Heroin Addiction History

Heroin, which is a very popular drug of choice in the American drug culture today, is not a new drug that just showed up in the late 1960’s nor is its negative effects unique to modern times. Heroin is an opium derivative and, as with any opium derivative, there is severe physical and mental dependency that develops when it is abused.

As long ago as 3400 B.C., the opium poppy was cultivated in lower Mesopotamia. The Sumerians’ knowledge of cultivating poppy was passed on to the Assyrians, Babylonians, and finally, the Egyptians. Interestingly enough, there is even evidence from excavations that the Neanderthals used poppy seeds.

Some where around 330 B.C. Alexander the Great introduced opium to the people of Persia and India, where poppies were grown in large quantities. By 400 A.D, opium thebaicum was introduced to China by Arab traders.

It was not until the 15th Century that residents of Persia and India began consuming opium mixtures recreationally, a practice that turned opium into a major product in an expanding intra-Asian trade. Under the reign of Akbar between 1556 and 1605, the Mughal state of North India relied upon opium land as a major source of revenue.

The history of the opium trade involves almost all of the costal European nations, Portugal, Spain, France, Holland and the UK. They exported opium from India to China, competing with the Arab and Indian merchants who had been using this trade route for many years.

It was not until 1700 that the British introduced China to the process of mixing opium with tobacco so that it could be smoked. This was to about to drastically change the amount of opium consumed by the Chinese in a huge way. With nearly 2 million pounds of opium being sold in China each year, it was creating an epidemic that the government tried to control ending in opium wars.

In the 1800’s during the American Civil War, soldiers used morphine freely, and those that had been wounded returned home with their kits of morphine and hypodermic needles. In 1866 the Secretary of War stated that during the war the Union Army was issued 10 million opium pills, over 2,840,000 ounces of other opiate preparations such as laudanum or paregoric, and almost 30,000 ounces of morphine. The result of all this earned opium addiction to be referred to as the 'army disease' or the 'soldier's disease.'

Diacetylmorphine was first synthesized in 1874 by C.R. Alder Wright. He had been working with finding a non-addictive form of opium. In 1897, Felix Hoffman produced two new compounds for the company he worked for, Bayer. These compounds were acetylsalicylic acid and diacetylmorphine. By 1899, Bayer was producing around a ton of heroin each year, and exporting it to some 23 countries. The country in which the drug did extremely well in was the US, where there was a large population of morphine addicts already existing, a over zealous market for patent medications, and almost no regulatory rules in place.

Interesting to note is heroin received its name from the very people who were testing it as they said it made them feel heroic. Bayer eventually saw the issues heroin was creating by the amount of people being admitted to hospitals for recreational use of the drug and stopped producing the drug in 1913. People were scrapping metal to be able to afford their habits giving rise to the term ‘junkie’. The following year use of heroin without a prescription was outlawed and then by 1919 a court ruling determined that it would be illegal to prescribe heroin to addicts. Then in 1924 the use and manufacturing of heroin was banned in the US. However in Britain the medical use of heroin continues today and accounts for 95 percent of the world’s legal consumption.

For information on treating heroin or opiate addictions you can visit methadone treatment, suboxone treatment, or rapid detox treatment dangers.