You should only IM if you’re using sterile medical grade products for injection or using micron-filters, as injecting in a muscle with street drugs will most likely lead to an access.
Seconded.
In general, intramuscular injection of street drugs will lead to the hardening of muscle. The muscle will become useless for the purpose after several months, maybe a year with typical thrice-daily injection.
It is not truly in keeping with HR philosophy to recommend this, as it basically is a no-win game that will only lead to more problems. Intramuscular injection is far more prone to all of the same complications known to intravenous users.
A drug injected into the muscle will linger, while it is slowly absorbed by the blood vessels of the muscle. The end result is essentially the same in all accounts, but takes longer. This increased transit time leads to a higher likelihood of infection.
IM is something you can do every now and then I suppose, but it's not a solution to your problem. You will just have to face all of these problems laer on, with more complications and a more devastated body.
As others have said, a perfectly sterile solution and equipment makes this a viable long-term route of administration. Your drugs are touched and handled by so many different people that it's just a natural thing to suspect you will get an infection of some kind eventually.
If you're not dissuaded by this, I encourage you to go overtime on sterile, hygienic technique. Wash your hands, swab site with Alcohol and don't reuse your equipment. The last one is bigger than a lot of folks realize. A dull needle is going to cause inherently more tissue damage/irritation. I'm shooting from the hip here, but it seems that a needle is basically half as effective each time it is used, so even a twice-used needle is going to be significantly more likely to cause problems.
I'm not currently in the scene, but from what I know and have seen, vaporizing Heroin/Fentanyl is much more common now than it was in my day. In my day, a guy who smoked his Heroin in the Boston area would be considered an odd-ball. Now it seems like I see people with foil out, straw in mouth every single day.
I can't speak to actual pulmonary health as a result of vaporizing these mystery substances. What I can say, is that vaporizing is probably the most realistic alternative for you. It is a quick hit, complete bioavailability et cetera. In fact, you'd likely prefer vaporizing over IM any way if you had to try both. An IM injection will be felt within a minute or two, but it's going to be ~15 minutes or so before the dose is completely absorbed.
