Foundation Antidote Bulgaria

The drugs

Drugs is the popular / and not so onerous/ name of narcotics. In the most of the people’s knowledge it is associated mainly with prohibited narcotic substances. In fact the term drugs is not related only to them but to all substances that are psychoactive. As their name says they operated on the central nervous system (CNS) and changed the psychical condition of the human. Many of the psychoactive substances are under strong international control / heroin, cannabis, amphetamines etc./, others are supplied in huge quantity absolutely legal / alcohol, tobacco/. In the way that they influence the CNS, the drugs can be separated in few groups.

Opiates

Large group that includes natural products/ opium, morphine, codeine/, their half synthetic derivatives /like heroin/ and fully synthetic substances / like methadone or fentanyl/.

Opium. This is a drug that is obtained by cultivated sort of poppy (Papaver Somniferum).
When its blossom falls, on the still immature, unripe fruits with seeds are made taps and white milky sap is leaking.
It grows dark and becomes thicker fast.
After a time the brown raw opium becomes darker and harder as from
a soft sticky stuff it turns to dry sticky resin.

Morphine. That is the main psychoactive substance in the opium, which assigns its influence on a man. It is used as salt /hydrochlorides or sulfates / - white crystal bitter powder. Dissolved / in ampullas / or like component in tablets the morphine is used in medicine and it is write out with special prescription.

Heroin. This is diacetyl derivative of morphine. Almost all quantity of morphine is now making like heroin. In pure form it is white bitter powder. On illegal market it can be found like powder, but it’s rarely white. To the final customer it reaches something yellow-brown or dark brown, sometimes even black. The street doses have any kind of supplements and their use is like dangerous Russian roulette.

Half-synthetic and synthetic opiates. Besides the heroin by chemical modification of the substances of the opium are made other opiates used in medicine or illegal-– hydrocodone, hydromorphone, dihydrocodeine, oxycodone, buprenorphine etc. Fully synthetic opiates are not less - pethidine, methadone, tilidine, fentanyl /as a lot of its legal or illegal derivatives /.