Happiness Is A Warm Blanket

So I work in a residential treatment facility for substance abuse. In the North East, Heroin still is king. I know that mostly everywhere else Meth has taken over, but while its around, heroin is cheap and powerful.

I love how parents wonder how their children become addicted to opiates and opioids. Almost every parents has some kind of pain killer in their medicine cabinet that just sit there over time. Humans in general are curious creatures. Not all will take some of the pills, but a good amount will. Most of the time they are pain killers like percocet, vicodin, darvocet and ultram. They are low to mid grade pain killers mixed with acetaminophen. Some hate the feeling, others love it.

Then you have the adults who have the serious pain killers laying around like oxycodone, dilaudid, fentanyl and morphine. These are all pain killers that are on that next level and really have the same chemical compound as heroin.

Stigma. If I take a few pills of oxycontin and get high, this fits into what kids do. What parents don't realize that there is no difference to the human brain between heroin and oxycontin. It starts off as a weekend party and tolerance fits in. Soon, its an everyday thing and that supply in your parents bathroom isn't going to last forever. OC is an expensive drug, so now they start with trying heroin. East Coast heroin comes from places like Afghanistan and is so pure and cheap, it can be found almost anywhere. On the West Coast, you still see a ton of Mexican heroin, which is in tar form. Tar needs to be injected or smoked. East Coast powder also can be injected or smoked, but most commonly it is railed nasally through the nose. No smell of burning tar, no needles, just a quick line and you are good to go.

Deaths continue to rise and funding continues to fall. This is something I will never understand. I can get a bag of heroin for less money than a pack of cigarettes. There are so many conspiracy theories that go around to why more isn't done to combat this epidemic. Since the 1960's, addicts who wanted to get clean were given methadone. While methadone is synthetic, it is a safe drug, dispensed at a clinic under supervision and its stops addicts from getting arrested, overdosing and sharing needles. Most methadone patients are on it for decades. Pain Managements physicians also dispense methadone to patients who are terminal, especially cancer patients. It is a very cheap drug to manufacture and your State and Government see a lot of money on the back end of this.

Recently you have other options like Suboxone and Subutex. I will get into these new treatments at another time. All of this heroin talk is making me want to use. I am in recovery for heroin. I will always want to use it, but at this point in my life, I have too much to lose. I have buried friends because of heroin, ruined friendships and relationships and hurt family ties that still have never been fixed years later.

My advice. Check your medicine cabinet. Maybe you can stop your child from an easy way to get high. On the other hand, you also might find a while array of drugs that might open up a while new world to you. Pandora's box will always be there. The thing with a medicine cabinet is that when you close the cabinet door, you have to look at yourself in the mirror.