One Heroin Addict's Regrets:
In the following passage from Jara A. Krivanek's book, Heroin: Myths and Reality, a former heroin addict tells of some of the consequences of her addiction: I'm 29 years old. I wish that, by now, my career was all settled for me.
That I had friends. You don't learn how to be a friend or what a relationship is when you're just getting high. And when you stop getting high, it's like being a baby and starting all over again from the beginning.
When you're high, it's like being a robot. It's euphoric, but you could be anybody. All the people that are out there using drugs, the faces change, but they're all the same, they're all nobodies, because they're never going anywhere, they're never going to make anything of themselves. . . .
The main thing that bothers me is that the years that I lost while I was taking dope I will never get back. And you lose a lot of self-pride because of the things you end up doing, and it takes a long time to get that back. What I should have been doing all that time in my life was going to college, pursuing a career, and going out and doing the socalled normal things. What I was doing was hanging out on the street corner and getting high. And that was my whole life. You don't see a lot of things when you get high. . . . If I hadn't gotten involved with drugs, maybe I would have had a career. Maybe I would have had more confidence in myself at this point in my life, because I don't have it now. I'd have some friends today, which I don't have now because after all those years, I really didn't have any friends left.