Heroin usually appears as a white or brown powder or as a black sticky substance, known as “black tar heroin.”

It is estimated that about 23 percent of individuals who use heroin become dependent on it.

How Is Heroin Used?

Heroin can be injected, inhaled by snorting or sniffing, or smoked. All three ways deliver the drug to the brain very rapidly, which contributes to its health risks and to its high risk for addiction.

How Does Heroin Affect the Brain?

When it enters the brain, heroin is converted back into morphine.

Heroin overdoses frequently involve a suppression of breathing. This can affect the amount of oxygen that reaches the brain, a condition called hypoxia. Hypoxia can have short- and long-term psychological and neurological effects, including coma and permanent brain damage.

Users report feeling a surge of euphoria (“rush”) accompanied by dry mouth, a warm flushing of the skin, heaviness of the extremities, and clouded mental functioning. Following this initial euphoria, the user goes “on the nod,” an alternately wakeful and drowsy state.

A result is tolerance, in which more of the drug is needed to achieve the same intensity of effect. Another result is dependence, characterized by the need to continue use of the drug to avoid withdrawal symptoms. Studies have shown some deterioration of the brain’s white matter due to heroin use, which may affect decision-making abilities, the ability to regulate behavior, and responses to stressful situations.

What Are the Other Health Effects of Heroin?

Heroin abuse is associated with a number of serious health conditions, including fatal overdose, spontaneous abortion, and infectious diseases like hepatitis and HIV. Chronic users may develop collapsed veins, infection of the heart lining and valves, abscesses, constipation and gastrointestinal cramping, and liver or kidney disease. Pulmonary complications, including various types of pneumonia, may result from the poor health of the user as well as from heroin’s effects on breathing.

Street heroin often contains toxic contaminants or additives that can clog blood vessels leading to the lungs, liver, kidneys, or brain, causing permanent damage to vital organs — National Institute On Drug Abuse

Halifax County Stats from January 2014 to Present

15 suspects arrested

62 charges

2,997 Bindles seized (approximately 60 Bricks) Street value — $59,940

57.67 grams or raw Heroin. Approximate street value — $11,500

Seized money.— $24,275