Doctors Warn of Brain Damage From Inhaling Heroin Vapor

Inhaling heroin vapor, a practice known as “chasing the dragon,” can severely damage parts of the brain responsible for movement, physicians from Columbia University warned in the New England Journal of Medicine. Dr. Arnold R. Kriegstein and his colleagues said they had treated two patients for the problem, the first such patients known in this country.

One was a 21-year-old woman whose body movements had become slow and shaky. Two weeks after being admitted to the hospital, she was mute, nearly quadriplegic and unable to stand or sit. In the second case, a 40-year-old man who inhaled heroin vapor every day for two weeks developed slurred speech, erratic eye movements and could not move his body properly. Their brains showed similar abnormalities.