Heroin - Overview
Overview
Heroin is made from the fluid that drips out of opium poppy bulbs. The use of opium poppies for medication dates back more than 6,000 years. The first archaeological record of poppy use can be found in the ancient cultures of the Fertile Crescent (now the nations or Iraq and Iran). A document discovered in the ancient Egyptian city of Thebes, dated to 1552 BCE, lists more than 700 illnesses for which opium was used. By the time of the great civilizations of ancient Greece and Rome, opium was well known for its painkilling properties—and for its effects on the brain. The Greek god Morpheus, god of dreams, is depicted in artwork carrying a bouquet of opium poppies.
Centuries-Long History
During the Middle Ages (c. 500–c. 1500), physicians experimented with opium for use in treating diarrhea and anxietyA feeling of being extremely overwhelmed, restless, fearful, and worried.. Swiss scientist Paracelsus (1493–1541) mixed opium with alcohol and called the resulting tinctureCombinations of an active drug and a liquid alcohol. laudanum, the Latin word for "to be praised." In the centuries that followed, opium would appear in a variety of widely dispensed medicines, even for teething babies. American inventor Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) used opium to relieve the pain of gout and was believed to have been addicted to opium when he died.
In the nineteenth century, opium use was legal. In most cases it was socially acceptable and not considered any worse than smoking tobacco. Poets such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) wrote under its influence, and wealthy women used it habitually for a variety of complaints. In 1803, a German pharmacist isolated the active ingredients in opium and was able to create morphine, which was named after the Greek god Morpheus. Stronger and faster-acting than opium, morphine quickly gained a following as a painkiller. Its habit-forming nature soon became evident, too. In 1848, the modern hypodermic needle was invented. This allowed surgeons to inject patients with liquid morphine to ease pain. This proved a boon during surgery and recovery, but it also created addicts. So many soldiers came home from the American Civil War (1861–1865) with morphine addiction that the condition was called "the soldiers' disease."
It was the search for a less habit-forming painkiller that led to the creation of heroin. In 1874, British chemist Alder Wright boiled morphine with an acid called acetic anhydride. The compound he produced, diacetylmorphine, at first seemed to be a miracle drug. It was a better painkiller than morphine, and it was quickly put to use for chronic coughs, especially in those suffering from tuberculosisPronounced tuh-burk-yuh-LOH-siss; a highly contagious disease of the lungs.. The German pharmaceutical company Bayer began marketing diacetylmorphine under the trade name "heroin" in 1898, principally as a cough suppressant.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, the medical community began to admit that opiate addiction had become a public health crisis. In his book Illegal Drugs: A Complete Guide to Their History, Chemistry, Use and Abuse, Paul M. Gahlinger wrote that an estimated 250,000 Americans in a population of 75 million (or 1 in 300) were morphine, heroin, or opium addicts. The most noticeable of these were the opium smokers, who frequented "opium densDarkly lit establishments, often in the Chinatown section of big cities, where people went to smoke opium; many dens had beds, boards, or sofas upon which people could recline while experiencing the effects of the drug." where they smoked the drug to get high.
But just as serious was the use of medicines that contained opium derivatives, most of which did not even list the ingredients. Cranky infants were given "soothing syrups" that contained morphine, codeine, or heroin. Sometimes they died of overdoses. Men and women from all economic levels depended on their "tinctures" and "elixirs." Even the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes, created by Scottish author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930), solved one of his cases by visiting an opium den.
Crackdowns on Use
In 1906 the Pure Food and Drug Act made it illegal to dispense medicine without listing the ingredients on the bottle. Less than ten years later, the Harrison Narcotic Act prohibited opium and its derivatives (including heroin) in all but prescription medications. The particular dangers of heroin singled it out
even further from its less powerful cousins, morphine and codeine. (Entries on morphine and codeine are available in this encyclopedia.) Heroin production in the United States was outlawed in 1924. For some time after that, doctors were able to obtain imported heroin for use as a painkiller. However, in 1956 the drug was completely outlawed, even for medical use. As such, heroin was one of the first drugs to go from being used in medicines to being classified as an illegal substance.
Outlawing heroin promoted its use as a recreational drug. A post-World War II generation of young people, resistant to authority and eager to try new things, began experimenting with heroin and other opiates. One of them, William S. Burroughs (1914–1997), would go on to describe his experiences as an addict in novels such as Junkie (1953) and The Naked Lunch (1959). Illegal heroin gained popularity as a recreational drug in the 1960s and 1970s, drawing many artists, musicians, and actors into its grip. Some of them, like comedian John Belushi (1949–1982) and singer/songwriter Kurt Cobain (1967–1994), died during heroin highs. Others, like musician Eric Clapton (1945– ), successfully battled addiction.
In the early 1980s a new danger crept into heroin abuse. Addicts who injected heroin and shared needles already knew that they ran a greater risk of contracting hepatitisA group of viruses that infect the liver and cause damage to that organ.. But a new virus called AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome) was found to spread quickly through shared needles, too. AIDS is an infectious disease that destroys the body's immune system, leading to illness and death. By the mid-1980s, public health officials were warning that AIDS was spreading at higher rates among drug addicts than in other at-risk groups. The addition of AIDS to the heroin addict's list of dangers accounts for part of the rise in emergency room visits related to heroin in the 1980s and 1990s.
For a time, the risk of AIDS lowered the use of heroin in the United States. But the introduction of purer doses that could be snorted or smoked has brought the drug new users. These users do not run the risk of contracting AIDS by using dirty needles. However, heroin use can lead to risky behaviors, like having unprotected sex, which can lead to AIDS. In addition, users still face all the other dangers associated with heroin, including its tendency to promote dependence. As abusers build a toleranceA condition in which higher and higher doses of a drug are needed to produce the original effect or high experienced. to heroin over time, they become more likely to inject the drug, since this is the quickest way to achieve a high.
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