Opium is extracted from a particular variety of poppy seeds. The main constituent of opium is morphine.

With very simple chemical reaction morphine can be converted into heroin and it is very dangerous because one dose can make you an addict and over dose can end your life.

Heroin is metabolized in the body to 6-acetylmorphine and morphine and all the three can make you addict.

It is sold as a white or brown powder which contains different amounts of heroin stretched (mixed) with different other substances to make more money.

The main effects are euphoria followed by alternative wakefulness and drowsiness and the mental function is affected.

Infectious diseases like HIV/AIDS and hepatitis B or other sexually transmitted diseases are transmitted when the same needle is used by different addicts to inject heroine. To prevent this new needles are supplied sometimes in some countries free of cost to the addicts.

How does one become addict so quickly? If we take medicines or drugs corresponding receptors are formed in our brain and normally if you stop the medicine or tablets, the receptor disappears, but in the case of opiates, where morphine mono acetylmorphine and heroin are members, the heroin receptors are formed but even after they are completely excreted from the body, the receptors are not disappearing. You get the carving to get more and more to fill up these receptors, you try to get it at any cost to avoid the withdrawal symptoms and the vicious cycle starts without an end mostly till your death.

Here we try to fill the receptors with medicines like methadone which have a very high half life period so that there will be no withdrawal symptoms. In course of time patients successfully practising thse substitution therapy could lead a normal life. A strong will is necessary to out of this addiction.

How often does one need the heroin injection? It always depends upon the amount of heroin present in the powder. Heroin has only few minutes half life period, the time in which the amount of heroin becomes half in one’s body. Mono acetylmorphine, the first metabolite of heroin has 10 to 15 minutes and morphine has two to four hours half life period. So one needs few injections in a day and is prepared to get it at any cost.

One may take the several thousand euros valuable watch of the mother and sell it for two doses of heroin; the black market price of heroin may be only 60 euros per injection. The addicts break the house to steal money and other things and they break the drug stores, steal the medicines there and swallow whatever they get. Very often they also try to snatch the handbags of old women.

There are several other examples like this and the worst problem is prostitution including child prostitution and thereby HIV/AIDS infection. NGOs and government try with social workers here to inform about the safer sex with condom so that there will be less infections. It is a continuous but losing fight, but it is worth doing.

Say always no to drugs; they are not good for our health…