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Indeed,
methadone therapy was instituted to mitigate heroin withdrawal,
and is gladly accepted by heroin users wishing to escape the downside
of the addicted lifestyle.
But methadone itself
is a mini-prison, just outside the heroin big-house, locking people
into a daily pattern of using a strong opiate as if it was medicine.
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TMWTGA has become a
symbolic figure in collective thinking of the heroin-addicted
community, representing a tragic, suffering figure with little
hope.
Heroin and methadone
users become quite knowledgeable about neurophysiology, and can
engage in discussions of their neurotransmitters with the same
casual exactitude that gardners discuss roses.
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In such bio-babble,
they find their explanation of why they do not expect themselves,
or any heroin user, to become drug-free.
They often live in
a symbiotic relationship with doctors and counselors who tend
to the task of keeping their synapses fortified with opiates,
while undertaking long-term programs of general self-improvement,
most often in groups consisting of similarly-minded people.
This is all fine, except
in instances when individual heroin users seriously want to opt
out of the drug scene altogether, leaving addiction
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treatment and the recovery
group movement behind, and lead independent lives as normal, healthy
men and women who simply never drink or use drugs.
In those instances, TMWTGA becomes a serious opponent to contend
with.
It hovers closely in one's consciousness, amplifying every twinge
of discomfort as one's body adapts to the immediate absence of
opiates. Afterward,
they typically recall, "It wasn't that bad, yaa, it hurt,but like
a bad case of the flu." What did Frank Sinatra really know about
heroin withdrawal?
continue... Although
we know
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