Understanding Heroin Addiction and Pathways to Recovery
Are you or someone you love affected by heroin use and seeking compassionate, effective pathways towards lasting recovery?
Are you or someone you love affected by heroin use and seeking compassionate, effective pathways towards lasting recovery?
Speak to someone who understands, in confidence and without judgement. Contact our team to talk about heroin or nyaope help, for yourself or for someone you love.
Heroin addiction, an overview
Heroin is an illicit and powerful drug that comes from the pod of the opium poppy, which is grown and harvested in parts of Asia, India, the Middle East, South America, Afghanistan, Colombia and Mexico. For most users it is more than recreational, and many develop a heroin addiction that can be deadly. Heroin appears in the form of white powder in its purest form, brown or black powder when it carries additives, and a black sticky gel known as black tar. Heroin can be smoked, snorted or injected.
How does it affect the user?
Heroin is a strong opiate that works quickly and attaches to opioid receptors in the brain. The brain’s reward system becomes flooded and chemicals like dopamine and endorphins are released. Heroin users typically describe feeling a surge of pleasure, referred to as a rush.
The addiction to heroin can take hold quite quickly due to its rapid effect on the brain, and eventually the user cannot feel normal or function without the drug. The brain loses its natural ability to produce dopamine on its own, and the user then increases their dose to get the same effect. This need to use more to achieve the same effect is called tolerance, and it increases the chance of an overdose.
Why Do People Get Addicted to Heroin?
Heroin is so addictive because of how fast and how hard it hits the brain’s opioid receptors, flooding the reward system with dopamine and endorphins and producing an intense rush. The brain treats that feeling as something to repeat, and with regular use it slows its own production of those chemicals. Before long the person needs heroin just to feel normal and to hold off withdrawal, which turns use into a daily physical need rather than a choice. That mix of intense reward and brutal withdrawal is what makes heroin so hard to stop without help.
Nyaope and Whoonga: Heroin on South African Streets
On South African streets, heroin most often turns up as nyaope, also called whoonga or wunga. Nyaope is a low-grade heroin base, usually smoked in a joint with dagga and cut with cheap fillers to stretch each portion. It is one of the cheapest and most destructive drugs in the country, and it takes hold fast, often after very few uses.
Nyaope is often associated with antiretrovirals, and some batches do contain them, but its main active ingredient is low-grade heroin. That heroin is the real danger, driving the same addiction, overdose risk and severe withdrawal described on this page. Nyaope and whoonga addiction respond to the same medical detox and rehab as any other heroin addiction.
Overdose
When people overdose on heroin, their breathing often slows or stops. This decreases the amount of oxygen that reaches the brain, a condition called hypoxia. Hypoxia can have short and long-term effects on the mind and nervous system, potentially including coma and permanent brain damage.
Signs of a heroin overdose include:
- Constricted pupils
- Shallow breathing
- Dry mouth
- Tongue discolouration
- Slow pulse
- Blue lips
- Disorientation
- Weak pulse
A heroin overdose is a medical emergency and can stop someone’s breathing within minutes. Do not wait. Call an ambulance immediately on 10177, or 112 from any mobile phone. Where naloxone (Narcan) is available, give it while you wait, since it can reverse an opioid overdose.
Heroin is very addictive, and it does not take many uses to develop a full-blown substance use disorder, a chronic, relapsing brain disease that goes beyond physical dependence and is characterised by uncontrollable physical craving and mental obsession that results in drug-seeking behaviour with little regard for the consequences.
Although injecting heroin may reach the brain faster than other methods, heroin is extremely addictive no matter how it is administered. People who inject heroin are, however, at higher risk of contracting blood-borne diseases like HIV and Hepatitis A, B or C. These diseases are transmitted through contact with blood or other bodily fluids, which can occur when sharing needles.
Effects of using heroin include the following:
| Short-Term Effects | Long-Term Effects |
|---|---|
| Dry mouth | Insomnia |
| Warm flushing | Infection of the heart lining and valves |
| Nausea and vomiting | Abscesses (swollen tissue filled with pus) |
| Severe itching | Constipation and stomach cramps |
| A heavy feeling in the arms and legs | Liver and kidney disease |
| Clouded thinking | Lung problems such as pneumonia |
| Drifting in and out of consciousness | Depression |
| Sexual dysfunction in men | |
| Irregular periods in women |
Withdrawal
When a user attempts to stop using heroin, withdrawal may start within a few hours of the last hit.
Symptoms of withdrawal include:
- Restlessness
- Muscle and bone pain
- Insomnia
- Diarrhoea
- Vomiting
- Cold spells with goosebumps
- Involuntary leg movements
Withdrawal usually peaks between 24 and 48 hours after the last dose, when symptoms are at their worst. The physical symptoms begin to ease within about a week, though some people have persistent withdrawal signs for months, which is one reason medical support matters so much.
Treatment
Addiction is a chronic disease that requires specialised treatment within a rehab facility. Heroin addiction often requires long-term treatment that combines medical and behavioural therapies to restore a semblance of normality to the person’s brain function.
At Changes, heroin treatment starts with a medically supervised detox, because stopping opioids suddenly is painful and hard to do alone. From there you move into primary care for intensive individual and group therapy, then into secondary care and structured aftercare that hold the recovery in place once you are home. Medication has a real role in opioid addiction, so detox and any opioid substitution are managed by our medical team rather than left to willpower.
You can read more about our heroin and opioid treatment and how it works.
There is always hope and help available. Changes Rehab Johannesburg is here to guide and support you through each step. When you are ready, the fastest way in is to pre-authorise the admission or call our team on 081 444 7000. For a loved one who needs help, we will walk you through the first steps.
Heroin street names: nyaope, whoonga, wunga (South African), Black, Black Tar, Black Pearl, Black Stuff, Black Eagle, Boy, Brown, Brown Crystal, Brown Rhine, Brown Sugar, Brown Tape, China White, Dope, Dragon, The Dragon, H, He, Horse, Junk, Mexican Brown, Mexican Mud, Mexican Horse, Mud, Number 3, Number 4, Number 8, Sack, Scat, Skag, Skunk, Smack, Snow, Snowball, Tar, White, White Nurse, White Lady, White Horse, White Girl, White Boy, White Stuff.
Heroin and nyaope (whoonga) addiction help: medically supervised detox, therapy and aftercare for lasting recovery. Talk to Changes in Johannesburg.. Changes team counsellors are here to help you.Heroin & Nyaope Addiction: Recovery Options for Sobriety
