Heroin is a white or brown powder made from opium poppies. Users may snort, smoke or inject it. Heroin is a depressant. It also impairs the thinking process, which affects the way you act and make decisions.27
Heroin is highly addictive, and because of the way people use it, it enters the brain almost immediately. Users build up a tolerance very quickly and need more and more of the drug to feel the same high they did the first time they used it.28 Because the strength of heroin varies and its impact is more unpredictable when used with alcohol or illicit drugs, the user never knows what might happen with the next dose.29