What is Heroin?

Heroin also called diacetylemorphine is an illegal opiate drug. Heroin is processed from the alkaloid morphine derived from the latex sap of the poppy seed. Endorphins are our body's natural pain killers also involved in any sort of pleasure response. Heroin acts on these endorphin receptors that are scattered throughout the brain. This allows heroin to act rapidly to produce pleasurable sensations. These characteristics of heroin have made it one of the most abused drugs today. Heroin in its purest form is thought have very few unpleasant side effects apart from constipation. However it is rapidly acting and users become highly dependent on heroin making de-addiction from heroin extremely difficult and drawn out.

What does heroin look like?

In it's pure form heroin is a dry white powder with an extremely distasteful bitter taste. On the streets heroin is not always sold in its pure form but sold adulterated with various other psycho active drugs or sometimes with just similar looking sugar or rice powder. Depending on its purity and other addictives heroin could be white powder, white crystalline granules, and brown to black powder or tar like form.

Effects of Heroin:

Heroin is imbibed by its users in many different ways. User's snort that is breathe it in, smoke it in or shoot it into the veins by injecting melted heroin. Depending on how it's taken heroin effects can be felt within 7-15 seconds. The common effects of heroin are a sense of euphoria or instant 'rush', a sense of highly relaxed mind and body and drowsiness. However the effects may vary for different people with the strength of the sensations affected by how much of the drug was used, the persons general health, age, gender, height, weight and whether heroin was taken in combination with other drugs or alcohol. Heroin in higher doses can have very unpleasant and dangerous effects such as inability to concentrate, nausea and vomiting, reduced breathing rate, unconsciousness, dampened breathing reflex and asphyxia. These effects of heroin overdose can be life threatening and lead to death.

Apart from these effects prolonged abuse of heroin can lead to other health and social hazards. Long-term use of heroin can lead to damaged nasal lining, collapsed veins, and damage to the internal organs such as heart, lungs, liver and various other physical and cognitive impairments. Users rapidly develop tolerance to heroin necessitating an increased dosage each time the drug is taken. Increasing dosage and prolonged use leads to a dysfunctional individual who can only function if heroin is present in their blood stream. The various effects of heroin can make the abuser to lose his inhibitions and self control and lead to dangerous accidents or acts of violence.