A personal view of Heroin

When I was growing up, my only real experience of seeing heroin or interacting with heroin users was being approached by beggars and seeing homeless men and women sleeping in subway tunnels or seeing users occasionally shooting up in parks. As this was about as far as my interaction with heroin went, I was naturally fearful of it and particularly wary of anyone associated with it. I believe this is a common experience and viewpoint associated with heroin. When seeing people in difficult situations, one would assume that people’s natural emotions would be one of pity and sorrow. However, my personal experience of seeing how people react to heroin and its users is that people in general don’t view these people in these terms. Asking the average person in the street what they thought of heroin or people addicted to heroin, one would assume their answer to be overwhelming negative.

The way heroin and people who use heroin are portrayed in the mainstream media goes some way in explaining why people hold these views. Diseased, scroungers and junkies are some of the words used to describe heroin users in some of the most widely read newspapers in the country. Although I have never read such papers and didn’t hold views concerning drug users as negative as many other people, my views where unreasonably negative. This was partly due to how I had been taught about drugs but also about how I feared something I knew very little about. It is something which is ingrained in the current discourse in how people talk about heroin users and drugs in general. It is dehumanised to the point where people are not even seen as being human and as such, many people have generally little emotional concern and compassion for these users.  

It was only when I got a bit older that I realised there was far less to fear from heroin and its users than society would have me believe. Although, it can obviously be extremely destructive, I came to see it simply as a personal choice people make, like almost all other drugs. This change of heart was triggered after smoking opium. The experience of smoking something so closely linked to heroin actually changed my whole perspective on heroin, not just about the drug itself, but about the people who use it. I always had a stereotypical view of someone who uses heroin, in terms of class, age, race, societal status and so on, which I believe is still held by most of society who seem to be overwhelmingly ignorant to the realities of drug use in 21st century Britain.

However, overcoming the stigma attached to heroin is something that needs to happen not only individually, but among society as a whole. Whereas drugs like alcohol and cocaine can be just as harmful as heroin, it is accepted by society, even glamorised and encouraged in certain respects. The contradictions here are plain to see. Until we detach ourselves from the decades of stigmatisation attached to heroin and people who use it, the real issues of why people get entangled into heroin dependency will never be tackled.