Brazoria County Sheriff's Department

Narcotic Division

General Narcotic Information

What are narcotics?

Narcotics are drugs that relieve pain and often induce sleep. The opiates, which are narcotics, include opium and drugs derived from opium, such as morphine, codeine, and heroin. Narcotics also include certain synthetic chemicals that have a morphine-like action, such as methadone.

 

Which narcotics are abused?

Heroin ("junk", "smack") accounts for 90 percent of the narcotic abuse in the United States. Sometimes medicinal narcotics are also abused, including paregoric containing opium, cough syrups containing codeine, and methadone, meperidine, and morphine.

 

Who becomes dependent on heroin?

Anyone can become heroin dependent if he or she takes the drug regularly. Although environmental stress and problems of coping have often been considered as factors that lead to heroin addiction, physicians or psychologists do not agree that some people just have an "addictive personality" and are prone to dependence. All we know for certain is that continued use of heroin causes dependence.

 

What are the physical dangers of narcotic dependence?

Physical dangers depend on the specific drug, its source, and the way it is used. Most medical problems are caused by the uncertain dosage level, use of unsterile needles and other paraphernalia, contamination of the drug, or combination of a narcotic with other drugs, rather than by the effects of the heroin (or another narcotic) itself.
The life expectancy of a heroin addict who injects the drug intravenously is significantly lower than that of one who does not. An overdose can result in death. If, for example, and addict obtains pure heroin and is not tolerant of the dose, he or she may die minutes after injecting it. Infections from unsterile solutions, syringes, and needles cause many diseases. Serum hepatitis is common. Skin abscesses, inflammation of the veins, and congestion of the lungs also occur.

 

What are the withdrawal symptoms of heroin?

When a heroin-dependent person stops taking the drug, withdrawal begins within 4-6 hours after the last injection. Full-blown withdrawal symptoms--which include shaking, sweating, vomiting, a running nose and eyes, muscle aches, chills, abdominal pains, and diarrhea--begin some l2-l6 hours after the last injection. The intensity of any of these symptoms depends upon the degree of drug dependence the addict has developed.

 

What is methadone?

Methadone is a synthetic narcotic used in the treatment of some heroin addicts. When used in a maintenance program, methadone is given to addicts daily in measured doses which relieve the physical craving for heroin and prevent the onset of withdrawal symptoms. Used with proper supervision, methadone allows the addict to lead a relatively normal life.
Since methadone itself causes physical dependence, it is under strict government regulation to prevent its diversion to illicit street use. Many programs provide for withdrawal from methadone, once rehabilitation has succeeded.
One disadvantage to methadone maintenance is the need for patients to visit the clinic each day to get their medication if the clinic does not allow its patients to take the medication home. This can interfere with work, school, or other rehabilitative activities. A new drug, called 1-alpha-acetyl-methadone (LAAM), may be the answer to this problem. LAAM, which is still in the testing stages, needs only to be given three times a week rather than daily. It has other advantages as well. It has fewer psychoactive effects than methadone, it eliminates the need for clients to take medication home, and it reduces the patient's psychological dependence on the drug.

 

If methadone is used for treatment, why do people die from it?

Used in treatment, methadone dosage levels are carefully regulated and administered. When people do not follow the prescribed dose level or the regimen established for them, they may die from an overdose. But most methadone deaths occur in non patients, those who have used the drug accidentally or illicitly and are not tolerant of the dose.

 

Why not prescribe heroin for treating narcotic dependence?

There has been a great deal of interest lately in the United States about the prescribing of heroin for narcotic dependence treatment. This approach, which has been used in Great Britain, has a number of disadvantages when applied to our heroin problem and our narcotic treatment system.
Two areas of major concern involve eligibility requirements for patients in the program and administration of the drug, which must be given 5 or 6 times daily to prevent withdrawal. Since we currently treat over 250,000 heroin-dependent persons each year, these become awesome problems indeed. In addition, heroin maintenance is often cited as a means of putting the major drug traffickers out of business, but the British have found that patients still go to the streets for heroin to supplement their legal dose--and the black market stays alive. In order to explore these concerns further, research into the effectiveness of heroin in the treatment of narcotic dependence is being planned in the near future.

 

What are narcotic antagonists?

Narcotic antagonists are drugs which block the "high" and other effects of narcotics. They also precipitate withdrawal symptoms in the narcotic addict. This feature of narcotic antagonists makes them extremely useful in treating overdoses. Research is currently going on to determine the usefulness of antagonists as maintenance drugs. Present narcotic antagonists (such as naloxone and cyclazocine) have too brief an effect and too many side effects to be completely satisfactory. A new drug, naltrexone, appears to be more promising since its effects last longer, and it appears to be more acceptable to the treatment clients.