Heroin Addiction

Heroin is a drug made from morphine. Morphine comes from opium poppy, which grows throughout the Middle East. Opium is one of the original pain-relief drugs. It affects cells in the brain, turning down pain signals as well as increasing “feel good” brain chemicals.

Heroin does the same thing. It makes users feel both happy and pain-free. When heroin is used, it converts back into morphine inside the body. Morphine binds with opioid receptors which suppress pain signals from the body. When you break your ankle, pain fibers send the pain signals to your brain, which tells you to stop moving because you have an injury. Without a working pain system, you could damage your body permanently. Pain is your body’s way of making you stop and take care of yourself.

Opioid receptors are primarily located in the brain stem. This is the part of your central nervous system that regulates automatic life functions, including breathing, blood pressure and other functions. When you take too much heroin, these systems become suppressed. That’s why people die from heroin overdoses. Too much heroin can stop your breathing.

Heroin is sold as a white or brown powder. It can be snorted, smoked or injected. All three methods of taking heroin help it enter the brain quickly, where it’s effects are felt almost immediately. This fast-acting effect makes heroin powerful and highly addictive.

Bakersfield, California is on a major drug trafficking highway. According to the Department of Justice, although heroin is less often abused than methamphetamine in the local region, it is becoming a bigger problem. This is because many people are addicted to opioid painkillers (e.g. Vicodin®, Norco®, Oxycontin®, Fentanyl®, etc.).

Opioid painkillers such as prescription pain medicines act on the same centers of the brain as heroin. Many people find that, over time, they need greater amounts of these medicines to satisfy their addiction. When the brain has adapted to the frequent influence of opioid painkillers, people will get severe withdrawal symptoms and continue to use just to avoid the withdrawal and to feel “normal”. When painkillers can’t be obtained due to a higher price on the black market, people often turn to heroin to achieve a greater high or just feel “normal”. The result is heroin addiction.

Opioid addiction has become a problem of epidemic proportions over the past 15 years. Along with the opioid addiction epidemic, there have been many more deaths from opioid overdose since 2000. A report from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) showed that in 2014 there were 18,893 overdose deaths from opioid painkillers and 10,574 deaths from heroin overdose. In comparison, in the year 2000 4,400 people died from opioid painkiller overdose and 1,842 from heroin. This is a 5-fold increase over the past 15 years!

In the past, society considered heroin an inner-city drug. Today, however, you’re just as likely to find heroin abuse in the locker room of your child’s school in the suburbs as you are on the streets of Los Angeles. Researchers believe that the rise in prescription painkiller use among the middle and upper classes has predisposed a whole generation to heroin abuse and addiction.

In 2012, the Guardian reported that doctors wrote nearly 260 million prescriptions for opioid painkillers in the United States. That’s almost one prescription for every man, woman and child. 99% of the world hydrocodone (e.g. Vicodin® or Norco®) is supplied to the US.

A shift in doctor’s attitudes towards pain management occurred gradually over the past several decades. As more prescription painkillers were approved by the FDA, more doctors offered them to their patients. Changes in drug classifications also made them easier to refill these prescriptions by phone, making them more accessible to patients and preferable by busy doctors. When prescriptions can be refilled by phone without seeing patients a second or third time, it’s easy for doctors to miss some of the warning signs that their patients are becoming addicted to painkillers.

Prescription painkillers act on the same opioid receptors in the brain that heroin targets. When you take any opioids, they change how your brain receives pain signals. The more you take, the more these changes become etched into your body. Over time, these changes make your body crave higher amounts of painkillers.

The rise in prescription painkiller abuse has created a new market for heroin. Drug dealers seized upon this opportunity and began offering teens illegal prescription painkillers. Over time, this created demand for heroin.

Heroin has always been throughout the United States, but now more than ever, it’s striking in the heart of suburbia. Law enforcement officials responding to a DEA survey show heroin is now one of their chief worries. Stories of teens ordering heroin by texting their dealers and receiving orders under the front door mat in the heart of Small Town, USA aren’t unheard of. When heroin becomes that easy to obtain, it’s become a national epidemic.

Through medical management for heroin addiction, you can be free from your addiction*. For more information, please call Synergy Recovery Services at 661-878-9930 or fill out our confidential online form today.