How Does Heroin Affect the Brain?   Heroin is made from the resin found in poppy plants.  A sap-like opium is removed from the pod of a poppy plant, which is refined to make morphine and following further refinement, heroin is made.  Heroin is highly addictive and most individuals who use heroin, inject the substance...Read More

When drugs mutate in their purity and potency, they become a danger to an entire community. The last few years saw this trend rise with devastating results. Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid, was being found in benzodiazepines and other opioids purchased on the street. Causing a tragic spike in overdose, this mutation of other drugs became...Read More

Abusing a drug of any kind carries certain inherent risks, firstly being addiction. Continued use for long periods of time wreaks havoc on both mind and body, severely impacting one’s quality of life and more times than not leading to premature death. But the outcome does not need to be a foregone conclusion, given that...Read More

After the Super Bowl, which featured public service announcements (PSA) about the dangers of opioid narcotics, many Americans were likely alarmed about the information relayed. Some may not have believed figures like, teenagers are more likely to lose their life from a drug overdose than a bullet or texting while driving. The hope was to...Read More

When compiling a list of all the entities and groups of people who had a hand in the American opioid addiction epidemic, bring a lot of paper and ink. From pharmaceutical companies (manufacturing) to pharmacies (distributing), there is a lot going on in between. Doctors, prescribing nurses, emergency rooms would certainly have a place on...Read More

The stakes are incredibly high for people using heroin today, much more so than for people who used heroin over a decade ago. There was a time when heroin addicts would wonder if a bag was either weak or strong; however, today’s heroin addicts find themselves wondering if their heroin is weak, strong or fatal...Read More

We have been writing a lot about the dangers of synthetic opioid analgesics in recent years—and for good reason. The presence of fentanyl in heroin, an opioid painkiller that is 100 times more potent than morphine and 50 times stronger than diacetylmorphine (medical-grade heroin), has led to scores of overdose deaths across the country. While...Read More

Finding your way into a room of recovery, such as a 12-Step meeting, often happens long after it should; because let’s face it, addicts and alcoholics are typically resistant to change, even if it means saving one’s own life. Albeit with ample access to recovery services, the majority of people suffering in addiction never get...Read More

In the United States, we have a number of government agencies in place to make sure that certain chemicals cannot be procured to make dangerous drugs. Even when things slip through the cracks, a number of changes will be made in order to ensure that does not happen again. Yet, the U.S. can only really...Read More

When taking a close look at the American opioid epidemic, it can be hard to not feel heartache. Millions of people across the country are caught in the grips of addiction, and those who fail to receive treatment are at an ever increasing risk of overdose and potential death with each day that passes. The...Read More