Letters to the Editor

Wednesday, October 2, 1996

Opiate of the Masses

To the Editor:

While I question some of your remarks about heroin (as I'll explain in a moment), yours was perhaps the best review I've yet read of Trainspotting [TDR 8/21/96]. Every such review naturally enough includes some general comments about heroin, and you do a good job of authenticating your own by recalling your friend. Still, every account of a heroin user who hit the skids raises a couple of questions that I think warrant our consideration.

One is whether the narrator is drawing *post hoc ergo propter hoc* conclusions: if a beer drinker, gambler or frequent masturbator winds up derailing his life, can we really be sure that the bad habit *caused* his ruin? I think bad habits are at least as frequently a symptom of a life awry as they are the cause of it.

The second question, in the case where an illegal drug habit clearly is the cause of ruination, is this: to what extent is the criminalization of the drug a more important factor than its pharmacological effects? I believe it's indisputable that the most probable serious harm a heroin user faces is arrest and conviction for the 'crime' of self-medication.

The use, even the chronic use, of medicinally pure opiates is remarkably free of harmful side-effects. Contrast this with the health problems associated with heavy drinking, for instance. But aren't the opiates 'addictive'? Yes, indeed; opiate use does cause physiological dependence; if I administer morphine to you in increasing amounts for a few weeks to a month, and then abruptly stop doing so, you will become physically ill. Never mind whether you enjoyed the morphine, or want more; opiate withdrawal is not a matter of craving. But your withdrawal sickness won't be life-threatening; you'll just have a bad flu that may persist for a couple of weeks.

I believe there is evidence that those who find opiates particularly appealing (and many people try opiates and find, often to their surprise, that they don't seem to do much for them — this business about 'the best orgasm multiplied by a thousand' is hogwash) may have a metabolic deficiency that results in lower-than-average production of endorphins. This assessment, by a 30-year-old chemist quoted in Andrew Weil's 'From Chocolate to Morphine', is quite typical:

'For me, the rush is secondary to the tranquilizing and pain-relieving effects of opiates. I feel I have a metabolic problem due to a severe lack of endogenous opiate-like drugs. By substituting external narcotics for internal ones, I have probably shut off my body's production of the endogenous substances, and now I have to take opiates regularly to make life bearable.'

In the climate of nearly 100 years of hysteria and scapegoating recreational drugs for all manner of evil, and imposing savage criminal penalties for their use or possession, it's hard to have any accurate idea of what intrinsic ill-effects the chronic use of a drug like heroin might have. In light of this, it's informative to read accounts of heroin or morphine use from the days when they were available without prescription.

To conclude, I think your saying of heroin such things as 'The drug debases life, and the concerns of an addict become nothing more than pathetic' is no more valid that claiming the same about alcohol after seeing a film about a bunch of down and out street drunks.

The sad thing is that misinformation about heroin only *adds* to its appeal as what you call the ultimate expression of rebellion. Were it not the subject of so much hysterical and irrational myth, our society might have a more balanced view of heroin as a self-administered anti-depressant medication, a drug which for many has all the excitement that daily insulin does for the diabetic.

John Finn
Lecturer
Math Department
Dartmouth College
Hanover, NH

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