Skagboys Skagboys Skagboys is a 2012 novel by Scottish writer Irvine Welsh. It is a prequel to his 1993 novel "Trainspotting", and its 2002 sequel "Porno". It follows the earlier lives of characters Renton and Sick Boy as they first descend into heroin addiction. When Welsh described the novel he said: "I think I’m going to call it Skag Boys: “skag” is my favourite word for heroin. It's set before they’re into heroin and investigates how the main characters become junkies, the family dynamics, the anxieties of young men. A lot of the fringe characters become more prominent". "I had a
Heroin half to two times more potent than morphine itself. The head of Bayer's research department reputedly coined the drug's new name, "heroin," based on the German "heroisch", which means "heroic, strong" (from the ancient Greek word "heros, ήρως"). Bayer scientists were not the first to make heroin, but their scientists discovered ways to make it, and Bayer led commercialization of heroin. In 1895, the German drug company Bayer marketed diacetylmorphine as an over-the-counter drug under the trademark name Heroin. It was developed chiefly as a morphine substitute for cough suppressants that did not have morphine's addictive side-effects. Morphine at the