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Heroin Facts
Nobody will deny the heroin facts that show heroin to be one of the most destructive and addicting substances in the world. However, there is still a great deal of misinformation floating around about heroin. Our heroin facts page will help to better inform you of the most current and relative information regarding this dangerous drug.
Heroin facts show that heroin is a highly refined drug originating from the poppy plant. Opium is taken from the poppy which is commonly grown in the Middle East, South Asia, and Mexico for production of morphine and heroin. Heroin is a highly addictive opiate, coming from opium. A little known heroin facts is that Laudanum, or heroin mixed in with alcohol or other tonics, was sold by pharmacies, doctors, and 'snake oil salesman' as a cure-all to Americans and Canadians in the early 1900's. Bayer, manufacturers of aspirin, produced medicines or tonics containing heroin for children with sore throats. Codeine, a synthetic opiate, is used widely in cough medicine today. Another little known heroin facts is that codeine is often used by heroin addicts when they are unable to obtain heroin on the street.
Who is abusing heroin? Heroin facts show that for many years a large percentage of heroin users were aged 30 or older, but that number is changing. Heroin users are beginning to skew younger – and the average age of heroin users is now 21 years old. As heroin users get younger and younger, education about the dangers of the drug becomes more important, and needs to be introduced at a younger age.
Heroin facts reports that this drug was first developed to aid doctors to treat severe pain in their patients. Some doctors also used heroin extensively in the early 1900's to treat morphine addicted soldiers. Other heroin facts include the claim by drug promoters that heroin was not addictive. Insightful doctors and professionals retracted this claim 10 years after widespread addiction to heroin occurred.
Heroin facts reveal that some heroin users become drug addicts after their first few times experimenting with the drug. Generally, it takes months or longer to become truly addicted to heroin. For many, heroin detox is needed to help during the heroin withdrawal process. Going through heroin withdrawal without help can result in severe cramps, muscle spasms, sickness and pain for the heroin user or addict. Withdrawal pain keeps heroin users going back to heroin even though they often truly want to stop using. Methadone, a synthetic opiate used as a legal heroin substitute and sometimes called heroin detox treatment, has also been claimed to be 'not addictive' and also has had that claim retracted by health professionals.
Some heroin effects include an intense high, especially when injected, followed by a low that often makes the user quite sleepy, or nod off. This is because heroin is a depressant (a drug that slows the metabolism, breathing and heart rate down). Heroin facts show that heroin use can result in a drug overdose; meaning the heart and breathing stops and the heroin user dies unless someone acts fast to medically revive the person. Additional heroin facts on this drug’s effects include hallucinations, and a dream like reality about life. The heroin user sees life as more of a mixture of thoughts and reality - this becomes their escape from day to day life problems. When life becomes too difficult to confront, being high on heroin produces a different reality for the user.
Many people mistakenly believe that if they do not inject heroin they will not become addicted. Heroin facts report that heroin is a deadly, highly-addictive drug no matter how it is ingested into the body. The only risk-factor that is diminished when snorting or smoking the drug is the risk if HIV transmission through infected needles. But even this conclusion is a weak one, when one considers that heroin use leads to the individual being place in bad sexual situations, which are often accompanied by unprotected sex. Heroin is a killer no matter how it is taken.
Little Known Heroin Facts
- Originally heroin was marketed as both cough medicine and as a non-addictive replacement for morphine.
- Known then as diacetylmorphine, heroin was first synthesized by Felix Hoffmann two weeks after he created aspirin.
- The Bayer Company produced and sold Heroin for 15 years.
- Heinrich Dreser, the man in charge of testing the efficacy and safety of new drugs for Bayer in 1898, originally rejected Aspirin saying, “The product has no value.” He believed it would detract from the publicity for heroin, their real wonder drug.
- Pharmacologically, morphine and heroin are very similar. But it takes four times are much morphine to get the same effect.
- Many people don't realize that heroin is actually a brand name. When it was first tested on workers at Bayer, some claimed it made them feel “heroic,” a term used by chemists to describe any strong drug.
- To support their drug habits, users in East Coast cities such as New York and Philadelphia would often collect and sell scrap metal. This gave them the name “junkies.”
- Ninety-five percent of the world's legal heroin consumption is for medical use in Britain.
- In 1898 the typical drug addict in Britain was a middle-class woman in her forties. Today it is an 18-year-old male.
- Some speculate that before his death Heinrich Dreser had become addicted to heroin, the drug he had originally chosen to market over aspirin.
