The Cycle Of Addiction

The Cycle Of Addiction

The Cycle Of Heroin Addiction
It has been said that they’re a few things on this earth that gives you a better feeling than the illicit drug heroin.   We have seen countless celebrities and ordinary people fall victim to its clutches.   I want to talk a little bit about what happens from start to finish in someone with an addiction to what has been called the most powerful drug of all, heroin.   You will see how people get started on the drug and the most likely reasons.   I will show you what happens to their body and what they do to support their habits.   Finally, we will discuss the various treatments and ways to get and stay clean from heroin addiction.   In order to know what makes heroin such an addictive drug we must first see what is inside the drug.
The making of heroin is a long process and the majority of the world’s heroin comes from places like Asia, Pakistan, and now places like Mexico and Columbia are getting into the game.   This is because the flower, papaver somniferum, what we call the opium poppy flourishes in dry warm climates.   Heroin is derived from morphine, which comes from the opium poppy.
The opium poppy is a bright flower that has an egg shaped seedpod hidden in the middle.   Workers go around and make slits on the body of this seedpod and a thin milky looking fluid oozes out.   The fluid is then allowed to dry on the pod and scraped off and formed into bricks or cakes and sold on the black market.   It is there that the refining process begins.
After the crude opium cakes are sold on the black market the crude opium is then turned into morphine by boiling it with lime until all of the impurities sink to the bottom and the
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morphine forms on the top.   The morphine is then boiled and filtered down until it makes a brown paste.   The morphine paste is then mixed with acetic anhydride and sent through various filters.   The final and the most dangerous purification step involve ether and hydrochloric acid.   This produces...