It feels like you are back in the womb,” Melinda says. “It melts everything away. All you feel is bliss.”
Melinda, now in her 40s, was introduced to heroin by a boyfriend in college. Right away, she loved it. It felt good. Heroin also fit into the story she and her friends had created for themselves. “We idolized artists and writers who experimented with psychedelics and journeying outside the norm,” she says. “I had a rough childhood. Heroin made it feel like all of my problems disappeared.”
Her problems may have disappeared temporarily, but they came roaring back when the drug wore off. This only made her want it more. “I thought heroin was so romantic,” she says, “but it wound up making my life smaller and smaller and smaller.”
