Salon.com > Heroin http://www.salon.com Fri, 24 May 2013 20:27:48 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Inside the Aryan Brotherhood’s prison heroin empire http://www.salon.com/2013/03/19/inside_the_aryan_brotherhoods_prison_heroin_empire_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/03/19/inside_the_aryan_brotherhoods_prison_heroin_empire_partner/#comments Tue, 19 Mar 2013 17:58:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13245848 the fix Prison is a place where racial hatred is routine, where gangs rule the roost and heroin is the most valuable commodity. “A white person in prison is in deep trouble if he doesn’t have people to stand with him,” one prisoner tells The Fix. “The guards can’t do nothing. All they can do is prosecute the winner.” And there are few bigger winners in the feds than the Aryan Brotherhood.

Despite some high-profile crackdowns against the gang in recent years, its grip on many facilities remains strong. “I just came from USP Lompoc [in Southern California] and the AB is running that yard,” the prisoner says. “The drugs are flowing. They got Atwater, Victorville, Canaan, Hazleton, Florence, Marion, Big Sandy and Coleman on lock. They are all over the system. The feds can’t stop anything.”

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/03/19/inside_the_aryan_brotherhoods_prison_heroin_empire_partner/feed/ 1 I love an angry heroin addict http://www.salon.com/2013/02/08/i_love_an_angry_heroin_addict/ http://www.salon.com/2013/02/08/i_love_an_angry_heroin_addict/#comments Fri, 08 Feb 2013 01:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13193666 Dear Reader,

As I pointed out in the Wednesday column, the best way to read the column every day is to bookmark http://www.salon.com/topic/since_you_asked/ and click on that every day.

I will run this notice up here for a few days so that folks will see it. (In case you've been having trouble finding the column because of the higher volume of stories Salon is now publishing.)

You could also subscribe to the Salon email newsletter and see how that works for you. It works for some people.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/02/08/i_love_an_angry_heroin_addict/feed/ 24 My year of heroin and acne http://www.salon.com/2013/01/05/my_year_of_heroin_and_acne/ http://www.salon.com/2013/01/05/my_year_of_heroin_and_acne/#comments Sat, 05 Jan 2013 00:30:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13161844 I got a pedicure each time I promised myself I’d stop doing heroin -- which is to say, I got pedicures all summer. Pedicures gave me the false notion that I was about to get it together. I wasn’t functioning well — my brain cells were spent and my serotonin was depleted. Sitting in a chair, despondent, was all I felt like doing.

My acne had taken over any joy in my life at that point and I was having opiate withdrawal, so I’d go to the nail salon in the middle of the day when it was quiet and I could avoid seeing humans. I liked eating the candy from the candy bowl. I took handfuls of Dum Dum pops, peppermints, butterscotch and those strawberry candies with the gooey middle that grandmothers always have. I sat in the massage chair, crunched down on my candies and watched Lifetime movies with subtitles. I pushed buttons on the remote to control the strength of the massage, and I drifted off. I hated myself. I actually hated myself. I never got manicures. They would be too much work, sitting upright and making small talk. Plus, I bite my fingernails down too low for them to be manicured. A disgusting addiction, but in comparison to my other addictions, I let it slide. I have too many battles to fight with myself, so I choose them carefully.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/01/05/my_year_of_heroin_and_acne/feed/ 46 My first time scoring heroin http://www.salon.com/2013/01/01/my_first_time_scoring_heroin/ http://www.salon.com/2013/01/01/my_first_time_scoring_heroin/#comments Tue, 01 Jan 2013 01:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13157476 Narratively I grew up in an affluent, mind-warpingly dull town in suburban Connecticut. On a quest for some kind of meaning, as a cure for boredom, as a substitute for genuine rebellion, as a panacea for adolescent angst or premature clichéd bourgeoisie alienation, my friend J and I made a habit of imbibing a cornucopia of mind-bending Substances.

Weekends were spent smoking filched cigarettes at the mall. We chugged medicinal cherry red cough syrup, which I can still somehow taste in the back of my mouth. On one particularly desperate day we took turns trying to inhale smoke from a burning cone of incense. We ordered pure DXM powder (the active ingredient in cough syrup and a potent dissociative) from a vendor of bulk research chemicals. It arrived from Hong Kong in a sealed plastic baggie stamped “NOT FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION” and was tucked into the pages of what looked like a Chinese glamour magazine. We ordered painkillers from Habeeb—a guy we found on a now-defunct forum dedicated to reviewing various international pharmacies. We bought Salvia Divinorum extract and tiny silver canisters of compressed laughing gas, as well as various research chemicals: 2C-I, 2C-E, 2C-B. I insufflated—snorted—a miniscule amount of 2C-I and saw the ceiling tiles in my friend’s basement swarm with ants.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/01/01/my_first_time_scoring_heroin/feed/ 28 Pakistan faces a growing opium scourge http://www.salon.com/2012/11/30/pakistan_faces_a_growing_opium_scourge/ http://www.salon.com/2012/11/30/pakistan_faces_a_growing_opium_scourge/#comments Fri, 30 Nov 2012 00:42:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13110778 the fix Pakistan's already-rampant drug problem is likely to worsen after withdrawal of troops from neighboring Afghanistan—the world's leading producer of opium. The supply of opium and heroin (an opium derivative) into Pakistan has significantly increased over the past five years, according to analysts, prompting a swell in drug use and addiction. Estimates of the number of Pakistani drug users currently range from 600,000 to 9 million, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, with the actual number probably somewhere in between. "[Drugs] are available like peanuts," says Dr. Saleem Azam, head of a rehab center in Karachi. "You are sitting in your office, you are sitting in your bedroom, you are sitting in your living room, you can call a person and he will drop the drug at your doorstep." The country's drug imports are expected to surge further when foreign combat troops withdraw from Afghanistan in 2014, loosening any control there currently is over opium production and smuggling in the region. According to the UN, the amount of Afghan farmland devoted to growing opium poppies has jumped by 20% over the last year.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/11/30/pakistan_faces_a_growing_opium_scourge/feed/ 0 Bon Jovi’s daughter arrested after “heroin OD” http://www.salon.com/2012/11/14/bon_jovis_daughter_arrested_after_heroin_od/ http://www.salon.com/2012/11/14/bon_jovis_daughter_arrested_after_heroin_od/#comments Wed, 14 Nov 2012 23:27:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13081736 the fix Jon Bon Jovi’s 19-year-old daughter, Stephanie Bongiovi, was arrested early this morning after allegedly overdosing on heroin. Cops responded to a dorm room at Hamilton College in upstate New York, after someone reported that Bongiovi had OD-ed and was unresponsive. They found a small amount of heroin, marijuana and drug paraphernalia on the scene. Bongiovi, who is currently recovering at the hospital, was arrested on misdemeanor charges for possession of a controlled substance, possession of marijuana and criminally using drug paraphernalia. Her rocker dad also did drugs early in life—but has avoided them ever since. "I did the drug thing very young and wised up very young too, because I was into drugs a little too much," he told People in 2007. "I've never been a drug guy. I've always felt I didn't have the mental stability to handle drugs." Bongiovi is Bon Jovi’s only daughter and his oldest child with his wife, Hurley.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/11/14/bon_jovis_daughter_arrested_after_heroin_od/feed/ 0 When I became a junkie http://www.salon.com/2012/11/14/when_i_became_a_junkie/ http://www.salon.com/2012/11/14/when_i_became_a_junkie/#comments Wed, 14 Nov 2012 21:48:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13073132 the fix When I checked into Promises in 2005, I had been doing so much cocaine that my nose bled onto the intake papers as I filled them out. I was so high I don’t remember what I signed but I was quickly escorted to a bed where I promptly slept for three days. A month later, I was released into the world. And then, after my father paid a staggering $7,000 for outpatient treatment, I dropped out after three days and started using again.

I remember being in my apartment, doing coke alone to a soundtrack of the Twilight Singers, wondering whom I could get high with. I cracked open my rehab-given Big Book. In the front, just like in my high school yearbook, were sweet inscriptions from fellow clients along with their phone numbers. I used my deductive reasoning to decide who among them would have already dropped the ball and be down to party. I picked a handsome rich kid junkie who was a chronic relapser that I’d been semi-friendly with. I called. Bingo. Within a few hours, he was at my house with cocaine, heroin and syringes. As he shot up speedballs, I snorted thick long lines off my enormous mirrored coffee table.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/11/14/when_i_became_a_junkie/feed/ 6 Losing the war on poppies http://www.salon.com/2012/10/24/losing_the_war_on_poppies/ http://www.salon.com/2012/10/24/losing_the_war_on_poppies/#comments Wed, 24 Oct 2012 22:50:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13051295 the fix Beneath the long war in Afghanistan there is another, darker war: a narco-war against the world’s most productive opium business. Neither war is going well for the United States: in advance of the announced 2014 drawdown of our troops, the only partly governed land seems to be heading inexorably toward civil war, even as the Afghan military turns against NATO troops and as the US all but abandons hope of a peace deal with Taliban insurgents.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/10/24/losing_the_war_on_poppies/feed/ 7 U.S. addiction diagnoses up 70 percent http://www.salon.com/2012/10/23/us_addiction_diagnoses_up_70_percent/ http://www.salon.com/2012/10/23/us_addiction_diagnoses_up_70_percent/#comments Tue, 23 Oct 2012 23:24:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13050308 the fix The number of drug and alcohol problems diagnosed by US doctors increased by 70% in the first decade of the 2000s, reveals a new study, just as painkiller abuse in the country reached an all-time high. The study, using data from two national surveys of doctors' visits, estimates that the number of addiction diagnoses jumped from 10.6 million between 2001 and 2003 to 18 million between 2007 and 2009. In addition, the number of visits involving a diagnosis of opioid painkiller abuse multiplied nearly sixfold in that time frame: from 772,000 to 4.4 million. "This finding is consistent with trends in substance use disorder-related utilization at the nation's community health centers and emergency departments and, sadly, use of its morgues," write the study's authors in the Archives of Internal Medicine. According to the research team led by Dr. Joseph W. Frank, from Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, 22.5 million people in the US are currently dependent on alcohol or drugs.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/10/23/us_addiction_diagnoses_up_70_percent/feed/ 6 Will a rain forest shrub cure my addiction? http://www.salon.com/2012/10/21/will_a_rain_forest_shrub_cure_my_addiction/ http://www.salon.com/2012/10/21/will_a_rain_forest_shrub_cure_my_addiction/#comments Sun, 21 Oct 2012 12:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13046039 What do you know about ibogaine treatment for opiate addiction?

Ah, ibogaine. It just so happens that ibogaine and I have a long history: though I never took it, I knew Howard Lotsof, the former heroin addict whose own recovery began in 1962, when he accidentally discovered that ibogaine can relieve heroin withdrawal. I wrote about ibogaine as a potential “alternative treatment” detox drug, in fact, in my first book, Recovery Options. As a fan of psychedelics who finds their therapeutic potential intriguing—and as someone who likes to see people in recovery advance the field—I’ve followed its highs and lows with great interest.

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Ibogaine is the product of the rootbark of an African rainforest shrub, Tabernanthe iboga, and is used ceremonially by the Bwiti tribe of Western and Central Africa to induce visions and shamanic experience. (In 2000, Gabon declared this controversial source of Bwiti spirituality a “national treasure.”) While it has been categorized as a psychedelic, it is more intense and longer lasting than LSD or mushrooms; it also has dissociative effects and effects on motor control, similar to those of the anesthetic ketamine. In the brain, it affects multiple neurotransmitter receptors, making it difficult to discern which effects are most significant.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/10/21/will_a_rain_forest_shrub_cure_my_addiction/feed/ 6 Can we trust addiction medication? http://www.salon.com/2012/10/04/can_we_trust_addiction_medication/ http://www.salon.com/2012/10/04/can_we_trust_addiction_medication/#comments Thu, 04 Oct 2012 22:09:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13030855 No one should be paying $30,000 to go to what amounts to three 12-step meetings a day; a true treatment center should be providing something medically significant. So says Dr. Mark Willenbring, one of the nation’s staunchest advocates for a lot more medical intervention and a lot less spiritual journeying in the rehab and recovery industry. Otherwise, it’s like “going to an oncology center and getting prescribed a macrobiotic diet instead of chemotherapy,” says Willenbring, who is the founder and CEO of ALLTYR, which provides drug and alcohol addiction treatment based on cutting-edge science and research.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/10/04/can_we_trust_addiction_medication/feed/ 6 Should methadone moms keep their babies? http://www.salon.com/2012/09/19/should_methadone_moms_keep_their_babies/ http://www.salon.com/2012/09/19/should_methadone_moms_keep_their_babies/#comments Wed, 19 Sep 2012 22:21:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13016531 the fix Imagine losing your child because you are taking a legally prescribed medication as directed—a medication that the Institute of Medicine and the World Health Organization have named as the best treatment for your condition. Now envision that the judge in your family court case is so dismissive of the overwhelming data supporting your use of this treatment that he says, “I can make a paper airplane out of these papers and glide it across the courtroom,” and refuses to read them.

That’s exactly what happened to a young mother, identified pseudonymously as “Rebecca,” who wanted to stay on methadone and keep her baby, as reported in an excellent account on the Daily Beast. Even worse, she is not alone.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/09/19/should_methadone_moms_keep_their_babies/feed/ 5 You bet your life http://www.salon.com/2012/09/13/you_bet_your_life/ http://www.salon.com/2012/09/13/you_bet_your_life/#comments Thu, 13 Sep 2012 17:20:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13010329 Of all the destructive habits in the world, gambling would seem to be one of the more benign. It doesn't blow out your liver. It won’t make your nose cave in. Even after the most appalling run of bad luck, you can be reasonably sure that you won't be carted away, having expired with a mouth full of vomit. No harm done. It's only money.

the fix You can keep telling yourself this until the moment you kick the chair out from under you.

Suicide rates among gambling addicts are staggeringly high. The National Council on Problem Gambling (NCPG) has estimated that one in five problem gamblers attempt to kill themselves, about twice the rate of other addictions. The reasons for this fact are both blindingly simple and impossibly complicated. And the central befuddling fact is this: Gambling kills you because it doesn't kill you.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/09/13/you_bet_your_life/feed/ 4 From recovering to recovered http://www.salon.com/2012/09/08/from_recovering_to_recovered/ http://www.salon.com/2012/09/08/from_recovering_to_recovered/#comments Sat, 08 Sep 2012 12:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13005250 Writing a memoir about your drug addiction and having that be your only claim to any kind of fame has a few drawbacks I hadn’t counted on when setting out to write the goddamn book. Granted, there are worse things. But, unless I feel like lying, pretty much every conversation with a new person who asks the dreaded question, “What do you do?” ends up uncovering the fact that I am a former crystal meth and heroin addict.

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Because the answer to what I “do” is that I’m a writer. So the logical follow up question is, “What do you write?”

“Oh, a book,” I say.

And then they ask what the book is about. It’s only natural.

So, thus, a new acquaintance is suddenly way more acquainted with me than either they, or I, had anticipated—or wanted.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/09/08/from_recovering_to_recovered/feed/ 18 Teen heroin use on the rise http://www.salon.com/2012/08/31/teen_heroin_use_on_the_rise/ http://www.salon.com/2012/08/31/teen_heroin_use_on_the_rise/#comments Fri, 31 Aug 2012 15:24:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12997497 It was the British novelist LP Hartley who famously wrote, “The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there.” Nowhere is this truer than in the world of the junkie, where the landscape changes so quickly and dramatically that the dope fiend of 1998 now looks like some lumbering victim of evolution to the younger using set.

the fix The most startling thing about the new breed of heroin addict is both their age and social status. Newspaper reports from across the country tell us that heroin use is skyrocketing among middle class, suburban teens. From La Crosse, Wisconsin to Chicago, Illinois, the stories are eerily familiar: suburban teens are turning to heroin in greater number than ever before, after first getting their habit going with prescription painkillers. NBC News’ recent piece on rising teen heroin use only served to confirm the narrative: the spiraling use of painkillers among teens is leading to an epidemic of heroin use. Indeed, by the DEA’s reckoning, Americans consume 40 percent of the prescription drugs in the world, despite only making up four to five percent of the population.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/08/31/teen_heroin_use_on_the_rise/feed/ 22 Strung out during Katrina http://www.salon.com/2012/08/30/strung_out_during_katrina/ http://www.salon.com/2012/08/30/strung_out_during_katrina/#comments Thu, 30 Aug 2012 15:57:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12996875 My heart quickens as I follow Hurricane Isaac’s progress right now. Eerily, it was seven years ago to the day that Katrina nearly destroyed the city of New Orleans—and me. I remember the wind’s howling and the feel of wading in warm water up to my waist. I remember the smell of campfires, sewage and death. But most of all, I remember the urge that drove me every night and day.

the fix People often ask why I didn’t just get out of New Orleans. The answer is simple, and will ring true to any addict: I stayed behind because I didn’t have enough heroin to last more than a day. I never even thought about leaving my beloved home city. Why would I venture to some unknown place where I had no idea where to score? Nope, I was staying right where I was. My then-husband and I were then staying with friends in the Treme—a semi-shady neighborhood just outside the French Quarter—in a large mansion broken into small apartments, mostly housing other addicts just like us.

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