What compels someone to try heroin?

What is heroin?

Heroin is an illegal, highly addictive opioid drug derived from morphine, which is extracted from the seed pod of certain poppy plants. It typically appears as a white or brown powder or as a black, sticky substance sometimes known as ‘black tar heroin’.

Heroin can be injected, snorted, or smoked. Many new, younger users begin by snorting or smoking heroin because they wish to avoid the social stigma attached to injection drug use. These users often mistakenly believe that snorting or smoking heroin will not lead to addiction. Users who snort or smoke heroin at times graduate to injection because as their bodies become conditioned to the drug, the effects it produces are less intense. They then turn to injection – a more efficient means of administering the drug – to try to attain the more intense effects they experienced when they began using the drug.

Effects of heroin

Short-Term Effects:

• Euphoria: Users often experience a rush of intense pleasure and well-being.
• Sedation: It induces a state of relaxation and drowsiness.
• Pain relief: Heroin has strong analgesic properties, reducing the perception of pain.
• Respiratory depression: It slows down breathing, which can be dangerous.

Long-Term Effects:

• Addiction: Heroin is highly addictive, leading to physical dependence and compulsive drug-seeking behaviour.
• Tolerance: Over time, users need higher doses to achieve the same effects.
• Health issues: Chronic use can lead to collapsed veins, infections of the heart lining and valves, abscesses, and liver or kidney disease.
• Mental health: Long-term use can cause depression, anxiety, and other mental health issues.

Risks of Use:

• Overdose: High doses can lead to fatal respiratory depression.
• Infections: Sharing needles increases the risk of HIV, hepatitis, and other infections.
• Withdrawal: Symptoms include severe cravings, muscle and bone pain, insomnia, diarrhoea, and vomiting.

Reasons leading to experimenting with heroin

There are many reasons why someone might start using hard drugs, and it often involves a combination of factors. Here are some common reasons:

1. Psychological factors: Mental health issues like depression, anxiety, or trauma can lead individuals to use drugs as a form of self-medication. Many people start using heroin to deal with anxiety, worries, and other stressors. Studies have shown that roughly 75% of people who use heroin also have mental health conditions such as depression, ADHD, or bipolar disorder.

2. Social and environmental influences: Peer pressure, family dynamics, and the environment someone grows up in can significantly impact their likelihood of trying drugs. In particular, socioeconomic challenges and the environment surrounding you can play a crucial role in shaping one’s likelihood of experimenting with heroin. We have a biological urge to fit in with our social groups. These urges are not limited to adolescence and may follow us into adulthood. A hard drug such as heroin may be shunned in one peer group but perfectly acceptable in another, especially within peer groups that:

• feel isolated or hopeless due to geographic or economic circumstances
• idolise celebrities who might use heroin
• commit to a form or notion of counterculture or the thrill of rule breaking.

3.Escaping emotional pain:  Many people have tried heroin as a way of self-medicating against pain and negative emotions. Heroin is known for its ability to create a sense of pleasure and numbness, and those effects can be enticing to someone struggling with emotional pain. However, the relief is temporary and often leads to a vicious cycle of using more heroin to escape reality. In addition, many people who try heroin have underlying mental health issues that may have contributed to their initial drug use.

4.Role of prescription opioids: One factor that played a role in the rise of heroin is the growing abuse of prescription painkillers such as oxycodone and hydrocodone. People who become dependent on or misuse these drugs may start looking for a stronger, cheaper high, which heroin offers. But it’s also more dangerous. There’s no way to know what you’re taking or how strong it is.

5. Curiosity and experimentation: Sometimes, people start using drugs out of curiosity or a desire to experiment. This is particularly prevalent in early adolescence.

Support

If you are looking for the right heroin rehab centre to help you make critical changes in your life, UKAT can help. We offer inpatient cocaine addiction treatment programmes that take everybody’s needs into account and provide you with the support you need to recover.

We offer a wide range of therapies, including cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), meditation, group therapy and 12-step work to focus on every aspect of your addiction. These will help you understand your addiction, develop healthy coping mechanisms and build a solid foundation for recovery.