HEROIN VIEWS: A PRECARIOUS BALANCE

DEAREST Cintra: I'm a journalist who specializes in covering drug issues.
I've just served as series researcher and associate producer for "Moyers on
Addiction: Close to Home" for PBS, and have written for the New York Times,
Washington Post, Newsday and Salon Online.

As an ex-junkie, I think one of the crucial points not often made in the
media is that most people who try heroin -- like most people who try
alcohol -- do not become addicted. The majority of people who try heroin
don't find it better than 1000 orgasms -- the ones who do tend to be those
whose lives are already lacking pleasure. And there are those who find
heroin pleasurable but, because their lives are good, they aren't willing
to give everything up for it.

What makes the 10 to 20 percent of opiate, cocaine and heroin users who get
hooked different from those who don't? That's the $17 -- billion question
that the drug war is afraid to ask. The truth is that addicts tend to be
people in pain -- as you said, those who are uncomfortable in their own
skins, for either biological, psychological or social reasons. Punishing
those who are trying to self-medicate pain, then, for obvious reasons, will
not help.

Also crucial to remember is that heroin itself, if taken in moderate doses,
is not a dangerous drug. One can live healthily on a maintenance dose of it
for a lifetime without incurring the kind of mental impairment and organ
damage sustained by alcoholics. Unlike alcohol, it reduces rather than
enhances violence. The 20th century image of heroin as "the hardest drug"
is a recent invention -- in the 19th century, the drug was seen as a less
harmful substitute for alcohol for chronic drinkers -- and a good case can
be made for that position.

However, it is important to remember that the risk of overdose is much more
serious with heroin than with alcohol. Even here, however, the risk can be
mitigated by making the antidote, naloxone, more available and by teaching
drug users that mixing downs (the cause of most heroin overdoses is
actually heroin and alcohol) is suicidal. Until we understand the truth
about drugs and stop believing our own "war on drugs" propaganda, the drug
problem will not be solved or even adequately confronted. -- Sincerely,
Maia Szalavitz

Dearest Ms. Maia: Thank you for your enlightened letter. It is very
difficult, when speaking of heroin, to maintain a balance between sounding
like a shrieking propaganda slave and coming off like somebody who is
alarmingly unfrightened by heroin use, like yourself.

While I am all for ripping back the tarpaulins of superstitious drivel that
accompany the hard drug topic, I think it is also just as important to
maintain that the stuff will basically screw up your life or kill you, as
it did to most of my friends at one time or another. Even those who didn't
exactly get addicted had long periods of worrisome binging that even they
thought were getting out of control.

All the people I knew who got addicted to heroin were fairly certain that
they were keeping a responsible lid on their use and were in no danger of
addiction at all. It is a very insidious chemical that way -- as they say,
you are the last person to know how strung out you are. Like you said,
heroin addiction doesn't usually turn people into violent criminals or make
them physically decay -- the real damage, I think, for junkies, is way more
subtle. What tended to happen to the hard-core users I knew was that they
seemed to stay perfectly still while the world around them spun five times
faster. Addicts step off the conveyor belt that slowly but surely propels
everyone forward in life. I know this isn't going to be a popular argument,
but heroin seems to turn off what Kerouac and I like to call the
"self-regulating Buddha nature" -- the evolutionary mechanism and instinct
that sets up the human being for the various triumphs and disappointments
that the soul educates itself with, subconsciously or otherwise. I tend to
think that most people, if you give them five years, even if they are
working the same lame job or hanging around with the same boring people,
will learn and evolve and galvanize, the same way that somebody barely
paying attention in a classroom will accidentally pick up some kind of
useful information.

Heroin addicts seem to be frozen in their ability to grow morally,
spiritually and in terms of maturity, and they don't materially progress --
the best they can do is maintain. Five years of dope use is sort of like a
time-capsule -- you come off the binge and you have to start way back where
you left off, while everyone else you know has moved five years forward.
Plus, your self-image is shot, your ego has shriveled and your looks aren't
as good as they were. It's like flunking sophomore year again and again and
again, and watching all your friends graduate. At a certain point, you
don't just stagnate but actively slip backwards. All anyone needs to know
about physical withdrawal of heroin is in the last 40 minutes of the German
movie Christianne F. Things that are good for you don't usually make you
uncontrollably spew great feverish jets of fluorescent vomit when you stop
taking them. Selah.

Smack fiends: Please write to CINTRA WILSON FEELS YOUR PAIN, San Francisco
Examiner, P.O. Box 7260, San Francisco, CA 94120, or email the Psychic
Supergenius at zintra@aol.com