In May of 2010, a British crime drama starring Idris Elba debuted on BBC One. The show, called Luther, featured a dedicated but obsessive, possessed, and sometimes violent Detective Chief Inspector who would stop at nothing when it came to getting the job done.
The first episode was a smashing success as Luther’s nemesis and future unlikely companion, Alice Morgan, was introduced. A brilliant psychopath, Alice is clearly the killer in a double homicide, but due to lack of evidence he cannot arrest her. One of the most famous lines in the first episode occurs when he tries to push a confession by making a wild (but correct) accusation and following it with the line, “I mean, I’m making a… a leap. Well, it’s a small leap… it’s more of a hop, really.”
Why are we discussing a line from a popular British crime show? Because much like Luther’s accusation that was “a leap…well…more of a hop, really,” the distance between pill popping and heroin use in America is shockingly short.
The Unintended Consequences of Prescription Pills
According to CNN, about 50 years ago the average heroin user was a young male who began using at about age 16. Addicts came from low-income lives, and their opiate use usually began with heroin. In 2016, the typical heroin addict comes from the affluent suburbs, is about 23 years of age, and most often starts using heroin as a result of prescription painkillers.
Almost every family has at least one heavy-duty prescription pill taking up space in their medicine cabinets. Xanax is prescribed for anxiety conditions, one of the most common types of disorders afflicting some 40 million American adults. Ritalin is prescribed for ADHD, a condition affecting 11 percent of children ages 4 to 17 (that’s 6.4 million kids). These are just two examples of commonly prescribed pills that trigger tolerance.
When taken as directed, prescriptions generally produce good results. Their danger lies with the youth (and adults) who assume a doctor’s endorsement makes them safe. Grabbing a pill from home is easy, and the value of such pills on the street in dollars is pretty high. But eventually, the supply runs out. If the body has built a tolerance, it craves more. Sooner or later, doctors stop writing scripts and pill poppers often become heroin addicts.
Why Heroin?
It’s cheap. Opiate pain medications cost roughly $1 per milligram. The average 30 to 60-milligram pill therefore costs $30 to $60. A 15 to 30 day supply averages $450 to $1,800 without insurance. The equivalent amount of heroin—a drug capable of easing pain, offering a high, and producing warm fuzzies—sells on the street for one-tenth the price.
The leap from pill popping to heroin isn’t much of a leap. It’s a hop, maybe even a light skip, away. The more aware we are of the dangers of prescription medications, the more likely we are to start curbing the epidemic of heroin users who are attempting to feed a need for a temporary drug that triggered a dependency.