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DRUG INFORMATION THAT COULD SAVE YOUR LIFE

Drug INFORMATION home | Heroin | The Basics | Effects | Dangers
Addiction & Tolerance | Mixing With Other Drugs | FAQ/ Frequently Asked Questions | Drug Tests | Legality | Helpful Links |

Please note: there have been very few scientific studies into the effects of combining psychoactive drugs. The information presented here is anecdotal. It is based on the subjective reports of experienced users. Different people will respond differently to different drugs and drug combination. Know your body,use your head.

Heroin:  Known as "The Monky" ... You supply the back.

The Basics: What it is: Made from the liquids extracted from the Poppy flower seed pod.
Heroin is a powerful, addictive pain-killing drug. It is one of the most-used, most-rapidly acting, and most addictive of the opiate family, which includes opium, morphine, and codeine.Not as addictive as you might think..

All opiates are derived from opium, a naturally occurring juice extracted from the seed pod of certain varieties of poppy (Papaver somniferum and Papaver setigerum). Heroin or 'diacetylmorphine' is a semi-synthetic derivative of morphine.
Heroin is increasingly used in club land as a chill-out drug and has also recently become popular on the gay scene. It's relatively cheap and many smoke it to ease comedown from E, speed or coke.
The price of heroin varies according to how much is available. Generally it's between € 75 - € 100 per gram, or around € 25 for a third of a gram.

Appearance
Pure heroin is a white powder with a bitter taste. Street heroin comes in granule, powder, solution or pill forms and varies in color from white to dark brown thanks to additives or impurities left from the manufacturing process.
Heroin in the UK often resembles packet chicken soup. In fact, strictly speaking, it isn't heroin at all - true heroin is a hydrochloride salt, soluble in water. The brown sold in the UK is diamorphine base - a product intended mainly for smoking, and is not soluble in water.

Injecting
Most regular users inject either intravenously (into a vein) or intra-muscularly (into a muscle, usually the shoulder) after heating heroin powder in a little water.
The brown heroin that dominates the UK and Dutch - market is insoluble in water and must be dissolved in acid, usually citric acid from lemons.

Snorting / Smoking
However, an increasing number of people choose to smoke or snort lines of heroin, rather than inject.
When smoked, heroin is heated on foil and the vapor inhaled through a tube or rolled-up bank note. This is known as 'chasing the dragon'.

Effects / RISKS;
There are many health risks associated with heroin use:
» overdose (particularly if injected)
» use of needles
» adulterants used to cut the drug
» addiction
» long term health side-effects of regular use

Overdose
The biggest risk is death from overdose. It's impossible to judge the purity of street heroin. Many accidental overdoses have occurred when a batch of particularly pure heroin is released onto the streets, overwhelming the built-up tolerances of regular users.
Smoking or snorting, rather than injecting, reduces the chance of OD'ing but does not eliminate it.

Needles
It is universally advised strongly, that you NOT inject heroin.
Injecting has two main safety problems: the transmission of HIV and other diseases (especially Hepatitis B & C) through sharing needles, and the dangers of injecting any added dirt and germs on your skin into your bloodstream.
About 10% of London's drug users are HIV-positive
50% have Hepatitis B
80-90% have Hepatitis C
As a rule, never share needles. Sharing equipment just isn't worth the risk. Clean works are available free from Needle Exchanges and some pharmacies.

Adulterants / CUTS
Heroin is often cut with as nutmeg, sucrose, starch, caffeine, chalk, powdered milk, flour, talcum powder.
While none of these substances are dangerous themselves, when injected they can cause chronic problems such as itchy and inflamed skin and veins. The powder solution injected is also likely to contain bacteria.

Long Term Use
Despite the myths, heroin is a relatively harmless drug, especially compared to alcohol or nicotine.
However, chronic heroin abuse can result in scarred and/or collapsed veins, bacterial infections of the blood vessels and heart valves, abscesses and other soft-tissue infections, and liver or kidney disease.
Constipation caused by a combination of poor eating and the effects of the drug on the bowels can lead to hemorrhoids. Addicts can also suffer from malnutrition because they're never hungry. Addiction While its addictiveness has been much exaggerated, heroin remains a highly habit forming substance. See our addiction info for more detail.

Effects / Dangers / CAUTIONS;
Heroin works on the central nervous system. The heartbeat slows. The breathing is dramatically slowed. Consciousness may be lost. Any of these effects can be fatal if the dose is too high.
Depending on purity and the user, a lethal dose of heroin may range from 200 to 500mg, but hardened addicts have survived doses of 1800mg and over.
However, with street heroin there is no absolutely certain "safe dosage". It depends on tolerance, amount and purity taken.

Addiction & Tolerance: Overdose = DEATH

One dose of heroin will not make you an addict. An estimated 25 to 40% of street users are not physically dependent. There are plenty of regular users who set strict limits on their heroin-use and do not become addicts.
However, heroin is highly physically addictive, more so than morphine, and on a par with nicotine. Regularity of use is as important as the amount in the development of addiction.
Overdose can occur when a dose taken is greater than that you're used to. A tolerable dose for an addict could be fatal to a first-time user.
Take a little to begin with and wait.
Tolerance to heroin in particular is quickly acquired. To compound things, the body quickly builds a tolerance to the drug. Long term, larger and larger doses are needed to achieve the same effect. Even occasional weekend users need to take more to get the same effect over time. 

Remember! - Tolerance can drop. Some users have overdosed on their 'regular dose', after just a few week's break.

Where you take it?
Bizarrely, tolerance also appears to be partially related to the environment where the drug is taken. Studies have shown that users who take heroin in an unusual or different place to normal are more likely to overdose.
No-one knows why this should be, but one theory is that the bodies of addicts who go to the same location to take the drug every time become conditioned to taking it there: their body gears up for what's to come and therefore they have a higher tolerance in that location. When they shoot up somewhere else, their body hasn't prepared itself and they overdose. This, however, is only speculation.

Mixing with other Drugs:
Heroin is a bad mixer and will only make the chances of unconsciousness, vomiting and choking greater. Only 21% of fatal overdoses in a recent Australian survey came about through using heroin on its own.

Please note: There have been very few scientific studies into the effects of combining psychoactive drugs. The information presented here is anecdotal. It is based on the subjective reports of experienced users. Different people will respond differently to different drugs and drug combination. Know your body.

Alcohol don't; Alcohol and Heroin both depress the central nervous system. The combination has proven fatal
Amphetamines mixing uppers and downers is not good; speed's stimulant effects may mask the opiate effects of heroin and make overdoses more likely
Cocaine don't; Mixing the two (known as a 'speedballs') is especially dangerous; the two drugs potentiate each other, increasingly their effectiveness twofold. The cocaine acts as a powerful stimulant raising the heartbeat but its effects wear off more quickly than heroin which in turn slows the heart. As a result, the heart can lose rhythm entirely.

Think you are a clever kid and can handle yourself well using common sense? Actors John Belushi and River Phoenix both died after taking speedballs.

Ecstasy / XTC = MDMA's effects may mask opiate effects of heroin and make overdose easier
GHB/ghb don't; GHB is a liquid sedative anesthetic; mixing it with heroin could fatally depress the central nervous system
Ketamine doesn't work
LSD AND  Mushrooms   Psychedelic drugs mess with the effects of opiates, making them unpredictable and usually unpleasant
Tobacco No harmful permanent effects.

Drug tests: detection times;
Heroin - and other opiates such as morphine and opium - are detectable by standard drug tests on urine between 24 and 48 hours after use.  Some over the counter pain medicines which contain codeine may give false positives.

Legality: In the UK and US
A class A illegal substance in the UK,  Schedule I in the US.

FAQ: Frequently asked Heroin questions

» Will I became addicted after one dose?
» If you don't inject heroin can you still become addicted?
» what is 'chasing the dragon'?
» what does heroin do?
» what's the difference between brown and white heroin?
» is it true that heroin is stronger than it used to be?
» is it true that most addicts have HIV?
» where does heroin come from?
» why do addicts use lemons?

» Will I become addicted after one dose?
No. Heroin's 'incredible' addictiveness has been much overplayed, backed up by the tragic specters of long term addicts, physically wasted by their habits. Nevertheless, like alcohol, nicotine, amphetamines and cocaine, heroin is a highly addictive drug with a seductive physical and psychological effect. It's ability to smother and cushion a user from their lives often draws the user into a psychological addiction, much before the physical compulsion starts.

» If you don't inject heroin can you still become addicted?
All ways of taking heroin can lead to addiction. Smoking and sniffing heroin do not produce a "rush" as quickly or as intensely as intravenous injection, but the heroin still ends up in the brain, where addiction and tolerance build up.

» What is "chasing the dragon"?
Smoking heroin, using by heating it foil and inhaling the vapor through a tube or rolled up banknote.

» What does heroin do?
The body has its own pain-killing opiates called endorphins which are released in times of physical injury. Heroin is converted by the brain into morphine which then binds of the endorphin receptors all over the body, creating a powerful and pleasurable warm 'cotton wool' effect.

» What's the difference between brown and white heroin?
Pure heroin is usually white. Street heroin is usually brown from impurities and adulterants. However there is no way to guage heroin purity just from looking at it.

» Is it true that heroin is stronger than it used to be?
Purity varies, fluctuating on a local basis depending on availability (dealers reduce purity when they don't have as much) but generally, yes, heroin is purer now than it has ever been.
Part of this is because former cocaine cartels are now branching out into heroin as well, flooding the market. Higher purity also makes snorting and inhaling an alternative to injecting without too much compromising of the intensity of the high.

» Is it true that most addicts have HIV?
No. About 10% of London's heroin users, for example, are HIV+. But 50% have Hepatitis B and around 90% have Hepatitis C. HIV and Hep B & C are passed on more readily through unsafe injecting practice than by other means.

» Where does heroin come from?
Most heroin in the UK comes from poppies grown in Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, and Turkey. In the US, heroin comes from Mexico, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, and the notorious Golden Triangle area of Southeast Asia (Burma, Thailand, Laos).

» Why do heroin addict use lemons?
The brown heroin commonly seen in the UK doesn't dissolve very easily and so is difficult to inject intravenously. Users have to use acids, usually citric acid from lemons, to do so.

Please note: There have been very few scientific studies into the effects of combining psychoactive drugs. The information presented here is anecdotal. It is based on the subjective reports of experienced users. Different people will respond differently to different drugs and drug combination. Know your body.

Some resource Links that may be useful:
http://www.lindesmith.org
http://www.erowid.org/chemicals/

University of Amsterdam Center For Drug Research  http://www.cedro-uva.org

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