HEROIN KILLS LIKE NO OTHER ILLEGAL DRUG CAN

It is not a surprise to find out last week that Porter County ranks among
the nastiest in the nation in heroin deaths and admissions to the emergency
room. The combination of a relatively affluent teen population and a supply
of cheap drugs close by in Chicago seems to breed kids who will try this
drug and risk death.

It seems that no matter how good the family values, no matter how much
teachers stress the ruination of life that drug use causes, no matter how
much groups like the Porter County Community Action Drug Coalition try to
spread the message and help, some kids keep trying and dying with heroin.

In grade school, the effort at early education about the dangers of drugs
makes all drugs seem equal. So alcohol and cigarettes, and even our morning
dose of caffeine, are taught as equally dangerous to health.

They are not. Heroin is the big kahuna of vicious drugs, and kids should
learn that early. It will kill after a single dose, while many of the
others kill more slowly -- some, like alcohol, only after decades of abuse.

Heroin, unlike any of the other popular street drugs, suppresses the
respiratory system at a high dose. Since the dose is never known, each time
heroin is tried, there is a risk that a healthy young body will die simply
by not breathing.

It is the first try of heroin that is hard to prevent. It is difficult,
maybe impossible, to have teenagers, who just have begun their experiment
with life, understand the gravity of trying a drug that has the effect of
controlling your brain forever.

I have used the word zombie to describe heroin users.

Probably that is a bad analogy. These kids behave, most of the time, just
like you and me. But their addiction, the drug controlling their brain like
some sort of internal parasite, makes them constant schemers to get the
money and go to the places and find the people who can get them heroin.

They become liars, thieves and cheats, no matter how well they were raised.

It turns families into friends of the jails, because they know that their
addicted kids are at least alive in the jail, not risking death on the street.

For you and me, who do not suffer from the internal parasite, it is hard to
understand why the addict continues to use drugs, knowing they are ruining
their lives and they could die with the next dose. It is not logical.

Of course. Logic has nothing to do with it.

Their brains have experienced a drug, heroin, that dwarfs all others in
making their brain feel good, so good it will cause them to neglect
everything they have learned up to that point in their lives to get more of
the same drug.

Breaking their mother's heart becomes less important than getting the next
dose. Losing a job becomes less important than getting the next dose. Going
to jail becomes less important than the next dose.

Even the threat of dying becomes less important than the next dose. And they do.