Heroin is a very strong, highly addictive drug. Heroin is hard to stop taking once it's in your system. Heroin belongs to a group of pain relieving drugs called narcotics. Drugs that come from the juice of a flower called an opium poppy are called opiates. Heroin is an opiate.

Street names are like nicknames for drugs. Street names are code names drug users use to identify illegal drugs. Heroin has many street names including big H, blacktar, brown sugar, dope, horse, junk, mud, skag and most common, smack. After September 11th, heroin was even called Bin Laden, twin towers and WTC. Some other interesting street names are Bart Simpson, Aunt Hazel, birdie powder, Dr. Feelgood, dog food, hong-yen, lemonade, Mexican mud, old Steve, pangonadalot and witch hazel.

Most people try heroin for the first time between 16 and 24 years of age. Heroin can strengthen the risk of getting AIDS, hepatitis, and tetanus. It also causes you to feel nauseous. People take heroin for many reasons. Just after taking it, you feel pleasure and calmness for about two minutes. Then you feel very drowsy.

Heroin is taken by eating, smoking, sniffing and most commonly injected into a bloodstream. If too much is taken you can die. Addicts sometimes even share a needle. When germs gets on the needle it can cause infections. You can also get infections from sharing needles with an infected person.

 Syringe graphic on this page created by the
"Kids Making Healthy Choices" ThinkQuest team.