Are there long term effects of heroin use?
For someone who has never suffered with heroin addiction, it may be difficult to relate. How could a functioning heroin addict continue, knowing the consequences of heroin long term effects?
Wouldn’t anyone stop to realize how they are destroying their future life by destroying their physical health and brain health? Heroin use is deadly. Heroin recovery statistics and the heroin recovery rate is fairly low without medical treatment, but for those who survive, what long-term damage remains?
While you may read about permanent long-term damage caused by heroin to the brain and body, you may also find references stating that heroin, and other opioids are safe drugs. Which is it? Does heroin destroy the body or doesn’t it?
Interestingly, pure heroin is a fairly safe drug, as long as the user does not take too much for their tolerance level and overdose. In theory, a person could take pharmaceutical grade heroin for many years without much harm to their body.
Yet, we must understand that no one on the streets is using pure heroin. Street drugs are always cut with other substances. In fact, most heroin has been replaced by fentanyl, or xylazine, also known as tranq.
Are you taking heroin, fentanyl, or the zombie drug?
Unfortunately, you never know what you are getting when you buy heroin on the streets. Most likely, your dealer is selling fentanyl analogs imported from Mexico or China.
Or, you could be getting the veterinary drug, xylazine, also known as tranq or the zombie drug. This zombie tranquilizer causes rotting skin, and dead flesh, or necrosis.
When the necrosis gets bad enough, it may be necessary for doctors to amputate a limb. Of course, even if you recover from an opioid addiction, lost limbs do not grow back.
Pharmaceutical grade fentanyl and heroin are considered to be fairly safe if administered under medical supervision, but the street supply is cut with a variety of toxic substances.
Desomorphine, also known as krokodil, is another dangerous substance mixed in with what is being sold as heroin or fentanyl. Krokodil comes from Russie and can cause gangrene, limb amputations, pneumonia, blood poisoning, and meningitis.
What if I take pain pills to avoid the dangerous side effects of heroin use?
There are opioid users who stick to prescription pain pills to avoid the unknown dangers of street drugs. While they may snort or shoot up their pills, they are confident in knowing that a 30 mg oxy contains a known amount of drug and no dangerous street contaminants.
Unfortunately, in today’s world, we can no longer assume that a pill that looks like the real thing is a real pharmaceutical opioid. The streets have been flooded with very realistic looking fake pills.
In fact, a fake opioid pill may contain any of the drugs described here, or they may contain other dangerous opioid-like substances. For example, tianeptine, known on the streets as zaza red, is a European antidepressant that activates the mu opioid receptor.
Fake opioid tablet manufacturers working in illicit drug labs may use tianeptine, desomorphine, xylazine, or U-47700, which is also known as pink, or gray death. The only way to be certain what is in a pill is for a chemistry lab to perform mass spectrometry.
And, even if you were to meet your dealer at their pharmacy when they pick up their pain pill prescription, so you know you have the real thing, there are still serious long-term dangers with the use of pharmaceutical grade opioid drugs.
How can an opioid made by big pharma damage my health long-term?
For people who crush up their pain pills to snort through their noses to get a faster and stronger high, there can be long-term problems caused by snorting, or insufflation. Some of the particles from the crushed pill end up in the sinuses.
Our sinuses are closed spaces in our heads, which have tiny access holes in our nasal cavities. When foreign bodies, such as drug dust, get into the sinuses, it is nearly impossible to get them out.
The body reacts with chronic inflammation. In some cases, the only solution to fix chronic sinusitis caused by snorting drugs is to undergo sinus surgery.
When crushed pills are heated and dissolved into liquid for shooting up into a vein, there are other serious long-term complications to worry about. Similarly to shooting up heroin or fentanyl, injecting pain pills can lead to serious infections.
In some cases, the infection grows on the user’s heart valves, causing endocarditis. Endocarditis requires serious long-term antibiotic therapy. If treatment is started too late or is not effective, then heart-valve replacement surgery may be required.
Imagine recovering from an opioid addiction only to find out that you now need heart surgery? Heart valves do not last forever, and mechanical valves require that you take blood thinners on a daily basis. Valve replacement surgery can also fail, leading to heart failure or death.
If I survive heroin addiction and undergo heroin detox and heroin addiction treatment, will I still have long-term problems?
Assuming that you have avoided all the dangers mentioned so far, there are other consequences to consider. Many heroin users develop hepatitis C as a result of their drug use.
Hepatitis C is transmitted by needles and sexual contact. For people who are confident that they only snorted their heroin or fentanyl, hep C is still a possibility.
Hepatitis C was once an incurable disease that could lead to liver disease and death, but there is now curative therapy. While there is now a cure for Hep C, it is critical to check for the disease and then go for treatment. Some people have put off hepatitis treatment and died from the disease.
There are other possible complications of long-term addiction. People in active addiction for many years do not take good care of their bodies.
If you have been malnourished for years, you have not cared for your teeth, or you have engaged in risky behaviors, you may have a variety of addiction-related consequences. It is important to see a doctor early in recovery, and also a dentist.
After heroin withdrawal and heroin detox, do I have to worry about brain damage from years of drug use?
Drug users often worry about brain damage from either alcohol or drug abuse. Will your brain still function as well as it used to, before you started taking drugs? Are there serious heroin effects on the brain over time?
This is a good question. As discussed, pharmaceutical opioids are generally considered to be relatively safe drugs. While they do carry significant risks for side effects, such as sedation and constipation, they do not typically cause permanent harm due to long-term use.
Another serious risk posed by long-term use of opioids, or even short-term use, is the development of an opioid addiction. A small, but significant percentage of people who take prescribed opioids will become addicted to this class of drugs.
Addiction is a brain condition. It is considered to be a psychological condition that is based in real, physical changes in the brain. When a person is addicted, their brain has formed new pathways in specific regions that reinforce need to continue opioid use.
While many people who enter a period of recovery from active addiction feel as if they are now safe from further drug use, they are often in denial of the power of addictive changes in the brain. Relapse is a part of addiction, and the risk of relapse is high for people who are opioid addicted.
Hence, addiction is a serious, long-term change in brain function that can occur as a result of opioid use. And, for people who are already addicted, their addiction can worsen over time with continued opioid use.
Are there other brain consequences of long-term opioid abuse?
In addition to dealing with addictive thoughts in recovery, such as intense cravings, there can be cognitive changes as well. For heavy opioid users who overdose, their brains may starve for oxygen for extended periods of time.
While a person may recover from an overdose with no apparent brain damage, the damage caused by hypoxia, or lack of oxygen, may be subtle. Over time, with frequent bouts of respiratory depression, stepwise cognitive decline may occur.
For example, the recovered opioid user may become aware that their memory is not quite as good as it used to be. Or, family members or friends notice certain changes in behavior, such as being more impulsive.
Is there hope for recovering brain function after overcoming an addiction to opioids? The good news is that the brain has an incredible ability for healing and compensation.
Over time, as long as a person remains in recovery, their brain is able to develop and work around any permanent changes that occurred as a result of drug use. This is especially true if the person engages regularly in intellectually stimulating and creative activities.
An important consideration for people who are in early recovery is to learn acceptance. Acceptance means to learn to do what we can to improve our health and happiness, but to also learn to live with what we cannot change. An important part of harm reduction is putting an end to causing ourselves further harm.
Even if you are not in a perfect state of health after overcoming an addiction, there is always hope for further improvement in many cases. People who have overcome addictions often describe their lives going forward as being the best times in their lives, where they are better able to appreciate the good things in life because of a newfound ability to live in a state of gratitude.
If you want to learn how to stop heroin and get through withdrawing from heroin, consider listening to our heroin addiction podcast. And, see a doctor who is experienced in treating heroin addiction for help with medication assisted treatment for opioid use disorder.
