Posted on 03/24/2014 6:26:18 PM PDT by mgist
The drug has followed prescription painkillers into new neighborhoods, forcing police and parents to confront an unexpected problem. In the upper left, a nurse shows off a container of naloxone, a drug which can reverse the effects of a heroin overdose. NEWBURYPORT, MASS. Ana was a good student in middle school. She got above-average grades, seemed poised and self-possessed, and, like many of her friends in her charming coastal town north of Boston, was on a probable path to college. Then, during her freshman year...One night she got very drunk with some friends and loved it. She says it made her feel like "the person she wanted to be." Before long she was also smoking marijuana. Soon after, a friend gave her some prescription painkiller pills to try, which Ana (not her real name) says made her feel even better than the alcohol. She started buying the pills illicitly – often spending several hundred dollars a day. She stole to support her habit, but it wasn't enough.
Then her friend asked her: Why not try heroin, since it's so much cheaper? Ana was shocked. Heroin, after all, was for "real" drug addicts. But by that time her dependence on the painkillers had become more than she could resist. She bought the heroin, snorting the powder at first. But within six days she was injecting herself with a needle – becoming the archetype of a classic heroin addict. Ana's anguished journey from conscientious student to heroin user is one confronting many young people in suburbs across the country...
The rise is being driven by a large supply of cheap heroin in purer concentrations that can be inhaled or smoked, which often removes the stigma associated with injecting it with a needle.
(Excerpt) Read more at csmonitor.com ...
Good luck. A word of advice - he can’t have contact with any of his old drug friends when he gets out of rehab. You are actually fortunate that he is under 18...because you can more easily spy on him.
And I would...all the way. Keyloggers on the computer and clone his phone....and whatever else you can think of. No matter how much he improves, even If he has decided he is dedicated to recovery...his old drug friends can make him falter in an instant.
Again - good luck. Most drug addicts eventuly relapse...so it is a lifelong struggle.
As a result, they do not have our problems with drugs. I really wish we had the same view, I really really do.
I wonder where exactly her parents were. Surely they noticed the spiral into destruction.
Had a distant family member succumb while in high school. In the Dallas suburbs there was a form of heroin that came from Mexico called “cheese”. He died from it. Probably about the same age as the person in this article. It’s pretty much as Mr. Mackey says - “Drugs are bad, mmmkay?”
That does not explain the many, many people that wasted away their lives on drugs during good times. I can't go with your explanation but appreciate your point that mine was over simplified.
Thanks; good point about why they do it in the “good times” - I don’t understand that, either. When I look at young people with facial tattoos and (to a lesser extent, because they can be concealed) piercings, I just can’t believe that person ever sees themselves holding down a real job. It seems a lot of the issues normally associated with inner-city youth (and associated with hopelessness) are now rearing their heads in other young people (substance abuse, out-of-wedlock pregnancy, broken homes, lack of education).
Don’t you know? Wallstreet along with the CIA and the Queen of England are importing this stuff into the country.
When I was a teenager, my contemporaries and I were vaguely aware of heroin but we knew it as a drug used only by the bums down on Skid Row.
This was in the early 1950s. Note that is not “1950’s,” by the way. Using an apostrophe after a word puts it in the possessive tense, not in the plural. Pet peeve of mine.
There’s only one thing to do, I’m afraid. Deal out some justice to the dealers.
I am truly sorry to read this, I hope for the very best for your son and your family.
“Don’t you know? Wallstreet along with the CIA and the Queen of England are importing this stuff into the country.”
Silly me.
I agree with you...
There’s always dopefiends, the only thing that really changes is their drug of choice. Meth was popular, now it’s fading again, so H gets to come back.
Ban the gateway drug: Alcohol, per the article.
Start wasting the dealers. It’s the only way.
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