Well, where to start? I have had a long relationship with drugs and heroin in particular. Up until the age of 12 I was a fairly happy child and doing well at school. Around that time my dad had been diagnosed with bowel cancer and was at the start of a long losing battle with it. Until recently it never occured to me that this was a reason for me turning to drugs, but looking back now I certainly don’t think it helped.

The first drug I ever used was cannabis. My friend had suggested to me one lunch time that we ‘nick off’ school that afternoon. I had never even thought about missing school before, but went along with it. We went and sat in a field and he got out a joint of hash that he already had rolled up. I just remember having such a laugh. This was in 1992 when I was still 12. Over time I stopped going to school altogether and ended up smoking joints like they were cigarettes. By the time I was 15 I was selling it to other people and thought I was quite the big man. All my friends were much older than me and I was pretty much revelling in the lifestyle and liked having reputation in pur town.

It was some time when I was 15 that I first came into contact with heroin. Two of my friends turned up at my door one night and asked if I was coming out. I said I was staying in, and one of them showed me a roll of tin foil he had stashed inside his jacket and encouraged me to come with them to try a toot. At the time I was a bit shocked and made excuses to stay home. I had heard whispers about some people where I lived who were doing heroin, and while I didn’t understand much about it or what it really was I certainly got tue negative tone people were using towards it.

After that night my friends went off and started getting hooked on the gear. I carried on with my life of smoking cannabis and started going put drinking with some other friends I had. My contact for the cannabis was still one of my friends who was now taking heroin so I still used to see him. It was one time when I had to wait at his house for the cannabis to turn up that, for no reason I can think of, I had my first toot with him. I wasn’t particularly impressed to be honest, but I did enjoy hanging out with my friend again and had a good time.

After leaving his house I was throwing up on the way home, which would become all too familiar when I started using heroing regularly.

It started being that I would smoke some brown with these friends just once a week, usually on a Friday. Then it got to where it would be on the Saturday as well. Then the Sunday, and so on. It didn’t take long until it was every day and I was soon addicted. I stopped selling the cannabis so didn’t even have the money from that coming in. I relied on money from my mum and an inheritance I had managed to convince my parents to let me have early. I continued like this until I was 17.

This was the time I confessed to my mum what I was doing, and she took me to the doctors to seek help. Back then it was very easy just to get a big bottle of methadone and not have to worry about drug tests or key workers. I wasn’t even taking the methadone most days, just had it as a back up for when I couldn’t convince my mum to give me any money or couldn’t score. I was also selling quite a bit of it.

When I had just turned 18 was when I first injected. A guy I had round at my house said he could “do me a sorter”, but he didn’t have enough for me to toot so I would need to share a dig with him. I was a bit nervous but went ahead anyway. It made me feel extremely poorly, but also gave me a buzz like nothing before it. This was the first time I ever felt the ‘pins n needles’ in my head that I came to love so much.

I wanted to do it again but was a bit scared of the prospect of getting needles. It seemed quite serious bunsiness. This guy wrote a list of instructions down for me so I would know what to do to get needles from an exchange service. He told me to use his exchange number and signed the bottom of the note wih “may the force of the pin with you”. I found this incredibly funny at the time.

Fast forwarding in time again, by the time I was 20 in the year 2000 I had used up my meagre amount of veins in my arms and was now injecting in my groin. The groin seemed like the answer to my prayers, hitting a vein every time (aside from a few painful artery incidents) and I just continued injecting more and more. I was still relying on my mum for money. I knew it was wrong, but knowing I could hassle my mum and just get money rather than stealing like so many others I knew, I just couldn’t help myself. My other source of heroin income was helping the local drug dealers and sometimes storing heroin for one of the bigger ones. One time that sticks in my memory was when I was looking after large amounts of heroin in exchange for a gram a day. The dealer said I could also take out whatever I needed to buy as long as I had the money. I was so easy having all that gear there. One day my mum came home and found me asleep with my face buried in this bag that contained around 9 ounces of heroin. To say she was shocked and disgusted is an understatement. I think she would have been even more so, but not knowing anything really about it she didn’t know the massive value of such an amount of heroin. Predictably I was taking more heroin from this bag than I could ever pay for, and the dealer, while actually being fairly reasonable, wouldn’t trust me to hold it anymore. Looking back I think it was a bit foolish to expect an addict to be able to control themselves around so much gear, but that’s another issue. I had to slowly pay him the hundreds I now owed him and had a bigger habit than ever. I managed to cut down a bit, but was still injecting around 4 grams a day, 3 0.2 gram bags in each dig, sometimes more.

My mum was becoming ever more distraught with my behaviour and the amount of money I was taking from her so she convinced me to try a free rehab program she had heard about. All she had to do was pay my travel fees, she also agreed to pay my girlfriend’s as well. I didn’t realise what this ‘rehab’ involved at first, otherwise I wouldn’t have agreed to it. It was a Christian organisation that operated in many countries througout the world. I agreed to go with my girlfriend to their operation in Portugal. I didn’t realise that this invloved having no medication at all, not so much as a paracetamol allowed.

Before we left for Portugal we had also been told we would be kept together, but when we arrived at this house in Porto they announced we were to be kept on farms at opposite ends of the country and they destroyed all our cigarettes. This was the first we had heard of not being able to smoke and be seperated. We instantly demanded to see each other and them made them drop us back at the airport. We were stuck rattling in the Porto airport for two whole days, an experience I will never forget. I remember going to the top of the airport to see if there was anywhere to throw myself off. Thankfully I gave up these foolish thoughts. After eventually convincing my mum to sort flights out for us home we managed to get out of there. Due to it being Easter and there being a fireman’s strike in Porto, we had to go on a long coach ride to an airport where there was flights home. I remember this being a horrific experience as we were both withdrawing worse than we ever had before. At one of the stops on this journey I had managed to use a phone to call one of my friends back home and had convinced him to take some gear to my house and leave it under the wheelie bin. I made my mum give him some money. Result I thought. The flight we had was only going to get us to London, so we had managed to get my sister to come and pick us up for the long journey up to Yokshire. All that time we were so looking forward to just having this gear when we got back. The stupid thing is we were coming to the end of the third full day of full on withdrawals and would soon be past the most extreme symptoms. That didn’t make sense to us at the time though, all that mattered was the feeling of all the symptoms washing away that we knew we would get from the gear. When we arrived at my house, it turned out some people my mum knew from a community mothers of addicts group had come to support her. They had also figured out where the heroin had been left so had taken it away. Understandably they didn’t like the way I behaved with taking money from my mum and making her unhappy, so their treatment of me was harsh. I managed to get my mum to help me by letting me stay as long as I promised to detox at home. They even got the doctors to prescribe me a load of valium without even seeng me which was surprising and helpful. Even so, the first chance I got I snuck to the and got someone else to stick some gear and works just inside the letter box so it wouldn’t be found. As soon as I got it I went straight to the bathroom amd locked myself in. Now I think I may have overdosed here, I can’t be sure. I put a normal dif on for myself, around half a gram then. I injected it and got the most intense rush I had ever had, but then just remember trying to walk to the toilet to sit down and my legs not working properly. I didn’t know anything else until I woke up some time later with my mum and sister talking to me after they had broke the door to get in.

I will skip forward some here as I really could be here all day.

Things carried on much the same as before. I had another similar rehab attempt when I went to a place in Birmingham. I actully went there with a few bags of gear and some valium wrapped up in plastic shoved up my bottom. I guess that says it all about that attempt. Goes to show, no one can be forced to get clean, it has to be for yourself.

After getting home again my mum kicked me out this time and stopped giving me money by cutting contact. She moved and didn’t tell me where. Through being a devious person I eventually found her and was once again hassling her for money. I hate myself for doing it and I know my mum thought I was evil, but I wasn’t. I was just a very weak person. She told me she should have drowned me at birth, although I know she didn’t mean it. This was around 2004 when I was 24.

Cutting forward again to 2006, I had left my girlfriend as I had found out she was unfaithful and that the addicted baby she gave birth to a couple of years before wasn’t mine. It was around this time when I met the lovely woman who is now my wife. I was living next door to her with a friend I had known since childhood. We were getting by mainly through benefits and all sorts of scams he was doing. Occasionally I would still get my mum to give me money but this was rare. I was also in quite a bit of debt with a few drug dealers. My future wife once saw me in trouble being dragged towards a car outside our houses. She helped me pay them off any also gave me money to pay off other dealers. I did have a lot of money from her, and I would be lying if I said I didn’t just spend a lot buying drugs, but I drew very close to her as we spent more time and knew she wanted a relationship with me.

One day she said I couldn’t carry on like I was as she feared I was going to end up in big trouble or dead. She had already booked me a place in Detox 5 in Harrogate and had the money ready to pay for it.

After the shock I agreed. She had already had contact with a house buying association and was all set for us to move away. She even said my friend could come with is even though she didn’t like him. He was my closest friend so I didn’t want him to feel I was abandoning him, but he didn’t want to leave. I decided I would go through with the rehab and move, and left my friend £1000 I managed to get before I left. I left sort of excited, but very nervous about things.

The detox was hard, but seemed to go by very quickly with all the medical help. In that is the problem though. On the last day there, I was hallucinating things and feeling very weak and strange, but the doctors and nurses were all happy and smiley saying “congratulations, your body is now opiate free”. Thing is, my head was no different to how it was before. The day before rehavlb I was on my 90ml of methadone as well as all the heroin (and crack) I could lay my hands on. It’s hard to change your mindset in just a few days. Within a few hours I had managed to skip and then bin my naltrexone doses and I was already well into plotting to score.

The good thing about this detox is I got back on good terms with my mum. This was 2007, and she was waiting for me when my wife brought me to our new temporary home and was so proud of me. As far as she knows I haven’t touched any heroin since.

I made up reasons why me and my wife had to visit where we used to live, and did whatever I had to to sneak off and score. One good thing is I was no longer injecting, but it wasn’t long until my wife caught me smoking it. I did it with her knowledge for a few months, then did Detox 5 again. The detox was even harder this time even though I was on a lot less heroin. After getting out I ended up scoring heroin once more. I just couldn’t cope with how my body felt afterward, even though it was supposedly opiate free. I ended up going back on methadon.

This will bring us neatly to where I am at now. I was mostly just having my 50ml daily dose of methadone and trying to sort my health out. I had leg ulcers and a DVT from all the injectin, incredibly painful. From 2008 to 2009 I remained on the same dose, but was doing a couple of bags of gear every couple of months. Somehow I did keep it down to this level which I guess is something. I didn’t have any dealer numbers anymore and was getting my old friend I lived with to come meet me with gear.

I married my wife in 2009 and started reducing the methadone at the same time. For the next couple of years I continued in the same way, reducing my methadone but still using heroin every couple of months or so. In 2011 I was down to 15ml of methadone and my gorgeous baby daughter was born. To my shame I had taken heroin the night she was born. My wife had to be induced and was in hospital for a few days. I was told to go home on a night, and decided to invite my friend to come over and bring me some gear. It was long 75mile journey but he came. He had left later on and I enjoyed my gear and went to sleep. I got the call to back to the hospital shortly after, so I was still smacked up struggling to open my eyes when she was born. I at least am glad I was there and still managed to support my wife.

I will now get to where I am now. I didn’t mention something that probably is relevant. In 2008 I had a motorbike crash caused by another driver. I have claimed compensation for this and have got quite a lot of money out of it. The thing is, I thought that I wanted possessions and they would help make me happy. Thanks to that money I have a house full of gadgets and game consoles and a garage full of motorbikes. I also have my sweet daughter who I do absolutely adore, she does mean the world to me. In the time since she was born I have used every few months still. In spite of having a wonderful family and lots of the cool possessions I thought I wanted I am feeling ever more unhappy. I used to at least think I knew myself and that I was a decent guy aside from the drugs. Now though, I just feel adrift.

Neither my wife nor any other family know I have taken any drugs since 2008. My old friend who was scoring for me has just been sent to prison recently so that is not an option anymore. Thing is, I just feel more detached than ever, and knowing I can’t just sort some gear by phoning someone, taking it or leaving it, has made it all the more on my mind. I do want a life free of drugs, but I find myself unable to deal with the real world now. I now am responsible for a lot of things I never was before, like all the bills and being expected to help make decisions with my wife. I just find that I can’t be the person I want to be. The more time that goes by and the more pressure I feel under I just feel more isolated and unsettled. I get moments of great happiness from my family and lovely daughter, but then when I’m alone again all the negative thoughts creep back in. I find myself turning on the Xbox just to not play it while I sit and fret about things. I find it so hard to put into words how I feel, I hope I am getting at least some of it across.

Sorry for the extremely long, poorly written essay, it’s hard to sum up all those years and how I’ve got to where I am now. If anyone would care to comment and offer advice I would appeciate it. I have been considering going to seek out local drug users to help me score. I haven’t touched any gear in three months now and know ot would be a terrible idea, I just feel so lost. It doesn’t help that the drug treatment agency seem to look at me as if I’m not a real addict anymore because I’m on so little methadone and they don’t know I’ve used. They seem to think I am just clinging onto the past by staying on methadone when I don’t need it. I am Just on 15ml now. They want me to either rapidly reduce to zero or move onto Suboxone fora five week detox on that. I don’t know that it is a good idea. Even with my dabbling, at least I haven’t gone all the way back to oblivion, but I fear if I am forced to do the detox (which means daily trips to clinic where I would see other addicts) it may push me over the edge.

I feel such a bad person after putting all these thoughts down, and so guilty. I hope I can somehow get my head where it needs to be.

My partner and I stopped using bout 9 months ago after, for me 15 long years of messing my veins up. No cravings to speak of but just feel like living the same routine but without the gear. Finished a course about positive affimations, which was great, wanted to go to college only to find out if you are on Income Support you get no funding.
Where the hell am I going to get a grand from also got loads of previously unnoticed health probs sometimes wonder if it was worth giving up.

I became addicted to heroin in April 2010. However, this wasn’t the first time, nor the fifth time I had tried it.
I first tried heroin when I was 24 years of age, 14 years ago now. The first time I ever tried it was via smoking and to be honest, I hated the effects of it. I was more of an ‘uppers’ person and at the time of trying heroin, I was heavily into injecting amphetamines. I remember sitting there after I had smoked a few lines and not being able to keep my eyes open. As I said, I really didn’t like that effect. A few hours later, I was hunched over the toilet, retching (I had nothing to sick up, due to not having eaten for quite some time) and my whole body was wracked in pain. I vowed then that I would NEVER touch heroin again.

In November 2009, I became very ill due to a lovely present that my ex boyfriend left me with, HSV II (or Herpes Simplex Virus II, genital herpes). The disease had spread to my urethra and I was urinating upto five times an hour. Along with this, I was in vast amounts of pain and this carried on for nigh on three months. By the end of December, I had had enough of constantly being on the toilet and the pain I was in. I had seen my GP countless times about it and also a Urologist. Nobody was willing to offer me any pain relief.  So, at the end of my tether and knowing that my boyfriend had easy access to getting heroin, I asked him to get me some. I have to say, my boyfriend did take some persuading over the issue but I told him that if he didn’t score for me, I would find some way of getting hold of some. My boyfriend was on a DRR Order at the time and there were quite a few people that he attended groups with that were either dealing heroin or could get heroin. So, after one simple phone call, I had some heroin. 
Taking it the second time around was completely different. I again smoked it and this time, I didn’t feel sick and I didn’t get sick after smoking it. I continued to smoke heroin about three or four times a week until the following April when it became all too apparent that I was addicted to it. After a few hours without smoking any, I would begin to feel unwell, my stomach would churn and I’d feel like I had a head cold. The withdrawal symptoms I experienced back then are nothing compared to what I have recently experienced in relation to trying to stop using. 

Last April I contacted my local drugs agency to try and get an opiate substitute prescription. I was lucky and the wait to see someone was approximately two weeks. It was decided that I would be given Methadone, starting at 20ml daily and to pick this up daily from the local pharmacy. Within less than twenty minutes of ingesting the Methadone liquid, my eyesight went very blurred and I developed an intense and throbbing headache. I saw my GP immediately who ascertained that my blood pressure had dramatically risen, 133/113 and having described my other symptoms to him, he felt I was having an allergic reaction to the Methadone. I was given an intra muscular antihistamine and my symptoms abated. 
After this episode, it took many months of trying other medications such as Physeptone tablets and Subutex (Buprenorphine) both of which I was also allergic to. Both of these medications produced dreadful burning, numbing and tingling pains in both arms and hands. I would wake up every morning with no feeling in my arms and hands and then the onset of the burning and tingling would start up. This would last for about four hours before settling down and then the whole cycle would start up again in the morning. My drugs agency were at their wits end with what to prescribe me and also going through a period of locum doctors as their Addictions Specialist Doctor had gone on maternity leave. 

By this time, which was mid August, I was still using as my drugs agency couldn’t decide what medication to try next and all they could offer me was ‘symptomatic relief’. I had even begun to do my own research as to what I could take as in all honesty, the drugs agency were being very unhelpful. I asked if they could perhaps prescribe me Methadone powder. This was run past their NHS Pharmacist (which took nearly two months to get an answer). Eventually, their Pharmacist said they were not licensed to prescribe this. Then I asked if perhaps Dihydrocodeine may be an option. It took another three months (as their Locum refused to prescribe Dihydrocodeine at first)  before eventually, in December 2010, I was finally prescribed Dihydrocodeine (or DF’s) starting at 8 x 30mg daily and triturating up to 20 x 30mg daily. The Locum finally agreed when I begged her to please get in touch with an Addictions Specialist in relation to prescribing Dihydrocodeine.
By the time I was prescribed Dihydrocodeine, I had a pretty big habit and I was injecting upto 3 grams of Heroin a day. The first time I injected was in May 2010 and this continued until a few days ago. In all honesty, I wish I had stopped sooner. In July 2010, I had my driving license revoked as by taking the advice of the Addictions Specialist at my drugs agency, I informed the DVLA that I was on an opiate substitute. At the time of writing to the DVLA, which was in May 2010, I was following my Physeptone prescription to the tee and I had stopped using. However, when I received a letter on 28th June 2010, informing me that my license would be revoked on 2nd July 2010 for a minumum of 12 months, I felt like the bottom of my world had fallen out. At the time, I was on daily pick up from the pharmacy and I live in a village, which is three miles from the nearest town and the bus service is pretty appalling. 

Instead of acting like an adult and thinking “Well, here’s the perfect opportunity to stop taking heroin and get myself clean so as to get my license back”, I acted like a complete child and thought to myself “Well, if they’re going to class me as a ‘persistant abuser of illicit drugs’ then I may as well carry on using heroin.” Which is of course, what I continued to do.
I have tried to stop countless times over the past year or so. Each time it becomes harder and harder. The most I have managed to stay clean has been 10 days and that was when I went on holiday to Greece last year in May. I took Physeptone for those 10 days and obviously, I was in pain on a daily basis due to my allergic reactions to the medication. 
I would say this is probably at least the tenth time I have tried to get clean off heroin since April 2010. I am now on day four. I am taking my prescription of Dihydrocodeine. As far as the agency are aware, they think I have been clean since December 2010. I haven’t been honest with them as I so desperately want to get my license back. I have been told by the DVLA that I need to be at least 12 months free of Heroin before I can reapply. I have managed to provide a clean mouth swab test every time I go to the drugs agency. Since December, I had to provide mouth swab tests as when using urine tests, it is impossible to differentiate between prescribed codeine and street opiates (i.e. heroin). The times before this I would either clean my act up three days before seeing my keyworker, so I could provide a clean test or I would make up a test, using tea and substituting it for urine. Unfortunately, these have been the lengths I have gone to in order to keep my drug agency from knowing that I have continued to use.

The past two months of my using heroin have been unbearable. I’d feel ill when I used it; I’d have a shot and I would develop a headache and then take myself off to bed for most of the day. Then, of course, knowing that within a few hours, I would be ill once more and need another shot of heroin just to make myself feel ‘well’ again. So, when I wasn’t using, I’d feel ill. I guess I’d just had enough of living the way I was. Always having to make sure that I didn’t run out of heroin and when I had run out, the sheer hell of having to go out and score, already feeling ill and not knowing for definite that I would be able to get hold of some heroin that day or having to wait until the next day. 
At first, when I started using heroin regularly, I could still function on a daily basis. Toward the end of my using, I began to realise that I no longer had a life. I barely went out, only to pick up my medication, which is now on a twice weekly basis. I used to be very house proud and I honestly cant remember the last time I actually cleaned my house. I also used to eat regular meals. It’s only been thanks to my GP prescribing Ensure liquid feed for the past few months, that I have actually been able to still eat a little each day. 
As I sit and write this, I hope and pray that I have now left using heroin behind me. I look at my arms and I am disgusted by what I see. I have very few veins left that I can actually be injected into. I never used to inject myself, my boyfriend always did it for me. The couple of times I did inject myself, I ended up in A&E as I got cellulitis, which is incredibly painful. 

I am now in the throes of heavy depression and I know that this is because my dopamine levels have hit an all time low. My boyfriend, who himself, is on a Methadone prescription, keeps telling me that this will pass in time. 
I truly hope that anyone who has never tried heroin and reads this will think twice before trying it. It really isn’t worth it. I used to lead a relatively normal life until I picked up heroin. In just over twelve months, heroin has taken me to the gates of hell and beyond. 

I pray that this time I will continue to stay on my Diydrocodeine prescription and begin to rebuild my life once more. I am under no illusion that it is going to be easy. However, I know where herion can take me and I dont want to be living in the depths of despair any longer. 

Actual 1st Time

Once upon a time in a land far, far away……….?  Lol it was definitely no fairy tale, that’s for sure!! However, I was a very, very, naive (but sweet!) 16 year old, it would appear. Yes unfortunately you did hear me correctly…. I was 16 when I first came into contact with Heroin & a little embarrassed to admit that I didn’t really have a clue what it was!? But then I was only 16! :-/

          “I know it looks like mud….. but it is in fact Heroin!” 

 You see as a 90′s school leaver from a small town/village in the heart of rural Staffordshire, drugs education was not really at the forefronts of peoples’ minds. Don’t get me wrong we had the ‘ police chat ‘ during one of our lessons ( believe it was actually a Religious education class? ) at secondary school but it was brief to say the least. We were shown Heroin in its powder form and were told that it was ‘injected’, using asyringe. The thought of doing anything like that at the age of 12/13, was just not an option because I was petrified of needles / syringes. We had discussed the subject within the family & they too had said that Heroin was a dirty drug! But I still had no idea that you could ‘smoke‘ it!?

                                                        

 As an experimental youngster (aged 14/15), during a difficult family crisis, I had stumbled upon Cannabis. That sounds so flipant but it seemed to be fairly popular in ‘the village’, so not that difficult to come into contact with. At that time it was Cannabis ‘resin’, a black, solid block that you essentially had to ‘burn’ or ‘heat up’ in order to crumble it into a cigarette, enabling you to smoke it. Which I got the hang of rather quickly & easily, sadly. So when a ‘new friend’ offered me a new way to get high & leave my troubles behind, naturally, being ‘stoned’ & 16, I thought:

“Why not give it a try!?”   “Cannabis is cool!” 

The Heroin had already been melted onto aluminium foil, turning it into a sort of sticky, caramel coloured, blob & looked almost as though a lump of Cannabis had been melted onto the piece foil? I had not seen the Heroin in its natural ’powder‘ form before this incident occurred, on the night in question, so I could be forgiven for believing this, as a naive 16 year old! If it was even possible to melt Cannabis resin onto foil & smoke it, I did not know but I obviously didn’t doubt the possibility enough, to make me question my new found ‘older’ friends or the rest of my ‘peers‘- including my mother!! However, in mylate mothers’ defence, it was merely poor judgement, fuelled by alcoholism, that led to her involvement. Still, it is difficult to question a parent when they say:

“Go on try it, it wont hurt you!!” 

Especially, when you have been raised to “respect your elders“!! To be honest, I don’t think she really knew what it was herself but didn’t want to appear ‘old’ in front of my friends during her, “I wanna be a teenager again!” phase! Also, just wanted to point out that, I am aware of this now, but I wasn’t at the time!!  

In order to smoke the Heroin once the powder has been melted onto a sheet of foil. Another smaller piece of foil is used to make a tube or ‘tooter‘. A lighter is then used to heat the Heroin so that essentially it ‘runs’ down the foil in order to produce the vapour/smoke. This is also known as ‘chasing the dragon’.

I put the foil tube between my lips & inhaled the smoke as my friend held  the other piece of foil & directed the lighter. What followed was an incredible warm rush that started in my toes & ran all the way up the back of my neck & into my head. I am reluctant to admit that it was a truly amazing feeling. It was like the feeling you get from snuggling up in bed with a loved one on a cold winter morning or being wrapped in cotton wool. It felt like nothing could hurt me. Totally awesome! It is very easy to understand why a person would chase that feeling or high. The wonderful bubble was soon popped & replaced by a sudden onset of projectile vomiting in the following few hours, after that initial hit & a couple more lines. This I later found out was to become the norm. My body obviously did not agree with this new foreign substance and tried to reject it quite violently! You would think that that would have stopped me from using again as well, being a person that hated to be ill or throw up but it didn’t dissuade me that much at all, to be honest. The taste of it, is also something I will never forget, hard to describe in anyway other than…….. like really fowl cough medicine? Uh! sorry but just thinking about it - even after 6 & 1/2 years – brings a little bit of sick into the back of my throat!! urgh! (quiver!).

The name Heroin had never been used in connection to the ‘drugs’ we were taking. Instead I heard new words to describe it like: “Smack”, “Brown” & “Gear”. To offer a 16 year old something you refer to as a “toot”, just seems ridiculous to me now. It’s not really a word a naive young teenager associates with anything bad, is it!? To ‘toot’ is basically the slang term used to describe the actual smoking of Heroin.

“If  only I knew then, what I know now….!!”

We have all said it at some point in our lives, but it has never been more true, than this, for me! Having said that…. If I’d have known what it actually was before I was offered it, would I have still taken it?? ……… Well, I would like to think not, but based on the circumstances at that time….. it’s a probability that I would still have tried it! 

I actually find out, exactly what is was, one afternoon, on route, with the ‘usual crowd’, to buy some Heroin or “score some gear“. Curiosity got the better of me, so I asked what it was exactly because ‘Smack’ was not a drug I’d heard of before? It was a bit of a shocker to find out I had been smoking Heroin for the past 3 months!? It was also on that same day that we all discovered what a “smack cold” was too. To me it was a bit of a sniffle & a little bit shivery, in reality it was the start of my body becoming dependent on the drug. The ‘smack cold’ was to become my first introduction to Heroin “withdrawl”. :-/ Although after only the initial 3 months of use it was just that, a bad cold! However as time went on, tolerance levels rose and as a direct result of that, the dependency levels also rose. Basically, 

“The more you use….., the more you need and want!”

Inevitably the cold then got much worse & the “addiction” began! 

Heroin Addiction is so much more than:

“Getting involved with the older crowd, feeling part of something and making new friends!”

 Taken From http://drugs.eprofits.com/how-it-started/