Am I the only person who, whenever I hear about someone dying from a heroin overdose, thinks that this person's friends and family were spared a lot of heartache in the long run?
Heroin addiction is a disease from which essentially nobody recovers. 🙁
Not everyone that uses heroin is an addict, and not everyone that dies from it is a problem user. Many first-time users have been dying lately, as the purity of the drug has increased and they have no idea what they are doing. The same has happened to a lot of casual users- people that only use it once in a blue moon at a party or whatever, as the purity has increased so much compared to what they have used before, that they use the dose that worked last time and up and die. A lot of people in my community that you wouldn't expect have died of heroin overdoses. One of my girlfriend's friends died of an overdose last week- he was going through a difficult divorce and child custody situation, decided to try heroin for the first time, and used too much. There's been three deaths in my town in the last month alone, all of them new users from my understanding.
Opiates aren't everyone's thing, it's not like you just inject heroin in someone and they're hooked for life, as is often portrayed in fiction. Just as with prescription opiates, only a portion of users will become addicts (in the case of prescription drugs, that's about 23%, but in the case of recreational users, it's probably higher, perhaps double that). To say all of the dead are sparing their families is neglecting the fact that many of these people weren't problem users. Many were trying it for the first time, were casual users, or were addicts that were so functional that no one even realized they were using. Yeah, there's a good number that are your straight-out-of-the-movies sell their mother's jewelry for a fix junkies, but most are pretty ordinary people. Every time I see a new name I know, I'm shocked, because you'd never think they were on heroin, let alone that you'd see them die from it.
Just as you've got a spectrum of alcoholics, from the ones that binge drink occasionally to the ones that are physically abusive and drive drunk constantly, so too is there a spectrum of users of most illegal substances. Don't paint them all with the same brush. And don't pass them off as being hopeless either. I've known several nurses and pharmacists that were former heroin users that have made full recoveries and are living healthy, happy lives, with families that love them and fulfilling careers. Finding comfort in the death of drug users because of your false perception of who they are and how hopeless you perceive them to be is a callous and ignorant way to approach the situation.
Personally I'm sick of all the people in my community dying, and the idea of someone writing these people off as better off in the ground pisses me off to no end. You should tell their kids that. I know of four little ones right now that would love for you to tell them how much better off they are now that their dads are dead and they were hopeless lost causes anyways.
