Turns out that the U.K. is currently in the grip of a massive heroin drought, a story that’s been getting quite a bit of play in the British press. Far from being a side effect of successful seizures by the authorities, the drought’s roots are in a fungus that has decimated the most recent poppy crop in Afghanistan, reducing it by half. This deadly drought has sent scores of desperate addicts to the street in pursuit of an elusive fix. Since the drought began, the price of heroin is said to have doubled to 40,000 GPB a kilo, according to Britain’s Serious Organized Crime Agency [SOCA]. The problem has been compounded by strengthening ties between SOCA and the Turkish authorities, leading to increased police pressure on what has long been a key supply route to Great Britain.
On the street, this has translated into vastly inflated prices and intense competition for whatever heroin is making it through. For the vast majority of addicts, there is no heroin to be found at all. Europe’s biggest drug testing company, Concateno, has reported that the number of positive tests for heroin amongst addicts in treatment and the court system has dropped dramatically—from a 48% average to just 22% when the drought started to bite in December of 2010. As the Concateno report says, the figures “indicate a disturbing trend—with the true drug in short supply, users move to more adulterated forms.”
The situation has provoked a deadly health crisis among England’s already ailing addicts. As The Guardian reported back in November, the shortage of heroin has resulted in unscrupulous dealers selling a potentially lethal combination of “a powerful sedative, caffeine and paracetamol” to desperate customers. Many “have become unconscious very soon after injecting or smoking” the concoction while others have reported “vomiting, flu-like symptoms and amnesia.”
In Ireland, authorities have noticed an influx of amateur drug dealers—many of them women—stepping in to fill the void left by the heroin market. Their stock in trade are painkillers and sleeping pills, smuggled in from Pakistan and China via Europe. The unfortunate combination of a country in an economic crisis and the potential easy money to be earned from desperate addicts has lured many people—previously outside of the traditional milieu of addicts and dealers—into the potentially lucrative business of drug dealing.
Far from resulting in more people getting clean, a heroin shortage usually leads to a spike in risky behavior by addicts. The Scottish Drugs Forum has listed factors for increased risk in light of the current situation, including “increased poly-substance use (including benzodiazepines, illicit methadone and alcohol), reduced tolerances, and switching to injecting by people who usually smoke heroin (with additional potential bloodborne virus risks). While it may still be too early to judge how the drought will affect crime rates, we can look toward the experience of the Australians: a report released by the Australian Institute of Criminology showed that rates of homicide, robbery, burglary and motor vehicle theft all declined over a period that coincided with their own heroin drought, which started in 2000.
The last heroin drought that directly affected me—in 2001—was certainly an eye-opening experience.
I had returned from Los Angeles to London in 2001 in an unsuccessful effort to get clean. After the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in October of 2001, the price of heroin suddenly dropped and the quality improved. The word was that the Taliban had released most of their stockpiled opium in preparation for the invasion. However, a few months after the invasion, the supply suddenly dried up. The first clue came when my connection’s phone was turned off without warning. Out on the street, the usual scoring spots around Shepherds Bush, Kings Cross and the West End were full of sick, pensive addicts all forlornly waiting for any kind of deal to materialize. Rip-offs became commonplace as gangs of dealers started selling overpriced, overly-cut heroin, or bags filled with nothing more than gravy granules or chalk dust. One friend of mine found himself viciously razored in East London on the way out of a block of flats. A gang of kids had slashed his face because he refused to hand over a ten-pound bag he had just managed to buy. The veneer of civility on the dope scene vanished overnight.
The methadone clinics were suddenly overflowing. Addicts who were scornful of what was commonly referred to as “the old liquid handcuffs” were suddenly begging to be taken on, but there simply wasn’t room in the clinics to accommodate the new demand. Those lucky enough to have prescriptions were no longer willing to sell a little “juice” on the side. Instead, many heroin addicts resorted to heavily using crack, and for a few months, madness ruled the smack scene in London.
In retrospect, the last heroin drought was over pretty quickly, and by early 2002, supply had returned to normal. In contrast, the shortage that is currently afflicting the U.K. has continued unabated since November of 2010. An interesting difference is the way that the Internet—in particular the phenomenon of blogging by drug users—has shone a light on what is going on with the average user.
The Gledwood Vol 2 blog has evolved since the start of the drought from an often-harrowing account of one anonymous blogger’s struggles with addiction and mental health issues into a forum where users can share their experiences of the current drought. The sense of desperation is obvious. “ANYONE anywhere,” he writes, “tell me what’s happening. How is it, and if it’s bad, how bad—and why you believe that is.”
A random sampling from the hundreds of comments paints a picture of anguish and fear. Once-stable addicts are being thrown into a state of dangerous desperation by this current fluctuation in the drug market. “Hey, Stockport has shite,” one commenter writes. “It’s light brown with no taste to it when run on foil. No gear in it at all. It knocks you out but it’s cut with sleepers or Largactil (Thorazine), or something similar.”
Another anonymous commentator writes, “Put (the heroin) on the foil heated it up and U could taste gear content, but wasn’t happy. Could tell it was cut with something but it still didn’t deter me. 4 hrs later I didn’t have a clue what was happening to me. Yes I have a fear that I may have been poisoned…I woke up at 4.30am rattling, stretching, yawning and trembling really bad…I was panicking and debating whether to stand on the end of the street and call an ambulance.”
Over at his blog Memoirsofaheroinhead, Shane Levine, a writer and heroin addict currently living in France, gave his own account of the 2001 drought. Shane is one of the few “drug bloggers” to openly use his own name, and is something of a star on the scene. His writing is mostly high-grade poetic reminisces of his experiences on the scene, and it’s widely enjoyed by readers outside of the narrow milieu of “drug blogging.” “I crawled into bed and cried,” he writes. “I was ill and so out of sorts I just cried at the world, and for the first time really cursed the fucking war, and even more passionately than the humanitarians, I wanted an end to all the bombing and devastation. But my tears were not for humanity, they were for me. And personal tears are always more genuine than any others. All tears are personal. Really.”
The comments section of Shane’s post on the drought turned into an informal place for people to vent their fears, frustrations and anger at the current situation. As one commenter put it: “When you make the point of all the people sick because of a drought it hits home…no one cares for us ‘lost souls’ as you put it, it is a tragedy that a whole country will feel that kind of pain but we are all kept behind the scenes, ignored, and our silent screams are rarely heard.”
Nobody knows the full story of why the drought started, or can really predict when it will end. As the Concateno head of oral fluids analytical services Peter Akrill grimly noted in his company’s aforementioned report on the drought, “This situation creates a worrying cycle: a shortage in drug availability at street level can mean it is more likely to be cut with higher proportions of other substances as bulking agents. This reduces the active component of the opiate, and a regular user therefore has to ingest a greater quantity of the drug to achieve the same ‘hit.’ From experience, we know that when heroin then becomes available, there is a real and likely chance of increased overdoses and fatalities.” At least now, with the advent of an online culture that allows addicts to break the wall of silence that they have so long endured, the rest of the population can have an opportunity to see this story unfold from their perspective. For the destabilizing effect that it will have on countless addicts—and the general population they live among—the heroin drought is undoubtedly a tragedy. While this ugly situation is set to continue playing out on the streets of the United Kingdom, at least in 2011 it does not have to unfold in the kind of shameful, hushed secrecy that has so often been the addict’s lot.
Tony O’Neill is the author of several novels, including Digging the Vein and Down and Out on Murder Mile and Sick City. He is the co-author of the New York Times bestseller Hero of the Underground (with Jason Peter) and the Los Angeles Times bestseller Neon Angel (with Cherie Currie). He lives in New York with his wife and daughter. O’Neill also interviewed Jerry Stahl and argued against abstinence for The Fix.