Him, the Pain, and the Drug

I listen to the paramedics on my scanner responding to OD's multiple times daily just here in Schenectady and it is at least 90% heroine. Every now and then the intentional od is from medication. I can't understand how anyone does it the first time, especially knowing how many people die from it.
Women too... I don't get it.
JJ

Those in chronic pain every moment of the day do desperate things for a few moments of normal. Then the drug and the ritual of loading that needle take over.

I understand that after the addiction, but before the first injection, there had to be a moment of clarity. I have been as depressed and hopeless as anyone I've known, offered all sorts of drugs but rejected them all. One time I was in the hospital in terrible pain so they gave me morphine. It stopped the pain but tore my body completely away from my soul and I could feel nothing at all. It was terrifying. I thought I was dead. I remember telling the nurse that I thought my heart had stopped beating. I have an unusual condition that causes me to hear my pulse through blood vessels in my ears. I heard no heart beat but I could still hear her telling me if my heart had stopped I wouldn't know or be able to tell her so. That did not ease my anxiety. I know that is the sensation those using heroine desire but I can't imaging wanting to feel nothing. My pain reminds me I'm alive and makes me want to co-exist with it. Without pain there is nothing to measure the freedom from it. I think the pain most are using heroine to escape from is pain of the mind, which can seem worse than physical pain, but medication can't cure that kind of pain, it just makes it fall asleep until the next fix. Therein lies the endless spiral downward to death, and if there is an afterlife, it really is an endless spiral down...  
JJ