How dangerous is heroin?
Heroin is one of the most dangerous drugs that are available. Heroin is what we call a depressant drug. That means that instead of stimulating you like other drugs might do, it depresses a lot of the systems. In simple terms, if you take too much heroin, you fall asleep or even fall into a coma, which is one of the main dangers of heroin. The dangers of heroin are divided into the psychological dangers and the physical dangers. The psychological dangers of heroin, or any other drug of abuse, are that it makes you feel good. It stimulates the pleasure centres and the reward pathways in the brain - specific areas of the brain that make you feel good. It's easy to avoid disagreeable emotions, feelings and circumstances simply by taking heroin. When the effects wear off, you feel dreadful, and therefore, you may want to take heroin again. The problem with heroin is that if you've used it on a number of occasions consecutively, when you stop using it, you go into physical withdrawal. That means that you develop aches and pains. You develop intense cravings. You develop nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea. It's these negative symptoms which often lead patients to using heroin again because they don't want to feel so unwell. Heroin has what we call negative reinforcing effects, because it reinforces you to take it because of negative symptoms. In terms of the physical problems with heroin, heroin slows most of the systems down. Heroin can put you to sleep and, more dangerously so, it depresses your respiratory centre; it stops you from breathing. So, unfortunately, the way you die from heroin overdose is simply that you stop breathing, and it's that lack of oxygen that eventually kills you because it kills organs such as the brain and/or the heart.
