Illicit heroin

Most opiate detoxes involve people coming off heroin on their own.
Detoxing on illicit heroin may mean that:

• you don’t have to see a doctor;
• you don’t have to go to a drug service;
• you don’t have to go into hospital;
• controlling a reducing dose can be very difficult if not impossible
  (especially if you’re finding your heroin habit hard to manage);
• you will have to see other opiate users to score;
• if you have a stock it can be very difficult to make it last;
• variations in purity may mean you can’t be sure what dose you are taking; and
• you can still get busted.

If you are planning to come straight off heroin without taking anything else, things that might help are:

• cutting down as much as you can in the run-up to your detox;
• switching to smoking it, if you are an injector;
• expecting to feel bad, and not sleep well, for at least a fortnight
  and possibly much longer;
• picking a time and place when you will use heroin for the last time; and
• remembering that once you’ve gone 24 hours without any opiate you will be prolonging the physical withdrawals if you use again.