Heroin is an extremely addictive substance that causes noticeable changes within seconds of being used. Almost immediately the user begins to feel a sudden rush of intense euphoria, and then an instant sensation of heaviness followed by a warm calming feeling that takes over the entire body. Once this "rush" sensation has passed, a feeling of drowsiness overcomes the user's body. As the user continues to fluctuate between a state of drowsiness and a wakening, just staying awake becomes increasingly difficult. This phase of the high is referred to as "nodding" or "the nod". During "the nod" phase the heroin user will continue to enter deep trances of sleep and then awakening suddenly.

One of the most deadly effects of heroin use is that it causes the user to experience impaired breathing. Sometimes this impaired breathing causes the user to stop breathing all together, eventually slowing the heart rate to the point of cardiac arrest; this is known as heroin overdose. Unfortunately, overdose is inevitable for heroin addicts who fail to seek professional heroin addiction treatment. The recovery rate of heroin addiction is less than 3%; however when Ibogaine and/or Ibogaine treatment is used, the rate of recovery exponentially improves.

Most often these overdoses are accidental; however, heroin addicts will sometimes resort to suicide by overdose in order to escape the depression of the addict lifestyle.

Addiction treatment professionals evaluate the abuse level of heroin to be determined by the tolerance level of the addict. In other words, over time the addict will need increasing amount of heroin to keep from feeling sick. While the addict constantly has to increase their usage, the potential for overdose increases as well.

Heroin addiction is an extremely serious problem that needs to be treated professionally; otherwise the heroin addict stands very little chance of recovery. In the event the addict chooses to accept heroin addiction treatment, historically most 12-step programs have held a very low success rates; hence the thousands of heroin addicts dying each year from overdose. While most heroin addiction treatment programs are failures, there is however some treatment protocols that re proven to have great success. This is exactly why it is so important to thoroughly research your available treatment providers; specifically the Ibogaine providers. Ibogaine treatment has proven to have the highest success rate in treating drug addiction.