.
mcantelon 12y ago
Ibogaine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibogaine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibogaine) reportedly works for some people to get rid of their additions.
mathattack 12y ago
Thank you for sharing.
jeangenie 12y ago
Thanks for telling your story. I have an odd question. How do you feel about the way current members of the military and veterans are treated w/r/t painkillers like Oxycontin?

tim333 12y ago

It's always seemed to me the fix is technically quite easy even if politicians find it hard to vote for - provide safe heroin or similar to addicts for free / low cost at addiction treatment centres while at the same time keep supplying drugs on the open market illegal. That way the dealers lose most of their income and get other jobs, the addicts are at least safe and the general public don't get their stuff nicked. I don't know why it's so hard to get that implemented. It has been done in the past in the UK and it works.

netcan 12y ago
I'm generally in favour of drug legalization and I think we should carefully experiment with even legalizing heroine/opiates. However, I don't think this is a "fix" any more than legal alcohol is a fix for alcoholism. Legal or not, there will be user and there will be addicts. Legality might be an improvement but it doesn't solve the problem. I don't know if there is a solution. An effective treatment for addiction is the only thing I can think of. We don't even have effective treatments for eating disorders.
- rwmj 12y ago
  There is a difference: alcohol can kill you in various ways, both acute and long term. Heroin can too, but by knowing what you're getting and your own tolerance you can avoid overdoses and then the side effects are pretty mild (constipation).
- valarauca1 12y ago
  A quote I like to fall back on is the one from Portugal, which no longer has (edited) criminalized substances. "If you realize addiction is simply a symptom of a deeper underlying mental illness. Treat the illness, you solve the addiction." But yes there will be addicts.
  - kcole16 12y ago
    Recreational drug possession is decriminalized in Portugal, but still illegal. You will still be fined if caught, and if you possess over a certain amount, charged with a crime. That being said, addiction has declined since the decriminalization.
    - jfrm 12y ago
      If caught consuming (under a certain amount), the drug will be apreend and you can be required to present yourself before a comitte formed by a lawyer, a doctor and a social worker. It's possible to be fined but that it's not the primary objective.
  - 12y ago

bigbugbag 12y ago

This site provides much help and information about dealing with heroin: http://www.heroinhelper.com/ http://www.heroinhelper.com/

lmg643 12y ago

thanks for sharing your story. based on your experience, what do you think can be done to address the situation?

onelittlepoint 12y ago
Social stigma is a huge problem. The people who won't get help because "A bum sitting under a bridge with a needle in his arm, robbing houses to feed his addiction," c.f. the article, is what people think of when they think of heroin. There are people who won't seek help out of fear they will be thrown away by society. Nobody wants to stop being who they are and start being "an addict." Part of what can help this is education. To most people, heroin is a mythical creature. It's either glamorized or demonized, but neither of these things have any grounds in reality. There's obviously nothing glamorous about being so broken that you need to turn to powerful opiates to solve it. And there's obviously nothing so demonic about it, either: it's some sort of cognitive or emotional failure on the user's part, but it's not evil. While I share some of the concerns of others about it, I think "safe heroin or similar to addicts for free / low cost at addiction treatment centres" is still worth consideration. I think "not heroin" is the reasonable choice, though picking something (eg opiate replacements) completely devoid of pleasure fails to solve the real problem. People tend to neglect that money is a big part of the reason that drugs turn up in a community. We're a society built on money and illicit drugs are a profit area that huge corporations, by law, cannot capitalize upon. But that doesn't mean that people won't, and those people have profit motives to do things that encourage use of their product. It's clear that killing these people or putting them in prisons doesn't help. This is why the "war on drugs" is a failure: it just opens up the market for new players. In truth, heroin is no more strange or evil than alcohol. In fact, they're fairly similar: they both feel good, hobble your senses, and dull "pain." But drugs carry with them certain cultures, and the culture of alcohol is a reasonable one. An obscure and "dangerous" substance like heroin carries with it an obscure and dangerous drug market. That is what's truly dangerous; moreso than even the drug. So some combination of (1) educating the public in a sane way rather than fearmongering and (2) using the newly-earned social support to open doors for tactics that destroy the black market are my idea of a solution. I could be wrong, though. I'm just one data point.

fixurUNpolicy 12y ago

"just in the underbelly" fuck you. sideways. with a rusty hypodermic.

mcantelon 12y ago

Ibogaine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibogaine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibogaine) reportedly works for some people to get rid of their additions.

mathattack 12y ago

Thank you for sharing.

jeangenie 12y ago

Thanks for telling your story. I have an odd question. How do you feel about the way current members of the military and veterans are treated w/r/t painkillers like Oxycontin?