Dark Horse: A Heroin Memoir

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David Petersen was a low-odds, dark-horse chance that his family, the robbery division of the San Antonio Police Department and the 186th District Criminal Court decided to take. The 16 year sentence he accepted in plea bargaining was for two of twelve admitted counts of aggravated robbery. The chance was conferring them concurrently - two eight-year sentences - with trustee time credit possibilities.

The promise was a number of habitual offender sentences, effectively for life, if he didn't get it right the first time.

The tenor of opioid problems in the public health arena back then in 1977 was greatly and hardly different than it is today. Opiates was the terminology, and ORT was the Traitement du jour .

Today, armed with considerable advances in pharmacology and neurobiological understanding, many of the drug names and treatment theories have new names. Yet, the place that opiates, or opioids if you wish have become more deeply and harmfully embedded in the lives and mindset of western culture.

Few make their way out. Many die in untimely manner, and many more spend their lives in serial episodes of brief respite from active addiction. David Petersen is an independent mental health practitioner, consultant and interventionist who is offering insights that are less popular, and expect less from the managed care, judicial and treatment establishments. More, he says, will have to come from the addicts, and their families and communities.