Addiction Treatment

It may seem strange that a drug with as dark a name as heroin is today started its life out as a painkiller. The drug is produced by the acetylation of morphine and was found in clinical studies to be a better painkiller than codeine or morphine when it first was marketed by the Bayer company.

Its use as a painkiller did not last long. The doctors of the early twentieth century soon noted that patients built up a tolerance to heroin and that their pain patients required an increasing amount of the drugs. Despite the doctor’s best medical intentions, many of the patients also became addicted to the drug.

During and after World War I, production of the heroin slowly decreased and several international treaties banned its production entirely. There has always been a small segment of the population willing to supply goods that are in high demand that are not necessarily legal and heroin soon went underground after its use and production became illegal.

Users noticed the euphoria effect in the 1920s and found that a better heroin high could be achieved by injecting the drug intravenously. This is the most common way the drug is used today. Unfortunately, the use of heroin has been increasing in recent years, despite the obvious dangers and horrendous side effects.

The practice of heroin users sharing their needles increases the chance of a heroin addict contracting sexually transmitted diseases such as HIV or Hepatitis. Worse, the drug is physically addictive and one of the hardest drug habits to break.

Many former heroin users simply switch their heroin addiction to an addiction to a safer prescription medication after going through the drug rehabilitation. Many cities to help control the spread of HIV have started clean needle programs to stop the practice of needle sharing because they cannot stop the flow of drug into their communities.