when people say they were born addicted to heroin, what does it even mean?
In: Biology
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It means that their mother was using heroine while they were in the womb, and the chemicals got into the baby’s brain and created a dependency.
This dependency, known as addiction, means the brain craves and needs heroine to function as it feels it is supposed to.
Drug addicted newborns end up with physical and mental defects and essentially have to go into withdrawl immediately after birth, leading to an increased risk of death.
It means that while their mother was pregnant, and they were inside their mother relying on her body for sustenance, their mother was addicted to/using heroin.
So when the baby was born, it experienced withdrawals as the heroin left it’s system – it’s hell for an adult, I can’t imagine how it feels to such a tiny body.
Heroin is one of many substances that can cross the placenta into a fetus. Usage during pregnancy may expose the fetus to the drug, but that exposure will stop when the baby is born, if not earlier. This results in the newborn infant going through withdrawal from the drug.
If someone does drugs while they are pregnant, particularly hard drugs like opiates, the baby can be born with a chemical dependency to that drug, because they were absorbing some of it in utero.
<Opiate baby here> I was born addicted, or for a better term, born suffering withdrawals from my mothers drug use whilst I was in her womb. If a mother uses drugs, the baby also is consuming whatever the mother takes, weed and smokes can cause respitory problems, opiates can cause addiction aka withdrawal symptoms once the baby is out in the world. its known as ‘ Neonatal abstinence syndrome’
First few weeks alive I didn’t fair well apparently, having fits, or trembling, not sleeping, crying for ‘no reason’ uncontrollably. high then low temps… just not a good thing for a pinkie to go through…. I was ‘ok’ by Age 1 though. growing up it seemly caused issues with emotional and social development, leading to depression and severe anxiety. Someone mentioned it stops development of the brain, I wouldn’t doubt that and other things, I’m a lot ‘smaller’ of a build then regular folks my age. So maybe even physical growth can be an issue when older..
It means that the mother was taking a dependency drug such as opioids while she was pregnant. This meant that some of the drug was also given to the fetus and his/her brain became used to having it, to the point where it couldn’t function without it. Our brain is like a child, if it gets to slack off for a while and not do something for a while, it forgets how to do it/ survive without instruction
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