DRUG ADDICTION Q & A

I asked a guy I knew about drug addiction.

He had an answer.

A good answer.

Even better, he thought I asked a stupid question.

Me: You were a heroin addict?

Guy: I started off shooting speed. You ever shoot speed?

Me: I haven’t.

Guy: The first time I did it I stayed up for a week.

Me: How can anyone stay up for a week.

Guy: By shooting meth.

Me: So you were a speed addict?

Guy: I was until I got drafted and sent to Vietnam. When I came back everyone was shooting heroin.

Me: So you shot heroin.

Guy: I did.

Me: What did you do after shooting heroin?

Guy: You don’t really get it, do you?

Me: I’ve never been a heroin addict if that’s what you mean.

Guy: An addict has one job: get more heroin.

Me: Is it hard to keep a job on heroin?

Guy: That’s just it. Heroin is the job.

Me: So how did you afford more heroin?

Guy: I was a dealer.

 

Dealing With It

How many times have you had the chance to talk to an informed drug addict?

More than you think. Not every current or former shooter is so forthcoming.

They might be a friend, a neighbor, a work buddy.

You don’t hear much about them these days if you’re not in the life.

Unless someone dies with a needle in their arm, a bad batch leaves a bunch of people dead, or a celebrity drug bust, heroin isn’t keeping up with the pack,

 

The shift from plant-based drugs, like heroin and cocaine, to synthetic, chemical-based drugs, like fentanyl and methamphetamine, has resulted in the most dangerous and deadly drug crisis the United States has ever faced,” said DEA Administrator Anne Milgram.

 

Who is helping stem the tide of drug addiction deaths?

 

Overdose deaths plummeted in the U.S. in 2024, down by 27%.

This drop in deaths from all street drugs, it’s huge. The CDC, which tracks fatal overdoses, called this moment remarkable.

Doctors, researchers, people living with addiction that I’ve been talking to say there’s just been a massive positive shift from the fentanyl crisis that once seemed unstoppable to this moment, when more and more people are surviving.

It’s important to say a lot of people are still dying from drugs – roughly 80,000 lives lost to street drugs in 2024. But that is a massive drop from the roughly 105,000 people who died the year before.

 

Drug Addiction Help

I’ve heard from a few sources that criminals get tired of criming at some point.

 

Property criminals, like burglars and car thieves, tend to stop in their 20s, while violent criminals are more likely to continue into their early 30s.

Drug-crime careers can be lengthier, stretching into the mid-30s, yet long sentences have had little effect on the drug trade. “When you lock up a rapist, you take his rapes off the street. When you lock up a drug seller, you recruit a replacement,” Blumstein said.

 

It’s a lifestyle easy to access. If you need drugs you have drug friends.

But what if you drop out? Then what. First, no friends.

It could be tempting to return to drug addiction for the company?

That’s where professional help turns the page.

They can show another way of life, one that has escaped someone on a downward spiral of life.

At some point a person needs to change, or accept their fate of dying in a downtown doorway after cooking up a bad load.

If it’s not an overdose death, it’s a drug deal death where the kingpin doesn’t know things have changed until it’s too late.

 

 

Heroin may not be on your radar, but it is stealthy. You don’t know until it’s too late, according to some heroin addicts parents.

Still, no need to blame yourselves if your kid spikes it and likes it. It’s not your fault.

If there is a fault, why not availability. You can’t ride the heroin train if it doesn’t make a stop near you.

During my Brooklyn days I mingled with the locals. It’s what you do if you’re not a shut-in recluse.

This is one of the people I met.

The ‘Little Cigar’ ran the American end of heroin importing.

If a dapper Frenchman in Marseille ran that end, a mean eyed ‘Lilo’ ran this end.

Did Popeye Doyle know Carmine Galante?

This was a man who frightened seasoned FBI men with his death stare.  His face was the last thing many saw.

For his world, Carmine Galante came to an expected end. Call it early retirement.

 

Too many people have had a version of early retirement from the drug addict life.

Too many crumpled people looking like a load of dirty laundry.

Where can they find help when they’ve had enough?