Heroin Overdose Quotes

The statistics tell you that kids like me face a grim future—that if they’re lucky, they’ll manage to avoid welfare; and if they’re unlucky, they’ll die of a heroin overdose, as happened to dozens in my small hometown just last year. I

Ethan Nadelmann, one of the leading drug reformers in the United States, had explained: "People overdose because [under prohibition] they don't know if the heroin is 1 percent or 40 percent...Just imagine if every time you picked up a bottle of wine, you didn't know whether it was 8 percent alcohol or 80 percent alcohol [or] if every time you took an aspirin, you didn't know if it was 5 milligrams or 500 milligrams.

Overdoses, and not burglaries and robberies, became the new barometers of the city’s heroin problem.

One way to say all this is, Our mother was an addict and she overdosed. Another way is, Our mother was suicidal and she killed herself. Another way is, Our mother was poor and ignored and dismissed for years by doctors who put her on legal and extremely profitable heroin, which eventually killed her. Another way is, Our mother needed help and no one, including us, gave it to her.

There were leaders here and elsewhere who agreed with the woman, he knew, including an Ohio sheriff who'd recently proposed taking naloxone away from his deputies, claiming that repeated overdose reversals were "sucking the taxpayers dry." Lloyd thought immediately of the answer Jesus gave when his disciple asked him to enumerate the concept of forgiveness. Should it be granted seven times, Peter wanted to know, or should a sinner be forgiven as many as seventy times? In the shadow of the church steeples, Lloyd let Jesus answer the woman's question: "Seventy times seven," he said.

Children of the most privileged group in the wealthiest country in the history of the world were getting hooked and dying in almost epidemic numbers from substances meant to, of all things, numb pain. “What pain?” a South Carolina cop asked rhetorically one afternoon as we toured the fine neighborhoods south of Charlotte where he arrested kids for pills and heroin. Crime was at historic lows, drug overdose deaths at record highs. A happy façade covered a disturbing reality. I grew consumed by this story.

She was warm and silky. Delicious, really. I wanted to take her like a drug. All at once, in one gulp. I wanted to overdose on her like cocaine, and heroin, and crack, knowing the destruction I was willingly inhaling into my body. Because Indie, like drugs, was a temporary fix.

Cocaine and methamphetamine—the popular drugs through the 1980s and 1990s—are damaging drugs, but people don’t often fatally overdose on them. Heroin, which people do overdose on, hadn’t been a sustained problem since the 1970s. Drug overdoses in Ohio had remained pretty constant for decades.

This time of year is brutal. Joe knows exactly what Donny’s referring to. It’s January, just after the holiday season, a time for family and gift giving and celebration for most, a time of unbearable depression for others. The days are cold and dark by four thirty. Joe and Donny have responded to a lot of suicides over the years, and winter is sadly the most popular season. Joe won’t miss that part of his job. Discovering the bodies. Sometimes the body parts. A teenager overdoses on heroin. A mother swallows a bottle of prescription pills. A father leaps off the Tobin. A cop eats his gun.

One day he felt ready to give up on life. He overdosed on heroine and woke up a day later at the hospital, where he was diagnosed with cancer. Just perfect, he thought.

Kentucky state legislator Katie Stine, a Republican, introduced a bill as I was writing this book that made it easier to charge a heroin dealer with the death of someone who died from an overdose.

Heroin has a frightening reputation, and rightly so: the margin between an effective dose and an overdose is narrower than that of any other mainstream narcotic. A paper in Addiction, an academic journal, estimated the quantity of various drugs needed to get an average person high versus the amount required to kill them.5 In the case of alcohol, it found that the ratio was about ten to one—in other words, if a couple of shots of vodka are enough to make you tipsy, twenty shots might kill you, if you can keep them down. Cocaine, it found, was slightly safer, with a ratio of fifteen to one. LSD has a ratio of 1,000 to one, whereas marijuana is safest of all: it is impossible to die of overdose, as far as anyone can tell. Even with the edibles, there is no evidence that one can die of overdose—you simply have a stronger and longer-lasting effect than you may have wanted. For heroin, the ratio between an effective dose and a deadly one is just six to one. Given that batches vary dramatically in their purity, each shot is a game of Russian roulette. Dealers

the Times says there's a heroin epidemic, Malone thinks, which is only an epidemic of course because now white people are dying. Whites started to get opium-based pills from their physicians: oxycodone, vicodin... But, it was expensive and doctors were reluctant to prescribe too much for exactly the fear of addiction. So the white folks went to the open market and the pills became a street drug. It was all very nice and civilized until the Sinoloa cartel down in Mexico made a corporate decision that it could undersell the big American pharmaceutical companies by raising production of its heroin thereby reducing price. As an incentive, they also increased its potency. The addicted white Americans found that Mexican ... heroin was cheaper and stronger than the pills, and started shooting it into their veins and overdosing. Malone literally saw it happening. He and his team busted more bridge-and-tunnel junkies, suburban housewives and upper Eastside madonnas than they could count....

The week after my happy Tin Man 5k, I learned that a friend had died of a heroin overdose, possibly a suicide. He and I had attended the same weekly recovery group for years. His death stunned everyone who knew him, myself included. A few days later, a friend’s boss shot himself in the parking lot of a nearby police department. Both events rattled me. While mourning the losses, I worried the knives in the kitchen drawer might jump out and stab me. I asked Ed to hold me. “I need to tie myself to the planet, so I don’t spin off.

Portugal, which decriminalized all drugs, including cocaine and heroin, in 2001, adding housing, food, and job assistance—and now has the lowest drug-use rate in the European Union, along with significantly lowered rates of drug-related HIV and overdose deaths. In Portugal, the resources that were once devoted to prosecuting and imprisoning drug addicts were funneled into treatment instead.

But I'd come to realize that taking space from Jace made me feel better about myself, not worse. The pressure I carried to be the girl he wanted was overwhelming and unattainable. I'd broken every part of me trying to fit into that pretty, perfect mold. I'd lost sight of who I was just so he could glance in my direction for one second - because that one second was my heroin. And he watched me overdose.

In racially mixed open-air drug markets, black dealers were far more likely to be arrested than whites, even though white dealers were present and visible. And the department focused overwhelmingly on crack—the one drug in Seattle more likely to be sold by African Americans—despite the fact that local hospital records indicated that overdose deaths involving heroin were more numerous than all overdose deaths for crack and powder cocaine combined. Local

Completely confused as to who the real criminals were in this case, the jury had voted to wash their hands of everybody and they let him off. That had been the meaning of the conversation I'd had with him that afternoon, but I hadn't understood what was happening at all. There were many moments in the Vine like that one—where you might think today was yesterday, and yesterday was tomorrow, and so on. Because we all believed we were tragic, and we drank. We had that helpless, destined feeling. We would die with handcuffs on. We would be put a stop to, and it wouldn't be our fault. So we imagined. And yet we were always being found innocent for ridiculous reasons. ...We bought heroin with the money and split the heroin down the middle. Then he went looking for his girlfriend, and I went looking for mine, knowing that when there were drugs around, she surrendered. But I was in a bad condition—drunk, and having missed a night's sleep. As soon as the stuff entered my system, I passed out. Two hours went by without my noticing. I felt I'd only blinked my eyes, but when I opened them my girlfriend and a Mexican neighbor were working on me, doing everything they could to bring me back. The Mexican was saying, "There, he's coming around now." We lived in a tiny, dirty apartment. When I realized how long I'd been out and how close I'd come to leaving it forever, our little home seemed to glitter like cheap jewelry. I was overjoyed not to be dead. Generally the closest I ever came to wondering about the meaning of it all was to consider that I must be the victim of a joke. There was no touching the hem of mystery, no little occasion when any of us thought—well, speaking for myself only, I suppose— that our lungs were filled with light, or anything like that. I had a moment's glory that night, though. I was certain I was here in this world because I couldn't tolerate any other place. As for Hotel, who was in exactly the same shape I was and carrying just as much heroin, but who didn't have to share it with his girlfriend, because he couldn't find her that day: he took himself to a rooming house down at the end of Iowa Avenue, and he overdosed, too. He went into a deep sleep, and to the others there he looked quite dead. The people with him, all friends of ours, monitored his breathing by holding a pocket mirror under his nostrils from time to time, making sure that points of mist appeared on the glass. But after a while they forgot about him, and his breath failed without anybody's noticing. He simply went under. He died. I am still alive.

It’s more complicated, too, knowing that people who call themselves feminists and social-rights activists might turn their backs on the ones who need them: Women who are desperate to be loved, so they sleep with too many men. Men who are snorting pills or shooting up heroin or some mysterious opiate concoction, because being alive hurts so much, it is worth it to risk overdose and disease and losing everything you have, everyone who loves you, to escape the hell inside you, even for just a few hours. Poor people without the wherewithal to stop smoking or stop burning their trash by the creek, who would rather die in a coal mine than get free health care.

It wasn’t the first time Alabama had overdosed, but it had been the scariest. Though she would never tell Richie this, there had been a moment during the experience—impossible to say for how long; could have been a minute, could have been an hour—when she had died. At least, that’s how it had felt after she had clawed her way back from it. Death didn’t scare Alabama; in fact, sometimes, part of her yearned for it. What terrified her was how lonely she had felt, lost in oblivion. No one had greeted her at the borders of another realm, because that other realm was just another lie in a world full of them. Instead, there had been nothing at all in every direction, forever. Perfect darkness. The absence of everything.

In 2012, the U.S. government estimated that 660,000 Americans were using heroin and more than 3,000 dying of it every year because Mexico was boosting the supply.22 About a quarter of all people who try heroin will become dependent on it, according to government estimates,23 and the precise appeal of methamphetamine to Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel was that it was “ragingly addictive,” according to the New York Times.24 Forbes reports that there is “little doubt” that the heroin that killed Philip Seymour Hoffman came from Mexico.25 These aren’t “big city” problems: They’re Mexico-is-on-our-border problems. Missouri had 18 heroin overdose deaths in 2001; ten years later, there were 245.26 Heroin deaths in Minnesota shot from 3 to 98 between 1999 and 2013.27 Michigan saw fatal heroin overdoses surge from a few dozen a year in 2002 to more than 100 a year starting in 2009.28 In just one year, heroin-related fatalities in Connecticut nearly doubled, to 257 in 2013.29 Between 2007 and 2012, heroin use in the United States is estimated to have increased by almost 80 percent.30 And that’s just heroin. More than 40,000 Americans were killed from all illegal drug use in 2010, surpassing car accidents and shootings as a cause of death.31 The addicts who die may be the lucky ones. In 2001, a seventeen-year-old boy in New Jersey who scored 700 on the math SAT took a heroin overdose that left him unable to stand, walk, or bathe himself. His mother, a globetrotting executive with Citibank, was forced to quit her job and become his full-time caretaker. After a year of hospitalization and more than a decade of therapy, he still needs his mother to carry him to the toilet. He has no recollection of taking an overdose, but packets of heroin and marijuana were found stored in a secret compartment in his bedroom.32

When I was a young lad, we knew what we could want and how to get it, and we knew we'd have something to show for it at the end of the day. A crop, or a flock, or a house, or a family. There's great strength in that. Now there's too many things you're told to want, there's now ay to get them all, and once you're done trying, what have you got to show for it at the end? You've made a buncha phone calls selling electricity plans, maybe, or had a buncha meetings about nothing; you've got your hole offa some bitta fluff you met on the internet, got yourself some likes on the aul' YouTube. Nothing you can put your hands on. The women do be grand anyway; they're adaptable. But the young men don't know what to be doing with themselves at all. There's a few of them, like Fergal O'Connor who you met there, that keep their feet on the ground regardless. The rest are hanging themselves, or they're getting drunk and driving into ditches, or they're overdosing on the aul' heroin, or they're packing their bags.

more people die from prescription drug overdoses than from heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamine drug use combined.

Sometimes it feels like there just aren’t enough hours in a day to get everything done. So instead of trying to make your day longer, why not make your life longer by an extra two years? That’s about how long your life span may be increased by eating nuts regularly—one handful (or about 30 grams) five or more days a week.1 Just that one simple and delicious act alone may extend your life. The Global Burden of Disease Study calculated that not eating enough nuts and seeds was the third-leading dietary risk factor for death and disability in the world, killing more people than processed meat consumption. Insufficient nut and seed intake is thought to lead to the deaths of millions of people every year, fifteen times more than all those who die from overdoses of heroin, crack cocaine, and all other illicit drugs combined.2

While we certainly cannot ignore the threat of terror, we must also recognize that the perception of threat far outweighs the actual level of danger. Many more people are destined to die in this country from suicide, highway accidents, heroin overdoses, domestic gun violence, and so on. Our reactive conditioned brain is now threatening not only our capacity to break out of suffering at an individual level, but when whole countries and civilizations act reactively, our survival as a species may be threatened. So we either need to spiritually evolve or we may be relegated to the “discard” pile of evolution.

I wanted to take her like a drug. All at once, in one gulp. I wanted to overdose on her like cocaine, and heroin, and crack, knowing the destruction I was willingly inhaling into my body.

If you ask me, the church needs a whole lot more grace addicts because grace has a name, and the name is Jesus. There are people in any church who will drive to the worst part of the city and risk their well-being to get a harmful fix. We see these stories in the news. These beautiful, smart, amazing kids in our city end up dead on the side of the road from a heroin overdose. Housewives are living double lives—alive at church, but dead in their addictions to painkillers. Businessmen are living lives of shame—present at a men’s breakfast at their church, but harboring infidelity on the side. It doesn’t matter who you are or where you come from, people will do the craziest things to get their drugs. The answer to all this is to become addicted to Jesus.

the creator and overseer of the universe existed or not didn’t matter. He was all she had left, the only one she could talk to. Please, she began her heartfelt prayer, let this be the day Brian overdoses on heroin. Please, oh please, your divineness, let Brian, spawn of the devil, wake up today, walk outside, and be the instantaneous recipient of a stray bullet, the fatal result of a

Heavy drug and alcohol use degrades the health of homeless people. Drug overdose is the leading cause of death among the homeless.44 Skin infections and disease are more common due to injecting drugs like heroin and meth. Respiratory diseases are common due to smoking tobacco, crack, heroin, fentanyl, and meth.45 And about two-thirds of the time of hospital emergency departments in San Francisco is spent serving the homeless.46 Social

No state in America has taken more aggressive action to reduce the public’s exposure to chemicals, and to secondhand smoke, than California. California banned the sale of flavored tobacco, because it appeals to children, and the use of smokeless tobacco in the state’s five professional baseball stadiums. It prohibited the use of e-cigarettes in government and private workplaces, restaurants, bars, and casinos. San Francisco in late 2020 banned cigarette smoking in apartments.8 In the fall of 2020, California outlawed companies from using in cosmetics, shampoos, and other personal care products twenty-four chemicals it had deemed dangerous.9 And yet breathing secondhand smoke and being exposed to trace chemicals in your shampoo are hardly sufficient to kill. By contrast, hard drug use is both a necessary and sufficient cause to kill, as the 93,000 overdose and drug poisoning deaths of 2020 show. And yet, where the governments of San Francisco, California, and other progressive cities and states stress the remote dangers of cosmetics, pesticides, and secondhand smoke, they downplay the immediate dangers of hard drugs including fentanyl. In 2020, San Francisco even paid for two billboards promoting the safe use of heroin and fentanyl, which had been created by the Harm Reduction Coalition. The first had a picture of an older African American man smiling. The headline read, “Change it up. Injecting drugs has the highest risk of overdose, so consider snorting or smoking instead.” The second billboard’s photograph was of a racially diverse group of people at a party smiling and laughing. The headline read, “Try not to use alone. Do it with friends. Use with people and take turns.”10 When I asked Kristen Marshall of the Harm Reduction Coalition, which oversees San Francisco’s overdose prevention strategy, about the threat posed by fentanyl, she said, “People use it safely all the time. This narrative that gets it labeled as an insane poison where you touch it and die—that’s not how drugs work. It’s not cyanide. It’s not uranium. It’s just a synthetic opioid, but one that’s on an unregulated market.

Despite skyrocketing overdose death rates, none of the country’s leading advocates of harm reduction are rethinking their advocacy of decriminalization and harm reduction. Instead they focus on things like promoting Narcan. “It’s really about getting emergency responders to carry [naloxone/Narcan],” said Ethan. “The guy who was a real pioneer in all of this was a guy named Dan Bigg out of Chicago. He really took this issue by the horns in the early 2000s.” What happened to him? “He himself died of an overdose a few years ago,” said Ethan. Bigg’s death in 2018 attracted national media attention. “The substances found in his body included heroin, two benzodiazepines . . . methadone, fentanyl, and acetyl fentanyl,” wrote a journalist for Vice. “The cause of Bigg’s death, however, in no way repudiates the cause to which he devoted his life.”24 Leaders of the Harm Reduction Coalition agreed. “We can’t end overdoses until we end poverty,” said Kristen Marshall, “until we end racism, and until we end homelessness.

The CSA regulates most of the common drugs you’ve probably heard of, such as marijuana, methamphetamine, cocaine, LSD, heroin, ecstasy, oxycodone, steroids, codeine, and many more. However, not all drugs fall under the purview of the CSA—alcohol and tobacco are curiously exempt from its scope, an outcome that most attribute to successful political lobbying. The CSA categorizes drugs hierarchically into one of five “Schedules” based on their potential for abuse and medical value. Schedule 1 drugs are viewed as the most dangerous, having the highest potential for abuse and lowest medical value, whereas those in Schedule 5 are considered the least dangerous. The higher a drug ranks in the scheduling hierarchy, the more restrictions and regulations apply. Bewildering to many, marijuana is classified as a Schedule 1 drug, in the same category as heroin. Perhaps even more shocking, cocaine and methamphetamine are listed one step below in Schedule 2. Yes, the CSA actually classifies meth as less problematic than marijuana, despite the fact that thousands of people overdose from meth each year and effectively zero die from marijuana.

There was always a chance somebody would say, “Well, he died. The cat took an O.D.,” an overdose of heroin; or he was pushed out of a window trying to rob somebody’s apartment, or shot five times trying to stick up a place to get some money for drugs. Drugs were killing just about everybody off in one way or another. It had taken over the neighborhood, the entire community. I didn’t know of one family in Harlem with three or more kids between the ages of fourteen and nineteen in which at least one of them wasn’t on drugs. This was just how it was.

But Archer reached into the box, looking resigned, and pulled out a replica black '67 Impala... just like Steele's car that we'd driven to the fight and the party. Just like the one that I'd been stuffed into the trunk of when I was overdosing on a drug ten times more lethal than heroin. "Let me guess," I drawled—or tried to because my voice was still all rough and painful, "there’s something in the trunk, isn’t there?

The pressure I carried to be the girl he wanted was overwhelming and unattainable. I’d broken every part of me trying to fit into that pretty, perfect mold. I’d lost sight of who I was just so he could glance in my direction for one second – because that one second was my heroin. And he watched me overdose.

Every 19 minutes, someone dies from a prescription painkiller overdose. In fact, the number of painkiller overdose deaths now exceeds the number of deaths from heroin and cocaine combined.

Thousands are killed and injured every year by teenagers driving too fast or under the influence of drugs and drink . . .others are killing [themselves] with alcohol or heroin overdoses.

This is a particular problem in the U.S., which makes up less than 5% of the global population but consumes 80% of the world’s supply of opioid prescription drugs.4 By 2012, 15,000 Americans were dying each year from prescription pill overdoses, more than from heroin and cocaine combined.5 In 2013, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) named painkiller addictions the worst drug epidemic in U.S. history.

Jessica was twelve years old in September 1993—twenty-four years after the Manson murders, five years after Hillel Slovak died of a heroin overdose, seven months before Kurt Cobain shot himself in the head, and three weeks before a man with a knife kidnapped Polly Klaas at a sleepover in Petaluma, California.

Four years since he overdosed on the heroin that she provided.

The guy who was a real pioneer in all of this was a guy named Dan Bigg out of Chicago. He really took this issue by the horns in the early 2000s.” What happened to him? “He himself died of an overdose a few years ago,” said Ethan. Bigg’s death in 2018 attracted national media attention. “The substances found in his body included heroin, two benzodiazepines . . . methadone, fentanyl, and acetyl fentanyl,” wrote a journalist for Vice. “The cause of Bigg’s death, however, in no way repudiates the cause to which he devoted his life.”24 Leaders of the Harm Reduction Coalition agreed. “We can’t end overdoses until we end poverty,” said Kristen Marshall, “until we end racism, and until we end homelessness.”25 For several years in the early 2010s, a UCLA sociologist named Neil Gong studied two very different drug treatment programs in larger Los Angeles.

At a certain point, her doctors caught on to her and she was struggling to access enough black-market OxyContin, so she lapsed back into using heroin. One night, she bought a batch that, unbeknownst to her, was actually fentanyl, and she overdosed.

I was well aware this wasn’t a word most lethal operatives like myself would use, but I had always marched to the beat of my own drummer. “You paint quite the scary picture, Professor,” I continued, raising my eyebrows. “Why do I have the feeling this isn’t the first time you’ve thought about this?” Singh smiled. “Not quite the first time, no,” she replied. “I guess I have gone into lecture mode. And it’s a lot to absorb. So let me wind this down. The bottom line is that the rates of substance and behavioral addictions have skyrocketed. Our levels of stress and neurosis have too. The furious pace of our advancements, and the toxicities and manipulations I just described, are outstripping our psyches, which were evolved for a simpler existence.” “Do you have statistics on the extent of the problem?” asked Ashley. “It’s impossible to really get your arms around,” replied Singh, “but I’ll try. In 1980, fewer than three thousand Americans died of a drug overdose. By 2021 that number had grown to over a hundred thousand. More than thirty-fold! And it’s only grown since then. “And these are just the mortality stats. Many times this number are addicts. Estimates vary pretty widely, but I can give you numbers that I believe to be accurate. Fifteen to twenty million Americans are addicted to alcohol. Over twenty-five million suffer from nicotine dependence. Many millions more are addicted to cocaine, or heroin, or meth, or fentanyl—which is a hundred times stronger than morphine—or an ever-growing number of other substances. Millions more are addicted to gambling. Or online shopping. Or porn.” Singh frowned deeply. “When it comes to the internet, cell phones, and other behavioral addictions, the numbers are truly immense. Probably half the population. The average smart phone user now spends over three hours a day on this device. And when it comes to our kids, the rate of phone addiction is even higher. Much higher. In some ways, it’s nearly universal. “Meanwhile, many parents insist their children keep this addiction device with them at all times. They’re thrilled to be able to reach their kids every single second of their lives, and track their every movement.” There was a long, stunned silence in the room. “I could go on for days,” said Singh finally. “But I think that gives you some sense of what we’re currently facing as a society.” I tried to think of something humorous to say. Something to lighten the somber mood, which was my instinctive reaction when things got depressing.  But in this case, I had nothing. Singh had called the current situation a crisis. But even this loaded term couldn’t begin to do it justice.

While successful young business people sipped their fine wine at $200 a bottle in some fancy restaurant in San Francisco, poor children in Flint, Michigan, were drinking lead-poisoned water, which caused brain damage. While Wall Street executives received millions in bonuses, minimum-wage workers in West Virginia were struggling with opioid addiction or dying of heroin overdoses. While CEOs of large corporations retired in gated communities in Arizona, half of older workers in our country had nothing in the bank as they faced retirement. Meanwhile, as the very rich got much richer while almost everybody else became poorer, the political system became more and more corrupt.

The cause of death is astounding, however. You’ll be surprised when you hear it. The man didn’t die as a result of his injuries.’ ‘Surprise me, Doctor. I’m waiting.’ ‘Heroin,’ Dr Schwartz said simply. ‘Heroin?’ ‘Respiratory failure, caused by an overdose of diacetylmorphine; that is, heroin.’ ‘The cough medicine?’ Schwartz nodded. ‘Cough tablets for morphine addicts. It used to be prescribed as an anti-asthmatic. Until people realised it was addictive.

A lot of heroin overdose isn’t overdose at all. It’s the same dose as normal, but taken in an unfamiliar setting, it overrides the body’s homeostatic

The information was far from comprehensive.  Inside the file was a polaroid that looked like it had been taken exactly from where Jamie was sitting. She held it up and matched the outline of the door in front of her to the picture in her hand. In the middle of it was Oliver Hammond. He looked dishevelled and gaunt. Hungry was the word that came to mind. His skin looked colourless and there were grazes and scabs hanging from his cheeks. The heroin scratch. That’s what her dad used to call it. When addicts pawed at their faces. His hair was matted and his eyes sunken, but there was no mistaking him.  Jamie pulled the photo out from under the paperclip and went through the rest of the file.  There was a roughly photocopied form that looked like it had been put together in a spreadsheet. It had been filled in by hand. Jamie closed her eyes and recalled the handwriting on the sign outside. It was different. Oliver must have filled it in himself.  It gave his name, date of birth, emergency contact, and blood type. Though there was nothing filled in under address. It also had two check-boxes under the words ‘Naloxone Allergy?’, and he’d checked ‘no’. Naloxone was used to treat heroin overdoses. There were also questions — ‘How long has it been since you maintained a permanent residence?’, ‘Do your family know where you are?’. He’d written ‘A year’ and ‘No’ for those two. Then came the personal questions. ‘What is your sexual orientation?’, ‘Are you sexually active?’, ‘How many sexual partners have you had in the last 12 months?’, ‘Have you been recently checked for sexually transmitted diseases?’, ‘Have you been diagnosed with any transmittable diseases?’, ‘Are they bloodborne?’. He’d written ‘Straight’, ‘Yes’, ‘1’, ‘No’, ‘No’, and ‘No’. So he’d only been with one girl, and he hadn’t caught anything.

But deaths involving prescription narcotics continued to mount, until the trend was impossible to dismiss. Overdose deaths involving prescription opioids quadrupled between 1999 and 2007, from about three thousand to twelve thousand per year. By contrast, cocaine killed about six thousand users in 2007, heroin about two thousand. Prescription narcotics were now killing more Americans than all illegal drugs combined. In

In 1985, an ABC News poll showed that 60 percent of parents worried that their children might be victimized. To this day, many parents warn their children not to eat any snacks that aren’t prepackaged. This is a sad story: a family holiday sullied by bad people who, inexplicably, wish to harm children. But in 1985 the story took a strange twist. Researchers discovered something shocking about the candy-tampering epidemic: It was a myth. The researchers, sociologists Joel Best and Gerald Horiuchi, studied every reported Halloween incident since 1958. They found no instances where strangers caused children life-threatening harm on Halloween by tampering with their candy. Two children did die on Halloween, but their deaths weren’t caused by strangers. A five-year-old boy found his uncle’s heroin stash and overdosed. His relatives initially tried to cover their tracks by sprinkling heroin on his candy. In another case, a father, hoping to collect on an insurance settlement, caused the death of his own son by contaminating his candy with cyanide. In other words, the best social science evidence reveals that taking candy from strangers is perfectly okay. It’s your family you should worry about.

The pressure I carried to be the girl he wanted was overwhelming and unattainable. I’d broken every part of me trying to fit into that pretty, perfect mould. I’d lost sight of who I was just so he could glance in my direction for one second – because that one second was my heroin. And he watched me overdose.

It occurred to me often that to be a user in New York was to lay oneself open to a whole system of threats, not only legal; for my mind always came back as I looked down at the little heap of whitish powder to wonder what an analyst would find there. The horse is cut with all manner of adulterous powders, until, at the average user's end, there remains 3% heroin. You can usually count on 3%. But there are times when codeine or even a barbiturate is substituted for the real thing. . . so long as they stun you, they calculate. And so you look to cop again, at once, and so it goes on. To administer an overdose a pusher has only substantially to raise the percentage of heroin in what he gives you. When you turn blue your friends try to bring you round and if they cannot they discuss how to have your body discovered elsewhere, away from their pad so as not to bring the heat on them. An occasional corpse is found in a parking lot.

The toxicology report on Bobby Ward took four months to reach my desk. During those four months, Mrs. Ward called me twice a week or more. Some weeks she called every single day. She had many theories about Bobby’s death, none of them involving drugs. “He didn’t use drugs,” she kept insisting, despite my telling her, every time we spoke, that the physical findings I saw on the autopsy pointed, strongly, to an overdose. “What about the sushi?” she asked me during one call. “People die from bad sushi all the time. He had sushi that day. Did you test the sushi in his stomach?” I tried to assert my firm professional opinion that people do not die from bad sushi all the time. In my experience people never die from bad sushi. A huge load of heroin, yes; bad sushi, no. “What about the beer? He was drinking beer with the sushi—it could have been poisonous. Maybe the beer made the bad sushi more dangerous!” Most every day for four months Mrs. Ward had a new theory of what did Bobby in: misuse of a friend’s asthma medication, anthrax (he’d died around the time of the October 2001 anthrax-letters terrorist attacks, so this was a hot topic at the time), allergic alveolitis, dust mites, iterations of the bad sushi theory over and over again. Then, just after Christmas, the toxicology report finally arrived. It showed Robert Ward had taken a lethal concoction of heroin, cocaine, and the tranquilizer diazepam.