Heroin

From RationalWiki

Heroin is a highly refined alkaloid opiate derived from poppies.

In ascending order of potency, as the poppy is further refined it is turned into:

• Munchkin music
• Codeine
• Laudanum
• Opium
• Morphine
• Heroin

Heroin is a clean, long-lasting painkiller that will take away pain you never knew you had. The only downside is that if you use it regularly (and, being an opiate, heroin will make sure that you do), and then stop, you have to go through all that pain all over again in the span of two to three days. Due to the constipating effects of opiate drugs, you will also crap like a race horse on Ex-lax.

Contents 1 Heroin chic 2 Street names 3 Heroin in popular culture and the arts 3.1 Movies 4 See also 5 Footnotes

[edit] Heroin chic

Heroin chic refers to a fashion trend that required being underweight, deathly pale, poorly groomed (ie, messy hair), and wearing dark glasses to hide one's dilated pupils. It also led to movie actors needing to know how to convincingly "shoot up", much as actors in the forties had to know how to smoke cigarettes.

[edit] Street names

As with most drugs, heroin has plenty of slang terms that refer to it. Here are a few:

• Smack
• Junk
• Horse
• H
• China white ^[1]
• Black tar
• Misties^[2]

[edit] Heroin in popular culture and the arts

John Lennon and Yoko Ono famously justified their heroin dependency by claiming "artistic privilege".

Numerous artists have sung the praises, or damnations, of heroin:^[3]

• The Rolling Stones: just about every song on Sticky Fingers.
• John Lennon: Cold Turkey.
• Lou Reed: Heroin, I'm Waiting For My Man, et cetera.
• The Beatles: Everybody's Got Something to Hide (Except for Me and My Monkey), Happiness is a Warm Gun.
• William Burroughs: his life and works. Get it? Ha ha.
• Sid Vicious: well, he was a junkie, but it didn't make him an "artist".
• Pink Floyd: Comfortably Numb
• The Heartbreakers: Chinese Rocks (also covered by the Ramones)
• Anything involving Peter Doherty
• Ultravox: White China

[edit] Movies

• Trainspotting
• The Dog Soldiers
• MacArthur Park
• Basketball Diaries
• Panic in Needle Park
• Pulp Fiction
• Drugstore Cowboy
• Gridlock'd

[edit] See also

• Rush Limbaugh

[edit] Footnotes

1. ↑ China white nowadays more often refers to the "synthetic heroin" designer drug analogue, alphamethylfentanyl, and not to actual heroin.
2. ↑ Actually refers to Morphine Sulphate pills which are diluted down into a delicious liquid, perfect with a side of bacon or for when those unexpected guests drop by.
3. ↑ This list is far too slanted toward Rolling Stones, John Lennon, Pink Floyd type music that nobody cares about anymore because classic rock radio has ruined them. Please help us out by adding some more obscure songs, but nothing so obscure as the Heartbreakers (even though "Chinese Rocks" has its own Wikipedia article) or the Mentors.