Hi!
I originally posted a much longer message here. Thank you to everyone who read it, and to those people who kindly left comments.
Since then, a clear understanding of what happened has been gained, and the original message has been re-written in a more generic tone.
My personal account was about surreptitious oral administration of heroin by a lover. It must be a very common method for getting the "opiate naive" addicted to the drug.
Surreptitious administration of heroin may also play a critical part in gaining control of a woman for the purposes of prostitution.
Within a few weeks, a woman who is being unwittingly drugged with heroin by her lover, will become physiologically addicted to the drug. Physical dependence is said to occur through the binding of heroin metabolites to the opioid (mu) receptor in the brain. This same process occurs whether the drug is taken knowingly or not. However, heroin taken orally is metabolised in the gastro-intestinal tract. This is a slower metabolic pathway than taken by smoked or injected heroin.
According to the literature, the sense of euphoria from orally-administered heroin is said to be much reduced, compared to smoked or injected heroin. While, this slow bio-absorption of orally administrated heroin can mask its consumption, the danger of developing a dependence to the drug remains ever present.
The lover carefully measures each dose of heroin for his partner. He adds the heroin powder to his/her food or drink. He stirs it in to hide it, and he serves it with a smile. Over time, he slowly increases the dosage of heroin. This upwards measurement reduces the physical side effects of the drug. This minimises the risk of detection.
Later, when the drug dealer is satisfied that he has established a strong physical addiction to heroin, he abruptly stops drugging her with it. This causes acute and painful symptoms of withdrawal for the poor woman.
At that point, the heroin dealer, who was previously posing as the woman's lover, now offers her heroin overtly. He assures her that it will relieve the dreadful symptoms she is suffering. Yet, even now, she still fails to recognise that her unbearable pain is due to acute heroin withdrawal, that he has caused. Out of desperation, the woman snatches the heroin that her lover is offering her. She gains immediate clinical relief.
However, now, she is fully under the control of the man. Life is heading towards ruins. When she pleads for more heroin, he orders her to pay for it. He is now, by law, her heroin dealer. To fund her new desperate addiction, he will steer her into selling her body. The dealer controls that as a business, too, by pimping her. He will work her in pubs and clubs, in massage parlours, or even on the streets. Through the concomitant risks from overdose, violence and venereal disease, her life expectancy is now just a fraction of what it once was.
Glamour photography, nude modeling and pornography are other industries notorious for the control of women through heroin addiction.
Below are four online resources which were extremely helpful to my understanding of what can happen:
The Breggin article is especially interesting, insofar as he bridges a knowledge gap. Breggin is a Harvard-trained psychiatrist. He pitches the article at his medical peers who prescribe psychiatric drugs, rather than at those who sell illicit street drugs. For this focus though, that is of no importance.
What Breggin documents, almost uniquely, is the "spellbinding" effect of drug intoxication. Whether the psychoactive substance is alcohol, amphetamine, Rohypnol or heroin, is irrelevant. The spellbinding effect is the same. The drug user is least able to objectively analyse his own cognitive impairment. The drink-driver is the simplest example. Heavily drunk behind the wheel, he is nevertheless adamant that he is, in fact, one of the safest motorists on the road.
Like the drink-driver, the victim of surreptitious drugging has no insight into his or her mental dysfunction. It is left to the clinical competence of those around the drugged victim to diagnose on physical symptoms and outward presentation.
Whether wittingly taken or not, heroin starves the human spirit, to the point that the user doesn't care about life any more. Those under the influence of heroin, have little insight to recognise the cognitive impairment from the drug. They do not care about the unpleasant physical side effects they are enduring. It is not that heroin makes you hate life, it is just that it matters not whether things are going well or not. You just don't care.
While drugged with heroin, the physiological addiction is not obvious to the user. The love she feels for her dealer is abused by him (or her) for profit.
From personal experience it took many months for the heroin addiction to fade. I suffered aches and pains throughout my body, and sustained depression as my brain righted itself. Only then did the true healing begin. The hardest past is finding forgiveness for someone who said they cared for me, but instead abused my trust in a most evil way.
Steven B. Karch MD (2008)
Pharmacokinetics and Pharmacodynamics of Abused Drugs, CRC Press
Peter R. Breggin, MD (2006)
Intoxication Anosognosia (drug-induced cognitive deficits), Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry, Fall/Winter 2006
Ulrike Halbsguth, et. al (2008)
Oral diacetylmorphine (heroin)..bioavailability, British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology
Elisabeth J. Rook, et. al (2006)
Pharmacokinetics..of Heroin and its Metabolites: Review of the Literature, Current Clinical Pharmacology, 2006, 1, 109-118
