Heroin: What Is It?
Heroin is a highly addictive illegal drug. Millions of addicts around the world are unable to overcome the urge to use it every day—knowing they will face the horrors of withdrawal if they stop.1
Heroin, like opium and morphine, is made from the resin of poppy plants. Milky, sap-like opium is first removed from the poppy pod, then refined to make morphine and further processed into heroin.2
Most heroin is injected, adding risks such as contracting HIV or AIDS, hepatitis B, hepatitis C or other infections in addition to the pain of addiction.3
Heroin cut me off from the rest of the world. My parents kicked me out. My friends and my brothers didn’t want to see me anymore. I was all alone.” —Suzanne
The Origins of Heroin
Heroin was first manufactured in 1898 by the German pharmaceutical company Bayer. It was originally marketed as a treatment for tuberculosis and a remedy for morphine addiction.4
A Vicious Circle
In the 1850s, opium addiction was a major problem in the United States. The “solution” was to replace opium with a less potent and supposedly nonaddictive substitute—morphine. However, morphine addiction soon became an even bigger issue.5
The next substitute drug was heroin, which turned out to be even more addictive than morphine. With the heroin problem came yet another “nonaddictive” substitute—the drug now known as methadone. First developed in 1937 by German scientists searching for a surgical painkiller, methadone was exported to the US under the trade name Dolophine in 1947. Renamed methadone, the drug was soon being widely used as a treatment for heroin addiction. Unfortunately, it proved to be even more addictive than heroin.76
Today, heroin remains a global problem. In the United States alone, it claims some 20 lives every single day.8
What Does Heroin Look Like?
The Destructive Effects of Heroin
Long-Term Effects
“I’ll Just Try It Once.”
A Very Slippery Slope
International Statistics
Heroin Combined with...
What Dealers Will Tell You
The Truth About Drugs
REFERENCES
- Heroin Research Report (Overview), National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), NIH
- What is heroin and how is it used? (Heroin Research Report), National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), NIH
- Why does heroin use create special risk for contracting HIV/AIDS and hepatitis B and C? (Heroin Research Report), National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), NIH
- Why are people addicted to heroin called “junkies?”, McGill University, Office for Science and Society (Dr. Joe Schwarcz)
- Civil War on drugs: Doctoral candidate explores the nation's first opioid epidemic, Binghamton University (State University of New York), reporting historian Jonathan S. Jones's research
- Fifty years after landmark methadone discovery, stigmas and misunderstandings persist, The Rockefeller University
- Opium Throughout History (The Opium Kings), PBS Frontline / WGBH
- Data Table for Figure 4. Drug Overdose Deaths in the United States, 2002-2022 (Data Brief 491), CDC/NCHS (National Center for Health Statistics)
How much do you really know about heroin?
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