*Norwegian Drug Addiction - Warren Richardson Photography

Norwegian Drug Addiction.

An addict once told me, if i was to try heroin for the first time i would more than likely not be addicted due to the fact i would know when to stop.

It seems hard to believe but yet true. But i guess i am not a heroin addict, i asked many questions as to why some of these people become addicted to heroin, near on all of them had the same answer " escape", escaping from family traumas, bad relationships, rape, and the list goes on. One of the women i was photographing told me as she was preparing to inject that she had a 9 year old daughter, and that she had to lie to her each time she left the house, i asked her if she loved her? she replied as the needle entered her upper left leg, of course i do she replied, as she slowly injected 20 milligrams of heroin in to her leg, i asked her but isn't your daughter a good insanity to stop using drugs? she just looked at me with a blank look as her eyes started to go glassy, her reflexes slowing as she uttered the words , i never want my little girl to know, it would brake her heart, then how do you stop that from happening i asked? i just don't know she replied as she took another syringe she had prepared and started to inject it between her toes.

I followed some of these people over the corse of months seeing what would change for them, to me it would come down to an inevitable death, which brings me to one of the man within this set of images. He had been a heroin user for sometime so he seemed to know a lot about the drug and how to use it, he told me, if you inject in the same spot for too long it can damage the vein and sometimes permanently, he said i know this because it has happened to me, i asked him which vein? at first he laughed and said do you really want to know, sure i said, how bad could it be. He told me that he had been injecting in to his penis so that he would not get found out whilst working at the job he was doing at the time, whilst he was telling me about his life, at the same time he was preparing a cocktail of drugs, i had to ask, what is that you are preparing because i have seen what heroin looks like within a syringe, but what you are doing looks nothing like anything i have ever seen, he told me this is what you call a speed ball, a mixture of heroin, cocaine and ecstasy in the one syringe, you are kidding me i replied, that's just suicide, but that did not seem to stop him, at first he tried to inject it into his vein on his hand as by the looks of this he has had many times before, as the needle entered the vein, the vein suddenly collapsed, but still that did not seem to stop his determination for the need to be high, he call over someone he knew so that he could help him inject. What came next still today haunts me, he gave the syringe to his friend and asked him to inject it in to his neck, at first his friend looked a little confused as where to put the needle, but the man blew his cheeks out and held his breath so that the vein in his neck protruded so that it could make it easier to see where to put the needle. To me it just didn't seem right, for one, the cocktail of drugs that he had placed within the needle, and two, where he was putting it at the time, to tell you the truth it scared the hell out of me and not just for me but him as well, it did not take too long to see things were going bad for him, i watched as his eyes round back into his head, and how he seemed to lose all sense of where he was as he collapsed and started to lose consciousness, two hours from the moment his friend injected him in the neck he died of an overdose.

Whilst collecting these images i learnt that Oslo Norway has at least 3000 heroin addict, from the working class to the homeless, and at 10 euro a hit per person that adds up to being 30,000 euro a day, near on 11,000,000 euro a year.

The Norwegian government is trying to help stop the flow of heroin, by helping the addict by opening methadone outlets so that the heroin user can go into one of these outlets and be helped by the staff and be supervised whilst using methadone.

Janne 47 years old and a long time heroin user is lookjng to score heroin, Janne told me she's in love with heroin, it takes the pain away and puts me in a place were I understands everything, once the drug wears off Janne will simply repeat and inject again, needing up to 6 to 8 injections of heroin to see the day through, but heroin is not for free, which means that Janne will need to come up with the money to pay for drugs, Janne normally sits with a cup and a sign out in Oslo's main shopping street Karl Johans gate, on a good day Janne can make enough to pay for her drugs, but on a bad day Janne resorts to prostitution to make extra money to help pay for her drugs addiction.

A cocktail of drugs all round into one, its quite common that most drug users will mix there drugs into one needle, Speed, Cocaine and Heroin a the most popular to take in one hit, drug users call this a speed ball.

2016

Celine is only 23 years of age, she comes from an upsetting back round due to the fact that she is a Heroin baby, born into this world needing drugs because her real mother was a user, Celine told me that she has spent most of her life in and out of foster care, she went on by saying the first time she met her mother, she handed a needle full of Heroin, we injected together me and my mother, Celine said that was the last time she ever saw her again.

2017

Seeing Celine again gave me hope, by seeing her changes, she told me that she had just come out of rehab, yet by her body Language I noticed that there was something going on with her, as time passed I realised that she was selling, both Celine and myself talked for hours, she told me many things about her life, she told me what changes she wants to make within herself, as she was telling me her future plans the words, I will not change in this city as there are drugs all around me at any given moment, for me to change means i will need to leave Oslo.

This is a continuing story.

An injection room is set up in central Oslo where self-medicating addicts go to feel safe whilst they inject their drugs, the injection room has rules in place, one of those rules is, no mixing of drugs, Janne and her friend stop in at the injection room as the heroin they have just purchased is very strong, most addicts feel safer using the injection incase something was to go wrong especially when it comes to overdosing.

Up to 300 people die a year in Norway of drug related incidences, it has become a real problem in the eyes of the public as it has become so noticeable, some say it is an everyday event to see drug addicts dying on the streets of Oslo, but yet very little is being done to prevent it from stopping.

Jan attends to Janne who lies in a drug induced state on her bed in the room of a governmental run housing for rehabilitating addicts, neighbours pass by and look into others rooms to score some drugs, I stayed in the room the hole day whilst Janne and Jan injected heroin, the next day Janne was scheduled to go into rehab to get off heroin, as she is suffering from ulcerating wounds on her legs and body.

Police arrest two men in the Brugata area known for it’s drug dealing in central Oslo on suspicion of dealing drugs and grievous bodily harm and assault with a deadly weapon are taken away by police.

Most drug addicts would say smoking Heroin is cleaner than injecting, the results are virtually the same except injecting is much more powerful and faster, smoking heroin is a little slower for it to take its full effect.

Eirin 26 years of age smokes heroin in a lift with two other dealers come users. Unfortunately Eirin’s mother died 2 years ago, which has left Eirin Traumatised and lost.

Now that the weather is changing in Oslo and becoming much colder, people like Peter take to small heated malls to shoot up right in the public,

Most businesses would prefer that drugs are not taken in front of their place of business, security are normally called to remove people like Peter, asking him to move on, Peter with his jeans below his knees struggles to find a vein in his leg, when a person who is using a needle to administer drugs into their vein system constantly, the repercussions can have serious long term damage to the veins and body.

Local hang out in central Oslo where heroin addicts love to congregate to shoot up.

An addict looking to get a fast fix would normally go to one of two spots on the body, the groin or the neck where major veins can be found, the concoction of drugs entering the vein system can take seconds for the drugs to take full effect, when trust is given to someone else to inject another in the neck it potentially needs to be done by someone that person knows and trusts, most self-medicating addict have been injected by someone and most have injected someone else.

Injecting in the same shot for many years can have an adverse side effect on the body. One disease called Crocodile which eats the skin and bone from under the skin is one of the biggest problems addicts face which can lead to loosing limbs.

As Heroin usage is quite high in Oslo/Norway, the government of Norway has set up methadone outlets, so that the drug users have somewhere to go, so that they can be given the right help. The outlets have one main rule: No Heroin.

The outlets supply new clean needles and syringe to help stop the spread of diseases, but that was 2006, now in 2017 these injection rooms allow the uses of heroin to be injected, the rule now is that the user can only use heroin and no other drugs can be mixed into the same needle when in the injection room.

Hearing nothing, absolutely out of breath. I started rubbing his chest to get a reaction, the moment I saw that it was not working was the moment I slapped him in the face to find a reaction, still nothing, I yell to a women standing across the other side of a small river, please ring for an ambulance I asked the women, the ambulance came as fast as a snail in a head wind, by the time they arrived the man was not looking like he was going to make it into tomorrow, the ambulance came and took him away and that was the last I saw of him.

Man lies died after overdosing in central Oslo.

After seeing a number of overdose deaths I realised I needed to be more prepared on how to deal with a overdose victim, the first doctor I asked explained to me in layman terms, she told me that everybody takes 12 breaths a minute, an overdose victim can be anywhere between 7 and 8 breaths a minute, when the breath becomes hallow, the brain will send a signals to the body to shut down, how to prevent an overdose the doctor told me, simply rub the persons chest, and with an open hand, slap the person around their face to try to wake them up, if this does like work then there is Nalokson, Nalokson is used as a stray that can be administered to the victims nostrils, once the spray has entered the nose it will normally wake the person up by helping dilute the opiates , make sure to stay with the person until the ambulance turns up just case the person goes back into an overdose state, if the person goes back into an overdose state before the ambulance arrives, then readminister Nalokson.