Heroin Most opiate detoxes involve people coming off heroin on their own. Detoxing on illicit heroin may mean that you: n don’t have to see a doctor; n don’t have to go to a drug service; and n don’t have to go into hospital.
But: n controlling a reducing dose can be very difficult if
not impossible (especially if you’re finding your heroin habit hard to manage);
n you may have to see other opiate users to score; n if you have a stock it can be very difficult to make
it last; and
n you can still get busted.
If you are planning to come straight off heroin without taking anything else, things that might help are: n cutting down as much as you can in the run-up to
your detox;
n switching to smoking it, if you are an injector; n expecting to feel bad, and not sleep well, for at least
a fortnight and possibly much longer (see page 30);
n picking a time and place when you will use heroin
for the last time; and
n remembering that once you’ve gone 24 hours
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without any opiate you will be prolonging the physical withdrawals if you use again.
