The Power of Addiction

Heroin users develop both a physical and psychological addiction to the drug. The body becomes accustomed to the presence of opiates. There is also some evidence that the brain adapts to having the “pleasure circuit” regularly stimulated. Many heroin users claim that they can never recapture what they experienced the first time they tried the drug. Recovering addicts often feel dysphoria, a general sense of unhappiness, which lasts for months after they quit heroin

An addict is someone who compulsively uses heroin regardless of the consequences. Many heroin addicts inject heroin several times a day and show signs of withdrawal as a dose wears off. The craving for the drug and the obsession with obtaining more become the most important things in an addict's life.

Occasional heroin use does not automatically doom a user to addiction, but there's no sure way of gauging whether a person is likely to become an addict. Studies have shown that there may be a genetic element to addiction, meaning that some tendency toward substance abuse could run in families. This does not mean that a child of a former addict will become an addict. It just suggests that if a person has a family history of substance abuse, he may be more vulnerable to addiction if he experiments with a highly addictive drug such as heroin. Beyond the family tree, there tend to be commonalities among the backgrounds of drug addicts. For example, drug abusers were more likely to hang out with peers who also used drugs. Drug addicts are more likely to report a history of physical or emotional abuse.