-
4. The Needle
- The University of Tennessee Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
4. The Needle Heroin users may have been a caste apartfrom the hop smokers, but they were not an undiJfirentiated group. An important distinction had to do with the way in which they used the drug, whether by sniffing, suh-:utaneous or intramuscular injeaion (''skin popping''), or intravenous injeaion ("mainlining''). The mainliners were those who had reached the most advanced and deadly stage ofheroin addiaion; the sniffers were generally neophytes or dabblers, and the skin poppers were somewhere in between. Since about 1910, when heroin surfaced as a recreational drug in American cities, sniffing has been the preferred method ofnew users. Like mostAmericans, they initially feared the hypodermic, which they associated with painful "shots" -vaccinations, novocaine injeaions, and the like. Sniffing appealed to them because itavoided the needle altogether. It also bypassed the digestive traa, which was a slow and sometimes unsettling way ofgetting opiates into the system. Sniffing had its drawbacks, however. Like cocaine, heroin would ultimately destroy the septum, or partition, between the nasal passages; it would literally put a third hole inside a user's nose. Sniffing was also a relatively inefficient way ofadministering the drug. Injection produced a strongerfeeling ofreliefand euphoria, andproduced it morequickly. Mainliningproducedthestrongestfeeling ofall. Users often picked up the trick ofmainliningfrom veteran addias, but sometimes the discovery was accidental. Buck, aHarlem junkman and mugger, was a cocaine and heroin sniJfir who graduated to the needle after he became addicted. ''/ went to the needle because I just couldn't stand sniffing up my nose no more, and I wasn't getting the kick out ofit I was supposed to get out ofit," he explained . One day he "discovered mainlining accidentally. I was skin popping and I didn't know I'd hit a vein in my forearm. I got a rush. I felt good behind it, and scared too because I hadn't had that kind offeeling when I was snorting. Then I just kept on shooting. "Pleasure mingled with surprise orfear was afairly common reaaion to the first mainline shot. ''Boy, that gave me a rush to my head, " recalled another addict, "I was going crazy back andforth in the room. " Remarks like this are conspicuously absentfrom accounts ofmedical addiaion in 104 ADDICTS WHO SURVIVED the nineteenth century. When addicts could purchase uncut drugs they had no need ofintravenous injection. Ifthey had injectedpure morphine into their veins, it might well have killed them. Heroin mainliners were also in jeopardy. An unusually strong bag could trigger a fotal overdose. This was a constant risk, since the addict usually had no idea ofthe purity ofthe drug he was sending directly into bloodstream and brain. The survivors we interviewed were wary of this danger, and tried to minimize it by regularizing their intake, beingcarefulabout theirsuppliers, or by procuring medical narcotics ofknown strength. They also managed to escape most ofthe serious needle-related infictions that ended the careers ofso many oftheir peers: hepatitis, endocarditis, syphilis, and tetanus. But, despite theirprecautions, they could not avoid the almost inevitable problems oflong-term intravenous injection: abscesses, scarred and swollen arms, and collapsed veins. Sometimes theseproblems became so serious that they wereforced to seek out treatment. Buck, for example, eventually entereda methadoneprogram because ''/ couldn'tfind no vein. I got tired ofsticking and getting nowhere. l0u can't find no vein in my forearm-you can't even see it. Nothing. Or in my back. I can't find nothing. And I'm not going under my arm, or in my neck-I'd rather quit entirely. " Mainlining was an indirect consequence of the police approach to narcotic addiction. Outlawing heroin and restricting access to other narcotics created a black market; like all such markets, it operated without external quality controls. Ruthless criminals took advantage ofthe situation and, just like the bootleggers who wateredtheir hooch orpoisonedit with methanol, they adulterated the heroin or mixed it with dangerous stimulants like strychnine. (This is more than just an analogy; most ofthe big-name narcotic traffickers ofthe 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s were experiencedbootleggersfrom the Prohibition era. Tampering with the merchandise was nothing new to them. It also helped that their big market was among addicts, who would settlefor practically anything.) The worse the heroin, the greater the temptation to mainline; the more widespread the mainlining, the greater the chance ofmedical disaster. This was the rule during the classic era, and it is still the case today. The law aggravatedthe health risks ofaddiction in another way. Many places, includingNew l0rk, hadlaws against thepossession ofhypodermicparaphernalia without a prescription...