Birth of Heroin and the Demonization of the Dope Fiend

Ah, heroin! The scourge of American civilization! The enslaver and despoiler of all that is good and pure! And heroin’s ambassador, the drug addict: a craven, diseased, desperate minion of Morpheus who wallows in a cesspool of decadence and habitual debasement! Yes, fearsomely addictive heroin and the deranged dope fiends who inject it have somehow been merged in the American public’s mind to form a two-pronged skewer that diabolically rips away at society’s most vital organs, leaving a trail of despair and death in its obscene wake.

At least, that’s the way it’s portrayed today. But, as author Th. Metzger posits, this wasn’t always so. Like everything else, heroin has a history, and so does the societal archetype of the heroin addict. Over time, heroin has came to be associated with defilement, sin and disease and its users have become synonymous with devolution and degeneracy. How this came to be makes for a fascinating tale, and Th. Metzger tells it well in The Birth of Heroin and the Demonization of the Dope Fiend.