The Pros And Cons Of Dope Sickness

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Joel Gallegos JOUR 1171 Legal dope peddlers slowly kill New Mexicans Thin, sinewy, slouched figures walk across a puddle ridden parking lot of a clinic in southeast Albuquerque, some of them climb their way out of their cars; others arrive on bicycle, but most arrive on foot. The people that are heading into the clinic are sick, dope sick. Dope sickness is the street slang that refers to the withdrawal symptoms experienced by heroin addicts and the clinic that these people are heading into is a Methadone clinic, a substance used to treat opiate addiction. But a new vision of opiate addiction is emerging as prescription drug overdoses far outpaced heroin and cocaine overdoses in the most recent analysis of deaths. According to a report by…show more content…
“The ads send a strong signal that prescription drugs are just like any consumer product — soap, cereal, cars, snack foods,…show more content…
“From then on it was like a twenty here, a forty there. After a couple months I moved up to twenties and forties every day.” The twenties and forties that Woody refers to are the milligrams of oxycodone contained within the prescription pills she would buy. Many heroin addicts start their road to addiction with pills. “When I was a year deep, trying to sustain an OxyContin addiction was not feasible, that’s how I started on ‘H’,” says Woody. The deaths from overdose in New Mexico hit close to home for Woody. “Two of my friends Justin Kennedy and Ryan Ramirez they’re dead now because of drug abuse.” Fortunately Woody will not be another statistic in the struggle against drug addiction, at the time this story was written Woody has been clean off of Heroin for two years and nine days off SubOxone, a drug used to treat opiate addiction. With a profound smile on her face she said “This is the first time in about six and a half years that I haven’t had any chemical or opiate dependency, legal or illegal, and I got to say it’s feeling

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