Heroin Is Harmless?

30 Responses to “Heroin Is Harmless?”

1. woog on May 26th, 2008 5:51 am

   Heroin addicts can moderate their usage? First I’ve heard of that.

   This article is irresponsible, and I’m pro-legalization.

2. Administrator on May 26th, 2008 3:38 pm

   Woog, here is an “irresponsible” scientific study for you – D. Shewan & P. Dalgarno, “Evidence for Controlled Heroin Use?” British Journal of Health Psychology, Feb. 2005.

3. Money on May 27th, 2008 3:29 am

   Dude, comparing the effects of caffeine to those of heroin should not even cross anyones mind as credible. Im also pro-legalization, but this article is biased and downplays the real dangers of the most addicting drug known to man.

4. Administrator on May 27th, 2008 9:08 pm

   Dude, (1) heroin is not the most addictive drug known to man. Nicotine is. See my book or Dr. Paul Gahlinger’s book, Illegal Drugs. (2) I don’t downplay heroin’s dangers. I simply point out that almost all of its dangers stem from its criminalization. If caffeine was illegal for close to a century, there is a good possibility people would be smoking and injecting it. A heroin/caffeine comparison would not appear so farfetched after a War on Caffeine.

5. The Spook on May 31st, 2008 10:57 pm

   Interesting Article. I also wanted to add, that drug addiction is not a disease, it is a choice. For more info on that, hell check out the Penn and Teller episode of Bullshit on addiction. Quite interesting.

6. Josh on June 4th, 2008 12:08 pm

   I had a college professor who said something similar many years ago. He said that the reason many heroin users look so unhealthy is because they lead an unhealthy lifestyle in addition to being on heroin. Their heroin usage may be a factor in their unhealthy lifestyle, but the drug itself isn’t making them unhealthy – their obsession with the drug, and their subsequent lack of focus on other things (food) is more problematic then the chemical reactions that heroin causes in the body.

7. asdf on July 7th, 2008 4:37 am

   I don’t know anyone who would be willing to give a complete stranger a blow job for a mocha.

   Heroin addicts, on the other hand, make up a large segment of the prostitution industry… which goes to show how incredibly difficult it is to quit. People would rather sell their own bodies than give up heroin.

   Sorry man. I’m pro-legalization for many drugs and this article is complete crap. I think your desire to sell more books through “shock value” is clouding your better judgment.

   Oh, and btw, addicts may develop collapsed veins, heart infection,liver disease, etc. etc. etc. Heroin is far from harmless and the health impacts have been widely documented.

8. Antipas on July 7th, 2008 5:05 am

   asdf, addicts may develop those problems, not directly from the use of heroin but the long term and improper use of syringes. A lack of hygiene, medical training on how to administer an IV shot and the reuse of hypodermic needles do to their controlled status has much more to do with the problem than heroin itself.

   Problems like becoming a prostitute for heroin are real but it’s because of it’s illegal status. It causes prices to be dramatically higher and availability lower. Make cigarettes illegal and I imagine you’d see similar problems. Availability would decrease, prices would go up. You’d see nicotine, a pesticide for christsake, available in an IV form soon, more than likely. Even if not, I promise you, you’d start seeing lower class people who can no longer afford their habits prostituting themselves for a fix.

9. jammin on July 7th, 2008 8:37 pm

   I have a sister who is addicted to heroin yes it has messed her life up and she has collapsed veins. My sister in law has just come off methadone and I would not want to have to cluck. I’ve seen the damage that can happen. I once met a guy who since died because when he overdosed the bloke who sold him the gear panicked and gave him a shot of amphetamine, addicts die when the gear they get is too pure, Methadone is more addictive and toxic than heroin, The taliban control most heroin on the black market while we spend billions on destroying it and people in africa die in pain because they cannot get diamorphine which is heroin that anyone whos needed that in hospital would say they were glad to have had. Prohibition kills more addicts than heroin. prohibition prevents harm reduction creates powerful gangsters (Al Capone?) and it aint stoppin anyone. WTF???

10. asdf on July 7th, 2008 11:12 pm

    I guarantee you that syringes don’t make people prostitute themselves. Otherwise every diabetic on the planet would be ho-ing themselves out for insulin. The problem is the heroin, not the needles.

    Yes, if heroin were cheaper people wouldn’t need to enter into prostitution. That’s not my point. My point is that heroin makes people think that prostitution is a good trade-off in order to get a fix. It’s the f***ed up mentality that heroin addiction causes. That’s my problem with the drug… it takes away your logic and rationality. Addicts will do anything for the next fix. Last time I checked, you can buy a hit of low-grade heroin for around $50 US. How many people willingly trade sex with a total stranger for $50? It’s completely irrational and, with AIDS and other STD’s, it can also be life-threatening. The addiction forces them to make a completely irrational decision.

    You don’t see prostitution rings sprouting up around other drugs like nicotine, pot, shrooms, XTC, acid, etc.

    It’s irresponsible to compare heroin to nicotine. Show me a nicotine rehab clinic where people are stealing televisions and offering sex for a cigarette. You can’t, cuz they don’t exist. I can show you plenty of methadone clinics where this is the case.

11. doug on July 8th, 2008 4:05 pm

    hey, heroin… even the poppy plant in general is your friend and has saved more lives than taken. Be respectful.

    Heroin is good.

    Heart heroin.

12. Administrator on July 14th, 2008 7:02 pm

    asdf, if you made those baseless comments in a mainstream mass-media forum in America you would receive boisterous applause while I would be shooed off stage to be patted down by law enforcement. Like a clever politician, you managed to tie the specter of drugs in with the moral majority’s righteous disgust with sex work.

    You are wrong about heroin’s health effects. Heroin users’ physical ailments stem largely from (1) as Antipas said, improper use of needles and (2) impurities in street bought “heroin;” NOT from heroin itself. I stand by my original assertion that the long-term negative health effects of heroin are largely limited to constipation and impotency. The most accessible documentation for this is Dr. Paul Gahlinger’s book, Illegal Drugs.

    You state heroin’s severe health effects are well-documented? Please direct me to your sources. If you point me to a DEA/ONDCP touted study make sure it supports your claim because – unlike main-stream reporters – I will actually read it.

    Are you damning heroin because some of its addicts do sex work? You seem to think that without heroin no woman would be so irrational. Despite your moral scruples, many intelligent, educated, and sober women choose sex-work of their own volition. A large percentage of street-prostitutes are addicted to some substance or another – NOT call girls, who constitute the majority of sex workers in America. See my blog entries on prostitution or my “Prostitution Legalization Primer” (both at right) for more documentation.

    If heroin was legal, and thus cheaper, desperate addicts wouldn’t have to prostitute themselves on the street. Of the illegal drugs you mention as not being associated with prostitution, none are as physically addictive as heroin. (Hallucinogens aren’t addictive at all.) Alcohol is similar to heroin in terms of physical addictiveness, but you don’t see as many people prostituting themselves for it because it’s legal. That IS the point.

13. STORMCAT06 on July 15th, 2008 9:50 pm

    I loved the article and thought it was well thought out and on target. I for one good sir completely agree with you. Heroin in pure form will NOT harm your body. Its the effects of drug prohibtion that have harmed people.

14. Robert on July 23rd, 2008 12:04 am

    Sir, you have written an article that I find hard to believe. While I find most of what you have to say to be not so strong, you recommend other sources for people to look further to which I find to be a strong point in itself.
    The only experience I’ve had with heroin (I’ve never used the drug this is in reference to anything personally related to myself involving the drug) is that my cousin attempted to overdose on the drug. Fortunately, he was unsuccessful in his attempt and he is still with us today. While I may not know the details of my cousins incident but according to what I knew, over dosing on heroin was an easy thing to do. However, your article has encouraged me to do my own research on this drug. I appreciate your article.

    Thank you.

15. Hunter Gillespie on July 30th, 2008 5:43 pm

    I know I didn’t just read an article downplaying the severity of heroin addiction. . .

    That just can’t be.

    While I’m for the legalization for all drugs–you can’t just compare caffeine to heroin.

    I’m an avid caffeine-aholic, but never have I accidently drinkin enough to kill me.

    I’ve had people close to me die of heroin OD’s.

    My father died of a methadone overdose. . .opiates are dangerous.

    Cocaine is dangerous.

    Drugs are dangerous.

    Don’t down play that–ever.

16. B on July 30th, 2008 8:25 pm

    Well written article. A lot of people on this forum clearly refuse to look past the stigma which is attached to heroin. Heroin can be extremely addictive, true. I’ve heard that the level of dopamine released in your brain during peak of a heroin high is actually about 10 times the amount that is released during orgasm. In this light, it may be inaccurate to compare caffeine to heroin. However, both certainly have potential for addiction, and if heroin were legal and taxed it would eliminate a great deal of criminal activity. (Al Qaeda makes most of their profit from heroin production and trafficking)

    There will always be a certain percentage of a population which is addicted to drugs, whether legal or not. Why not let the government benefit from their addiction, instead of spending millions every year in the “war on drugs”?

17. asdf on September 3rd, 2008 12:17 am

    You wanted references, you got ‘em. You fail to grasp that I’m not linking the sex industry with heroin; I’m linking the MENTALITY of selling one’s body with securing a single hit.

    My question stands: When was the last time you considered giving a stranger a blowjob for a dime bag of pot or a few cups of coffee??? Seems laughable, but people do it for heroin regularly. Hence many of the social problems (prostitution, robbery, etc) are tied to heroin addiction.

    I think this is all academic anyway, since you are trying to sell copies of your book through shock value. It’s the only logical explanation for your stance on this issue.

    References:

    Heroin and Death
    Time Magazine
    http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,900989,00.html?promoid=googlep

    Black Death: Race and Heroin-related Overdose in San Francisco
    American Sociological Association
    http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/1/0/3/9/6/p103965_index.html

    Acute Heroin Fatalities in San Francisco
    Western Journal of Medicine
    http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/picrender.fcgi?artid=1129778&blobtype=pdf

    Deaths of Heroin Users in a General Practice
    Journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners
    http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/picrender.fcgi?artid=1960478&blobtype=pdf

    DREW, L. R. H. (1982) Avoidable deaths from drug intoxication, Medical Journal of Australia, 2, 215.

18. Administrator on September 4th, 2008 7:09 pm

    asdf, all of your references refer to heroin deaths from street usage of street heroin. I have never asserted that heroin usage is not currently dangerous. However, it is dangerous because it is criminalized.

    Your cited works refer to overdose victims. The unfortunate people who died didn’t know how much heroin they were putting in their system (purity), what they were putting it in their system with (adulterants), nor did they have access to Narcan.

    I pointed out the flaws in comparing heroin to pot and coffee in the last paragraph of my July 14th post.

    I respect your interest in this issue. I know you will never buy my book, so please go to a library and get Dr. Gahlinger’s book, Illegal Drugs.

19. pharmachibi on October 29th, 2008 9:13 pm

    I happened to stumble across this article, and decided to read the comments as well. I had a feeling you’d have skeptics, even angry ones. I salute you for not backing down from your support of the pure, whole, scientific truth. I don’t understand why Narcan isn’t OTC; if I could, I’d hand it out for free to every opioid user I came across. Same as I’d hand out epinephrine to anyone with severe allergies. I’d sooner try a line of heroin than of maybe 25% of the drugs I dispense–because it’s safer. The fact that millions of people can abuse a drug to an early grave does not change its ability to be used safely. Period.

    I’ll be back, and I’ll look for your book, too.

20. sam on November 18th, 2008 11:53 pm

    Actually, when tobacco was rationed in Germany during WW1 people did things for tobacco that people do now for heroin or crack. The addiction’s the same or stronger, but the current availability and low price make tobacco a less prostituting drug. I wouldn’t do any of those very addicting drugs, but in no way are all of the stereotypes associated with them from the drugs themselves, and in no way is their use immoral.

21. altamiranda on December 2nd, 2008 9:53 pm

    asdf, what you havent grasped is that the coffee and soda and cigarette industry are legal businesses, that is, they are regulated, there are quality control issues which all of these companies must pass. If Dunkin Donuts started putting cocaine in their coffee, they would get shut down FAST. However if Joe decides to cut his heroin 50/50 with diphenhydramine (active ingredient in benadryl, it potentiates opiate substances making the user feel higher than he/she is) to make a bigger profit, No one will stop him… there is no national heroin purity monitoring agency. It is when Joe gets arrested and Junkie Jane gets a new dealer, whose cut has 75 parts heroin for 25 parts diphenhydramine (or baby powder, or wutever) that Jane overdoses because the product quality and purity cannot be standardized in an illegal situation. Now that Jane recieves 50% more heroin than her usual dose, she runs into trouble. When you take an aspirin, it says on the bottle how much aspirin is in each tablet and each tablet has that much. Otherwise people would accidentally die all the time. Iv’e had idiots tell me heroin gives you aids… dirty needles give you aids, dirty drugs make you overdose. In addition, alcohol consumption can make a difference. I have been addicted to painkillers, which are regulated LEGAL substances, in other words, I was getting x mg of drugs everytime, I knew how much substance was being put into my body, and what made me feel great on friday night could make me feel like hell on saturday after drinking 3 or 4 beers. (which normally would produce little to no effect, i could easily drink 10-12 beers in those days) so please, read the article carefully, were talking about diacetylmorphine… not the shit drug dealers sell in bags which could be any concoction of substances that should never ever be found inside a human bloodstream. As far as sexual favors, Im sure if alcohol or nicotine were as illegal as heroin, people would be doing similar things for a beer or a ciggarette.

22. Zero on December 20th, 2008 8:20 pm

    “It’s the f***ed up mentality that heroin addiction causes. That’s my problem with the drug… it takes away your logic and rationality.”

    Exactly. Its not like anything legal and readily available in bars and convenience stores ever impaired my logic and reasoning ability.

    “Addicts will do anything for the next fix. Last time I checked, you can buy a hit of low-grade heroin for around $50 US. How many people willingly trade sex with a total stranger for $50?”

    If heroine prices were more reasonable, I wouldn’t need drastic measures to come up with the money.

    “It’s completely irrational and, with AIDS and other STD’s, it can also be life-threatening.”

    Remember speakeasies? Remember bathtub bourbon? That killed. Now I have quality tested alcohol store bought for relative prices. I wonder why that is…

    Well-written article, your opinion is one that I share.

23. Meena on December 21st, 2008 1:01 pm

    I’ve seen three people die from heroin OD’s, however, I’ve never heard of anybody dying from one too many cups of coffee. From the viewpoint of a chemist, just look at the stuff, it is poison regardless of what you want to call it.

24. Grace on February 4th, 2009 5:49 pm

    You’re wrong. I’m the daughter of a junkie, and I lived with him (and his parents) for several years when I was a young teenager, facing the results of his addiction on a daily basis.

    There are elements that could tie into your (book-selling) claim (being beaten up by his dealers, being robbed by his dealers, etc.), but there are other things that your theory doesn’t take into account.

    1) Ability to “rise & shine” – heroin makes people want to do nothing else but heroin. Maybe not all people, but the sufficiently addicted, sure. My dad lost job after job after job after job because he couldn’t get up and go to work. Day one, he’d say he had a headache. Day two, he didn’t want to “leave his dream”. Day three, he was just a drooling, stinking mess. This applied to being able to care for his kids, too. I figured out quickly how to get myself the 10mi to school on the city bus, but I was cannier than your average schoolkid. Lucky me.

    2) They’re thoughtless. He would do his drug and all of the selfish things it entails and my Alzheimer’s-ridden grandma and depressed grandpa would just have to put up with the after effects…like the lack of food in the house, denial of care assistance, and no help cleaning up the steadily increasing tide of filth taking over our home. I was just a kid – I couldn’t do it all myself, but I sure tried.

    3) They’re greedy. They want to do their drug and nothing else. If someone gave us a VCR so we could watch movies together as a family and entertain grandpa while he kept his vow to always care for my grandma by being her sole caretaker, dad would sell it as soon as he could to get money for more heroin. If I saved up money and bought myself a stereo, he’d sell it. If a relative gave me their groovy old-fashioned bike, he’d follow me to 7-11, use the secondary lock key (he’d given me the lock), take the bike, and sell it. When the social security checks came, he’d steal most of the money out of grandpa’s pocket as soon as he could. We tried hiding everything we possibly could, but a junkie is a lot like a hound dog for valuables: he always managed to find it. He sold my record collection, school books, even my clothes.

    4) They don’t care about anyone else but themselves. Aside from the above, he used to cook meth in the kitchen to sell for heroin. Again: kids in the house, two helpless seniors, and he’s cooking meth in the kitchen. Did I mention he was a scientific genius? Chemistry and physics.

    5) No get-up-and-go. Yeah, he was a genius. Now he’s a toothless, broken old man who harangues his neighbours and has never worked long enough to get social security.

    6) Poor self-care. Sure, that might be a qualifying factor for using in the first place, but heroin certainly didn’t make this any better. He thought he was so secretive, shooting up between his toes and in his navel, but we could see it all. Especially when he would walk out of the bathroom and go into his junkie stupor and fall down blocking the hallway for hours because none of us were strong enough to move him. He’d do this out in the streets, too, when he was too impatient to get home to use his packet. He’d let himself get filthy and we’d only know he was out of his haze when he’d finally take a shower and get cleaned up again. That would last for a few days at most. Then back to bumville.

    7) Some addicts can control their intake. Many can’t. Dad was one of the latter. It didn’t matter how many good intentions he had to use only one packet a day or whatever other plan he came up with. He always used as much as he could as often as he could. That’s why he ran out of money and got sick and lost jobs and neglected his kids and parents and is now a crippled old man who can’t even chew his food.

    Our inability to bring in health workers to take care of the grandparents may have been mitigated if there was less worry of criminalisation. My inability to have a social worker help me get through the tangle life had become as the child of a junkie might have benefited from the same. I went years without seeing him because he stole from my mom when watching me one weekend, and another time was passed out when my mom came to pick me up…and had been since early the day before. I’m not sure how decriminalisation would have helped there, but who knows.

    There’s more to it than that, sure. There’s a lot more to it than a blog comment is going to cover. I just wanted you to know it’s not all about pet theories and grand ideas. Heroin addicts tend to get pretty hardcore pretty quickly, and everything in their lives suffers from the effects of the drug on the person.

    That said, I’ve long said that a prescription program for addicts would go far to solve many of the problems faced by all affected parties, and I support any efforts to put that into practice. Managed addiction is a far better future for all concerned than treating junkies (and their families) like cockroaches.

25. alex on February 25th, 2009 4:53 pm

    I’ve been a chipper (I think that’s the term Robert, right?) for over a year now. I’m perfectly fine. I work two jobs and I do comedy in nyc. If I am able to do this “horrible” drug and still function, where is my commercial? Heroin didn’t make your dad a shitty person, your dad was a shitty person. Heroin was his excuse but if he was a mature and responsible person like me he would of never had a problem. I do all drugs except Ice or Crystal and the drugs I do, I do with breaks. I drink caffine as often as I do cocaine. You have to be smart about drugs, all drugs.

26. Wolfgang on March 27th, 2009 9:46 am

    I have also been a chipper for over 6 years now and remarkably have never caught the sickness (withdrawals). Although really it is not so remarkable. It has been the result of being at least somewhat careful and knowledgeable about my usage. I am now a Ph. D. student who enjoys shooting up recreationally once in a while. It feels good to come out of the closet to people that have seen through this myth. In my early days, Francis at heroinhelper.com was the only source I could turn to for real, potentially life saving information. Kudos to him and thank you Robert.

27. lemon on July 15th, 2009 11:59 pm

    Alex is right. He is a heavy drug user that may be a bit crazy, but he is right. Drugs are an easy excuse to NOT do something. Whether this is going to class, feeding your kids, or keeping a job, drugs are not THE REASON they are a manifestation of the user’s selfish attitude. I smoke pot, that is selfish, I’ll admit it. I could be spending that money on constructive things or building a savings account, but I don’t really. Why? Because I am selfish. I’ve spent lots of money on drugs at festivals so that I can trip out and have fun. However, I spent this money on me, selfishly. So be it. There are a million ways to be selfish, another million ways to feel depressed, and another million ways you can say “its not that bad” or “I’ll do it tomorrow”

    I may have gotten sidetracked, but the point is, using drugs (Alcohol, Tobacco, Acid, Pot, Heroin, Meth) is not going to benefit anyone but the user (Besides the dealer). Only the user feels the effects. Only the user is going to die when s/he ODs. And if drugs were legal, users wouldn’t feel so trapped. Trapped by the legal system.

    If drugs were legal the problems could be out in the open, not taboo. Heroin users could get treatment without having to give it up for ever and reform their life to accept Jesus in the halfway house. Heroin ODers wouldn’t be left out to dry by the EMTs without narcan. Users wouldn’t have to prostitute themselves because they could get a job without being drug tested (which should end). The illegal nature of drugs makes non-users afraid of users. Users feel isolated, trapped, and don’t know what to do. And all in all, there will be violent addicts that can’t admit their problem whether it is legal or not, but street drugs are more harmful.

    There will always be selfish people that use drugs as an excuse to be even more selfish. However, there will always be users who can separate their selfish time to use and their constructive time to work and help. What the war on drugs does is condemn anyone who uses into the same category. Prohibition doesn’t work, it makes sleazy criminals rich, and gets police officers killed. There is too much profit to prevent it. Start spending money on help for these addicts, not on hunting them down to lock them away.

28. lisa on August 6th, 2009 1:13 am

    Well, I will position this article as extremely provocative, dangerous and irresponsible. Me as exheroinaddict will say – it (heroin) never leaves you unharmed – read this for better understanding: Neurocognitive Characterizations of Russian Heroin Addicts without a Significant History of Other Drug Use. And by the way most users are not any-color trash – most of them are active members of our society …

29. Andrew Bryan on November 13th, 2009 12:06 am

    I am a heroin addict, and I know for a fact that if I could go to a clinic and get heroin twice a day I would have none of the drug related problems I do now. Instead of this suboxone/methadone crap they prescribe us that only works for some, heroin prescription would turn my life around. I am a full time college student and got the highest GED scores in the state of NC for 2008, but I can’t even find an apartment that will accept me because of past felony drug convictions. Heroin is really not that bad, I’m better off quitting cigarettes before I try to quit heroin.

30. Ganjaholic on February 11th, 2010 11:57 am

    I find it no surprise whatsoever that all the people who oppose this article lack any kind of outside sources whatsoever, and any sources denouncing this article are most likely simply regurgitating main stream knowledge. The author is very upfront of his sources, and has the balls to tackle such a controversial subject rather than the cowards who denounce him. And i really hope you objectors aren’t drinking lethal alcohol, it’s more harmful than heroine you hypocrites!

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