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In lieu of any pictures of rotting abscesses, have these kittens.

A piddling little bit of blackened limb rot would be downright pleasant next to the looming threat of an accidental overdose. In a perfect world where no one ever makes mistakes, the difference between a good shot and a lethal dose would be about $10 -- but we don't live in a perfect world, so we have to deal with purity issues. Since there's not exactly an FDA for hard drugs, heroin purity is less closely monitored than, say, orange juice pulp levels. One person can have dope that is 80 percent pure, while his roommate can be getting high on stuff closer 10 percent, and there's virtually no way of visually distinguishing between the two. What happens over and over again is someone used to the lower-end stuff gets some "fire" dope from his dealer. Even if he's careful and does a tiny shot to test it out, it could still end up being like four of his normal shots. That's like picking up your latte at Starbucks, only when you go to take a sip, it turns out your coffee is made of shotgun blast and your head gets splattered all over the ceiling. Then Llarold, the hipster barista, is all "Psh, casuals."

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Llarold's a damned enigma, but he makes the third best latte in town.

This is why heroin in particular is responsible for such a large portion of all drug overdoses. In the short time I was using, I knew four people who overdosed that exact way. Some users have clarified that you don't die of an overdose of heroin -- you die "from heroin." Again, in an effort to make the drug seem scarier, we've distracted from the far worse reality: Heroin isn't dangerous because you might get an infection. Heroin is dangerous because at best you're not just at Death's door -- you're in Death's living room having a Mario Kart tournament at 2 a.m. and hoping he doesn't wake up, but you're not paying very close attention to the volume, because you're high on heroin.