Heroin is an opioid drug made from morphine, a natural substance taken from the seed pod of the various opium poppy plants grown in Southeast and Southwest Asia, Mexico, and Colombia. Heroin can be a white or brown powder, or a black sticky substance known as black tar heroin.
Prescription opioid pain medicines such as OxyContin and Vicodin have effects similar to heroin. Research suggests that misuse of these drugs may open the door to heroin use. Data from 2011 showed that an estimated 4 to 6 percent who misuse prescription opioids switch to heroin1-3 and about 80 percent of people who used heroin first misused prescription opioids.1-3 More recent data suggest that heroin is frequently the first opioid people use. In a study of those entering treatment for opioid use disorder, approximately one-third reported heroin as the first opioid they used regularly to get high.4
how to smoke heroin out of crack 22 3
People who inject drugs such as heroin are at high risk of contracting the HIV and hepatitis C (HCV) virus. These diseases are transmitted through contact with blood or other bodily fluids, which can occur when sharing needles or other injection drug use equipment. HCV is the most common bloodborne infection in the Unites States. HIV (and less often HCV) can also be contracted during unprotected sex, which drug use makes more likely.
When people overdose on heroin, their breathing often slows or stops. This can decrease the amount of oxygen that reaches the brain, a condition called hypoxia. Hypoxia can have short- and long-term mental effects and effects on the nervous system, including coma and permanent brain damage.
Heroin is highly addictive. People who regularly use heroin often develop a tolerance, which means that they need higher and/or more frequent doses of the drug to get the desired effects. A substance use disorder (SUD) is when continued use of the drug causes issues, such as health problems and failure to meet responsibilities at work, school, or home. An SUD can range from mild to severe, the most severe form being addiction.
Pain relievers with an origin similar to that of heroin. Opioids can cause euphoria and are often used nonmedically, leading to overdose deaths. For more information, see the Misuse of Prescription Drugs Research Report.
Internationally, overdose is the primary cause of death among people injecting drugs. However, since 2001, heroin-related overdose deaths in the United States (US) have risen sixfold, paralleled by a rise in the death rate attributed to synthetic opioids, particularly the fentanyls. This paper considers the adaptations some US heroin injectors are making to protect themselves from these risks.
The use of drug sampling as a means of preventing an overdose from injection drug use reduces the quantity absorbed at any one time allowing users to monitor drug strength and titrate their dose accordingly. Given the highly unpredictable potency of the drugs currently being sold as heroin in the US, universal precautions should be adopted more widely. Further research is needed into facilitators and barriers to the uptake of these drug sampling methods.
For many decades, overdose has been the primary cause of deaths among people injecting drugs [6, 9, 29,30,31,32], but since 2001, heroin-related overdose deaths have risen sixfold in the United States [33]. Heroin-related overdose intensified after 2010, with overdose mortality rates tripling between 2010 and 2014 from 1.0 to 3.4 per 100,000 [34]. The increase in heroin-related deaths has been paralleled by a rise in the death rate attributed to synthetic opioids other than methadone. The age-adjusted rate of overdose deaths attributed to synthetic opioids other than methadone, which includes fentanyl and its analogs, doubled between 2015 and 2016, rising to 6.2 per 100,000 [35]. Evidence from the US Drug Enforcement Agency indicates this increase is being primarily driven by illicitly manufactured fentanyl rather than diverted pharmaceutical fentanyl [36, 37]. While some have focused on the potency of fentanyl [38, 39] in increasing the risk for overdose, others have highlighted the risk of vicissitudes in the purity of fentanyl and its analogs in combination with heroin [40, 41].
There is a dearth of qualitative research on behavioral adaptions that current heroin injectors are making with respect to the ongoing fentanyl adulteration crisis in the US. In this paper, we present findings from ethnographic fieldwork trips in 2015 and 2016 to Baltimore, Maryland; Worcester, Lowell, and Lawrence, Massachusetts; Nashua, New Hampshire; San Francisco, California; and Chicago, Illinois on embodied methods of gauging opioid strength that injection drug users in these areas are taking to prevent overdose. With the exception of California, where solid black tar heroin dominates, all these states have powder sourced from Mexico or Colombia and are suffering rising heroin- and fentanyl-related deaths.
In 2016, Baltimore lost 454 people to heroin-related overdoses, up from 260 the previous year, and 419 people to fentanyl-related overdoses, up from 120 in 2015 [56, 57]. The figures available for Massachusetts do not distinguish between heroin and prescription opioids. In 2016, among the 1374 individuals whose deaths were opioid-related (including heroin) and a toxicology screen was also available, 1031 of them (75%) had a positive screen result for fentanyl, an increase from 754 (57%) in 2015, although this may depend on the frequency of toxicological screening [58, 59]. Drug overdose deaths in New Hampshire increased by 1629% between 2010 and 2015, largely as a result of fentanyl. Hillsborough County, the location of Nashua, where 43.6% of the fentanyl deaths occurred, was most affected by these overdose deaths. The rate of death caused by fentanyl, heroin, and other opioids rose sharply between 2015 and 2016 [60]. In Chicago in 2016, there were 487 overdose deaths involving heroin and 420 involving fentanyl, both rising from the previous year [61]. In San Francisco in 2016, 41 deaths were attributed to heroin overdose and 22 attributed to fentanyl, doubling from the previous year [62, 63]. Data for 2017 are not available for all sites, but Baltimore showed a small decline in heroin-related deaths (from 334 in January to September 2016 to 305 in the same period of 2017) but a much larger increase in fentanyl-related deaths (from 276 January to September 2016 to 427 in the same period in 2017) [64]. Massachusetts experienced a modest decline in overall opioid deaths in 2017 but an increase in the proportion screening positive for fentanyl (to 83%) [65].
Following information about fentanyl-laced and fentanyl-substituted heroin in Baltimore, New Hampshire and Massachusetts and high levels of overdose in Chicago, contact was made with harm reduction service providers in these locations. In San Francisco, the ethnographic team used personal contacts to arrange interviews with users and also carried out recruitment on the street. The study protocol was also approved by the University of California, San Francisco Institutional Review Board. The data and its collection are protected by a US Federal Certificate of Confidentiality issued by the National Institutes of Health/National Institute on Drug Abuse.
Transcripts were read in their entirety, and text relating to tester shots/snorting and other harm reduction methods were extracted by JO and discussed by JO, DC, and SM, who then clarified categories of activity, motivation, provenance and other themes arising from the data. Observations from the field notes and video recording were also incorporated in the analysis. The analysis gave priority to the ways in which people experience heroin but also included the reflections of the ethnographers observing the drugs and their administration.
While some referred to these methods as their regular practice, others sampled in particular circumstances such as after periods of abstinence or when the heroin or its source were unfamiliar. In Chicago, David, who was in his 30s and had been using for 7 years, generally relied upon a regular dealer to regulate the quality and strength of his heroin, as well as keeping his doses small, but he snorted heroin prior to injecting when buying from an unfamiliar source:
In Chicago, where the powder heroin can be snorted rather than smoked, several injectors described snorting their heroin before injecting. Ray, in his 50s and using for 25 years, explained that this not only gave an indication of its strength but also a taste at the back of the throat which, he believed, was indicative of its ingredients:
Several of our research participants indicated that they had begun injecting a smaller amount of heroin to assess qualitatively its embodied effects before injecting a larger dose. Johnny in Chicago, in his 20s and using for 6 years, was among those who endorsed this method:
Some of those interviewed had managed to avoid overdose entirely, perhaps as a result of using drug sampling methods. Larry, a Baltimore man in his 60s who had survived over 40 years of heroin use without overdosing, explained how he injected half his shot of heroin, waited a short time, and then decided whether to inject the rest. If he decided to inject the rest of the shot after waiting, he registered to check whether he was still accessing the vein first. We asked him about how he managed the decision not to use the whole shot:
However, there are limits to the drug sampling strategies just described, especially in the age of fentanyl. Harry, a user in his 40s from Lowell, MA, using for 20 years, explained that even with a tester shot, he had almost overdosed from heroin he later believed to contain fentanyl:
This study is explorative qualitative research based on a convenience sample of heroin injectors in five US states. Due to the non-random sampling methods and semi-structured interview format, quantitative comparisons of drug sampling patterns across the research locations or by sample characteristics should not be made. The data comprise a snapshot of drug consumption behavior that can generate hypotheses but not conclusive findings. Interviews carried out at needle and syringe programs and other public health settings may be influenced by social desirability bias. Some interviewees were recruited outside of these environments, however, in an effort to mitigate this bias. 2ff7e9595c
Comments