Opiate conversion codeine to morphine snorting question!

[sniffin]

Hello Bluelight!
If I understand correctly codeine is not active on its own and needs to be converted into morphine through the liver, would snorting still convert say oxycodone into oxymorphone? And if so, would it be effective to snort small lines every hour or so to keep the feeling going? I understand that redosing hydrocodone orally is not very effective and that waiting for your liver to "recharge" is the most efficient way. I have searched online but have not found an answer.
This is my first post so constructive criticism would be appreciated. :D

Edit: Sorry for the confusion, I am taking IR Oxycodone.

 

[keeping]

codeine is a pro-drug for morphine, meaning it gets converted in your liver into the morphine
snorting is pretty pointless as codeine really needs to get into your stomach, it would probably get there in the end via the drip, but you may as well just eat it and save yourself the hassle

 

[Keif' Richards]

codeine is a pro-drug for morphine, meaning it gets converted in your liver into the morphine
snorting is pretty pointless as codeine really needs to get into your stomach, it would probably get there in the end via the drip, but you may as well just eat it and save yourself the hassle

A pretty common misconception, but Codeine doesn't need to be orally digested to become active within the body. Codeine will be demethylated into Morphine regardless of the route of administration chosen. It just so happens that in the modern era, Codeine is used almost exclusively in the oral form. But, back in the day, Codeine was commonly available and prescribed as Subcutaneous/Intramuscular injections, rectal suppositories etc. Codeine, in fact, is more effective when consumed by the parenteral route. Howard Hughes for instance, was a lover of all Opiates, but specifically loved to get down with injectable Codeine, at least according to this documentary I watched.

Another example of a well known pro-drug? Heroin, which is metabolized into, among other things, Morphine as well. While the Bioavailability fluctuates from route to route, the drug is nonetheless active. So case in point, although it's not a well-researched ROA, I can only assume that it would be at least fairly effective, if comparison to other Opioids is any indication.

I'm just getting this now, so I apologize, but you threw out several different unrelated Opioids in your post OP. What exactly are you taking, Codeine? Because like Keeping and I have said, Codeine gets metabolized into Morphine, not anything else in appreciable amounts.

 

[JessFR]

Are you sure? I've heard of other active codeine metabolizes apart from morphine? I could be wrong it's just something I remember reading recently.

As for heroin, it's more or less exclusively metabolized into morphine. I mean, on the way it is converted into 3 and 6 MAM. But to my recollection neither lasts long before reaching morphine. Which it remains as for the remainder of it's duration of action as I recall. All of it is morphine, being the only thing left by only a few hours after use.

You're absolutely right that it need not be swallowed. The confusion is between ordinary metabolism of a prodrug into it's active metabolite via enzymes in the liver or kidneys, as opposed to first pass metabolism, which only happens with something swallowed, entering the liver by the portal vein first (this is from memory, check with google for verification), which is required to happen or not happen for proper drug metabolism. Some drugs are only properly converted into their active form by almost exclusively first pass metabolism from the stomach. Others, notably I can think of naloxone in various opioid analgesics, make use of this for the opposite effect. Naloxone has very low bioavailability swallowed because of first pass metabolism. But works effectively when injected. So they put it in pills and stuff following the logic that drug users won't crush and inject the pills because the naloxone will take effect, but the naloxone will have little effect at all when swallowed as the maker of the product intended for people to do.

I love chemistry

 

[sniffin]

I'm just getting this now, so I apologize, but you threw out several different unrelated Opioids in your post OP. What exactly are you taking, Codeine? Because like Keeping and I have said, Codeine gets metabolized into Morphine, not anything else in appreciable amounts.

I am taking IR Oxycodone (10 mg pink K 56) sorry for the confusion.

The reason I have turned to snorting is because when I ingest them orally after eating food, the effects seem greatly diminished. Is there a better way to take the pills even with food in the stomach?

Is it true that snorting every other hour isn't effective because the liver needs to recharge in order to convert more oxycodone? I have heard that this is true with some opioids which makes redosing ineffective.

Thank you all for your replies by the way.

 

[Ilove2nod]

I myself, have had those 10mg pink k56 oxys before, and I sniffed them.. they kind of weren't my favorite as far as oxy goes, I preferred the old school OC 30s,40s, 60s, and 80s and most of the different Roxy 30s out there, mainly I liked the M30s, A215s, and K9s for sniffing, smoking, and shooting.. I took oxy every possible way.. oral, IV, sniffed, plugged, and smoked... and really IV wasn't all that great with oxycodone to me, unless I did at least 80-100mg shots.. but sniffing, always worked wonderful for me, personally even as an IVDU I always preferred to sniff my oxy even after picking up the needle, unless I had another powerful opioid to mix it with in one shot, like hydromorphone+oxycodone in one shot for example, that was epic...

But hey what is your tolerance, how many do you normally take orally? and redosing with oxycodone, isn't ineffective at all.. if you keep doing oxy throughout the day no matter the ROA, you are going to feel each pill! I don't know who told you that redosing is ineffective, that makes no sense at all.. I was an oxy addict for years... trust me I know! I have had the pills your talking about to, and I hated any oxy that was under 30mg... just because I liked to sniff/smoke them mainly, and well the 30mg oxy IRs aka roxys, pretty much any of them besides a few nasty generics like the "big uglys"(the 224s, I call them the big uglys because they were two times the size of a normal oxy 30 ir) and a couple others, worked great every ROA, there was another one, a newer generic, forget the name, since I haven't done oxy in over a year, been on bupe, but there was another generic that was awful, and did not run on the foil when smoked, I hated them I think they were ALGs or something? and also the 10mgs you are speaking of tasted/ran like shit when chased on foil like H only tried it once with those and hated it, after that I only would sniff them or pop them, mostly just sniffed them, and that too sucked because they clogged my nose up something fierce! I would do like over 100-200mg or more a day with oxycodone(and later on after I ran into those 10mg IRs, and just had roxy30s, I began to do well over 400mg a day sometimes, 300mg was like the bare minimum at one point for me)... and well sniffing 10-20 pills sucked! I tried to avoid those and only got them if nothing of a larger mg was around and was sick... but if your tolerance to oxy is low, they are fine for sniffing, as long as your not doing like 5 or more a day your ok, still not good for you as sniffing any pill isn't.. and redosing every 5 mins, every hour, or every 5 hours doesn't really matter they will work... unless you are doing them IV, in which case it is better to wait between doses, to feel any sort of a rush whatsoever, that oxycodone kind of lacks even on the first shot of the day IME, its pretty much that way with a lot of IVable opioids... if IVing it is better to wait between shots... any other ROA it doesn't matter, with oxy, the more you do the better you will feel IME, just don't do too much, or you could OD, but that's kind of obvious.

 

[sniffin]

But hey what is your tolerance, how many do you normally take orally?

and redosing with oxycodone, isn't ineffective at all.. if you keep doing oxy throughout the day no matter the ROA, you are going to feel each pill!

I have a reasonably low tolerance, if I was going to swallow them I would usually do a single 10 mg at time. For me I like to snort 2 10 mg pills over the course of a day (7.5 mgs to start and then 4-5 mg lines to keep it going.)

I'm glad! I hoped that it wasn't true as I like to keep the feeling going which is good to hear, I will have to rethink my information sources! Haha.

I have never IV'd before as I am not a big fan of needles . I think so far insufflating is my favorite ROA.

Sorry to hear that you were addicted, glad you are not anymore (from what I gather reading your post).

I have never tried chasing on foil as I was not sure how effective it would be as I hear it's a easy to burn them if you don't know what you're doing, with the K 56 (the only pill I can really get at the moment) would you recommend trying to chase of foil?

 

[Keif' Richards]

On my tablet so this will be abbreviated. Liver doesn't need to recharge. You will die from resp depression before your liver gets bogged down.

Insufflation is a less efficient ROA than oral. If you want a fast onset and good bioavailability, I would consider rectal administration.

 

[keeping]

ooh shit son! Ahh my bad the I should have known that, some one told me that last week on here but thought they were fuckin with me when mentioned you can plug codeine -good to know tho. But yeah I'd still discourage snorting codeine, seems silly

 

[Ilove2nod]

^hes talking about oxycodone.
And OP yes plugging would be best with those pills you have.. sniffing doesn't have as good of a BA, and doesn't last as long as oral, but love sniffing oxy regardless, because it hits me harder! Plugging is another great way to take oxycodone.. Smoking oxy, does work, but I wouldn't do it with pills less than 30mg... but smoking 30s and old school OCs works pretty damn good.. you just have to get all the smoke/vapor you chase down the foil.. if you miss it that you wont feel it as much.. those k56s do not work well that way at all IME! pop em, sniff em, or plug em!

 

[belligerent drunk]

Are you sure? I've heard of other active codeine metabolizes apart from morphine? I could be wrong it's just something I remember reading recently.

As for heroin, it's more or less exclusively metabolized into morphine. I mean, on the way it is converted into 3 and 6 MAM. But to my recollection neither lasts long before reaching morphine. Which it remains as for the remainder of it's duration of action as I recall. All of it is morphine, being the only thing left by only a few hours after use.

You're absolutely right that it need not be swallowed. The confusion is between ordinary metabolism of a prodrug into it's active metabolite via enzymes in the liver or kidneys, as opposed to first pass metabolism, which only happens with something swallowed, entering the liver by the portal vein first (this is from memory, check with google for verification), which is required to happen or not happen for proper drug metabolism. Some drugs are only properly converted into their active form by almost exclusively first pass metabolism from the stomach. Others, notably I can think of naloxone in various opioid analgesics, make use of this for the opposite effect. Naloxone has very low bioavailability swallowed because of first pass metabolism. But works effectively when injected. So they put it in pills and stuff following the logic that drug users won't crush and inject the pills because the naloxone will take effect, but the naloxone will have little effect at all when swallowed as the maker of the product intended for people to do.

I love chemistry

6-MAM plays an important role in heroin's pharmacology. 6-MAM is actually pretty stable in vivo. The difference between codeine's and heroin's effects as prodrugs is remarkable. Codeine needs to be 3-demethylated into morphine by CYP2D6 which happens in the liver. For this reason, taking codeine orally is efficient - it is absorbed and transported directly to the liver (first-pass metabolism), where it gets activated. You can take it through other routes, and it will make its way into the liver, but it will be distributed throughout the body first.

Heroin, on the other hand, is activated by non-specific esterases, which are present in the brain among other places. So it can get activated within the brain, and the reason heroin is somewhat more potent than morphine is because heroin is more lipophilic, and can cross the brain blood barrier easily, where it gets converted into its active metabolites, 6-MAM and morphine. 6-MAM has a reasonably long half-life, and IIRC it's still detectable around 6 hours after ingestion. It is also a few times more potent than morphine itself. So heroin's pharmacokinetics aren't as simple as instantaneous heroin->morphine conversion, but it's more of a bi-phasic action where some of it gets converted to morphine, some of it remains at 6-MAM which is slowly metabolized into morphine, excreted unchanged, or glucuronidated and excreted.

As a side note, it should be also mentioned just in case that IV codeine is dangerous due to immense histamine release IIRC.

 

[JessFR]

6-MAM plays an important role in heroin's pharmacology. 6-MAM is actually pretty stable in vivo. The difference between codeine's and heroin's effects as prodrugs is remarkable. Codeine needs to be 3-demethylated into morphine by CYP2D6 which happens in the liver. For this reason, taking codeine orally is efficient - it is absorbed and transported directly to the liver (first-pass metabolism), where it gets activated. You can take it through other routes, and it will make its way into the liver, but it will be distributed throughout the body first.

Heroin, on the other hand, is activated by non-specific esterases, which are present in the brain among other places. So it can get activated within the brain, and the reason heroin is somewhat more potent than morphine is because heroin is more lipophilic, and can cross the brain blood barrier easily, where it gets converted into its active metabolites, 6-MAM and morphine. 6-MAM has a reasonably long half-life, and IIRC it's still detectable around 6 hours after ingestion. It is also a few times more potent than morphine itself. So heroin's pharmacokinetics aren't as simple as instantaneous heroin->morphine conversion, but it's more of a bi-phasic action where some of it gets converted to morphine, some of it remains at 6-MAM which is slowly metabolized into morphine, excreted unchanged, or glucuronidated and excreted.

As a side note, it should be also mentioned just in case that IV codeine is dangerous due to immense histamine release IIRC.

Indeed, codeine shouldn't be given IV for exactly the reason you say. And you're right, 6-MAM is still detectible in the first several hours after use. I've seen this first hand from the drug tests I've had to take at my methadone clinic. They've shown me the results and most of the time all they've detected was morphine, but once or twice they've detected 6-MAM too. I presume because those tests were sampled very recently after my last shot of heroin.

I'm actually amazed the quantity of drugs my clinic tests for. They once asked me if I take Seroquel, and I told them no, I was prescribed it years ago for anxiety but haven't taken it in years. We worked out that one of the shittier batches of heroin id used must have been cut with Seroquel, and it was detected in one of my random drug tests.