Heroin Addiction: Methadone & Heroin Facts

Question: Question about heroin addiction?

(Posted by: Stormy on 2009-05-11 17:21:51)

I'm writing a book and I have a character who has been addicted to heroin for years whom is trying to stop. I was wondering if there are any side effects to stopping heoin suddenly with out any help from a doctor. Something like shaking or chills or something or anything that makes it exetremely hard. What is it like? Thanks I know it's a bizarre question. Also what are the main drugs hippies took besides Lsd/ Acid?

Posted by: pelops_dl on 2009-05-11, 18:02:31

From personal experience with morphine addiction here's some vivid(ish) descriptions of what it is like to go into withdrawal. Firstly the physical symptoms: It's like having the worst cold ever. You yawn a lot, and when you do you tear up and they run down your face. The sensation of that is irritating because it feels like ice. Every sensation is magnified and twisted around to be unpleasant. NOTHING feels good. Silk will feel like coarse cotton. The first three days you can sleep, sort of, but by the third night the 'kicking' starts. This is basically restless leg syndrome. What this feels like is a horrible crawling sensation in the backs of the legs leading up to an uncontrolled contraction (almost always a full contraction). You can resist this urge to jerk but the crawling sensation increases and it becomes unbearable. This sensation often moves into the arms and chest as well. The first three days you look pale, like death warmed over and you're sweating. The slightest gentle touch causes gooseflesh and feels awful. By the fourth day through the 10th you still feel this low grade muscle tension, a mild crawling. The whole time your muscles feel as though they wanting to tear themselves away from your skeleton. It isn't a violent sensation, but it is very present and very uncomfortable. Now for the psychological symptoms. The first three days and nights are almost a blur of misery. Depression and anxiety are constant. The knowledge that if you just had a fix everything would be okay becomes a point of obsession. You start trying to figure ways to get a fix no matter how insane or desperate. After the third night you are in a state of constant anxiety. You wake up (if you were lucky enough to be able to sleep) with a ball of burning ice in you gut. This lasts for at least another week. The third day is day you just want a break from it all. You want a fix "just to get a little relief ". I fell back off the wagon on this day many times. For many days after the worst of the withdrawal is over you are like a robot who can only feel negative emotions. Not even anger. That's just too much energy. Nothing is all that funny. Nothing is enjoyable. The fourth day, oddly, marks the return of sex drive and sometimes surges of arousal occur (usually because you're just laying there too tired and sick to move, but your mind is wandering). Masturbation becomes a tiny bright point of relief, at least for the brief seconds of orgasm. The physical sensations are bad enough with the aches and hypersensitization, but the crippling anxiety and depression coupled with the need to use to stop all this horror is the worst. The despair and anxiety are almost dreamlike (nightmarish) in their character. The events and environment become infused with your emotions and it is difficult later on to even look at the bed you lay in for days. TV shows you might watch you can never go back to. The days you are awake are a combination of boredome and misery. You're too weak and miserable to do anything other than watch TV, but commercials and sitcoms are so noisy and jarring you wonder if it'll shatter you into a million pieces. You also have to remember the associations of reward with using the needle. Shooting up becomes this blessed ritual. While in withdrawal I would often get these obsessive fantasies of using the needle. It was better than sex. Other drugs hippies used were pot, barbiturates, mushrooms, speed (dexedrine usually), cocaine (sometimes), and many others. Pot was very common. Read "The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test " by Tom Wolfe. Good luck with your book.

Posted by: max on 2009-05-11, 17:28:49

The withdrawals symptoms from any opioid is chills, nausea, sweating, fatigue, pain, and vomiting. Hippies usually smoked more pot then anything, but there weren't as many drugs back then.

Posted by: poorspartin117 on 2009-05-11, 17:47:30

They would be in more pain than god could stand Well Really noone can just stop it takes alot of theropy and methadone