<p>My daughters know 2 guys from high school who dealt heroin. One has been to rehab a few times. The last time he moved out of state to try and get away from it. It grabs hold and won’t let go. </p>
<p>I don’t attempt to understand addiction.
It is a vicious disease.
Very sad, remember him for his life, not his death.</p>
<p>You relapse because you are always a recovering addict, never a former addict. A much more familiar analogy is blood pressure meds or bipolar meds – you feel so good and normal, you decide you don’t need the meds. perhaps successful recovering addicts feel it’s all under control, too, and they can have a limited exposure?</p>
<p>Heroin deaths in PA spiked recently due to a tainted, toxic distribution on the East coast. Mr. Hoffman is a more famous victim, perhaps, but not the only one. Friend of a friend found her DS dead in his bedroom last week, had been clean for months. Life is fragile, and fleeting. </p>
<p>I’m sure the personality issues that may be associated with addiction aren’t necessarily the same for all addicts. Having seen the downward spiral of an addict to its final conclusion, it clearly is not something that is easy to fight.</p>
<p>I understand relapse. I just don’t understand why anyone would try heroin in the first place. Didn’t we learn anything from all those deaths in the 70’s? This is a very, very dangerous drug.</p>
<p>Prevalent in the wealthy burbs here in the Detroit area. They are mixing it with Fentanyl and then it’s lights out unfortunately</p>
<p>People try heroin just like they try anything else - curiosity, not expecting that they will get hooked, or they need something stronger. There are more dangerous things out there that even most heroin addicts will not try. </p>
<p>I don’t know what he was battling with, but I was in so much physical pain before I had surgery, that I would have considered using heroin if I had known where to get it.
But I dont get addicted to things.
My brain unfortunately doesn’t kick up enough endorphins.</p>
<p>Heroin has become very inexpensive and more available in NYC. Prescription painkillers often provide the gateway to heroin because they are really the same thing chemically,and making that transition is easier than making it from other drugs. Starting up with those painkillers is too easy, as it just doesn’t seem so illegal and nasty, and then one continues. </p>
<p>He had been clean for twenty years, until he relapsed last year.
Sad.
<a href=“R.I.P. Philip Seymour Hoffman”>http://www.avclub.com/article/rip-philip-seymour-hoffman-201004</a></p>
<p>Remember him from Twister? </p>
<p>Pirate Radio. Fun movie, tremendous soundtrack, PSH had a starring roll. </p>
<p>We have had several young people die in my town from Heroine overdoses. Surrounding towns as well. It has become an epidemic.</p>
<p>Heroin is becoming popular here among high school kids in the more affluent suburbs. The reason is what cpt says–they start with painkillers and, when those run out, need a cheaper way to maintain the same effect.</p>
<p>p.s. Madison85–love your photo. It gives me hope for summer!</p>
<p>Here is an article on heroin abuse uptick. </p>
<p><a href=“http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/02/us/heroin-use-rising/index.html?hpt=hp_t1”>http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/02/us/heroin-use-rising/index.html?hpt=hp_t1</a></p>
<p>It’s only an epidemic when it escapes from the hood to the suburbs and affects wealthy people.</p>
<p>I got to believe there’s some truth in what cmgrayson just said.</p>
<p>Never understood drug addiction. I know it’s an illness but at times I have been quite impatient with the users I’ve known because of the harm they brought upon their loved ones while on one binge or another.</p>
<p>Heroin is not new and was the drug of choice in the 60s (at least in my hood, had some older relatives when I was a girl that had the ‘monkey on their back’.) Now it’s cheap and in the suburbs but it wasn’t an epidemic then, it’s just now that more affluent users are coming to the hood to score it.</p>
<p>The book Manchild in the Promised Land by Claude Brown, which is about Harlem in the 40s and 50s, talks about what a disaster the sudden advent of heroin use was for many people there.</p>
<p>Ooooh I remember being a preteen girl and my brother gave me “Manchild in the Promised Land” such a good read. It wasn’t an epidemic then it was a Harlem/ghetto thing. </p>