Word: addicts
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...former drug addict, 1 would like to commend you for your excellent article about junkies [March 16]. At long last, someone is telling it like it is about a junkie's world. Although I was addicted to speed (Methedrine), and not heroin, most of my friends were junkies, and the man who turned me on was a junkie himself. I tried heroin a couple of times and never cared for it, but I saw what it did to my friends. They never completely recovered, and six of them are dead...
...horrifying statistics on teenage drug addiction-"50% of our youth is hooked," and "the average life expectancy of the addict is five years"-are true, haven't they created a self-destructive problem...
...also had disadvantages. Continuing rather than curing drug addiction, it led to an increase in addict registration: the number of known heroin addicts rose from 454 in 1959 to 2,782 by 1968. The system was also subject to abuse. Some doctors grossly overprescribed heroin to addicts, who sold what they did not use. Their action forced the government to change the law in 1968 so that only specially designated consultants at certain hospitals could prescribe drugs...
Another approach to the problem of heroin addiction is the methadone maintenance program. Pioneered in New York beginning in 1964 by Drs. Vincent Dole and Marie Nyswander, the program involves switching an addict from heroin, which can cost $50 or more a day on the black market, to methadone, a synthetic substitute that can be made available legally for about 150 for a day's dosage. Administered as part of a total rehabilitation program involving counseling and therapy, methadone eases heroin withdrawal and blocks heroin's euphoric effects. This enables an addict to function normally and hold...
...most accepted means of dealing with the drug addict is through a small, controlled therapeutic community. These residential communities first detoxify, then attempt to rehabilitate the drug user by restructuring his eqo and life pattern. Some, like California's famed Synanon, are run largely by former addicts. They accept only those who have proved their determination to kick the heroin habit, and seek to increase the addict's understanding of himself and his problems through often brutal group-encounter sessions. Others, like New York's city-run Phoenix and Horizon Houses, utilize both ex-addicts and professionals...