Heroin junkies create the most depressing Instagrams

BY DANIEL STUCKEY

Many friends of mine have had episodes with heroin. I never got around to shooting up myself, which supposedly was “the bomb,” “ruled,” and felt “better than being blown by Jesus.” I never tried it, nor did I ever catch a great contact high being around my strung out friends. Of those awful times, I mostly remember tragic romances, an infant hanging out in someone’s living room (yes, kind of like Trainspotting, but milder), and junkies acting bratty while I washed their dishes for them.

Now there’s a community of heroin and pill junkies on Instagram glorifying their personal drug abuse narratives. A montage of drug connoisseurs comes from the eye of a needle’s beholder (or a camera phone). Listed under #nodsquad and #junkiesofig you’ll find smiling dopers, needle rigs, pills stacked like Jenga sets, many cups of lean, and other accoutrements displayed in all of their Instabrag-filtered glory. 

“You’ll find some gems of Instagram heroin users… if the word gem can be applied to them,” a friend told me after sending me a list of #nodsquad #junkiesofig and Instagram profile links. Riffing on those thinspiration and self-harm Tumblr blogs, the photos manifest that perverse cry for attention a junkie must emit when doing the loneliest of drugs all alone with a smartphone.

Might a pre-existing condition for excessive social media sharing have contributed to the flux of these ‘cute’ fix pics? I hate to be a narc, but it also appears that the posters could be using the hashtags for product demonstrations. Some provide Kik handles and exhibit huge stashes of drugs and cash. Selling heroin with Instagram? Come on.

Read the full story on Motherboard. 

All photos via Instagram