This thread has not been answered. AT ALL.
Well, to my mind this entire thread has fallen into the trap that everybody who thinks of heroin just being heroin falls into. Now I have NO. IDEA WTF East Coast Dope is; but I would THINK according to geographical sense that since it would appear that we are talking about the E Coast of the USA then it is 90% likely to be Afghan rather than anything else. I DO know that the SW gets most of theirs from the relatively new grow areas in Central and South America, which produces dreadful sticky tarry stuff because they do NOT use the correct chemical for acetylisation - glacial acetic acid as opposed to the chemically more accurate and ten times more effective and clean acetic anhydride. They can not even bother their arses doing the very easy synthesis of acetic anhydride FROM GAA which would produce the regular diacetyl base that is made from over 90% of poppy grown specifically for heroin production! yielding a substance varying in colour from a very light tan to a darker brown which on drying is a powder which is then compressed into blocks of around 250g but generally weighed using an ancient unit of weight which is pretty much unique to the area of Afghanistan and N Pakistan. I am not familiar with what that weight actually is but the blocks that are transported westwards through Iran, normally in a yellow plastic outer wrapping over thinner, transparent plastic type stuff do tend to be a quarter of a Kilo each or in fact a bit more than that using the Afghani weight units.
The key word I have used is BASE. The Central American stuff, almost black in colour so dark brown it is thanks to the use of GAA, any purchase of acetic anhydride being flagged by the DEA and it's equivalents in those countries (why they can not make their own anhydride is a mystery which I put down to sheer laziness as it is neither difficult nor expensive and results in a vastly superior product) is also heroin BASE. I would also imagine that the West would mainly source, as do Australia, South Africa etc, from the famous Golden Triangle area - a product which is so much higher in quality and also more expensive but is NOT base. It is, in that area, the custom to make from their opium the hydrochloride salt, unsuitable for smoking without the addition of a base powder consisting in the main of anhydrous caffeine, cooked acetaminophen and d-mannitol/mannitose. Few people actually do this except in Cambodia, the Lao Republic and Vietnam so the main ROAof this product which is a greyish white colour, fluffier and less clumpy than Afghan brown in all it's myriad shades which vary from one oil drum to the next. The HCl salt made in the Thai/Burmese border areas is remarkably consistent from jungle lab to jungle lab because of its nature and that final step, the step which Westerners erroneously describe as the difference between "#3" and #4" heroin. In other words (those numbers really have no meaning at all to the producers) the difference between the water soluble heroin hydrochloride, the drug that is available on prescription, and raw heroin base, the smoking gear that makes up 90% of the world's illicit heroin and which must be made into a water soluble salt before injection, usually the citrate as our needle exchanges skive out small sachets of citric acid in order that this may be done as well as the isopropyl alcohol swabs, aluminium cookers, cotton filters, and amps or vials, plastic these days, of Water for Injection BP or USP. Some pharmacies will hand out all-in-one syringes with fixed needles somewhat like 1mL insulin syringes; the needle is normally of the finest gauge (those on the 0.5mLsyringes are the finest of all) and along with the filter should ensure that no unwanted solid gets anywhere near one's bloodstream. The advances in needle issue to IV users in the past five years or so are greater than at any time since the exchange introduction in the early 1980s.
My point is that yes heroin is lipophilic. Yes it crosses the blood/brain barrier far easier than does morphine in any form and by any route. Although the time of up to ten minutes given for onset if action when Afghani is smoked is laughable, being closer to ten SECONDS than minutes. I know that when I inhale the fumes from three lines smoked pretty rapidly one after the other when the bag is first opened and the rattling needs to be banished ASAP, by the time I exhale after line #3, the barrier is crossed and I am beginning to feel human once more (if the percentage purity is sufficient - since the Great Blight of 2009 and the subsequent change in route meaning the worst adulterations in history now occur, I am 999% sure in Kosovo, the new road that's used for smuggling (if you find the smaller amount that follows the old route via Iran, Turkey and Bulgaria rather than the more southerly one to hen your goods will (not MAY but WILL) be at least twice as pure by the time they reach the greedy b*st*rds in London and LIverpool who keep UK and Irish kit the worst in W Europe by further cutting already laughably impure stuff so that your average kit of a Kilo or less in the UK is now likely 20% Or even LESS than that!
Snorting b/a is only worth it if you firstly make your supply into the hydrochloride (easiest) salt. As is dosing safely according to the accepted range and the clinical range used by Pharma companies in the amounts they sell, but remember that the reason that Heroin hydrochloride in their amps on Rx are POWDER because it degrades so fast if sold in SOLUTION. Heroin HCl is rapidly and entirely water soluble, Afghan heroin base is NOT and so is NOT suitable for snorting at all. So there goes your East Coast snorting. Do not do it without making your supply into heroin hydrochloride first,even though you are likely to return only about 200-250mg at most from each gram purchased, pick your supply carefully only using and buying the stuff which makes you gouch out after four or five lines.
That's the key to snorting and injecting. Making that last step to salt with the common Afghan smoking gear. So easy yet so few do it. I actually prefer smoking as a social thing anyway but always like a sneaky hit or snort so try to keep some HCl around the place.
So remember these things.
Making common Afghan heroin base into salt makes it water soluble.
It also makes it suitable for snorting.
It purifies the product, removing the adulterants and making it almost BP standard.
It makes using heroin, a fairly benign drug, even SAFER by removal of anything toxic that may have been added.
It makes it safer because you are using a KNOWN DOSAGE of KNOWN STRENGTH SUBSTANCE.
It feels nicer.
I have no idea what this would do to the tarry crap from Mexico but I am sure that if it has been made with GAA the result will be similar to what I describe.
And remember that nearly all heroin on the street is a complete waste when snorted because it simply will not dissolve enough to cross the mucous membranes and at best you will have an uptake of 25% of the available drug if you DO snort brown.
Be smart folks. I have used heroin now for 38 years. If it had been alcohol I assure you I would be dead. But of course jot. I am as Fit and healthy as you could get at the age of 56 thanks to my drug of choice being the almost harmless HEROIN HYDROCHLORIDE, made, adapted and used properly every day,a NOT ABUSED!
Enjoy, fellow opiophile.