Heroine Drug Use and how Heroin Effects the Body

Heroine drug quickly enters the brain and it slows down reaction time, slows memory and slows down your thought process. The effect of heroin is a sense of warmth and well being is felt by users when a small dose of heroin is taken. Larger doses make the user feel relaxed, separated from the real world and drowsy. Heroin, being an opiate drug, is capable of directly stimulating the opiate receptors within the brain. When a person uses heroin, the drug moves through the blood brain barrier and infuses the brain with opiates. Heroin affects multiple brain regions. The receptors in these regions deal with pain but some receptors are within the brain stem which is an important area for automatic critical life processes, such as blood pressure and breathing. Heroin affects the brain areas that produce physical dependence as well as the brain areas that produce euphoric sensations - thereby causing both physical and psychological addictions. The addictive properties of heroin are characterized by tolerance (the requirement for larger and larger amounts to get the same result), persistent cravings for the drug, and a dangerous/painful withdrawal. Heroin is highly addictive as well as extremely fast acting. So addictive is it that even after just 3 days, it is possible for someone to experience withdrawal symptoms if they stopped taking it. As well as the physical addition, over time the psychological effects of heroin on the brain produce 'craving' and a strong desire to keep using the drug.

Research has shown that a major proportion of individuals who just want to experiment with heroin can become addicted quickly. Addiction is measured by developing an increased tolerance towards the drug as well as a dependence on the drug. People can easily become so physically and mentally dependant that their entire existence becomes all about finding and taking the drug. An increase in tolerance level means that user must continually increase the amount of heroin taken in order to produce the same euphoric results. As a consequence of using heroin in larger quantities and more often, the potential for overdose and death almost exponentially increase.

There are several ways to get heroin into the user's bloodstream. Heroin drug can be injected into a muscle, injected straight into a vein (called "mainlining"), smoked in a standard pipe or a water pipe, mixed with a cigarette or with a marijuana joint, inhaled as smoke using a straw (called "chasing the dragon"), or snorted as a powder through the nose. However Mexican black tar heroin is almost always dissolved first and then smoked or injected due to its consistency. Unfortunately since heroin is decreasing in price at the same time it is increasing in purity, it an attractive option for young people. Although heroin is usually associated with "bad" parts of the town, heroin drug has also been showing up in some more affluent communities.

The heroin drug is derived from morphine, which is a naturally occurring substance that is extracted from the pods holding the seeds in specific varieties of poppy plants. Heroin drug generally is distributed in two forms known as china and tar. Tar which is usually made in Mexico, is a black sticky substance (hence the name) which is called on the streets "black tar heroin", while china is usually a pure white powder (hence the name china) but is also distributed as a brownish powder and comes from many other sections of the world.

Heroin drug is generally distributed in packages of paper (called "bindles"), in small balloons, or in glassine envelopes. When packaged in balloons, the drug is funneled into the balloon bottom and then tied off securely. It is reported that heroin is detectable up to 4 days from the last use by a urine test.

Although almost pure heroin drug is now seen more often, usually heroin that is sold on the streets is "cut" or mixed with other drugs or with other substances such as starch, powdered milk, sugar, quinine, procaine and lidocaine, baking soda, laundry detergent, starch, talc, Ajax cleaner, curry powder, or strychinine in order to stretch it further. All of these mixing agents are dangerous if injected into the users bloodstream. This is one of the dangers in street heroin as one never knows exactly what it was cut with or the purity is an hence how much will produce an overdose.