SuckOnThis

Well I'm not saying heroin is healthy but I've heard quite a few times from people in the know that out of all the drugs to be addicted to heroin causes the least amount of physical damage to the body. Not saying anyone should do it, I never have but I've done my share of other things in moderation.

http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/...es/cu/cu4.html

In all, 861 male addicts--- 80 percent of them addicted to heroin and the others to morphine or other opiates--- participated in various phases of this study. Most of them were between twenty and forty years of age. They came to the hospital more or less voluntarily (in some cases, no doubt, to escape arrest) for the stated purpose of being "cured." Most of them were criminals and most of them were poor; then as now, affluent addicts did not go to a city hospital for treatment. Here is the broad general conclusion which Dr. Light and his associates reached:

The study shows that morphine addiction is not characterized by physical deterioration or impairment of physical fitness aside from the addiction per se. There is no evidence of change in the circulatory, hepatic, renal or endocrine functions. When it is considered that these subjects had been addicted for at least five years, some of them for as long as twenty years, these negative observations are highly significant.

Details of the study were equally striking. For example, the narcotics addict is popularly portrayed as lean, gaunt, emaciated. A subgroup of about 100 addicts out of the 861 in the Philadelphia study was maintained on adequate doses of morphine and intensively examined and tested while thus maintained. Only four of the 100 were grossly underweight --- emaciated. Six of the 100 were grossly overweight--- obese. The group as a whole weighed within two-tenths of one percent of the norm for their height and age, as determined by Metropolitan Life Insurance Company standards. Yet these addicts before hospitalization had been taking on the average 21 grains of morphine or heroin per day 8 --- more than 30 times the usual dose of the New York City street addict in 1971.

The explanation for the weight findings, which could hardly be more normal, is quite simple. The addicts in the Philadelphia study had ready access to both hospital food and hospital morphine. Under these conditions, they ate well and thrived. The emaciated addict usually described in other studies is one who starves himself to save money for black market drugs--- an ordeal he is able to bear more easily because of the tranquilizing effect of the drugs. The Philadelphia study established that addicts eat like anyone else when both food and drugs are readily available.