Drug Wall Paper: Heroin

Heroin is a painkilling drug that is made from the Papaverum Somniferum, also known as the opium poppy plant. All opiates are addictive painkillers. Heroin starts as a milky sap of the opium poppy. The sap is then dried and becomes a gum. After washing the gum, it becomes opium. Morphine and codeine are two painkilling alkaloids that

In the United States alone, there are 1.2 million people who are using heroin. 600,000 of those users are addicted to heroin and use 150 to 250 milligrams on a daily basis. 700,000 Americans are needing treatment but are not receiving it. Heroin is more deadly than car accidents. From 2001 to 2014 there was a five-hundred percent increase in the total number of deaths. Although injection of the drug has declined, smoking has increased because the cost of clean needles has gone up and to newer users it is easier. While the popularity of Heroin in the United States of America has grown, Florida and California have the most heroin seized by law enforcement. Diacetylmorphine was first synthesized in 1874 by C. R. Wright. an English chemist working at St. Mary 's Hospital Medical School in London. He had been experimenting with combining morphine with various acids and sent it off to be analyzed.

Heroin, a white powder, was created in 1874, and was sold as a safe substitute for morphine. However, it was discovered that heroin produced a quick dependency in people. Heroin and other opiates were made illegal in 1920 as part of the Dangerous Drugs Act. Still today, however, Heroin is illegally manufactured and imported, largely from the Indian sub-continent.

This literature review will focus mainly on the drug use of heroin, the scary numbers behind the drug and the sudden rise of overdosing on the drug across the United States. Issues that will be discussed are what is Heroin, what’s in Heroin that makes it addicting, how it can increase the users risk of contracting other life threatening diseases and where it’s use and abuse are most popular across the United states and we will take a look at multiple studies that show examples of our new drug problem in the United States. While we looked at how homicide rates have dropped while in class, the flip side to that is that the amount of drug usage has risen.

Heroin addiction is one of the leading killers of adolescents and adults in the United States. In recent years, addiction has skyrocketed, and “the rate of heroin-related overdose deaths increased by 286 percent between 2002 and 2013.” In 2002, “100 people per 100,000 were addicted to heroin, and that number has doubled by 2013” (The National Institute on Drug Abuse 2013). The most affected populations include low income males, adolescents, and those who have a family history of addiction, due to their increased susceptibility and crime-ridden environment. While it may seem as though heroin addiction is “just another drug problem” in the U.S., it is actually a problem of major public health importance because there are numerous physical, economic, and social risks associated with heroin dependence. Heroin dependence in the United States accounts for brain damage, increased homelessness, crime, and incarceration rates, as well as economic decline.

I would like to thank my friends, Sarah Erwin and Anntasia for helping me review and edit my essay.

“In 2002, 404,000 people used heroin in the United States. By 2016, there were 948,000 people. This is a 135% increases in the past 14 years” (Kounang). I decided to research about heroin, because I want to know what heroin is and which celebrities have done it and survived or died. I knew it was an addictive drug that many people overdose on. There was a lot of misconceptions that I had about heroin. Originally I thought heroin users become addicted instantly. I still have some questions about heroin. Why is heroin so popular? Who has done it? Even though some people think heroin is not bad, people should not take heroin because it's a highly effective drug and tons of people are dying from overdosing.

Heroin Addiction in Australia. There are many fact of this devastated addiction which lead a person to die or rather hope to. Heroin is an opiate drug which belongs to morphine, and morphine itself obtained from the opium poppy plant and this plant called papaver somniferum which means a hypnotic plant, also this plant grows in many countries such as Afghanistan, India, Australia, and China, additionally in 1803 heroin first discovered, and the reason why it has discovered is to help patients to kill the pain, so its name was a painkiller. (Live Science 2015) In addition, according to National Institute in Drug Abuse (2014) heroin is a highly chronic addictive drug that contains morphine which is from a plant called opium poppy that belongs

Many heroin overdoses occur after a period of abstinence from the drug. For some time,

Heroin addicts have the psychological dependence on heroin that leads them into the state of self-destruction and the possibility of leading to death by the extreme use of heroin. Never estimate the poppy flower for its power that withholds the fiends to their mentality enduring the euphoria enslavement of the mind that contained for many centuries. The heroin addiction nation is a self numbing injection and dry approach to have the mind under the state of the greatest feeling of great happiness leaving the pain behind under the spell of heroin. Heroin comes in many forms for addicts to enjoy in their own way. They come in powder and rock like form that is combined with other narcotics. The snorting form for heroin is not

The initial effects are physical ones. Users get a rush, which makes their skin warm and flushed, dries out their mouth, gives them heavy feelings, makes them nauseous, makes them vomit, and gives them severe itching. For a few hours after heroin is taken, users continues to feel the effects, but more psychological ones. They may feel drowsy for hours. Their breathing and heart function may be slowed down, and their brain may become cloudy. There are also long-term psychological effects of using heroin. It can deteriorate the brain. This affects decision-making, the ability to regulate behavior, and the ability to respond to stressful situations. These effects, both long-term and short-term, can be detrimental to health, and some people’s

Addiction is said to result in long-term alterations in the biochemical and functional properties of the brain. “The physiological effects of heroin injection occur within 30 to 60 seconds after the drug enters the bloodstream. Following an initial warm rush, the user may experience an instant euphoria accompanied by sleepiness. The pupils of the eyes become constricted, the rate and depth of respiration are decreased, the tone of the anal sphincter is increased, urination becomes difficult, nausea and vomiting may also occur.” If the user frequently uses the same injection site it may result in skin shedding or dying. Lastly heroin tolerance builds quickly, at the height of an addicts use, the dose would be fatal to a new user, and if recovering addicts took the same dose it would most likely result in

Many heroin users have an extremely hard time quitting for long periods of time. This is due to both

the resin of the seed pod of the opium poppy plant. Heroin is a highly addictive drug made from morphine and is a psychoactive drug.

Heroin use and overdose related deaths have increased considerably in the United States in recent years (Jones, Logan, Gladden, & Bohm, 2015). The results of the National Survey on Drug Use and Health [NSDUH] (2014), showed in the year 2013, approximately 517,000 Americans abused heroin, which was almost a 150 percent increase since 2007 (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration [SAMHSA], 2014). According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse [NIDA] (2014), in the year 2011, 4.2 million people who were twelve years of age or older said they used heroin at least once in their lifetime. Furthermore, data from NSDUH showed approximately 460 people, twelve years of age or older, used heroin each day in 2013 (Lipari and Hughes, 2015). An even more frightening statistic is death rates doubled for people who were twelve years of age or older as a result of heroin overdose in the years 2010 through 2012 (Hedegaard, Chen, and Warner, 2015).