sean thomas, himself a former heroin addict, explains why prostitutes put themselves at risk |
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The images are startling. A young prostitute talks to camera and explains that she is going back to work the streets of a city where, a few days before, two women like her have been murdered. She does it, she says, because she needs the money. A few days later she too is killed.
To most people this behaviour will seem as inexplicable as it is tragic. But to anyone who has been involved with drugs, one glance at the woman's scratched and twitching face tells the story. The woman is - or was - a heroin addict. It's the drugs that make her do it.
How much should we pity a woman, who knowingly puts herself at risk for a bag of heroin? Having been a heroin addict myself, I think we should pity her as much as any murder victim.
Heroin addiction is unbelievably powerful. |
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| Without the crutch of heroin, the addict believes their very soul might fall apart |
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People like to compare it to nicotine addiction, but this is nonsense.
Heroin changes the neurological structure of the brain until life without it becomes - literally - inconceivable. Moreover, many addicts are damaged people, psychologically speaking, and the anaesthetic quality of heroin provides a kind of psychic scaffolding, a cocoon - that seems to hold things together, where other techniques fail.
Without this crutch, the addict believes, their very soul might fall apart. This is why an addict will risk death to get the drug.
The sad thing here is that actually withdrawing from heroin is not as painful or as difficult as many addicts believe: once they take the plunge. Persuading an addict of this can be tough. Even tougher is finding out just why these bright young women turn to hard drugs in the first place.
But that's a puzzle for us all, not just the Suffolk police. 
FIRST POSTED DECEMBER 14, 2006
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