What methods are available yet very effective for someone with no access to a true opium pipe?
Foil and straw, meth pipe, hot knifing, or light bulbs. Also when China/US started cracking down on opium they'd make pipes out of vases, jars or wine flasks. They'd drill a hole in them and attached a bamboo stem to them. They were also used to smoke heroin pills. It could be taken apart easily and it was easier to hid. Towards the end of the opium epidemic the pipes found were really ghetto. For ghetto opium lamps I've seen some uses a candle covered with a cup with a hole in the bottom or a soda can in place of a real opium lamp. Also in Iran they traditionally used shisha coals to heat up and vaporize the opium.
Mrflowers00 said:
actually most people will mix it with tobacco and smoke it out of a pipe thats how smoking opium came about
A lot would, but they'd waste opium. It called madak. Often it was mixed with tobacco, acacia leaves, barley husks, other herbs and spices, and/or sometimes gold or silver threads for there supposed tonic effect. This was only done when/where opium was widely available and legal, so it didn't matter if it was wasted anymore than most of the nicotine or alcohol gets wasted taken most routes. I think in India even madak, which was made usually with acacia leaves, was vaporized. Burning it will give you 10-15% of the morphine tops. That's why you read trip reports where they smoke like a gram. A gram of good opium could be too dangerous to smoke the right way.
i don't understand how they could be wasting anymore than with any other smoking method but if they take it orally they would absorb more i believe
Oral has good absorbtion but it lack the flavor, rush and experience of smoking opium. It'd be best to make laudanum for oral administration, with alcohol, saffron, cinnamon, and nutmeg, it you want to stay true to tradition. In some parts of India they make tea out of opium, not just pods. This study
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2588593/?tool=pubmed shows that oral opium had the highest bioavailability for morphine, with vafour(opium pipe using shisha coal) not far behind, and Sikh-Sang(a variant of hot knifing) the lowest. It also claims that smoking opium, particularly via sikh-sang, had a negative effect on health. I'm not a medical professional, so I can't interpret their date to see if it's true.
While the morphine bioavailability is lower smoked, you have to know that the other alkaloids add to the high. The other alkaloids are more volatile than morphine and codeine. In fact, a lot of the morphine and codeine stays in the dross(
http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/bulletin/bulletin_1981-01-01_1_page006.html ) . Chinese opium smokers actually preferred opium with a lot of other alkaloids over high morphine low secondary alkaloid opium. Cooking and smoking dross, which has mostly morphine, was regarded as ghetto and more toxic.
Opium can also be taken rectally, sublingually and even snorted. I know sublingually worked surprisingly well, and snorted seemed to do something but I didn't use enough to tell. I guess morphine meconate is much better absorbed than other salts, since the sulfate doesn't work with those ROA.
I have wonder if opium smoking could be brought into the 21st century. Like how would a vapor genie or a skillet work with opium. Is there an electronic vaporizer that can mimic the precise heating of an opium lamp? Maybe someone could get a glass blower to make a modern opium pipe? Could the lamp and pipe be made more portable and quicker to uses?
Sadly there's no market in the west for opium, it all goes to heroin. Heroin's better for those who want to get fucked up quickly. There's no market for your smoke shop to risk selling opium paraphernalia. And most don't know how to harvest opium, make yen gao/chandoo or even how to grow poppies or smoke opium.