My first impression upon watching the documentary “Black Tar Heroin” was a portrayal of desperation and sadness. As the various characters were interviewed and they gave their stories it often seemed that, though they were most definitely heroin addicts, they didn’t want to admit that to themselves and were deliberately trying to act “normal”, as if they were no different from anybody else. The graphic visuals of broken and damaged blood vessels from heroine injections, and all the different parts of the body that were used for injection makes one wonder why on earth someone would deliberately do that to themselves. The scenes of a young man injecting drugs into his jugular vein were particularly nauseating. It’s a testament to the addictive power of heroin.

The notion that the drugs were in complete control hit me when a long time heroin user was introduced. She had no veins left to inject heroin into so she had to inject it intramuscularly, which is a great hazard for septicemia and other blood diseases. She admitted to using heroin maybe fifteen times a day, and prostituted herself for the money to buy it with. Her body had become so acclimatized to heroin use that she was shaking and showing the early symptoms of withdrawal just a few hours after her last fix. Her next dose seemed to be all she thought about.

As the video demonstrated, there are many different types of addiction and dependence. These include; physical addiction, psychological addiction, behavioral addiction, and habituation as a form of addiction. Physical addiction is where the body has become used to receiving a certain chemical to the degree that one’s body chemistry has been changed. Going without the drug results in physical withdrawal symptoms such as nausea, sweats, shaking, the perception of physical pain, and even hallucinations. An example of this would be the woman previously described who demonstrated an extreme need for heroin, but many other types of drugs can result in physical dependence as well.

Psychological addiction can exist with drugs that may not always be considered physically addictive, but have received mental reinforcement in their use such as with marijuana and cocaine. Essentially the person likes the way the drug made them feel and want to feel that way again. One woman in the film, Tracey, had been in jail for six months and gotten over her physical addiction of heroin. But she began to use heroin again once she got out of prison because she said she enjoyed how it made her feel. Unfortunately, often such sensations are misremembered as being more pleasurable than they actually are, thus the wish to feel the way they remember becomes unattainable because the drug may not have had the desired result.

Behavioral addiction is measured by what is called the “hassle factor”. Essentially it’s based upon how much you’re willing to go through to get the drug and how much you’re willing to change your life to keep using the drug. Such behavior can be the result of multiple forms of addiction. Though this film does not show the lifestyles of people prior to their drug addiction, it does show the downward spiral of people into criminal activity to support their habit. Another girl, Jessica, was so addicted in this fashion that she willingly worked as a prostitute in order to make the money to buy more heroin.

Habituation as an addiction refers to the body’s ability to build a tolerance to a drug that is used regularly. A young man, Jake, displayed an extreme degree of habituation when he attempted to commit suicide by heroin overdose. He shot up four grams worth of black tar heroin and survived. In a person who has not been habituated to heroin, this amount would’ve been quite sufficient to kill him/her within minutes of its use.

It’s commonly known that drug use has a direct influence on crime levels in any given neighborhood, but it’s not always known how it does this. The tripartite model explains this relationship in three different parts. The first is the psychopharmacological model. In this model crime is committed by people under the influence of drugs because of a situational lack of self-control. This is similar to someone who vandalizes a car because they were drunk. The second part is the economic-compulsive model, where people are willing to resort to crime in order to obtain money to buy drugs. Jessica, after having gotten sick of prostitution, was seriously considering robbing people for money to buy her daily heroin fixes. The third part is the systematic nature of the illegal drug market. Basically there is inherent violence in the world of illegal drugs. Drug dealers will contend violently with one another. People will often rob drug dealers because of the value of the products and money they frequently have on their persons. Addicts may occasionally get into violent altercations with their dealers over feeling ripped off when purchasing drugs.

There are many different sociological theories which attempt to explain drug abuse, but in the context of the film, I feel the most pertinent is the General Strain Theory demonstrated by Jessica’s case. Its states that people go through stress, suffer negative affective states such as depression or anger, and then use drugs to cope with stress. In the film Jessica stated that she had been sexually abused regularly by her grandfather when she was young. I certainly feel that this would qualify as a major stressor and the cause of negative effective states. After using heroin regularly she initially worked for an escort service, and is considered a little better than a streetwalker on the prostitution totem-pole. She was later arrested and took a mandatory blood test, which indicated that she was HIV positive. If she was caught soliciting sex again she would be charged with attempted murder. She did it again anyway, but as a streetwalker this time. She began smoking crack and drinking along with her heroin use at this point. As the film continues its apparent that, aside from her addiction, Jessica is using drugs increasingly to shut out the world and avoid the stressors around her as her life spirals further and further out of control.

The study by Hung-En Sung and his associates presents several hypotheses as to why some drug addicts use injection to take heroin while others use less invasive methods such as inhalation to get high. The Career-Intensification hypothesis seems to be the most relevant to the film. It states that a long time user is likely to progress from smoking or snorting heroin to using needles as they become more addicted to the drug. This is likely because a heroin user’s body habituates to the drug and it takes and increasing amount to get high. The injection method allows the body to absorb a greater portion of the heroin injected than snorting or smoking heroin. This allows the drug user to get a greater effect from taking the same amount of heroin.

A young junkie by the name of Oreo recounted, as he was injecting heroin into a vein in his throat that he had told himself long ago that he would never resort to doing the very act he was performing. Before that he told himself he would never inject heroin at all. He had originally experimented with heroin by smoking it, but found too late that he couldn’t stop himself until he began using it regularly. It would appear that drug users initially set limits for themselves which they don’t believe they will exceed, but later do. This is a perfect example of the graduation process that a lot of junkies go through.

In this case I believe that even if heroin were legal, it would still pose a massive social problem. Legalization does not eliminate the illegality of its implications as heroin users will often resort to crime to later support the extreme cost of their habit. The drug is incredibly addictive, so recreational use is unlikely. It has withdrawal symptoms that are bad enough as to kill people sometimes. An addict is completely unable to function while using heroin, and holding even a part-time job is hopeless. The addicts in the film were often talking about people who had overdosed and were dead, as if it were a common everyday occurrence. I suppose that from their perspective it is. It just shows how far gone these people are that death no longer fazes them.