Heroin addiction is one of the most alarming of all the addictions and the reasons why people start off on this road, which is a road to hell, are many. Addiction can start with something as simple as using it as a painkiller like morphine - an opiate. Many cough medicines contain methadone, which is a synthetic opiate. These can be very addictive and one can often see addicts buying up cough medicine as a solution to their inability to obtain heroin.
As one of it's main functions is as a painkiller, the reason people want to continue with this drug is that it numbs the senses, including the heroin addict's emotions. A further problem is that, once started on this road, it is very difficult to step off it and then the problem is that the amount needed to achieve the same sensation, has to increase as tolerance to it increases. In the same way that drinking one beer when you're young makes you buzz but, in order to get the same buzz when you're much older, you need six or even 12 beers.
Tolerance of these drugs occurs rather rapidly and the addiction is physical as well as psychological. This becomes very dangerous for the heroin addict as he needs more and more to get the same effect, which can lead to death. Respiratory depressions are dangerous. The released histamines can cause hypotension or broncho-spasms. Other symptoms are: constipation, nausea or vomiting, sedation, vertigo, edema.
Once addiction sets in, one of the most popular ways of treating it is by giving the heroin addict methadone. There is nothing more useless than this due to its highly addictive nature. So, you help the heroin addict by making him an addict of a further, more debilitating addiction problem. Too many people are now addicted to methadone, which can easily lead them backwards and forwards between the two drugs. Heroin addiction can be life threatening and many an addict has been found in an alley, the life out of them.
Many programs focus on the physical addiction and use very questionable ways of dealing with this, such as using methadone or other addictive drugs to rehabilitate the addict. Other psychological programs try to "reason" things out and make the person "see" the wrong way of doing it. It takes a lot more than this to help a heroin addict. Their ability to make you believe that all is well is unbelievable. Desperate for their "fix" they will spin you the wildest yarns to obtain it.
One wants to stop the revolving door syndrome and rehabilitate the heroin addict, once and for all. There is only one way to truly handle heroin or methadone addicts and that is to get them through a program that addresses, firstly, the actual heroin addiction and then, secondly, the reasons the person got him or herself addicted in the first place. Part of this would be to prepare them with the real tools to go back into life, fully rehabilitated as well as becoming a contributing member of society.
Get your loved one to a heroin addiction program that really works. You can save their life. Give them the life skills they need.