Heroin, ett arbete om droger (På engelska)

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Drugs, the way to an early death.

Heroin

Heroin is a drug from the family of opiates.
Morphine and opium are also members of this family.
Heroin is made from the opium poppy.

Heroin is an illegal, highly addictive drug. It is both the most abused and the most rapidly acting of the opiates. Heroin is processed from morphine, a naturally occurring substance extracted from the seed pod of certain varieties of poppy plants. It is typically sold as a white or brownish powder or as the black sticky substance known on the streets as "black tar heroin." Although purer heroin is becoming more common, most street heroin is "cut" with other drugs or with substances such as sugar, starch, powdered milk, or quinine. Street heroin can also be cut with poisons such as strychnine or other poisons. Because heroin abusers do not know the actual strength of the drug or its true contents, they are at risk of overdose or death.
Heroin is usually injected, sniffed, or smoked. Typically, a heroin abuser may inject up to four times a day. Although smoking and sniffing heroin do not produce a "rush" as quickly or as intensely as intravenous injection does.

The drug mimics dopamine, a chemical which the brain sends out to the body if in pain, or by pleasure. It makes you, well, happy. At least you think you are happy, it’s just a short rush.
If you would jump of a mountain and get captured up by a net further down, the body would release dopamine and adrenaline. When you would land in the net, you would feel happy.

SHORT-TERM EFFECTS
Appear very quickly after taking the dose (after a few seconds or minutes) and disappear within a few hours or days:
Opiates produce short-term stimulation and then inhibit activity in the central nervous system. Immediately after having injected heroin into a vein, the user experiences a wave of euphoria, which turns into a feeling of satisfaction that excludes all sensations of hunger and pain.
The pupils contract - a typical external sign. At higher doses the body feels warm and the mouth dry. The user grows numb, falling into an alternately alert and dozing state in which the outside world is forgotten.
Death can occur due to a severely reduced ability to breathe and to heart failure. There is a great risk of overdose when the drug is bought on the street as it is impossible to know the concentration of the drug. Overdoses impair breathing even more. At very large doses the user cannot be woken, the pupils are contracted, the skin is cold, damp and takes on a bluish color. The heroin addict´s way of life can also lead to other kinds of violent death.


Heroin powder
LONG-TERM EFFECTS
Appear after repeated long-term use.
An important risk factor is the injection technique itself. Heroin addicts have been infected with jaundice, HIV, hepatitis B and C, from sharing needles with other addicts.
Poor injection technique can also cause infections in the heart tissue, as well as liver diseases and tetanus.
After a while, the person using the drugs will get more resistant to its effects, the person will need more heroin to get the same “rush” as before.
Another effect of long-term heroin abuse is that the user neglects to treat many physical symptoms such as toothaches, inflammation and infections as they are hidden by the painkilling effect of the drug.
Suicide because of depression is a common cause of death in long-term abusers of heroine and other opiates. In such cases, suicide is often by overdose.
Arthritis and other rheumatologic problems
Collapsed veins
Bacterial infections
Abscesses
Infection of heart lining and valves
THE BODY’S DEFENSE
The body doesn’t really have a defense for this drug, because it mimics a chemical sent out by the brain. The brain can’t protect itself from something it thinks that it has created itself.
But, the chemicals will disappear after a while from the body. The body will recover from the moment of “joy”.

SOCIAL ISSUES
The person will get more shut into them selves, soon the life of the addict will only evolve around getting hold of the drug, and money to buy it.
If the person has got a family, it will get harder and harder to keep the relations with the family. The persons often get aggressive towards others. If the person don’t got no money,
the person often begins to steal. They do stuff that a normal person in its right mind wouldn’t do, like steeling from their families. They don’t care how they get the drug, just that they get the drug. The person’s career is destroyed, because of the never ending crave for a rush.
Often the person will get thrown out on the streets or something like that if not put in for rehabilitation. Then the person can go back living their normal life again. But, their world as they know may have been destroyed by the drugs, their family, their home, and their lives.
Persons who need to recover, they need support from family and friends. They can’t just go to the rehabilitation center and come out healthy, it is a long mental process.

DRUGS ARE BAD FOR YOU!
Don’t ever begin using drugs, drugs stink! Drugs will destroy your life, your world. Drugs are among the worst things you can put your body up for. It will destroy you, and the persons around you. Drugs can...