DOSE:

repeated

Opioids

BODY WEIGHT:

39 kg

Since I was 14 I foresaw myself becoming a junkie as I was using opiates at least once a month, normally more and there is a history of drug and alcohol addiction in my family. My mum had cancer and one day when I had a bad headache and as there was no ibuprofen left, she gave me a couple of her pills. I loved the feeling and I soon found that they helped remove my emotional pain, for a while at least. From then I took codeine, dihydrocodeine, morphine (the 12 hour release sort), dextropropoxyphene, hydrocodone and anything else I could get my hands on.

Not long after my mum died and my use increased to once or twice a week. Soon all my mother's pills had gone but there are various opiates sold OTC in the UK (codeine, dihydrocodeine & morphine [very small quantities approx 90mg in a 300ml bottle of medicine]). I also managed to get my doctor to prescribe dextropropoxyphene & managed to steal or otherwise obtain hydrocodone from my granny.

During that time the only problems I encountered were a build up of tolerance (removed by a yearly break of a month) and that the chemist became rather suspicious. I never really had many problems paying for the drugs as they are cheap (32*8mg codeine w/ 500mg paracetamol (Acetaminophen) pills-256mg codeine = £1.50/$2.25, 24*7.46mg dihydrocodeine w/ 500mg paracetamol - 179.04mg dihydrocodeine = £4.20/$6.30, 90mg morphine w/ various anti-diarrhoea drugs £3.50+/$4.75+). No one ever suspected anything, as I was already under weight & abnormally pale. And no one really suspects a 14/15 year old who looks young for his or her age (I looked around 12) of being an opiate addict, especially a Catholic schoolgirl...

Although I didn't do quite as well at school as I had previously done (I got an average grade of B in my GCSE's instead of the A I was predicted) but everyone just assumed my under achievement was due to the death of my mother 1 month before the exams but once I got to college the under achievement continued. My friends began to suspect something was wrong but they assumed it was just depression. No one noticed that I only ever wore long sleeves (I'd taken to extracting the morphine from anti-diarrhoeal medicine and injecting it). I had no scarring as such as I used clean, sharp needles & clean syringes each time but I had some bruises I didn't want to explain while at a friends house - her mum is a nurse. This was possible as sterile needles & syringes can be bought on the Internet for £4.50/$7 for 100 inc. p&p).

At 18 I moved a bigger city (Manchester) thinking that most of my problems would go away (boredom, depression, the doctor wouldn't prescribe anything for, my ever increasing drug use, etc) and for a while at least, they did. Once I got there I had complete freedom, found new friends that I actually had something in common with and didn't have to fake interest in (the crowd I'd always been warned about) and things seemed a lot better. I even enrolled at college and was predicted a grade A/B in all the exams. During this time I was still using drugs a lot, probably more so than what I'd done in Grimsby (a medium sized town with a high teen pregnancy & drugs use rate, this reflects the amount of interesting things to do there...) but I'd pretty much stopped using opiates as it was far easier to buy illegal drugs (I'd never used heroin) in Manchester than in Grimsby, not that I ever had any trouble finding what I wanted there.

Then in the March my friends and I received the results of our module exams and as we'd all done reasonably well decided to have a little party. We headed off to our dealer's flat to obtain drugs to enchance our night and whilst there he offered us some heroin (the pharmaceutical sort in ampules). At first I said no, but my friends kept calling me chicken so I gave in (I'd never disclosed to them that I had chipped heavily at opiates). It wasn't until later that night when we injected that they noticed how easily I found a vein that they realized I'd had previous experience with injecting and I told them about it. Needless to say I was the one that administered all the injections. I hated giving those injections because I anticipated that at least 1 of the 6 people there would become an addict.

Over the next few weeks we used weekly and I knew better than to slip into the 'just this once, I'll be fine' mid-week use but my 5 best friends didn't. Sometimes I used with them but more often than not I didn't bother as I didn't plan on going back to injecting every 3 days or so (after a while it begins to hurt more and more as the veins bruise with that many injections). Gradually they stopped going out places with me each weekend and one of which was the drummer in my band and he even quit that. It got so that the only time I ever really saw them was when we used heroin together. Other 'friends' began to distance themselves from me over this time as they took one look at my friends and me and just assumed. Tutors, employers & friends began to treat me with suspicion. They obviously didn't believe a thing I said. I'd lied to them prior to them thinking I was a junkie and they'd never had a seconds thought even when I deliberately slipped up just to test them. With me it always was the case that if my lips are moving I'm lying.

I was given frequent drug tests from my employer - several of which I've failed but each time I've convinced him its from Paracodol (paracetamol with 8mg codeine) tablets. I'll just have to hope he doesn't check with my doctor to see if I am actually allergic to aspirin & ibuprofen. I'm not... Over the next few months they became physically addicted and as I was the only one to hold a job down guess whom they kept asking for money. As I refused to give them it as I won't give anyone money to fuck themselves up with gradually I saw less and less of them. Last time I saw any of them was when one of them OD'd and I visited her in hospital. She still uses... In the 9 months since I first used heroin I've faced more problems with injecting once a week at most than I had with 18 months of injecting morphine at least twice a week. I still use...

Exp Year: 2001	ExpID: 16385
Gender: Female
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Sep 17, 2002	Views: 70,972
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Heroin (27), Morphine (211), Codeine (14), Hydrocodone (111) : Various (28), Retrospective / Summary (11)