JTemperance
Bluelight Crew
- Joined
- May 15, 2016
- Messages
- 1,345
Interesting. Still not sure if it's oral or parenteral hydromorphone in this context.
The hydromorphone-in-Vancouver thing I was familiar with was not this vending machine, it was a quite large study (hundreds of users) over a year or so where they had one group using pure heroin/diamorphine and the other using hydromorphone, to basically see if HM was a reasonable substitute for heroin in maintenance. (Conclusion: It is. Surprisingly, hardly any of the subjects could accurately tell which they were on, when they were asked as part of the study. However, the ratio of milligrams used between hydromorphone and heroin only ended up being about 1:2, which surprised researchers since they thought hydromorphone was more potent than that based on common equivalence charts for pain.)
In this one, the drugs were available to be injected, three times a day I think, exclusively on-site. Nurses supervised the injections and the dose escalation, and you were only allowed to try IV'ing in your arms; otherwise you could IM it in your thighs. This study also involved long-term methadone failures, and I think they took urine screens but didn't withhold dosing unless you were visibly intoxicated, and only threw people out for aggressive behavior or prolonged absence.
The hydromorphone-in-Vancouver thing I was familiar with was not this vending machine, it was a quite large study (hundreds of users) over a year or so where they had one group using pure heroin/diamorphine and the other using hydromorphone, to basically see if HM was a reasonable substitute for heroin in maintenance. (Conclusion: It is. Surprisingly, hardly any of the subjects could accurately tell which they were on, when they were asked as part of the study. However, the ratio of milligrams used between hydromorphone and heroin only ended up being about 1:2, which surprised researchers since they thought hydromorphone was more potent than that based on common equivalence charts for pain.)
In this one, the drugs were available to be injected, three times a day I think, exclusively on-site. Nurses supervised the injections and the dose escalation, and you were only allowed to try IV'ing in your arms; otherwise you could IM it in your thighs. This study also involved long-term methadone failures, and I think they took urine screens but didn't withhold dosing unless you were visibly intoxicated, and only threw people out for aggressive behavior or prolonged absence.