Addict: Heroin hardest to get off

Editor’s note: This is the final part of a two-part series on heroin. Today’s article is an interview with a longtime drug addict who talks about what being addicted to heroin is like.

DAVE MOSIER/independent editor

When it comes to drugs, Van Wert resident Joey Moore has seen it all – and done it all. A crack addict for 16 years, although now clean for two years, the 30-year-old Moore has also taken a variety of prescription drugs, including Oxycontin, and was also on meth for awhile.

But nothing compares to heroin, he says, when it comes to its addictiveness and the withdrawal symptoms you have to overcome to get off the drug.

That’s also one of the reasons the drug is gaining a big foothold in the Van Wert community.

“When I first did heroin, it was like ‘now I know why people shoot up heroin’,” Moore said of the first time he injected the drug into his system. “It’s the highest you ever get.”

The problem, he added, is that first high is the best you’ll ever have on heroin.

“I spent the next week chasing that first high, but never got there again,” Moore said, adding that he progressed from there to just trying to keep from feeling sick from withdrawal symptoms.

“It’s the worst sickness you’ll ever have,” the longtime drug addict said. “Heroin ain’t no joke, man, it’s bad.”

That’s coming from a guy who lived on the streets as a crack addict and ate out of dumpsters.

“You feel like your bones are breaking, like when you’re getting the flu, but 10 times worse,” Moore said of heroin’s withdrawal symptoms. “Your muscles hurt, your back hurts, you feel awful.”

Moore credits Van Wert Police detectives Jeff Blackmore and Mike Freeman for turning his life around.

“Those two really saved my life,” he said, adding that, because of the two officers, he feels he has a real life again. “When I was on heroin, I had zero dollars; now I have a truck, money in the bank and I got my kid back.”

It wasn’t easy, though, for a guy who has spent more than six years in prison and jail because of his drug addictions: either for possession, drug trafficking or charges related to stealing money to buy drugs, such as receiving stolen property.

“You become a slave to heroin,” Moore added. “You don’t use heroin, you become heroin. It gets so bad, you’ll sell the meat in your freezer to a dealer to get the drug.”

Moore said he knows people who have sold their kids’ diapers and forced their wives to prostitute themselves all to get enough heroin for the next fix.

“You spend your life chasing this drug,” he added.

As a recovering addict – he’s been off the drug for six months now by using methadone instead – Moore knows all the tricks addicts use to get heroin and then use and/or sell the drug.

“Everybody’s selling heroin,” he said. “They go to Dayton and buy a gram for $100 and come back here and make $450 on that gram.”

After buying the drug in Dayton, dealers go to the local Walmart and buy vitamin capsules, take out the vitamins, and put either powder or tar heroin into the capsules for sale to users. Addicts shooting up the drug also take the Walmart route to get syringes, buying diabetic syringes from the store pharmacy.

“You just have to sign your name to get them,” Moore said, adding that some addicts also go to pain clinics or local doctors complaining of back pain and other painful ailments to get prescriptions for pain medication, which they then sell to buy heroin.

“Doctors and clinics need to tighten up their act and stop giving painkillers to everybody,” the recovering addict noted.

The heroin problem has become so bad in Van Wert, Moore said, that it’s now harder to find other drugs here. “The people who were selling weed ain’t selling weed any more, they’re selling heroin; the people who were selling dope are selling heroin,” he added.

Trying to get off heroin is harder than any other drug, Moore said, because it makes you think you can’t beat it.

“Heroin gives you this interpretation that it’s impossible to get past it,” he explained, adding, “It is possible to get past it and it’s well worth it; you get your natural happiness back … you get your life back.”

After six months off the drug, Moore can now hold down a job – something he couldn’t do when he was on heroin and other drugs. “When you’re dope sick, you’re not going to make it to work,” Moore explained.

He’s also paying his rent – a first in a long time – and working on his other bills.

Moore is a big believer in methadone. While the drug gets a bad rap sometimes, Moore said he feels it’s a good tool to beat heroin if a person gives it an honest try and doesn’t just use it as a substitute for a heroin high. Suboxone treatment is also highly touted as a way to get off heroin, but is extremely expensive.

The problem with methadone, though, is the nearest clinic is in Fort Wayne, Ind., which causes a problem for addicts who don’t have reliable transportation.

“We really need a methadone clinic here in Van Wert,” Moore said, adding that he hopes some local agency will look at providing one here. “I think a lot of people would try methadone if we had a clinic here.”

And compared to what it costs to maintain a heroin habit, Moore said methadone is a no-brainer. “If you can find $300 a day for heroin, you can find $13 for methadone,” he added.

Moore also said he thinks local police need more money and a task force to combat the heroin problem.

Unfortunately, drug laws are fairly lenient, he added, noting that many of those arrested for heroin possession or trafficking either request treatment in lieu of conviction – which they usually violate – or are placed on community control. Some are eventually given prison time, when all else fails, but that often is just a few months.

But even if it takes going to prison, Moore said those using heroin need to get off the drug, while they still can.

He also readily admits, though, that even prison sometimes isn’t enough to get some people away from the drug. “I know guys who work out while in prison to get their veins strong so they can shoot up again when they get out,” Moore said.

Moore said he isn’t one of those. He’s scared of the drug. “I don’t want anything to do with it,” he said of heroin, adding that he now avoids old friends he used to get high with.

“I’ve finally got a real life again, and I don’t want to lose it,” Moore said with conviction.