Heroin Treatment Center

The History of Heroin and Heroin Abuse

This week we are going to focus on heroin addiction, the effects, and the statistics of the drug. Heroin abuse has grown in the US by alarming numbers over the last century. This drug is blamed for more overdoses than any other drug out there. First, we would like to give you the history of where heroin was derived from.

In November of 1898 the company Bayer and a chemist named Heinrich Dresser launched the product Diaceylmorphine. The company Bayer is well known still as the inventor of aspirin. It is still made today and people consume over 40 billion tablets of Bayer aspirin a year. When launched, heroin got its name because employees of the Bayer company tested the product for sore throats and coughs. When they consumed this product by drinking it they all said they felt heroic. Thus the name heroin was thought of. The drug was 4 times as powerful as morphine and more effective. It was first marketed as a non-addictive substance. In those days heroin was packaged in a bottle and consumed by drinking it. The intravenous needle did not come till much later. In 1899 Bayer produced over a ton or 2000 pounds of heroin and sold it to over 23 countries including the United States.

From 1910-1912, the United States government started seeing a drastic rise in heroin abuse. People were overdosing and using the substance for recreational purposes. It took another 22 years for the United States to make the possession and consumption of Heroin illegal. Bayer had stopped production of heroin in 1913 only to have other people making it illegally and more powerful. That is when people started using needles to inject heroin and the powder to ingest through the nose.

Clearbrook Treatment Centers are Pennsylvania heroin rehabs that are close enough to serve as New York heroin rehabs, New Jersey heroin rehabs, and Connecticut heroin rehabs. Please call us to speak with an admissions specialist today.