04:00 - Source: CNN
The mechanics of heroin addiction

Story highlights

Most people who die from heroin overdoses stop breathing

Heroin use can also cause heart problems and kidney failure


CNN —  


The numbers



An estimated 23% of them will become addicts. And it’s addicts who die more frequently than new users, studies show.

How heroin works

Heroin is most often mixed with water and injected. Injecting it minimizes the lag time between when the drug is taken and effects are felt – with injection, the effects are almost immediate.



What’s happening inside the body is the heroin is turning into morphine. Morphine has a chemical structure similar to endorphins – the chemicals your brain makes when you feel stressed out or are in pain. Endorphins inhibit your neurons from firing, so they halt pain and create a good feeling.


Why you die






Heroin use can also cause an arrhythmia – a problem with the rate or rhythm of the heartbeat. During an arrhythmia, the heart may not be able to pump enough blood to the body, and lack of blood flow affects your brain, heart and other organs.

Heroin use can also cause pulmonary edema. That’s when the heart can’t pump blood to the body well. The blood can back up into your veins, taking that blood through your lungs and to the left side of the heart.


Heroin can also come with other toxic contaminants that can harm a user – although deaths from such instances, while not unheard of, are thought to be rare.

Studies suggest instantaneous death is unusual. One study showed such deaths, where a needle and syringe are still in place, account for only 14% of heroin-related deaths.

Heroin deaths increase when

There are some common social characteristics in heroin deaths. Most fatalities involve men, particularly those who have struggled with other drugs or alcohol and other drugs or alcohol are often present.

While many are single, most users die in their homes and/or in the company of another person.



That may be in part because those who are newly clean don’t know how much of the drug to give themselves any more, Drexler said. They won’t need the same amount to get high as when they were using more regularly.


Statistics suggest that newer heroin users aren’t the ones most likely to die. One study showed only 17% of the deaths studied were in new heroin users.

However, Drexler said newer users can overdose because they don’t know how much drug to take, compared to experienced users. “I think it is misleading to say you would not die if you only use it once or twice,” she said.
