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by: DavidBSmith
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Heroin is an addictive drug that is processed from morphine and generally appears as a pale or brown dust. Its street names include smack, H, ska, junk, and many others.

Heroin use is still on the rise and it has become a serious difficulty in America and throughout the Western world. Heroin use is associated with serious health concerns, including lethal overdose, spontaneous abortion, collapsed veins, and, particularly in users who inject the drug, communicablee diseases, including HIV/AIDS and hepatitis.

The short-term effects of heroin abuse emerge soon after a single dose and disappear in a few hours.

After an infusion of heroin, the user reports sensing a rush of euphoria ("rush") accompanied by a warm blushing of the skin, a dry mouth, and heavy arms and legs. Following this preliminary euphoria, the user goes "on the nod" - an alternately sleepless and drowsy condition. Mental operation becomes hazy due to the depression of the central nervous system.

Long-term effects of heroin use appear after repeated use for some period of time. Chronic users may grow collapsed veins, disease of the heart lining and valves, abscesses, cellulitis, and liver disease. Pulmonary complications, including numerous types of pneumonia, may result from the poor health condition of the abuser, as well as from heroin's depressing effects on respiration.

Heroin abuse during pregnancy, along with the many connected lifestyle factors (e.g., lack of prenatal care) have been associated with numerous adverse consequences for newborns including low birth weight - a crucial risk aspect for following developmental setbacks.

In addition to the effects of the drug itself, illegally obtained heroin may have additives that do not readily dissolve and result in blocking the blood vessels that lead to the lungs, liver, kidneys or brain. This can result in infection or even death of minor patches of cells in crucial organs.

With regular heroin use, tolerance develops. This means the abuser must use more to realize the same intensity of effect. As larger doses are used over time, bodily addiction and addiction grow.

With physical dependency, the body has adapted to the presence of the drug and withdrawal symptoms may ensue if use is cut down or suddenly stopped. Withdrawal, which in consistent users may transpire as early as a few hours after the last administration, produces drug thirst, anxiety, muscle and bone pain, insomnia, diarrhoea and vomiting, cold flashes with goose bumps ("cold turkey"), kicking movements ("kicking the habit"), and other signs.

Major withdrawal symptoms peak between 48 and 72 hours after the last dose and subside after about a week. Sudden withdrawal by severely dependent abusers who are in poor health is sometimes lethal, although heroin withdrawal is deemed less dangerous than alcohol or barbiturate withdrawal.

In many Western countries Methadone is administered to heroin abusers as a substitute to abrupt withdrawal. In theory, the methadone is used as an provisional means to help the user get over his or her reliance on heroin The main difficulty with this though is that methadone is even more addictive than the drug it is supposed to be replacing!

This is the irony. Heroin was initially developed to help people who had become addicted to morphine, but it turned out to be more addictive than morphine. Methadone is likewise more addictive than heroin, and it is the addictive property of the drug that accounts for the dreadful number of fatalities.

In the short-term, Methadone is a less harmful drug than many of its alternatives, but the longer the drug is used and the more acutely the user becomes hooked, the poorer the user's chances of recovery become.

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