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Narcotics
Use
by
Andrew D. Carson, Ph.D.
Some classification systems classify opioids as their own category, while others classify them as "narcotics" within a broad category of depressants. I classify them with other hallucinogens/psychedelics, mainly because in their vocational context their users often cite the drug's ability to produce visions or other hallucinations, but more through a withdrawal from everyday reality than its distortion, as is the case with hallucinogens such as LSD. Opioids include several different drugs, inlcuding heroin, hydromorphone, oxycodone, methadone, and merepedine.
Schivelbusch (1992/1980) asserts that although there was some opium use in Europe in the nineteenth-century (among at least several dozen romantic poets and perhaps several thousand workers who used in lieu of alcohol), on the whole the Western powers prevented its widespread use there, preferring instead to sell it in volume overseas, and especially in what became a semicolonial China. Widespread opium use "made Chinese society indolent, dreamy, inactive, uncompetitive--manageable" (Schivelbusch, p. 223). Even today, one might argue that opiates such as Heroin and illegally obtained Codeine serve a similar function (essentially) targeted at specific minority groups in Western nations, while at the same time serving to create a less active class of potential critics (our own romantic poets). Heroin use continues among many well-known creative artists, e.g., William S. Burroughs (author), Kurt Cobain (musician), Jean-Michel Basquiat (painter).
Although marijuana remains the American worker's drug of choice, there are signs (based on drug tests of worker urine) that heroin and other opioid use is growing, according to Current ("Heroin Makes Its Way Back"), who provides lab testing of worker urine to detect drug use. Current reports a number of signs of heroin use among workers: "lethargic appearance, frequent illnesses, problems concentrating, constricted pupils, itchiness, mood swings, and impaired vision at night." Current adds that companies with workers taking heroin will experience increased absenteeism, increased thefts, poor performance, and more accidents.
Links:
Heroin
(Australian Drug Foundation)
Methadone
(Australian Drug Foundation)
Narcotic
(from Encyclopedia.com)
Heroin, in Factfile
on Drugs (BBC News).
Heroin information
(Narconon of Oklahoma).
Report:
Consumers Union Report: Licit and Illicit Drugs, by Edward M. Brecher
(1972, from Schaffer Library of Drug Policy).
Heroin,
differential effects of small and large doses (BBC-Radio 1-Essentials).
Lou
Reed, lead singer for the Velvet Underground, from the PBS American
Masters series.
Heroin,
by the Velvet Underground (excerpt of recording).
Heroin page in the Dead
Musician Directory.
William
S. Burroughs, author of Naked Lunch ("the hallucinogenic ravings
of a heroine addict, from a review
on Amazon.com), who worked with Kurt Cobain to produce a short 1992 album
(The Priest They Called Him).
Jean-Michel
Basquiat. Discussion of the 1996 movie about the painter.
Air
Traffic Controller overdoses on heroin, found in the bathroom stall
of the control tower.
References to citations in the text.
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Updated March 16, 2008
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