192 Heroin
Fusion, Raw Hide, Ready Rock, Red, Red Chicken, Red Eagle, Red Rock, Red
Rock Opium (with barbital,caffeine, and strychnine), Red Rum (with barbital,
caffeine, and strychnine), Red Stuff (with barbital, caffeine, and strychnine),
Reindeer Dust, Rhine, Rufus, Sack, Salt, Scag, Scat, Scate, Schmeek, SCOT,
Scott, Scramble, Second to None, Shit, Shmeck, Shoot, Shoot-Up, Silk, Skag,
Skid, Skunk, Sleeper, Slime, Smack, Smoke (with crack cocaine), Smoking Gun
(with cocaine), Snow, Snowball (with cocaine), Speedball (with cocaine or
methylphenidate), Spider Blue, Spike, Spoon (quantity), Stuff, Sugar, Sweet
Dreams, Sweet Jesus, Sweet Stuff, Tar, Taste, Tecata, Thanie, Thing, Thunder,
Tigre, Tigre Blanco, Tigre del Norte, Tits, TNT, Tongs, Tootsie Roll, Vidrio,
Whack (withPCP), White, White Boy, White Girl, White Junk, White Lady,
White Nurse, White Stuff, Whiz Bang (with cocaine), Wicked, Wings, Witch,
Witch Hazel, Z (quantity), Zoquete
Type:Depressant (opiate class).Seepage 22
Federal Schedule Listing:Schedule I (DEA no. 9200)
USA Availability:Illegal to possess
Pregnancy Category:NoneUses.For most of the twentieth century drug addiction and heroin were
synonymous in the United States; all substance abuse was assumed to lead to
heroin. Only in the 1980s did heroin become displaced as the devil drug,
supplanted in public fear and disapproval bycocaine. Being a Schedule I
substance, heroin has no officially approved medical use in the United States.
Heroin is produced frommorphine, and body chemistry converts a heroin
dose back into morphine. Most users cannot detect a difference between those
two substances. Depending on means of administration and the effect being
measured, heroin is 1.5 to 8.0 times stronger than morphine and is used med-
ically to suppress coughs and relieve pain in children and adults. One study
of pain relief found heroin comparable tohydromorphone, a standard med-
ication administered to fight severe pain. Physicians have judged heroin to be
a safe anesthetic for use during childbirth, with no apparent ill effect on
mother or child. The drug is also used to treat porphyria, a body chemistry
disorder making people sensitive to light and occasionally making them vio-
lent. Heroin users of both genders have reported increased sexual activity
upon starting the compound, with decline in that activity as usage continues.
That sequence would be consistent with the drug at first reducing psycholog-
ical anxiety, an effect gradually evolving into indifference about the world.
As noted below, heroin has hormonal actions that reduce male sexual activity.
Extrapolating from severity of withdrawal symptoms, any particular size
heroin dose taken by intravenous injection is five times stronger than one
taken by inhaling heated vapor (“chasing the dragon”). Other measurements
show a dose to be four times more potent when taken intravenously instead
of by inhaling powder.
Sometimes intravenous injection of heroin produces a rush of feeling lik-
ened to a total body sexual orgasm. Heroin may allow some nonmedical users
to experience euphoria, but more typically an intoxicating dose increases psy-