[A case of traveller who showed heroin withdrawal after returning from abroad]

A 28-year old Japanese man with heroin abuse was reported. He is an ex-beautician and has abused a variety of substances such as toluene, marihuana, methamphetamine, LSD, and so on since he was in a junior high school in Japan. He experienced an intravenous injection of heroin for five days on his first trip to Thailand in 1989. Soon after he returned home, he went back there to use heroin again. He also experienced tearing and running nose as withdrawal at the end of his ten-day trip. During his third stay there he got a job as a wholesale dealer of heroin under a illegal drug organization in the northern part of Thailand. Before he returned home in Japan, he managed to withdraw from heroin by reducing the dose and replacing it with opium smoking. On his fourth trip he failed to withdraw from heroin and injected the drug intravenously at Chiang Mai Airport before leaving Thailand. He began to show acute heroin withdrawal just after he arrived in Osaka, Japan and sought treatment without telling heroin abuse. He was hospitalized next day and soon showed more severe withdrawal and delirium for next ten days. The delirium was thought to be due to not only heroin but the other drugs which he used. Recently heroin abuse, once prevalent during the latter half of 1950s in Japan, has been hardly seen owing to changing the law to severe punishment in 1963. To avoid strict regulations in home some of young Japanese seem to travel abroad and abuse drugs in Asian countries where the drugs are easily available.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)