The study was mostly funded by the Folkhälsoinstitutet (Institute of Public Health) for which I am extremely grateful. Thanks are due to a number of people. The staff at the open treatment clinic at the Dependency Unit of Norrköping, among them Anders Kroon, Anders Johansson and Ylva Johansson, also to the social workers at Sesam?s Youth Clinic and Roger Gustavsson and Rita Hallström. I also express many thanks to my friends Lars Holst, Fia Littås and Elvin Holst who let me sleep in their apartment while I was in Norrköping and who supported me emotionally. From the world of academics I am very grateful first and foremost to my fellow researcher and friend, Bengt Svenson, for his attention, interest and engagement without which this book would never have been written. Bengt and I also planned the project because he was doing a similar study in the bigger town of Malmö, with a thirty-year long history of heroin use. This year we will carry on with this comparative work. If Bengt had not asked me if I wanted to cooperate with him, I would probably not have entered the field of narcotics at all. I must also thank my colleague at work, Robin Room, of the University of Stockholm, SoRAD (Social Research on Alcohol and Drugs) for careful reading, valuable insight and encouragement. Thanks are also due to Jesper Andreasson, Torun Elsrud och Max Hansson and my brother Rickard Lalander. My translator Aisling O?Neill deserves thanks and much appreciation for what was often a difficult, challenging and irregular assignment. Thank you also to Thomas Johansson, Klaus Mäkelä, Pia Rosenquist and Pekka Sulkunen for support and inspirtation.