Word: heroines
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...book succeeds because, unlike in real life, Jacobs (an Esquire editor and NPR contributor) confines his written observations on Encyclopaedia Britannica articles to jottings the length of entries in Schott's Original Miscellany. (Among the facts he highlights: the Bayer company invented heroin; toward the end of his life, Nathaniel Hawthorne constantly scribbled "64" on scraps of paper; René Descartes liked cross-eyed chicks.) Instead, he uses his book, which is organized by Encyclopaedia Britannica entries, to do what he has done best as a magazine writer: stunt journalism. The entry on "Vital Fluid" leads to a story about getting...
...longer, but within half an hour you'll have something," says Bampi. When the drought temporarily starved them of a daily fix, Bampi and her friends began searching for other ways to get stoned. Bampi started using benzodiazepines, sedatives usually prescribed for insomnia and anxiety, topping up whatever heroin she could find: "I used to mix them with smack, take five pills with a hit. The next day I'd be completely blank about what I'd been doing." Some of her friends tried the same crude cocktail, while others began experimenting with stimulants, especially ice, the potent crystallized form...
While amphetamine use was growing well before 2000, the post-drought switch to different drugs has many health professionals and drug agencies deeply worried. Amphetamine abuse in particular has severe side effects, including aggression and psychosis. No one knows the full extent of the post-drought migration from heroin to other illicit drugs. The National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre has examined this trend, but its long-awaited report has yet to be made public. Treatment admissions suggest many users have tried to break their habits since heroin supply fell, but drug workers see plenty of others who inject stimulants...
Pina Bampi tried ice and knows many who now can't give it up. "Ice is horrible, horrible," she says. "People are different when they use it - it does something to your mind." A decade ago at one clinic in Adelaide, 80% of patients were being treated for heroin; now just 30% are, while half are amphetamine users. University of Adelaide pharmacology and addictions expert Professor Jason White, who works with the clinic, says abuse of prescription opiates like morphine has also become more of a problem. In central Melbourne, where Lindsay Bent's paramedic team is being trained...
...course that's good, says Bent, "but it's bad too, in that they're using other things instead, which presents new challenges to us." Reducing heroin deaths has been a big win. But heroin isn't the only problem, says Turning Point's Paul Dietze: "use of injected drugs is the issue." And given that those amphetamines are mostly produced within Australia's borders, the new front line will be harder to define...