Oxycontin becomes Heroin
I recently lost a close friend to an overdose on heroin and it made me think about the larger picture at hand. Jim, who was a college athletic star, hurt his should his junior year at school. The doctor had prescribed him OxyContin to alleve his pain after the surgery. Jim ended up changing his social patterns. Instead of hanging out on weekends he stayed shacked up in his bedroom.
Three months later, Jim failed out of school and returned to his suburban town while the rest of us studied. I had heard through multiple sources and mutual friends that he now had a drug problem. I am no stranger to friends with drug problems and I want to let other people know what happens.
People were prescribed oxycontin in it’s hayday a few years back and it is basically a pill form of heroin that has very high addictive traits. Oxycontin became a problem for drug users, pharmacies, and makers. As a result, the procurement of the pills became harder and harder. It just turns out that the effects that users chase can be duplicated with another, readily available, cheap drug known as heroin.
Jim got hooked on heroin and could never kick the habit. He had been encouraged multiple times to enter a Residential Heroin Detox center without success. I wrote an article awhile back about Residential Intervention Centers and I suggest that you have your friends with issues read it. Heroin programs are as popular as a Inpatient Eating Disorders Treatment Program these days.