Snowflakes (Scholarship Essay; English IV AP)
Downy powder drifting aimlessly – a beautiful peril, blocking roads, latching on to synapse-receptors.
C21H23NO5. Branching, tenuous chains of carbon and hydrogen, laced ever-so delicately with nitrogen and oxygen. The formula for unadulterated rapture. Injected frost or inhaled snowflakes.
Heroin, beginning its tumultuous course.
Cold and numbing, particles of 3, 6-diacetyl morphine ester, crystallized as a hydrochloride to ease consumption, transmute rapidly into monoacetylmorphine – a false endorphin – upon hasty contact with an anticipation-laden brain.
Lewis Carroll, inspired through the power of LSD, wrote Alice in Wonderland – a tacit endorsement of the psychedelic hallucinogen. In Brave New World, Aldous Huxley proposed the mind-boggling, spirit-draining lethargy of recreational soma. In Dune, Frank Herbert introduced mélange, an alien and prescience-enhancing spice, similar to opium in its addictive potency, and distinguishable by its roughly cinnamon-y scent and the trademark blue-in-blue eyes of addicts. These drugs were coveted for their power to impose an alternative reality, to pro-offer transcendence.
In contrast, it is the illusory, but grounded, euphoria that results from absorption of Heroin into the bloodstream that secures it a lofty and permanent grasp on its devotees, impressing them psychologically and physiologically. Heroin initiates instinctively cling to ritual – shooting up in the same ragged alleys, worn bathtubs, or crowded cafeterias to refine the high. After exposure, physiochemical addiction requires only a handful of days, and in each dose the drug’s impact is near-instantaneous, with only a few seconds to a few minutes before arrival of the opioid rush.
First marketed as a panacea for morphine addicts, Heroin was originally sold by Bayer, the pharmaceutical corporation that piloted aspirin, to an unknowing and unsuspecting populace. To the company’s chagrin, though the new drug invoked indefatigable courage, it only aggravated the addiction – once in the liver, heroin metabolized into an acetylated, augmented version of morphine twice as potent as its predecessor.
Since then, it has become a widely popular and illicit medium (a schedule I substance, according to the U.S. Controlled Substances Act of 1970) for injection among thrill-seekers worldwide. Rarely, it is offered as a very limited-access prescription painkiller.
Of itself, diacetylmorphine isn’t lethal, unless taken in excess. But the Heroin dealt on the streets is often of murky consistency, and duplicity is expectedly rampant among slumlords. When impurities are present, or when Heroin is synthesized with other depressants, the drug yielded is less stable and more prone to overdose and adverse side effects.
Withdrawal, too, is agonizing, but not fatal. Malaise, vomiting, anxiety, depression, and fever can set in within the first day of abstinence. To reduce symptoms, most addicts are gradually weaned from Heroin to methadone or diazepam – opioids with less strength.
So it comes to be that shivering from the goose bumps of discontinuation, the glorious snowfall of Heroin finally melts.