DOSE:		oral	Pharms - Dihydrocodeine	(pill / tablet)
		smoked	Heroin	(powder / crystals)

I Am a Secret Heroin Addict

Almost ten years ago, I had a back injury which led to being prescribed codeine and then dihydrocodeine tablets. Up until this point, I was moderately familiar with other drugs (having spent some time in the party scene in my younger days), but completely naive to anything in the opiate family - suffice it to say, that was about to change.

Apart from the obvious pain relief benefits, I liked the way the codeine made me feel - pleasantly warm and sleepy. I found that I was a better, more productive person on them; my mood improved, I could be more sociable, and I had a renewed motivation for getting things done.

Fast forward to last year, when my supply of tablets was unexpectedly (and fortunately, temporarily) cut off. I found myself listless, anxious and depressed. What could I do? I decided to try the 'big H', the granddaddy, the one my parents always told me not to dabble with - Heroin.

My first problem was getting hold of the stuff. Not really doing drugs (except for prescription ones) any more, I had a severe lack of friends involved in the 'scene' at all, and out of all of those, none to whom I wanted to divulge my desire to 'dance with the brown lady', as it were.

Well, it turns out that these days, you can order any manner of questionable substances online via the darkweb, so after reading up on how to do it, that's what I did. A (long, anxious) few days later, a small parcel dropped through my door, containing a tiny wrap of brown powder.

At this point, I must say that I was surprised at the form this drug took. Living in the UK, it turns out that the type of heroin we get here is known as 'number 3'; it's a brown powder, usually from Afghanistan, and it's the freebase form of the drug. All my research had led me to believe it would instead be a white powder which could be snorted, which is the 'number 4' heroin common in the US.

Number 3 heroin can be smoked on foil, or converted into the injectable form by mixing with some kind of acid and 'cooking' in a spoon. I chose (and I'm glad to say that, at the time of writing, I've still managed) to stay away from the lure of the needle, and that meant smoking it.

So off I went, to procure a roll of tin foil. I tore off a small strip, about 8 inches by 3, and rolled it around a pen tube to make a 'tooter'; I then tore off another small square, folded it in the middle and emptied out some of the brown powder onto it. Holding a lighter under the foil, the gear immediately started to sizzle and char, releasing a small quantity of foul-smelling smoke which mostly escaped the advances of my ‘tooter’. D’oh.

After teaching myself the finer points of gear-smoking, and wasting a lot of my meagre quarter-gram of powder, I finally started to get the hang of it. I can’t say I felt very much that first time. Maybe very slightly relaxed, but mostly, I just gave myself a headache.

It took me until my second bout of illegitimate web shopping to really experience ‘chasing the dragon’ to its fullest. And that’s the thing; with smoking it, heroin isn’t the crazy, eyes-rolling-back-in-your-head, one-hit-and-you’re-hooked, granddaddy of all illegitimate substances that people make it out to be. It’s almost subtle. It just feels nice, relaxed, and even a little nauseous (this is when I learned that one can combat the nausea by taking an antihistamine such as Diphenhydramine, or smoking a little weed).

I don’t know if I have a high natural tolerance, but it took me a few more tries, and a lot of gear, before I experienced “the nod”. Oh yes, the nod. This is more like it. This is what I expect that eluded me the first few times. Intense relaxation; all my worries and cares simply melt away. It’s like being asleep, but not. I might slip in and out of consciousness, I might even drool (but I won’t care). I dropped lit cigarettes and nearly set my house on fire; I even caught myself ‘forgetting to breathe’ a few times (near-overdose? Not sure. Not good, either way).

Unless I do enough to experience “the nod”, I can still be a perfectly normal, productive person. I just feel *better*. Everything sucks less. If you have the money, and no problems in your supply chain, you can be a highly-functioning member of society on heroin. It’s a far less ‘obvious’ drug than alcohol or cannabis.

Well, after several weeks of using every night, I realised I might be doing too much. Time to take a break.

Let me tell you. The one thing they say about smack that really is true, is that the withdrawals suck. I mean, they SUCK. 100x worse than dihydrocodeine. Feeling like I have flu for two weeks. Depressed, aching all over. Bear in mind that, the times I’ve had withdrawals, I wasn’t even a “proper” addict (more on that below, but I’ve used for, at most, three weeks at a time before stopping ).

It’s harder to “taper off” with smoking, because I don’t really have a set dose - I just do enough to feel ‘right’. I find the dihydrocodeine pills, when I can get them, help massively with the withdrawals, and are much easier to ‘taper off’ again.

So. Heroin. Addictive? Definitely. Dangerous? Potentially. Is it as bad as people say? It is what you make of it. If I had a reliable source, enough money, and adequate self-discipline, I could be a heroin addict my whole life, and still be a productive, functioning member of society. Fortunately, I’m way too paranoid to order smack-by-post on a regular basis, so between that and not having a local source for it (oh, and having way too few social skills to go and hang around with the other addicts and ask them if they can get me some stuff), using gear is, at the moment, only an occasional treat.

None of my friends or family know. Maybe they suspect, who knows. I don’t show up in public nodding out.

Does this mean I’m not an addict? Hell no. I’m constantly loaded up with other opiate painkillers, partly for medical reasons, partly because I can’t get through the day without them. If I’m not on heroin, I’m constantly thinking about it. Sure, I lead a fulfilling life in other respects - I have many hobbies, a wife, a good job, but I also like heroin. Addiction really is a matter of personality; whether one has the self-control to prevent it from taking over one's life or not, one is still an addict.

Exp Year: 2007-2017	ExpID: 110023
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Aug 19, 2020	Views: 1,366
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Heroin (27) : Alone (16), Addiction & Habituation (10), Retrospective / Summary (11)