Questions about Heroin Withdrawal

In response to my fellow writer's question about whether someone going through heroin withdrawal can faint from lack of food or fatigue ... First of all, I love that you are looking for the truth about heroin detox. Second, if your character is homeless and isn't getting much sleep or food, I can imagine they could faint while going through heroin withdrawal. I was doing some research into the question myself and discovered here that people can sometimes experience hallucinations during heroin withdrawal. (That sounds rather dramatic and worth a novelist's appropriation, don't ya think?)

I have a related question actually: have any of you had main characters who struggle with mental illnes? The challenge in working with a character with mental illness is that I'd want to create a meaningful connection with that character for the reader, and yet it can be easy to caricature/stereotype the illness to such a degree that the character becomes a bit wooden, predictable or so disconnected from reality that they're hard to empathize with. The only real example from among the greats that I currently can think of is Faulker in The Sound and the Fury and his characters Benjy and Quentin. But do any of you have suggestions here or other models for developing characters with a mental illness?

Kid_filmmaker said:

Ok I'm here because I have a question, I tried to ask this on Reddit in their drugs subreddit but i don't know, people get offended if you ask questions about certain drugs and such - ridiculous. Anyway, I've been trying to get answered for two days now. I'm doing a novel where my MC is a 40ish year old man on a three times a day, three month Heroin binder - or drug use.

In my novel, my character is kicking the habit cold turkey, all alone, in an abandoned warehouse because he's homeless. My question is, can someone go unconscious for a long period of time while suffering from severe cold turkey heroin withdrawal symptoms?
I mean, has anyone on Heroin ever went unconscious/fainted from fatigue or lack of food, after going through all of the severe symptoms of Heroin withdrawal via detoxing cold turkey?

Click to expand...

KR Dover said:

I have a related question actually: have any of you had main characters who struggle with mental illnes? The challenge in working with a character with mental illness is that I'd want to create a meaningful connection with that character for the reader, and yet it can be easy to caricature/stereotype the illness to such a degree that the character becomes a bit wooden, predictable or so disconnected from reality that they're hard to empathize with. The only real example from among the greats that I currently can think of is Faulker in The Sound and the Fury and his characters Benjy and Quentin. But do any of you have suggestions here or other models for developing characters with a mental illness?

Click to expand...

Yes, but the novel is terrible and been trunked for good. It had multiple severe issues though the mental illness thing wasn't one of them.

For a book that portrays mental illness I'd recommend Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine by Gail Honeyman.

Also, you probably want your question to be in a separate thread, as people will click on this thread expecting questions/discussion about heroin withdrawal and people who might be able to answer your question might not click the thread.