• BASIC DRUG
    DISCUSSION
    Welcome to Bluelight!
    Posting Rules Bluelight Rules
    Benzo Chart Opioids Chart
    Drug Terms Need Help??
    Drugs 101 Brain & Addiction
    Tired of your habit? Struggling to cope?
    Want to regain control or get sober?
    Visit our Recovery Support Forums
  • BDD Moderators: Keif’ Richards | negrogesic

Missed vein the proceeded to inject heroin subcutaneously, I am in pain!

Status
Not open for further replies.

The Straight Dope

Bluelighter
Joined
Nov 19, 2008
Messages
326
I am located in the United States and everything in the following is of course fiction ;). Also I am a new member and this is my first post in this controversial forum.

So yesterday I cook myself up my usual hit and eventually find the vein I'm looking for and proceed to inject. I'm not sure what exactly happened next but about halfway through my hit the shit isn't going into my vein anymore and is going under my skin and creating the subcutaneous heroin bubble.

Well, let me tell you it sucks, it hurts a lot and I basically feel like I've wasted the shot since I didn't feel the drug nearly as much as I would for a regular mainline. To top it off the swelling and inflammation has secluded all the veins in that area taking away my options for injection spots in that area. Ironically this was also the day of my first NA meeting (which I personally believe a lot of the things that program goes by is total BS) and I was planning on quitting and detoxing today with the bundle of subutex pills my friend had given me, but now I feel that I pretty much have to keep using for legitimate pain management purposes, which heroin has been working exceptionally well for.

So please help me out here, can someone tell me how long the pain and inflammation is going to last? Is there anything I can do for it? Would putting an ice-pack to it accomplish anything?

Someone please help!!! this is the first time this has ever happened to me.
 
you could get a subcutaneous abscess, that would suck. I hope your injection process was sanitary?
 
Do not put ice on it if this just happened. Put a warm compress on it every so often, and try rubbing it in with your fingers between compresses. The swelling will go down with-in a few days.

If the swelling gets worse or doesn't go away with-in 2 weeks, that means an abscess is forming/has formed, and you're going to have to go to the ER to get it lanced.
 
I'm not your average dumb heroin addict, so being sanitary is definitely a priority for me, so every time I inject I use a walgreens brand alcohol injection prep pad, and every time I've been injecting since the bubble formed I give an extra swipe of the pad on top of the bubble, it might not do anything but I've heard stuff you put on your skin gets absorbed, and at the least I'm maintaining the cleanliness of the puncture wound on top of the bubble. Not to mention I always cool off my hit after I cook it up by letting my filled syringe sit in the cold glass of sterile drinking water that I use to inject with. And it pretty much goes without saying I use a brand new syringe every time I inject since I'm lucky enough to live in a state where they just recently legalized the over the counter sales of brand new syringes at the pharmacy down the street. I definitely understand this to not be something to fuck around with, this is a medical procedure we're working with here. It'll also be nice once I quit with the subutex. I have such a high tolerance I just can't get high off the stuff like I used to, not to mention I'll finally be free from the constipation and accumulation of mucus in my lungs which wakes me up in the middle of the night gasping for air. Heroin addiction really does take a toll and stops being a walk in the park after a while...

Oh yeah and the swelling and pain has gone down significantly since my last post here, which I take to be a really good sign.

I have another question if anyone cares to answer it, how likely is there to be permanent vein damage for say about 3-4 weeks of regular usage? I mean I've had veins disappear on me after using the same area too many times, but thankfully those veins have made a comeback, willing and able to be used for injection again hehe, but sparingly of course.

And finally, and I'm sure this has been gone through a million times on this forum, my IP address and anonimity are safe since I'm located in the US and the servers are in another country correct?
 
And finally, and I'm sure this has been gone through a million times on this forum, my IP address and anonimity are safe since I'm located in the US and the servers are in another country correct?

No, Dave. Now EVERYONE knows you live at 380 Orchard Street in Boston, MA. =D

FC
 
If your anonymity is compromised here it'll be because you compromise it. Do not put out any information you wouldn't want other people to have about you, and do not post any details of anything personally incriminating, and you'll be fine.
 
Ironically this was also the day of my first NA meeting (which I personally believe a lot of the things that program goes by is total BS) and I was planning on quitting and detoxing today with the bundle of subutex pills my friend had given me, but now I feel that I pretty much have to keep using for legitimate pain management purposes

LOL Fancy that. You still need to use the heroin for the abcess 8) C'mon man, recognise that your brain is just tricking you into still using. You need antibiotics for an abcess, not heroin. The only reason it may feel painful is because: i) you are WDing off H... everything is painful, ii) as I said, it's giving you an out to keep using.
Be strong. You didn't join NA to make friends, so man up and give it a chance.

Good luck
 
And finally, and I'm sure this has been gone through a million times on this forum, my IP address and anonimity are safe since I'm located in the US and the servers are in another country correct?

lol, seriously? Does the Patriot Act ring a bell?

Let's face it, if the government wanted to start an operation to bust every drug user they could possibly get their grimy hands on, everyone on this website would be rightly fucked.

Lucky for me and you, they've got bigger proverbial fish to fry.
 
LOL Fancy that. You still need to use the heroin for the abcess 8) C'mon man, recognise that your brain is just tricking you into still using. You need antibiotics for an abcess, not heroin. The only reason it may feel painful is because: i) you are WDing off H... everything is painful, ii) as I said, it's giving you an out to keep using.
Be strong. You didn't join NA to make friends, so man up and give it a chance.

Good luck

Dude I don't have an abscess, it's just the puffy red inflammation of having a foreign liquid injected underneath my skin, and it's been healing nicely. Unlike most addicts and junkies, I am ridiculously clean and sanitary, I use alcohol pads and I wash my hands as well as using an unused needle each time. Not only that but I've managed to keep my life in order and my apartment clean and organized. I have no financial worries and have never pawned anything in my life for drugs. I've never had problems with the law either (knock on wood).

It's easy for you to say it's an excuse for me to keep using, but it really sucks, and I think that I'm going to just sniff the stuff until the inflammation fully recovers. It's also the needles that really got me addicted to this stuff, so going a day without feeling the intensely good feeling rush of having the stuff hit me instantly might help, not to mention you feel less of the drug at the same dosage this way.

As for NA, I think that anyone who isn't weak-minded, conforming, or religious will agree with me about a very good amount of their material being weak or irrelevant. I believe in myself to be my higher power and nothing else, and it's myself that's going to get me out of this addiction, and there really is no better being, person, institution, or entity to do this for. I'll still read their literature and try to pick out things that might be relevant or inspiring to me. as well as maybe receiving the support from other members of the program, but I honestly doubt any of that will even be necessary.
 
Having had many a miss and even a few abscesses Yes even this CLEAN junky had a few abscesses
Sorry yes i took offense.
Either way it can take a while to go down and than it can either become a abscess or just go away
by the way this has more to do with what the "H" was cut with and what is caught under your skin than if you are clean or not
I do wonder
why you seem to see yourself as not a junkie?
It sounds like you think because you have never hit bottom and because you are functioning that this makes you less of an addict.
Please do not let it fool you. If you have a habit that consists in your having to shoot or sniff or smoke you are a junkie. Even if you do not go out and rob, pawn, or steal, or sell your body, It still makes you a addict or junky or whatever the name you choose to call a person with an addiction. You are just what is called a Functioning addict and believe me That addiction is the worse to get off of. Because you constantly believe you do not have a problem because Just as you said you do not pawn etc etc.
As far as stopping It will likely not happen until you face the fact you are a junky.
And No I am not preaching or knocking ya do what ya do i am just keeping it real.

Oh and the poster was right you are using an excuse if you were for real about quitting you would take some Tylenol for that abscess put some warm compresses on it stay away from that area even above and below because the vein needs to heal.
Oh and in answer Yes if you get a abscess that vein can become damaged.
I know the one I had in my leg I never felt anything i did in that vein after the abscess healed there. I have one on my arm though and it was a small one and it never effected the vein Although to this day no blood can be drawn or iv's placed in those places. which is a royal pain in the bum when you have to have blood drawn or go to hospital
 
"I'm not sure what exactly happened next but about halfway through my hit the shit isn't going into my vein anymore and is going under my skin and creating the subcutaneous heroin bubble."

But you kept pushing anyway . . .

" . . .it hurts a lot and I basically feel like I've wasted the shot"

So this is what came here to tell us.

"Ironically this was also the day of my first NA meeting (which I personally believe a lot of the things that program goes by is total BS) and I was planning on quitting and detoxing today with the bundle of subutex pills my friend had given me, but now I feel that I pretty much have to keep using for legitimate pain management purposes, which heroin has been working exceptionally well for."

You've got to be kidding. Why bother going to NA and wasting other peoples time and sympathy? You can do it on your own, bro! BTW, I've got a headache, can you spare some of that H for a friend?

"So please help me out here, can someone tell me how long the pain and inflammation is going to last? Is there anything I can do for it? Would putting an ice-pack to it accomplish anything?

Someone please help!!! this is the first time this has ever happened to me."

Why ask us dirty junkies for advice? Sounds like you have everything under control.

FC

P.S. - Welcome to Bluelight!
 
Okay it seems like I'm gonna have to take back some of the things I said, I still maintain my opinion of NA though, it is bullshit.

It seems that I have indeed developed an abscess, the funny thing is the abscess is not in the same spot I was originally complaining about in the thread starter, this actually happened after this thread was started and this is my first abscess ever, how ironic is that? I've got friends that have been addicts for years and they never developed a single abscess, and they are some dirty motherfuckers. I think my abscess developed when I had the grand old inebriated idea of picking up and using my filled syringe after dropping it on my carpet. The vein within the area of abscess still looks plump and operational, so I take this as a good thing. And now for my crazy story of events:

I've had the displeasure of being afflicted by what seems to be a case of pneumonia for the last 5 days or so, if this has anything to do with my drug usage I'm not sure. Maybe it might have to do with the fact that heroin keeps me from feeling the Chicago cold, and I've kind of skipped on buying an actual coat this season opting to use my light jacket instead. Maybe it might be from using needles, as I hear a lot of what you shoot up ends up in your lungs. Does using H intravenously compromise the immune system?

Well anyways, it came to a point where my voice was gone and my breath was short, and I could not smoke a cigarette without the numbing effects of H as my lungs would straight up reject it. In a haze of drug-induced paranoia from having a 100$ a day habit for a couple days I got really paranoid that I was sick. I actually think it's not that uncommon for an H user to be paranoid about their health like this. So basically I end up in the emergency room complaining about my lungs and the abscess on my arm, with of course the added comment of "I'm scared I might have endocarditis!" at the front desk of the emergency room. By me saying that I actually managed to get some pretty prompt service, being called up before a lot of people that were there in the waiting room before me.

So they take me up back and measure my temperature and tell me that I don't even have a fever and I'll be alright. I fess up about my IV heroin usage. A doctor with a European accent comes by and basically talks to the nurse and says "I don't think he has endocarditist, he's just an asshole!". Well of course he didn't say the asshole part but that was what he pretty much meant. Then this guy starts saying things to me like "why do you do drugs? when are you gonna stop doing it? why do you do this to yourself? etc. etc. etc. So he's trying to make me feel guilty about what I've been doing, can't say I blame the guy though of course.

Eventually a Korean doctor comes in and takes a look at me. The one thing that pisses me off about my visit is that I really really wish they would've taken an X-ray of my lungs and examined if I had pneumonia and that sort of thing, I guess they didn't care much since I didn't have a fever, but let me tell you I was feeling sick as hell and I'm only just starting to get better. Still though I wish I could have gotten the pneumonia taken care of before the abscess, because being sick really really sucks, and I'm not fond of missing days of school either. The doc gives me a prescription for some anti-biotics for the abscess, or "cellulitis" as he likes to call it. The script is for a drug called Clindamycin, which works well for the abscess, but does absolutely nothing for my pneumonia. To top it off it has digestive side effects, and using any sort of narcotics has a good chance of making these side effects worse due to the constipating effect.

After I pick up my anti-biotic medication from walgreens I go home and I decide that I am in fact going to quit doing H. I hadn't used at all this day, so I sit around, and I finally get hit with the feeling of being dopesick and having pneumonia at the same time. As you can imagine, this is not a pleasant feeling, I vomit and I pretty much almost lose consciousness, I immediately proceed to intake 4mg sublingual subutex buprenorphine, which helped me out a bunch, but of course I'm still feeling sick and shitty, since I have pneumonia!

I lay in bed with the heat cranked up really high, and I'm sweating all over the place, yet I'm shivering and feeling really cold. Eventually my mom gives me a call and I tell her that I'm sick, so she comes to my apartment and picks me up to take care of me. Not only have I been able to quit doing H for a couple days, but cigarettes as well as being this sick makes me willing to do anything to make myself feel better more quickly.

So I've been laying in bed sick as hell for the last couple days, honestly I don't think withdrawling is helping me get better from pneumonia more quickly. I only used subutex for the first day or two, and I know it takes about 8 days or so to fully get passed the ill effects of quitting a heavy habit of H. So today I fucked up, I slipped. After 5 days of being totally clean and not even smoking cigarettes, I end up going back to doing H again. I'm sure as many of you know, there is no better way to complement that initial rush of H with a smooth refreshing cigarette. I really did feel like not smoking cigarettes was helping my lungs and my sickness heal more quickly, and I've been wanting to quit for a while. Let me tell you though that taking H has really really helped me with the shitty feelings of being sick with pneumonia. It takes away much of the chills and shivering (though not all) and lets me feel very comfortable and smug while without it I had trouble going to sleep and such. How nice it would be to sleep through pneumonia and wake up fully healed and feeling like a million bucks.

So yes I had a good run of soberness going and I slipped, but I don't see it as being that bad. As long as I don't do any tomorrow I don't really think I'll get dopesick at all. I shall go back to not smoking any cigarettes tomorrow as well. I can really see why they used to prescribe heroin for things like pneumonia back in the early part of the 20th century, it is truly extremely soothing for the condition. I can't help but think that withdrawling, even if it is past the intial 3 day hump, has something to do with making me feel more sick than I really am. I can definitely say that I have a decent amount of tolerance still left in my body and am not back at baseline yet, nor was I before I used H today. I have also definitely noticed in the past that weening off H is indeed effective, as long as there are gaps of days in between the gradually smaller amount being used. This is not something that a really heavy psychologically weakened addict could do without going overboard of course, good thing I am not that person. On the bright side my abscess seems to be starting to shrink and diminish so the Clindamycin is working, and the vein underneath it still has blood flowing through it. What is everyone's opinion of poking a hole in the abscess and draining the pus? bad idea?

Also I've read that epsom salt can be effective at helping to treat an abscess, anyone know anything of this? What if I inject a water solution of epsom salt into the abscess? haha just kidding that has bad idea written all over it.

PS: Does anyone have any tips on explaining an abscess to a family member without mentioning drug usage?
 
Last edited:
You're a fucking idiot...
No one cared about your opinions on NA, that was completely irrelevant to your post, yet you insisted on going on and on about it. Fact is, it helps some people. People that are ready to quit.
And for not being a 'dirty' junkie, you should know you can classify yourself as a stupid junkie, because you have no idea about more then half the shit you were talking about.
People like you just make me angry, I get a once a month IV of immune medication, and one time the entire bag of that went under my skin. So you got about 1cc, I got about 2 cups of thick sticky medication under my skin for about a week. And ya know what I didn't even need heroin for it!
Grow up and deal with your problems like everyone else.
 
You're a fucking idiot...
No one cared about your opinions on NA, that was completely irrelevant to your post, yet you insisted on going on and on about it. Fact is, it helps some people. People that are ready to quit.
And for not being a 'dirty' junkie, you should know you can classify yourself as a stupid junkie, because you have no idea about more then half the shit you were talking about.
People like you just make me angry, I get a once a month IV of immune medication, and one time the entire bag of that went under my skin. So you got about 1cc, I got about 2 cups of thick sticky medication under my skin for about a week. And ya know what I didn't even need heroin for it!
Grow up and deal with your problems like everyone else.


You're an angry person. I know this is an old post, but I stated in my last post in this thread that I mean to take back some of the things I said, what I meant mainly by that was my rationalization to continue doing H based on the missed shot pain. When you are physically addicted to heroin it no doubt changes who you are and your personality and even your logic. I am sober as I'm typing this. Also I started the thread so I can rant on about NA as much as I please to make for more discussion, as that's what forums are for: discussion.
 
You're an angry person. I know this is an old post, but I stated in my last post in this thread that I mean to take back some of the things I said, what I meant mainly by that was my rationalization to continue doing H based on the missed shot pain. When you are physically addicted to heroin it no doubt changes who you are and your personality and even your logic. I am sober as I'm typing this. Also I started the thread so I can rant on about NA as much as I please to make for more discussion, as that's what forums are for: discussion.
Yea, just dont mention suboxone or the allmighty, all controlling moderator will close the thread faster than a cat can lick its ass.:\
 
Meh, all the negativity is stupid bullshit. The OP posted to ask a question, and it was a pretty legitimate question. His opinions of NA are his. I happen to think the 12 step system in general is bullshit, regardless of how many people it's helped. It's irrelevant to the thread.

In general we welcome any question as long as it's not been completely done to death/easily searched and is concise. At worst the latest post wasn't concise. It hit my tl;dr threshold. We get a lot of stuff here that should really go in people's blogs. General discussion of basic drug topics is fine. We get a lot of people here who like to bag on threads because it offends them personally that people should ask a basic question. They're reading the wrong board.

Yea, just dont mention suboxone or the allmighty, all controlling moderator will close the thread faster than a cat can lick its ass.

Suboxone.

I have no clue how fast a cat can lick its ass, but my dog can do it with surprising celerity.
 
I've got friends that have been addicts for years and they never developed a single abscess, and they are some dirty motherfuckers.

Abscesses have practically nothing to do with how clean you are during injection. It has everything to do with how good you are at injection. If you don't miss, you're not going to get an abscess.

So, just stop missing.
 
Abscesses have practically nothing to do with how clean you are during injection. It has everything to do with how good you are at injection. If you don't miss, you're not going to get an abscess.

So, just stop missing.
I missed last night with some H a little. I registered but when i started to shoot I felt the sting and saw a slight bubble and immediately pulled out and went to another spot. It stayed swollen and sore and scared the shit out of me...thats why I came to this thread last night to see what I could find out.
The swelling was gone this morning and there was just a slight bruise. What a relief. Apparently I went all the way through my vein after I registered.
I find bluelight to be a great place for drug info.
 
I think that if you have one of those microwavable hot/cold packs they sell at walgreens it does wonders if you immediatley apply it to a missed spot, it helps a lot with the swelling and pain and I have a really good feeling it helps to prevent abscesses too.

It also really sucks when you register but miss anyways, it makes it harder for me to find another spot since the barrel of the syringe is already bloody and it makes it harder to see the stream of blood being drawn when it's all red and murky. You can somewhat avoid this if you can pull off getting all of the air out of the syringe before you pull out, this way the blood doesn't mix in with the H as much.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top