Substance Proposal

1. What substance from the list would you like to research? Why?

As our first choice we chose Heroin because I would like to show/tell people how heroin can affect the body and how it affects us emotionally and physically and study how heroin can leave long-term effects on the brain when someone is addicted to heroin. We are curious to learn the pros and cons of using it and if it can be used medically for pain, surgeries, etc.

2. What do you already know about this substance? What prior knowledge do you have?

We are already aware that this drug is in fact an opioid. It is also a highly addictive drug that is made from morphine and usually the powder is brown or white. It also comes in black tar sticky substance. Morphine is a substance taken from a seed pod from certain poppy plants from Mexico,Southwest/Southeast Asia, and Columbia. It can be injected (by a needle) , smoked, or snorted. After taking the drug one might get some short term effects such as a dry mouth, vomiting, feeling heavy, etc. Some long term effects can be liver and kidney disease. Symptoms that you have after 1-2 hours can be sleep problems, bone and muscle pain and severe heroin cravings.

3. Why is this substance relevant or significant to you?

This substance is relevant to me (who is me? Say which one of you are writing this). because in my culture eating poppy seeds is popular like making poppyseed cake and putting it on different pastas. My mom's friend ate something with poppy seeds in it and got drug tested the next day and tested positive for drugs. The people who tested him asked what he ate days before and found out he tested positive for drugs because of the poppy seeds.

Another way this substance is relevant to me is that my family's friend had a roommate who just moved into the house with him and seemed to be really nice and even cleaned the whole house for him. A few weeks after being moved into the house she had someone over at night. My family's friend noticed that she hadn't come out to eat breakfast as usual and went to check in on her. When he walked into the room he fainted from the shock he saw. He saw his roommate in her bed dead. Half of her body was blue and her legs were more of an orange/yellow color. After calling 911 right away and still being on a call with them he tried to see if it was still possible to do something. 911 arrived and confirmed that she was dead. The whole room was investigated and it was found that she overdosed on Heroin sometime in the night.Investigators were trying to figure out how she got the drugs but still haven't found out. Her family was really shocked to see what happened and she even had a 11 month old baby that was taken from her before she overdosed.

4. What do you hope to learn about this substance?

I hope to learn the effects of people and mostly teens that use heroin. I also want to learn how it is made and how/why it is addictive and if it can be used medically for health and what parts of the brain it affects. I wonder how long it takes the drug to leave the body after not using it anymore or if it stays in your body forever.