GETTING CLEAN JUST TOO TOUGH TO HANDLE ALONE

At any age, getting off heroin is a bare-knuckled fight for
survival.

An addiction that begins with a feeling of euphoria can inflict abject
misery on users trying to kick the habit.

That's because heroin use floods the body with opiates that cause
natural human opiate production to cease.

Stripped of their essential natural opiates, a heroin abuser must keep
using or face a hellish torrent of withdrawal pains, vomiting and
crawling skin known among addicts as "the sickness," explained Dr.
Punyamurtula Kishore, founder of the National Library of Addictions in
Brookline and an addiction medicine specialist. "For them, everything
falls apart," he said. "It's not a glued-together body anymore."

Natural opiate production typically resumes three months after an
addict stops using, but few make it that long without medical
supervision. "I thought I was going to die. I would have been happier
dying than being sick. It's horrible," recalled a young patient of
Dr. Kishore's who tried unsuccessfully to quit on his own.

Heroin addicts are often put on methadone or other drugs to keep the
sickness at bay, but Kishore prefers not to resort to swapping one
drug for another in his teenage patients.

Instead, he treats the myriad withdrawal symptoms to keep the kid
together until his or her natural opiate production resumes.

It worked so well for one of his recovering teen addicts, a young man
from Lynn who didn't want to be identified by name, he brought a buddy
to Kishore's clinic. The pair plans to convince another pal to get
treatment.

"When he's clean, we're going to get another one until we have a big
fellowship of our friends where all the users are going to look at it
and say, 'Wow, you know what, we don't have to use drugs. Look at
these guys.' "