Word: addictive
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...knew I'd win a million, for some psychic reason," said Chronic Loser Terry Garrett, 39, a former heroin addict with a long arrest sheet. Sure enough, Garrett's number came up in the million-dollar spin of the California lottery last month, guaranteeing him $40,000 a year for the next 20 years. (The state withheld $200,000 for taxes.) Garrett, however, did not predict the sorry sequel to his story...
...that are ever present -- from nuclear holocaust to world hunger to environmental disaster -- seem to obsess the national consciousness in cycles. Perhaps it is the sheer insidiousness of crack, the newly popular, highly potent form of cocaine that can in short order transform the casual pleasure seeker into an addict. Perhaps it is the perception that drugs have spread into the workplace and the neighborhood, that they have arrived like the wolf at the door, or at least next door...
Heroin abuse has stabilized at half a million users, about the same number as 15 years ago. That is still a tragically high number, but the heroin-addict population is aging. The NIDA reports there are relatively few new heroin users...
...enough to guarantee a single user two or three blissful joyrides. Coke sniffers so constrict their nasal passages that they can no longer snort the stuff, while heroin users must constantly search for new veins to pop. The only limit on the amount of crack an addict can use is the amount he has. "There is no such thing as saving crack," says Dr. Herbert Kleber of Yale Medical School. "You use what you have...
...drug addict holds a peculiar place in society, not unlike the AIDS victim; the impulse to shun collides with the impulse to embrace. If the addict happens to be your colleague or your daughter, the confusion doubles; there are no impoverished minorities to pity or blame. You become a mote in history. For thousands of years, people have smoked, snorted, injected their way between paradise and self-murder, while the outer world has watched, scolded, legislated, not legislated, with barely the slightest comprehension...