• Select Your Topic Then Scroll Down
    Alcohol Bupe Benzos
    Cocaine Heroin Opioids
    RCs Stimulants Misc
    Harm Reduction All Topics Gabapentinoids
    Tired of your habit? Struggling to cope?
    Want to regain control or get sober?
    Visit our Recovery Support Forums

Heroin Injecting into places other than arms

Her0inSik

Greenlighter
Joined
Nov 5, 2006
Messages
18
Hey guys, I'm back-the girl with no veins,or at least very few left, who's a hard stick. My neck, arms, legs, boob, hands, wrist veins are all gone and lately I've been hitting small little blue blood vessel looking veins in my palm or hand. No matter how slow I inject it hurts like hell and kinda blows up a little, but the swelling goes down after a day or two. I know it's not missing because it registers the whole time but they're hard to hit because the needle is pretty much all the way out when it registers. I just slowly and patiently inject over the course of 10 minutes and it works okay but I dont know how much longer they're gonna hold up.
The reason I'm here is because the only veins I haven't exhausted are my feet, my groin, and some little blue vessels in my palms and fingers. I have a girlfriend who has shot up in her groin for years and she says its a great vein that lasts forever with a great rush. I'm really scared to hit this one as you have to go in blind at a deep 90 degree angle and it lies right next to the femoral artery. I read the post about injecting into the femoral vein but a few things confused me-it said to feel for the pulse and inject next to it towards your private parts, but where i feel the pulse end, I'm past the "crease" of where my thigh meets my vagina and I've seen people inject the groin, its ALWAYS in the middle of the crease line. Second, I can see all these great veins in my feet, esp after a steamy shower, but everytime I put the needle in, it's not in the vein! It's driving me crazy! It looks like its right there and Ill fish around left to right and it won't hit. I'm guessing they're big rollers but why am I having such a hard time with them? I'll try to pull the skin taught but it doesn't work. Any tips? I also heard there are some veins you can't see between your knuckles. I've hit one before that I could see between my pinky and ring finger knuckles but haven't tried in between other knuckles, simply because I don't see/feel anything.
I also have tons of friends who said one of the first veins they used up was a great one running up the backside of the arm from the elbow to the wrist. I have never seen this one on me nor can I feel it. I've tried fishing for it, but alas nothing. Every expert shooter friend I have can't even find it on me and it baffles them. Anyone have tips on how to hit this large vein or where it lies? I've used a tourniquet and it doesn't help.
I know this post is long but I wanted to make sure all my options are open. Please and thank you for all your help.

p.s. NO LECTURES PLEASE. MY LAST POST GOT A MILLION AND ONE LECTURES OF PEOPLE TELLING ME TO "GET HELP" which I'm obviously not going to do unless I'm ready to, so SAVE IT.
 
I know I asked you this last time; have you gotten any 31g needles instead of any larger gauges?

I know what it's like for the needle to be barely in and you're registering, that's why I like 5/16" tips. 31g's are better for hitting those tiny veins.

You might need 1/2" tips for the femoral vein. Be careful; they say to feel for the pulse because that is the artery, the artery has a pulse. The vein is so close to the artery, and that's why feeling for the pulse helps you find the femoral vein.

I think you already know that vein blood is dark red, while artery blood is bright/frothy red, and may push the plunger back on its own. So that's how you can make sure you are in a vein; if you are hydrated properly, your vein blood should be dark, crimson red.

The ones in between my knuckles are large enough to use, but I don't need to use them.
 
How can you afford a computer with a habit like that? I seriously don't understand.

I would be very careful about exhausting ALL of your veins...ahh...I'm trying to avoid giving the 'get help' speech, but it's hard. Suboxone is a life saver.
 
People are misunderstanding me. Im not some junkie who loves to shoot up all day and sit around high as a kite. I shoot up once in the morning, once at night to get by. It's because 1)I shoot acidic black tar heroin 2)I am a slim girl with hardly any muscles and I hardly exercise-my veins have always been super small and hard to find and my veins go way quicker than most people's. (all my life when nurses would draw blood from me they'd say I have the veins of a 2year old and use the infant butterfly needles on me) I pretty much always use a fresh point, filtered water, rotate sites, use alcohol swabs, keep things clean-i just wasn't as blessed as all of you are with great fat juicy veins. Is that so hard to understand.
 
Oh and @ captain Heroin:

I tried them but for some reason my blood clogs up small gauges really quickly and it coagulates really quickly as well. Don't know why but that's how it is. I'll try the 30 gauge again-maybe if I hit the small palm veins with that and it registers right away it wont clog up. It's when I get small amounts of blood in there but without full registers and it adds up, next thing you know after a few minutes my shot is useless and the consistency of jelly.
 
I just wasn't as blessed as all of you are with great fat juicy veins. Is that so hard to understand.

No, it's not too hard to understand. I think there's more people with a similar situation on Bluelight, they might know more than I do. I am still working mainly on one arm. I leave the other one untouched 95% of the time.

I think if you want to try hitting the femoral vein, you should go to the exchange and get 1/2" tips (if that's the needle length you have now, then maybe you need 3/4" or 1" tips?).

30g tips would work best I think. Most people prefer around a 30g from what is said on here anyways.

There is one vein on the side of your hand (on the insides of the wrist; what faces up if your hands are in a "praying" motion), you have one of them on either side. These are good to use, because they're typically larger than the other veins in your wrist. I find them easy to hit, and they're typically the closest I hit, though I have used a different hand vein before (just to see if it would work, it did).

Using a new needle tip is a good thing and I'm glad you're already doing it! :)

I hope I've offered some advice that I may have accumulated since your last post. Good luck and take care!
 
If the OP needs help, she will go to TDS aka The Dark Side.

She's in Other Drugs asking for tips on how to hit veins, not for how to quit what she's doing.
 
One of my posts was deleted by CH, but I still wanted to add something...
I understand that the OP is desperate and needs a shot now, but the tone of the original post is unnecessarily agressive. Writing in CAPITAL LETTERS is SCREAMING - so when you scream that you DON'T WANT TO RECEIVE ADVICE ON QUITTING, it might very well trigger the exact response that you wanted to avoid in the first place. It is not «that hard to understand» (rude way to put it, btw) that all your veins have collapsed, because we are not idiotic enough to misunderstand such a simple statement.
I've re-read the last thread and some posters suggested new injection sites, new IV techniques and what not, but they don't seem to be interesting enough for the OP. What about some feedback on plugging? What about giving IV'ing a rest and try other ROA's? What about respecting your fellow BL'ers enough not to scream at them or imply that they're too stupid to understand that all your veins have collapsed?
I'm not trying to be an ass, just trying to explain why the OP will inevitably trigger «quit now»-type responses.
 
One of my posts was deleted by CH, but I still wanted to add something...
I understand that the OP is desperate and needs a shot now, but the tone of the original post is unnecessarily agressive. Writing in CAPITAL LETTERS is SCREAMING - so when you scream that you DON'T WANT TO RECEIVE ADVICE ON QUITTING, it might very well trigger the exact response that you wanted to avoid in the first place. It is not «that hard to understand» (rude way to put it, btw) that all your veins have collapsed, because we are not idiotic enough to misunderstand such a simple statement.
I've re-read the last thread and some posters suggested new injection sites, new IV techniques and what not, but they don't seem to be interesting enough for the OP. What about some feedback on plugging? What about giving IV'ing a rest and try other ROA's? What about respecting your fellow BL'ers enough not to scream at them or imply that they're too stupid to understand that all your veins have collapsed?
I'm not trying to be an ass, just trying to explain why the OP will inevitably trigger «quit now»-type responses.

The OP has already gotten plenty of feed back on alternative ROA's, and ORT. I don't think they care for that. Thank you for being concerned for a fellow Bluelighter though!

This is appropriate feedback. It's not harassing the OP.

Inappropriate feedback will be warned from here on out. I'm not referring to your other unapproved post InvisibleEye, I'm referring to other posts that have been incredibly rude and uncalled for that I have deleted. We don't accept intolerance in any other thread in Other Drugs, and so we're not going to accept that in here either.
 
I just wasn't as blessed as all of you are with great fat juicy veins. Is that so hard to understand.

Nope. And I ended up in what sounds a spookily similar circumstance - the palm smarts a tad, dontcha think? :|

As others have said, once things are getting that bad there's just not many shooting years left, in my experience. I ended up quitting heroin cos it was taking upwards of two hours to get a shot a lot of the time. That meant refiltering and recooking nasty coagulated shots and perpertually looking like I'd been in a knife fight. Wasn't pretty or practical but quitting daily IV use was the only option. I have two or three usable veins now and quit daily use around five years ago.

Inside of the knees, ankles and knuckles are the ones I have left. I really can't recommend the latter lowly enough. I went with Subutex and reluctantly switched to plugging as a regular IV "replacement". It's not the same, but it has similarities and is better than a boot in the backside if your veins are gone bye-bye. Some of us drew the short straw when they were dishing out veins :(
 
Oh and @ captain Heroin:

I tried them but for some reason my blood clogs up small gauges really quickly and it coagulates really quickly as well. Don't know why but that's how it is. I'll try the 30 gauge again-maybe if I hit the small palm veins with that and it registers right away it wont clog up. It's when I get small amounts of blood in there but without full registers and it adds up, next thing you know after a few minutes my shot is useless and the consistency of jelly.

Have you tried taking aspirin prior to trying to IV to thin out your blood so it doesn't clog the syringe?

Might work, I've never heard of anyone doing it before but hey worth a shot in your situation.
 
^ i think that might work, because i had taken some ibuprofen a couple hours before IVing my dose once and it seemed like my blood was more "liquidy" if that makes any sense. It also made my blood a little brighter than usual also. At first i thought "oh shit i hit an artery" but it wasn't lol.

EDIT: I think ibuprofen thins blood.. it seemed it to me anyway.
 
^ You are correct, ibuprofen also thins the blood...

Man, am I ingenious or what? ;)

OP, try the aspirin or ibuprofen.

Also, check out Tubular Bells by Mike Oldfield, is a very cool song.
 
Ibuprofen does produce mild effects on platelet behaviour which prevents clotting, not as much as aspirin though, and neither of them technically "thins" your blood but yeah pretty much right.
 
In addition to having safe needle use programs and clinics in large metropolitan areas, they should just offer a midline catheter to very frequent users. It doesn't necessarily need any imaging device to insert in non-complicated cases (even with complications only an ultrasound), and then you are all set to push whatever you want into your primary blood vessels with a mere syringe and some saline solution. I've heard of people with kidney problems having them in for years.

edit: for those of you who don't know a midline catheter is a tube inserted into a vein (like the one in your elbow's arpit) that then gets pushed up into your vena cava (a more major vein that feeds the heart directly). They then cap the end on your arm to deliver medication etc. It is used in place of multiple reoccurring regular i.v.s). On medical shows you always here about "placing a mainline" which is the same thing except generally starting from your neck or groin which goes all the way into your actual heart. tres cool
 
In addition to having safe needle use programs and clinics in large metropolitan areas, they should just offer a midline catheter to very frequent users. It doesn't necessarily need any imaging device to insert in non-complicated cases (even with complications only an ultrasound), and then you are all set to push whatever you want into your primary blood vessels with a mere syringe and some saline solution. I've heard of people with kidney problems having them in for years.

That would cause an infection real fast. You have to take careful care of a line like that or you'll get sick, and junkies aren't exactly the cleanest/most responsible people.
 
But would the risks of infection with a catheter, be so much higher than the risks of infection with a needle, that it outweighs all the benefits? (no diseases from shared needles, no missed injections, less vein trauma, etc.) Also you need to take care of them but not so much more so than needles. Just add an anticoagulant to your hit and keep the actual area clean, much like needle use sites.

edit: sorry if this is off topic
 
^ That sounds like a good idea to me brother. I remember just recently someone posting about a drug user who actually had something like that.
 
One of my posts was deleted by CH, but I still wanted to add something...
I understand that the OP is desperate and needs a shot now, but the tone of the original post is unnecessarily agressive. Writing in CAPITAL LETTERS is SCREAMING - so when you scream that you DON'T WANT TO RECEIVE ADVICE ON QUITTING, it might very well trigger the exact response that you wanted to avoid in the first place. It is not «that hard to understand» (rude way to put it, btw) that all your veins have collapsed, because we are not idiotic enough to misunderstand such a simple statement.
I've re-read the last thread and some posters suggested new injection sites, new IV techniques and what not, but they don't seem to be interesting enough for the OP. What about some feedback on plugging? What about giving IV'ing a rest and try other ROA's? What about respecting your fellow BL'ers enough not to scream at them or imply that they're too stupid to understand that all your veins have collapsed?
I'm not trying to be an ass, just trying to explain why the OP will inevitably trigger «quit now»-type responses.

Um just so you know when I wrote in caps I wasn't insinuating screaming I was emphasizing certain words-I guessed it would have been better for me to use italics. Sorry I didn't mean to offend you, and I don't see how I was rude in anyway, nor was I "unneccesarily aggressive". I wrote one P.S. ending line with some capitalized words-if that's super aggressive then I must be missing something. If I was I apologize but the last post I was plenty sweet and still got tons of those responses, along with the good ones. I was just hoping that if I stated this from the get go that people would be less inclined to give me those type of "get help" responses" As for plugging I haven't tried it yet-I asked a few friends of mine about it they said it's not even half as good as IVing and that muscling is better.

As for me thinking the other people's suggestions weren't "interesting enough for me" I don't know what gave you that idea. Just because I didn't respond to every post? If I didn't it's because they suggested things I have already done and/or taken into account and stated in the post anyway beforehand.

Phew. *ducks at the hail of bullets*
 
Top