Here is a news story about a couple who are suspected of dying from a fentanyl and/or heroin overdose. He was a pilot for Spirit Airlines. They lived in an upper-middle class home in Centerville, OH. (As a side note, I grew up in Centerville.)
I guess I’ve been living under a rock all my life, but I don’t think I’ve ever known a heroin addict. I’ve always pictured them as unemployed, unkempt, and living in the streets or in a dilapidated home. This story makes me wonder if some of the people I encounter everyday – even coworkers – are addicts.
Have you known a heroin addict? Did they lead a “normal” life?
Just like alcoholics, there are always a certain number who will be very high functioning. They’ll hold down jobs, go to church, family events, etc, all undetected.
So I’m going to go ahead and say you HAVE known both a secret alcoholic and a secret drug addict, without being aware. I’d wager we all have.
But, like a lifetime of alcohol abuse, no matter how high functioning, for how ever long, sooner or later it will begin to tell. And then, seemingly from out of nowhere, their world will entirely destruct. Job, family, home, all lost. It can literally be from boardroom to gutter.
I know a lot of heroin addicts and have throughout my life. I know many high functioning addicts but very very few that hold long term stable jobs. Self employed painters, plumbers, handyman, even some guys who do computer work or commercial arts folks. Most of the guys I grew up with were dead before 50.
Just from my own experience it seems like most the guys who die of overdoses are pretty young. Heroin addicts that I know die of things like hep c, blood infections, chronic alcoholism, falls with head injuries, or overdoses from pills. Most of them are also heavy smokers and copd kills a lot of them.
I have never met one that lived what I would consider a normal life.
I’ve known a couple of people who used heroin in a pattern that allowed them to work a normal job. Because heroin isn’t usually a socially accepted drug, very few people knew the details of their drug use.
One guy did exterior house painting. He drank during the spring and summer, and worked his ass off doing painting jobs. At the end of his season (late fall) he put away his ladders and brushes and switched from beer to heroin. When March came around he quit cold turkey, dealt with withdrawal, and then began booking jobs. He did this every year from his 40s on, dying at 60 of a heart attack while painting.
the largest growing sector of heroin users are people who became addicted to opioid pain medication; as, sometimes its easier and cheaper to get, esp if your scrip has run out with no refills. theyre also most likely to be white, middle class, aged 20-34, from the midwest. so its likely you did know one.
I don’t know any heroin addicts personally, but one of the most famous doctorsin US history was an addict throughout his life. I don’t know if it is common, but if someone has access to a long-term source of legal opiates, the effects of the drug per se don’t necessarily cripple you. It’s probably less damaging that alcoholism, and some people continue high-functioning for years.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say that the only thing about opiates that makes them bad is that they are illegal, but many of the bad effects come from having to buy them from disreputable sources, that they are not always pharmaceutical-grade, and getting convicted of buying them messes up your life.
Apparently, one of the big reasons for the spike in overdoses here in Ohio is that the heroin users think they’re buying heroin, and they’re actually getting something with fentanyl in it.
Not directly, but I work with a few people who have experience with addicts with similar MOs. One of my coworkers does side jobs for such a man. She doesn’t talk about him very often, but I know she’s had to quit working for him several times because he’d let things get out of hand while he was using.
An ex-coworker of mine lost her son to heroin about two years ago. He did roofing and drank during the warmer months. Once the roofing season ended he’s switc.h. My ex-coworker found him dead in her bathroom from an apparent OD. He was in his early 30s.
I get the same thing whenever I link to the New York Times. There is a button in the upper right to bypass the shopping site.
FWIW the link is to a book about William Halsted, who was a professor of surgery at Johns Hopkins and considered one of the founding fathers of modern US surgery. He was addicted first to cocaine, and then to morphine.
The famous example is William S. Burroughs. He was a heroin addict most of his life. He got to be a famous author and lived into his 80s. Normal? Um, he was a heroin junkie all his life.
The moral of the story is that if you are born into money and become a famous social figure, you might be able to find a reliable source of drugs and feed your habit for decades. Good luck everybody!
Or, you do and just don’t realize it. The whole point of this thread is that not all heroin addicts are passed out in the gutter belts with wrapped around their arms and needles and baggies scattered around them.
It’s much like how people say ‘It’s 100% impossible to hide smoking, I can always smell cigarette smoke on people no matter how well they think they’re hiding it’, no, you smell smoke on people that smell like smoke. The people that smoke and don’t smell like smoke, you don’t smell it on.
While I’m not going to say that you personally know heroin addicts, you probably know people that drink waaay more than you’d guess or someone that takes 15 vicodins a day or does some coke before they have to interact with people.
I think a lot of people have the misconception that drugs automatically make you such a mess that it’s obvious to anyone that looks in your direction. But, in reality to say that you know someone doesn’t do heroin is to say that you know everything they do in their private life.
I don’t know any heroin addicts, AFAIK, but my sister was addicted to cocaine for at least a decade, although she finally dried out 30 years ago. She was sufficiently high functioning that she earned over $100,000 a year selling jewelry mostly on commission. The other salesmen hated her because customers would come in and ask for her by name.
I’ve known some high functioning alcoholics who managed to hold down jobs as professors of mathematics. One of them, a close friend, eventually dried out and is now 81. Another one, a colleague, eventually developed something called Korsakoff’s syndrome and hardly functions at all now. It is caused by severe B12 deficiency and he is permanent disability.
If you’ve ever worked in a high pressure service industry, and especially food service, you have almost certainly known multiple drug addicts. I won’t go so far and make up some kind of baseless statistic about how many professional cooks use heroin, meth, or coke (or more likely, all three), but sustaining that kind of lifestyle long term essentially requires pharmaceutical augmentation for many people; the amount of stress, incredible hours, required obsessive attention to every detail, the pressure to never be five minutes late or call in sick regardless of how sick/hung over/stressed out you are pushes many people into using drugs to both get up and slow down.
But it isn’t just service workers; I’ve known of several professionals (lawyers, doctors, pharmacists, research scientists) who use various drugs for increased mental acuity or endurance. The pressure to compete with colleagues and perform at the absolute peak level at all times–which is impossible–leads people to start using speed to get up and prescription drugs or alcohol to calm down enough to rest. Heroin, which is generally taken intravenously, may seem like a big leap from pills and drink, or even inhaled powder, but the response is so fast and overwhelming that once you’ve done it once it is easy to normalize it (so I’m told…I’ve avoided all drugs except alcohol and caffeine, and even those in moderation).
As long as you have a schedule and clock to follow, it’s easy to get into a routine where the drug use doesn’t interfere with being a functional employee…until some extra stressor comes into your life compelling overuse, or the damage and disruption it causes (in the case of heroin, bowel obstructions, infection from punctures, or nutritional deficiency) results in attendant illness. The bigger problem comes when you use drugs as a way to deal with boredom, anxiety, or depression because it doesn’t even treat the symptoms and generally results in a downward cycle of progressive use. “Mother’s Little Helper” isn’t a song about having live-in help.
people dont use drugs because their job is stressful. they use their stressful job as an excuse to use drugs. people dont use drugs because theyre in pain or theyre depressed, or theyre poor or theyre rich, etc, they use all these as an excuse for their drug use.
you’d be amazed at all the normal people around you who use drugs, and then say to themselves “i’m not an addict, i’m not like them, i’m normal!”
My daughter worked in a methadone clinic and told me that eventually heroin use is to avoid the pain of withdrawal - the drug ‘rush’ just is not that strong.
The treatment regimen in Switzerland allows addicts to function in society and hold down a job.
At periods in their life, most of the users I’ve known were functional just like with alcohol or anything else. The difference, at least in those I’ve known, is that only one or two have been able to remain that way for long. It just doesn’t seem to be a substance where use and normality can coexist over years and years.
opioid addiction quickly leads to an increase in tolerance; you need more drug to get the same effects. higher dosage leads to shorter time lapse from crash to dope sick. vicious cycle: the more often you use, the larger the dose you need, the quicker you need to use again. . . . its hard to stay normal when youre either stoned or needing to get stoned.