Overdose potential: Possible, when taken in sufficient amounts or mixed

with Barbiturates.

Physical addiction: Yes.

Common methods of consumption: Ingested, liquid form.

NOTES:

Alcohol is a depressant; in chemistry and pharmacology, it resembles chloral hydrate and paraldehyde.

The pitfalls of alcohol are many and varied. It is among the most dangerous drugs in existence, ranking in the category of Speed, Barbiturates and hard narcotics. An estimated 6 to 7 million Americans are chronic alcoholics, or one out of 30.

The American Pharmaceutical Association, in their pamphlet on "Drug Abuse Education," credits alcohol with causing "acute and chronic intoxication, habituation, physical dependence and addiction. Withdrawal symptoms (delirium tremens) result when alcohol is discontinued." And may we add, alcohol is the number one drug killer in the whole world.

Because of the extent of the alcohol problem in the United States and eslewhere, a great deal is known about the treatment and cure of alcoholics. For more information, contact your local chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous, your alcoholism council, or write to the Superintendent of Documents in Washington, D.C., for a list of alcohol-related publications.

Medical uses: As mentioned earlier, alcohol and hashish were once used as an anaesthetic during open surgery with reasonable success. Before ether was widely available, alcohol was sometimes used medicinally. (Remember the doctors in the Old West movies?) Alcohol is extremely dangerous when taken with most barbiturates because it heightens action of the pills so much that it can create an overdose.

26

Common methods of consumption: Smoked, often mixed with marijuana, ingested.

NOTES:

Opium smoking in America is rarely done today, simply because the supply of opium is so sparse. With a few rare exceptions, most opium is mixed with something else before being sold. A good example is opium-cured grass, which crops up from time to time. This is a sort of dreamy, sleepy high with all the rough edges polished off.

Opium is an extremely potent, do-nothing drug in its pure form. It's main dangers are two-fold: First, it's a class A narcotic, extremely addicting over long periods of time. Second, it makes you so docile that you are tempted never to do anything except sit around and smoke opium, forever.

Opium is a substance prepared from the juice of the unripe seed capsules of the opium poppy. It contains such alkaloids as morphine, codeine, and papaverine. Medicinally, it is used to relieve pain and was known to be used as far back as 5000 B.C., and was first grown in the area of Mesopotamia.

The "Opium War" of 1840, was a struggle between China and the British, primarily (though other countries were involved), which ended with China being forced to sign a treaty permitting the English to import opium into the country. Opium was necessary to the survival of the British East India Company, which depended on its trade for the company's financial foundation. In the early 1930's

during the war between Japan and China, the Japanese paid Chinese War Lords to have farmers in their domain cultivate the poppy. The Japanese believed that opium would make the Chinese people so docile they would offer little resistance to a take-over of the country.

Opium addicts are rare, but occasionally you may see one. Lately opium has taken on new significance, with a number of people having just completed extended vacations in Southeast Asia. We've seen people lately who claim they've been shooting opium, which comes in a white powder. On investigation, this has turned out to be heroin, which clarified the issue somewhat. So little has been seen of opium in this country, that few people are cautious when they are offered something that is said to be opium. Occasionally, and this is even harder to believe, “marijuana" is sold in white powder injectable form, which people also buy thinking that it must be THC or some such preparation, but which is actually heroin. All of which leads us to the obvious next chapter.

HEROIN

Classification: Opiate.

Overdose potential: Improbable under light to heavier use, though possible due to impurities or accidentally obtained pure heroin.

Physical addiction: Yes.

Common methods of consumption: Injection.

NOTES:

Heroin is a classic drug in late Western law, history and literature. It is the most often thought-of narcotic today, and at one time the most feared by the Establishment. It was first produced

commercially in Germany in 1898 as a substitute for morphine and codeine, though it was soon discovered to be more dangerous and addicting than either of the former.

Smack, or heroin, is morphine treated with acetic acid. It is 20 to 25 times more potent than morphine, and about four times as addictive. It can be cut many times and still produce a strong effect. Street heroin is, in fact, usually only 11⁄2 to 3 per cent pure. Generally speaking, the heroin on the West Coast is more impure and less potent than on the East Coast. Consequently, kicking a habit cold is more dangerous where the purity is greater.

The smack scene stands apart from most other present-day soft dope cultures. It is a completely different thing than most grass smokers and pill users care to get involved with. Such places as Synanon, Odyssey and Phoenix House, and even a few state-run programs have been effective to a degree in helping treat the smack problem.

Naturally heroin has a few old strongholds — like New York City, L.A.'s East Side and poverty areas of most large cities. Recently, however, there has been a major drive to push smack to the unsuspecting middle class public which have been the hardest hit victims of the old scare propaganda regarding drugs. If, after all, marijuana didn't turn people into raving maniacs, why should they believe that heroin was all that addicting? And besides, with the government cracking down so hard on marijuana that it's a little harder to score, why shouldn't kids-especially the younger ones -try something else at the same price?

This is a well-known experimentation syndrome that happens only when the grass dries up, and only because of inadequate information. First the media plays up drugs, and when the kids are old enough to try something, and no grass is available, they turn to hard things -- like speed, reds, glue and paint - and lately, as we pointed out, more and more are trying junk. For the first time in decades, kids are getting strung out because they really didn't know the truth in the first place, and because organized crime is taking advantage of the grass shortage by pumping quantities of hard dope into the nice, gullible market.

So what are some of the answers to the new wave of junk addiction? There are a lot of suggestions, a lot of failures, and a lot of things still worth trying, including decent preventive education. But let's look for a moment at the best potential cure for those who are completely into the junk syndrome:

METHADONE

This drug seems to have evolved in the last decade, into the most popular synthetic narcotic for the control of heroin addiction. It is a highly controversial treatment, and therefore worth a few more comments.

As many people are aware, methadone treatment programs flourish in New York City and state. Outside of this, its use as a treatment has not yet reached the stage it should have in proportion to the heroin problem. In Los Angeles, for example, with thousands of established old-time junkies and tens of thousands of new experimenters, L.A. County has only recently begun standard methadone treatment for some addicts. Of course there is Synanon as an alternative, which takes up some of the traffic, and a number of state-run institutions. But, as is true with much of the rest of the country, fear of acknowledging the junk problem by instituting treatment is jamming the works. Only slight relief is in sight for America in the near future.

Methadone, truthfully, looks good as a treatment if only someone would learn how to use it. It can also be a dangerous, addicting drug if misused. Even in New York, methadone is often misused, so that oftentimes young addicts with small habits who enroll in methadone programs are nearly overdosed by the quantity of their daily dose. Part of the answer might lie in letting more junkies, or rather ex-junkies, help administer the programs and advise the doctors on dosage level, as well as whether the enrollee should be placed on maintenance or gradual detoxification. Methadone detoxification, whereby the drug is used to help curb withdrawal of a heroin habit, is another potentially valuable tool which has not been adequately tested. We can't hope to make any further progress in this area at all until we admit we're in the middle of an epidemic, and can find some way to change mass education on drugs in general to make it all more realistic and proportionate to the existing problems.

HEROIN-TECHNICAL INFORMATION

In case of overdose: Overdoses are very often caused by accidentally getting purer heroin than is normally used. Since all heroin is illegally produced, there is virtually no way of telling its strength except by past experience in a certain area, which indicates you-get -so-much-for-this-price. On the West Coast, some instances of junkies visiting from the East Coast, and selling junk here, have caused overdoses. On both coasts, instances of servicemen returning from Southeast Asia, where junk is almost all pure, have caused a lot of overdoses, especially recently.

The best advice to someone who has overdosed on heroin is, get to a hospital immediately. Getting busted, if it happens, is very unfortunate, but it is a lot better than being dead. If you call an ambulance, tell them to bring NARCAN or Nalline. These are drugs which