It’s never a good idea to take drugs unless they are prescribed to you, or over the counter for a specific medical reason.

The problem comes when individuals use drugs for recreational use.  One specific drug that has come to the surface recently is heroin.

Ever wonder why the characters in The Wizard of Oz fall asleep as they are skipping through the poppy field? Heroin is an opiate and comes from, believe it or not, the seeds of a poppy plant. Heroin  can severely harm users.

In recent weeks there have been local deaths due to heroin overdose.  Recreational use of heroin can have serious side effects, including death.

Health teacher Tony Sorice has some insight on why heroin can be so dangerous.

“Side effects of heroin are that people that use it have terrible nutrition.  They don’t eat, they don’t take care of themselves, they’re unkempt,” said Sorice. “It works slowly on the nerves and brain cells so everything slows down, and when you slow those things down enough times, that’s how a person is going to be. So basically you become very slow, and all your movements become slow.”

Unfortunately, some people don’t think about the long-term effects.  Most people don’t consider how easy it is to get addicted.

Health teacher Doug Truscott has some advice about the use of the drug.

“It is very addictive, and the use of needles is sketchy because people share them, and then they intermingle their blood and fluids,” said Truscott.  “Long term use of heroin can kill you.  If you get too much it can kill you the first time.  If you buy it on the black market, which you do, you never know the potency of it.  Sometimes it is laced with things to fill it up, and other times it’s pure, but you never know that.”

There are lots of things that can go wrong when you take illegal drugs.  Health teacher Sharon Fassnacht has some insight about drugs.

“Its an experimental drug that a lot of kids right now are participating in and using.  It’s laced with a lot of things that can kill you,” said Fassnacht.  “Kids experiment with a lot of different drugs, and it used to not be a life or death situation, but synthetic drugs now, even the heroin, are laced with things.  There was one batch called murder ink where people were dying the first time they used it.”

The more a person uses drugs, the more there is a chance that they can get hurt.  Sometimes it is even more harmful to try to get off the drug, and get back on it again, than to just use it consistently.

“What a lot of heroin addicts are doing now is they’re addicted to it, and then they are taking themselves off of the drug.  So their tolerance is lower, and they are using the same amount they did before they stopped using it.  And that’s how they are overdosing,” said Fassnacht.
Overall, there are too many risks involved in using heroin to make it worthwhile.