Addicted to Heroin? Fuck the Stigma, Get a Prescription

Seriously. Okay, well it's not that easy, but who can even argue against regulated heroin use as a proper method of maintenance when the alternatives are methadone and suboxone? Methadone seeps into your bone marrow and destroys your fucking body and suboxone is a dozen time stronger than heroin with a much longer withdrawal period. I get it. Legal, prescribed heroin is an outrage and is preposterous - but have you studied the alternatives? Do it. Look into other opiate maintenance programs. Then get back to me.

Let's just inject our methadone anyways, k?

Also, this totally deserves its own paragraph. Y'know when someone's smoking cigarettes or drinking alcohol while pregnant? You want to smack the smokes right out of their hand, don't you? Then why the fuck is acceptable to expect methadone patients to have deformed babies within the bounds of legality and yet the thought of someone using heroin while pregnant is shameful and infuriating?  Don't get me wrong, I'm certainly not advocating use of either during pregnancy - but the fact that there are programs in place that warn you: "Hey - you're addicted to methadone and your baby might fucking die." Tells me that the introduction of a less-harmful heroin maintenance program is a GOOD IDEA.

Can you say handcuffs? Suboxone and Methadone are, for a lot of people, life sentences. I can't list names here, but a friend of mine had a close connection with one of the people in charge of the Methadone program in Halifax, and his words were that "Methadone is a treatment practice designed to take money out of the drug dealer's pockets and put it into the government." I mean, it's not like we didn't already know that... but it's kind of a shock to hear it from the mouth of someone who helps control the freakin' program.

So, with all that in perspective, maintaining your heroin addiction with, say, heroin, seems a little more sensible, no? I mean, you're already pissed off at yourself for being addicted to heroin, why the fuck do you want to get yourself wired to something stronger? No offense to any of my homies on Methadone maintenance right now -  I respect your choices and opinions, these are just mine. That said, heroin used to be mass-produced as an over-the-counter cough prevention agent and painkiller - also touted as a 'non-addictive alternative for morphine addicts.' That reputation was quickly destroyed and its use was restricted, but it seems that its making a resurgence - so clearly the FDA isn't working to meet the same agenda as it did a century ago when it outlawed heroin.

So, (even though I'd much prefer to maintain my addiction with kratom - more on this in my next article,) Vancouver has recently become the first North American city to offer prescription heroin to addicts outside of clinical trials. The heroin's manufactured in Switzerland, where this sort of treatment is already available (along with Germany, the Netherlands, the UK, and Denmark.)

The only catch is that you have to get your shot done at the doctor's, similar to early-on Methadone treatments where you have to go to the clinic everyday to get your juice. This says that the addicts using the treatment are determined to maintain their use in a safe and regulated environment - as opposed to having to score from street dealers, bang their shit using dirty needles, wake up dopesick only to find out their supplier's out of town and they're going to spend the next 24 hours shitting their only pair of pants. Yeah, it's a good alternative.

A lot of the controversy comes just from the stigma surrounding the word heroin. Heroin. Say it to yourself out loud. H E R O I N. The word is so deeply associated with ruined lives, pain, sickness and death that it almost invokes the same feeling as unspeakable racial slurs or the name, 'Voldemort.' Well, it looks like it's going to change again - eventually - once the general population realizes that heroin's hardly different from any of the other regularly prescribed, habit-forming opiates: oxycodone, hydromorphone, fentanyl, you name it. They're all dependency-causing drugs that can ruin the life of someone less-informed.

HOWEVER, when you look at these two charts right next to each other,

you may ask a few questions. Are the deaths from prescription pain relievers so much higher because the public is less informed that they're just as fucking dangerous as heroin? Everyone's taught since childhood to stay away from heroin, but nowhere on the D.A,R.E posters of 'drugs that you and your mother should avoid' do you see OxyContin or Dilaudid.

So if heroin becomes widely available as a prescription... does that mean the death toll from prescriptions will rise, because a bunch of heroin overdoses will now be from prescribed junk? Or will the statistics decrease, because more people with chronic pain will realize that their medicine is classed in the same category as heroin, the devil they've been told to hide from their whole lives.

Who knows? All we can say now is that since starting the program, a lot of Vancouver's heroin addicts have moved off the street and into stable housing, citing that the drug's prohibition was a large cause of the issues surrounding it. Now that they can get their fix legally instead of self-medicating in a dangerous underworld, they can look towards focusing on the other aspects of their lives.

Really, who can complain about that?