We summarize the results of the heroine study

Some time ago, we launched a study of a heroine that stretched out to five parts: we studied how much a role this substance plays in a shadow economy, how state and public rhetoric was formed in this area, why this drug was glamorous, how the state was fighting and what the relatives of drug addicts feel. Now the time has come to summarize and summarize what we learned, including thanks to our readers.

When we started this study, we were guided by the same stereotypes as most of our readers: heroin is a substance that remains somewhere deep in the 1990s, an absolutely marginal drug that gave way to others. Our first text from this series, dedicated to the TEO, which spoke about its many years of experience in using heroin, at the same time showed: such heroes should be somewhere else, and the topic itself remains taboo and painful for many.

Here are the simple figures that the UN Drugs Office leads to our introductory material to the chapter regarding the situation with heroin in the world:

- the production of opium from which heroin is made over the past two years has grown by 65 % - up to 10,500 tons per year; This is still an important part of the shadow economy, which gives earnings and workplaces to farmers in poor countries and further along the chain;

-In 2018, 76 % of the total number of deaths after drug use also occurred due to opioids -semi-synthetic drugs from opium: heroin and disomorphine.

Russia remains the leader in the consumption of heroin in Eastern Europe, this drug is still popular in a darknut along with new psychoactive substances.

At the same time, a large space and direction of the study gave a reaction to the text about the feasibility study, which was deleted at the request of Roskomnadzor. We analyzed all the comments left on the Samizdat website and in its social networks regarding the topic we have chosen, and saw that the first and main topic that users say is the stigmatization of heroin -dependent. Many commentators - that is online, that in personal conversations with the authors of the study, the editors of Samizdat - admitted that they did not want to see and hear “On Torchi” and consider stories about heroin -dependent propaganda of their lifestyle. However, in the same discussion there was an important direction and a source of information, which we will talk about below.

In the meantime, at this stage, we found that this separation of rhetoric is inherent not only to observers and those who lived with the drug addict or was himself, but also to those who are designed to save them. So, we went to study the Russian culture of rehabilitation centers, due to which it became partly clear that it largely inherited a repressive model adopted in the Soviet Union in the framework of the so -called punitive psychiatry, which ultimately led to the formation of Stigma. As for global practice, the language of hatred that they speak of drug addicts was largely formed by the efforts of the state, from top to bottom: at different times they became a symbol and a way to solve geopolitical issues or for individual political figures - to earn additional popularity among voters. The author of one of the texts in this chapter, Yegor Sennikov, discussing the war with the drugs that the United States unleashed, made two interesting observations. First: at some point, American politicians became hostages of their own rhetoric, calling attempts to solve a rather delicate and multi-component problem of drug addiction and drug trafficking precisely the war, in fact, when it was instantly on it. Second: this war was almost completely naught after the first place as a global threat came terrorism. As politics and statesmen were more actively included in the new agenda, the attitude to work with drug addicts as a whole began to be reviewed towards liberalization, although not final.

As stated in the same UN report, the image of the heroin -dependent in the mass consciousness is very different from the real one: the inhabitants imagine a person who is on the sidelines of life, while among consumers there are many teenagers from prosperous families, housewives, managers and many others. This theory was partly confirmed by the letters that the editors of Samizdat began to receive: there were many functional drug addicts among the correspondents. Some have used heroin for fifteen years, either taking breaks, or carefully monitoring their health. In one of the letters, his author told how he managed to combine heroin dependence with study at the university and work in gloss, which ultimately led him to business, to his own house outside the city and to provide himself and three children without the help of partners. Successful career and complete integration into society, as shown by the third chapter of our study dedicated to the role of heroin in Bohemia, is not uncommon.

In the fourth chapter, we again returned to the role of the state in the formation of anti -drug policy. It is interesting that it is opened by a monologue of quite liberal, by the standards of this department, a former FSKN employee, to whom, however, it is worthwhile to take a closer look to understand how those who fight drug addiction actually think. According to his ideas, it is possible to distract potential drug users from the same heroin by promoting a healthy lifestyle, active involvement in cultural and sporting events. Such ways of combating drug addiction, by the way, turned out to be a fairly popular and important direction in Russia: almost everyone who studied at the Russian school in the 1990s can recall how terrible stories were told in the dangers of drugs and showed extremely naturalistic films. Interestingly, this only more strongly mythologized by heroin as a drug. Even a cursory survey conducted within the editorial office and abroad showed: many still think that he causes instant addiction after one injection (which is actually not so). It seems that a complete awareness of danger can protect from it better than creating a myth around it and intimidation with the help of a criminal code.

A separate (and most difficult) block for us was the stories of relatives of heroin -dependent. Even from the letters that came to the editor, it was evident for which of the potential heroes this topic is most painful: former or existing drug addicts came to contact with fewer reservations and began their communication on average more friendly. It turned out to enter into a dialogue with relatives much longer and more difficult, explaining for a long time that a difficult conversation about the heroine is needed, including so that society knew better about the problem. The leitmotif of this chapter eventually became co -dependence. Studying the stories of those who lived with drug addicts for a long time, we saw how deep in each of them there remains, even if this experience was final. Some heroes are still therapy, others have only come out of it. Interestingly, this part of the audience, which initially reacted to our study negatively, eventually turned out to be the most loyal and grateful.

Having completed the study, we asked our readers to talk about what these publications changed in their heads and what we made us think about. Here is a fragment of one of the letters: “I hope that all these terrible things will go around me and my loved ones. I am very glad that I grew up among other values, among books, with a wonderful mother and grannies who loved me very much. In an ordinary poor family. There were different ones-both quarrels and joy ... And if someday I have children, I will pray that their upbringing and the environment have a good effect on them and they do not think about drugs. ”

Another correspondent said that he had found a lot of acquaintances for himself, although he had never encountered drugs. For ethics reasons, we do not give the details of his letter, but we mention that he belongs to the stigmatized group and the details of his “second life” would not have met understanding from his environment and family. “In fact, I feel like a drug addict, I hide, sometimes I’m lying, and yes - I, damn it, are a master in this,” he writes.

Interestingly, a new global topic leaked out of this study: we regularly received letters that spoke about such a phenomenon as “Khimsex” - unprotected contacts under Mephedron, including group. We united these letters into a separate group with which we are now working and preparing a new text. As it turned out, among those who practice Khimsex, there are many middle -class representatives, and this phenomenon is also directly, according to experts we interviewed, it is associated with all the aggravating problem of the spread of HIV/AIDS beyond the limits of the so -called risk groups.

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The study "Heroin" read