How does heroin affect the human body?
The effects of heroin on the human body are complex. But let’s set one thing straight right away. And that is: most people, when they see a heroin addict, see someone who is very miserable; and they attribute that to the looks of whoever they have in focus – on him or her – taking that drug. Now, it’s more complicated than that. Because most people who take heroin use a lot of money to take that heroin, and they don’t use a lot of money for food, for housing, for health, and for spas and whatever, so they disintegrate. Their health disintegrates, but it’s not because of the heroin they take, it’s because of the lives they live. Heroin as such is a depressant, and it can depress your respiratory system to the degree where you don’t inhale air anymore, and that’s what you die from – that’s the overdose risk of taking heroin. But it’s not toxic in the way that we think with regard to poisons. You can’t take a poison and be healthy afterwards; it will destroy something in your body. Now in
