I can't believe that after all the experiences I have had with medical emergencies and drugs (seizures, DTs, ODs, comas, abscesses, you name it) and all my inpatient stays and addiction misadventures, that during my two-day maintenance-relapse on tar, I did NOT seek the ER after what sounds like for sure hitting an artery. I had EXACT same experience that the person below describes. Since I had not used in four years and my use before was limited to only east coast powder heroin and meth and filtered pills, all very different than tar, I was like a newbie in many respects and also anxious and half-excited, half-terrified of the path I had chosen.
I ran out of my maintenance opiate two days early and it turns out my doc would have been willing to do an early authorization but I dared not rock the boat, so after four years clean I spent $400 on a lot of supposedly very good tar--I know everybody says that their drug is the best quality, blah blah, but I will honestly say that most street drugs I've done have in all likelihood been average quality since I had no real proof of them being better, just a good high; and also that in this experience I had been on suboxone and then methadone for so long that even shooting 2grams tar/day barely held me--BUT, I know for a FACT that this was a very pure, only minimally adulterated cut. I will not explain how or why I know so as not to identify or incriminate anybody; the point I'm making is how not worth it a switch to tar or to street drugs is after you've committed yourself to recovery and have gone through the trouble, grief, pain, and also honesty and relief and joy of being open with your doctors, true to your family, taking your maintenance medication as prescribed, and trying to live a sustainable, non-parasite life. Ostensiby a friend got me 2grams to tide me over for the 2 days and this was strong stuff; from the beginning I was secretly excited that I would get a fun weekend out of a situation that otherwise would have sucked a lot--methadone withdrawal--and kill 2 birds with one stone: have some fun for once and also avert the pain. WRONG. Even my friend is regretting that he did not, after all his years clean (he has over a decade clean but once had VERY... easy? ample? access to a lot of yet-unadulterated product, involving overseeing of international travel etc. He served his time for it both legally and emotionally, and yet some phone numbers are indelible, he says. So he broke his dope celibacy to help me out because he saw that otherwise I would likely go and do something risky in parts of a town I'm not familar with (SF). He now regrets that he did not try harder to find contacts that could have provided diverted methadone, or anything but tar. I won't go on about how awful, unpure, and dirty of a drug I think this is. At least my batch did not smell of vinegar, though when cooked or tasted it was anything but pleasant--and this from a person who thinks meth tastes wonderful to inhale (alas!). It is filled with all kinds of unpurified plant alkaloids and potential allergens that produced minor allergic reactions everywhere I hit and every hit I finished to completion would swell up--not just like the other things I've shot, where the swelling is commensurate to the amount of extra stuff you've just put into the vein, and after a little rubbing subsides as the vein goes back to normal size.... this was more like, twenty minutes after, a hard ball of swelling, a bit smaller than a golf ball and not as round, would develop on my arm and render that whole real estate untenable for future shots for the next two days. Making it harder and harder to find veins. Anyway, I missed a lot of shots, and they hurt a fair amount, like the person below describes. The pain was localized, I did not realize immediately that I had missed the shots (or, I had partly hit but then probably poked the needle through the vein because of inability to hold it steady, and dispensed the syrupy mystery morphine base that is tar into the body tissue behind and around the poor vein). The immediate pain went away almost immediately (within the half hour, if not minutes), though soreness lasted for days, because, as I describe, I had a unique (relative to my experiences with other drugs, east-coast heroin and pure morphine included) allergic response to tar, as I did the few times I had shot it before finally getting clean in CA in 2010 (allergic reaction--am I sure? no, but the sites became swollen, sore, firm, and much larger than the amount of liquid/viscous matter I had put into them, blowing up into scary-looking tumorous lumps you wouldn't want your mother to see--but NOT red, inflamed, hot, pulsating, squishy, or abscess-like. so I deduce allergic).
However, one time, the first night of the two days I was doing this horrible, misbegotten idea of DIY maintenance therapy as I waited for my actual methadone Rx, here's what happened, and how it differed from the missed shots or even good shots but irritating to the body that I described above: I shot into what looked like a good vein, closer to my wrist than I usually would like, but because I knew I'd need the veins higher up as the days progressed I went for it. I could see the vein and the needle went through it; I often register not just two but three, four, even five little pops as the needle penetrates various tissue--even when I end up getting a good hit--so I was not alarmed. I should have been worried when I got a register (a) immediately, and (b) with a half-inch needle
fully embedded in the arm (thumb side of the arm, about six inches above my wrist; im a small but not petite girl)--usually I push it in fully, at a 45 degree angle, into where I think I've caught the vein, pull out plunger only to get the annoying air bubble, then start slowly, slowly pulling the needle out, waiting to see whether I get a definite bloom of blood, dark and flower-like, extending into the first quarter of the plunger (not an aggressive thrust of blood, nor a tiny little thread of blood, no matter how hopeful I am and sick of looking for veins--I've learned, you gotta get a good register to end up satisfied with your shot). Apparently I hadn't learned this lesson enough, because when I inserted this deep into a part of the arm I don't usually use, I got excited at the ease of the shot, what with sudden blood just spurting its way up (forget unfolding like a flower into the syringe; this was like, a battering ram of picture-book-red blood breaking the bulwarks of the syrupy tar and just thrusting up, taking the needle under siege, en masse. There was
no question that I had registered. This was accompanied by immense pain, like every time I even brush up against a nerve (try poking around your wrists with a clean sharp to explore this feeling, if unsure). Like others have said, the pain was like direct, shooting electricity and an intensity of 15 on 1 to 10; nerve pain is so keen and sharp and particular; imagine getting tazered on your funny bone. Like that. Idiot that I am, I thought:
people told me that tar is pretty corrosive and can hurt; I need to not be a p***y and man up, I've prob forgotten what being a true addict is like and become soft; probably now I've just really hit a real good vein, and bottom line: I know I've hit a blood vessel and I must make myself feel ok before my roomie comes home and finds paraphernalia, so this substance must go into my body and if it goes into a vessel it will make me ok faster [re rommie and the need for secrecy: another sign i'd made a poor life decision, in my opinion]. So, I proceeded against all animal instinct to discharge a full 90 units (or, 9/10 of a regular 1 CC/1mL rig) of very very concentrated tar (I'd tried to dissolve 3/4gram good tar into 1mL, which took a very very long time; I managed to create something with consistency of pea soup and kind of frothy that wouldn't pull (thank god) through any filter into any needle, so I was forced to add another sterile mL to it and thus had managed to put it into 2 shots with leftover moisture in the filtering cotton) into this situation. Oh! Like others said: the blood had been very easy to discern from the color of the brown shot [ugh i hate tar; at least on the east coast you had a clear product that felt more natural to iv, although as a pharmacology student i shouldn't be prejudiced or base opinions about toxicity on color of substrate, i know]; where I had trouble the rest of the weekend seeing even good registers against the dark brown of the solution, having to hold it up to the light or pull the plunger ever further out to try to get a stronger register under better light, in this case I was in a darkish room and two colors were distinctly separate. You can imagine how at first, despite the electrocution feeling, a junkie might get happy about this register. Ok, discharging the 90 units is the most painful thing I have experienced since... breaking my left wrist after a fall of 10 feet head down. Incomparable pain, especially because nerve pain is unlike any other. It
felt like nerve pain but the warning bells in my head said I had hit an artery (I had just read this entire post less than a week before this happened!!) and because the two didn't compute I figured I should just continue with what I was doing, since I'd already started.
Immediately, something way beyond allergic reaction happened. I have
never had an allergy to anything before, nor ever seen hives on myself or had anything needing antihistamines; not one drug, not one natural substance, nothing, ever. Here,
immediately with the excrutiating pain, crazy red color traveled down my hand--oh yeah, the nerve pain/electrocution traveled down to my hand along the edge of my wrist (the thumb-side edge) and well inside the hand itself. It felt like you'd imagine lemon juice to feel on a wound if you injected that lemon juice and the wound was inside your entire hand. That kind of feeling, get it? Really extreme, bite your shirt not to scream excrutiating. I pulled out immediately after finishing the shot and did not see any blood come out the puncture site--but like I said, I had gone the full half inch to find this vessel of glory. Right away prickly feelings started developing along the skin of my arm and I began to feel dizzy and hot-headed; my heart began to race faster than it has after snorting a lot of coke or shooting meth or even alcohol DTs (well, the DTs get pretty crazy. coke comedowns do too). But: from nothing to suddenly pounding out of my chest way faster than 120/min. 180-200/min, by the feel of it? And very intense pounding, with the blood rushing in your ears and a feeling like you might faint. The body telling you:
it's no longer fun and games, kid, this is the real deal, we're encountered a fucking problem, MAYDAY MAYDAY! As this went on I tried to keep panic out of the picture, knowing it would only worsen things, and told myself consoling fictions like: 'this is the rush that everyone talks about, its just an acquired taste', and 'the tar is corrosive, it will soon pass; I've heard if you dont die in the first twenty seconds you have twenty minutes and after twenty minutes you're good for at least a day before seeing a doctor'--total BS, by the way, I'm just saying the bullshit rationalizations I was making to avoid the ER.
Meanwhile, my hand was starting to turn strange colors from the place I had shot down to the wrist and hand; it was quickly changing from red to purple to totally white, like clouds of blood floating under the skin. The skin was swelling to separate, huge, welts and blisters--about five minutes in, by the time I had become scared enough to wake up a roommate who did know about what I was doing and has experience, there were four such spots down from where I had shot, at seemingly random spots--I mean, not just in a circule around where I had injected, but like, a blister on the pad of my thumb, etc. Friend said it was hives and also to chill out. I don't think he understood the amount of
incorrectness that I was feeling, thinking that I was just inexperienced after years off the needle and panicking because of the connotations of relapse. Yes, all that too, but at that moment I was having a truly horrifying, physical experience like none I have ever had while shooting in the three years I did shoot way back when nor the rest of the two days now. Ok, the hand was also rapidly going from intense, PAINFUL, tingling--not just pins and needles, but really aggressive, stinging pins and needles, like nettles or swarms of hornets, or like I imagine a BAD allergic reaction would feel--to increasing numbness spreading around (I did notice when I had tasted some of the product to clean off the plunger end, it made my mouth numb like lidocaine, so I don't know if a cutting agent in the tar was not responsible for the numbness, totally independent of all these other effects I describe. that's whats awful about street drugs not being legal and under public control--we have no idea what the fuck is in them or what is going on and are scared to be safe, even with all the education and experience in the world.) With the numbness came swelling and pulsing inside the hand, the pulsing of blood going to it. The swelling made my hand look like a surgical glove somebody had blown air up into. I was really horrified. I could feel nothing and when my roomie asked me to touch the fingers to one another I had movement of the middle, fourth, and pinky (although reduced because the palm area was so swollen) but the index/pointer finger and the thumb were swollen, dead, couldn't move, and I couldn't touch them to one another or touch my thumb to my pinkie. The colored clouds of blood were good, as were the hives; now the entire hand was an even, horrifying, swollen, and was bright red, with the edges of the red distinctly marked on the arm around and down from the area where I shot, like a map of either the west or east coast or great britain, say--not a straight line but a craggy, incomprehensible map of very distinct red, swollen area wrapping around my wrist and down toward the hand, with its peak touching the place I'd shot, wrapping the wrist like a cuff and spreading down toward the hand, where only the three non-thumb fingers were free of problem. About half an hour in, after I succeeded in calming down (after 2 klonopin, as prescribed) and the other half of my original intended dose (the second syringe), which my roommate watched and taught me how to make sure you did right afterward (you get a register, you shoot, you immediately pull the plunger back to see if the register is still there, if it is, bravo, you did good a to z, now quickly shoot that substance-infused blood right back in, hold it in there a second, pull out fast and cover with cloth or cotton or whatnot and then rub like a madman for he claims a long time. the checking for the register after the shot is done, then quickly reinserting the checked blood if the register is right, was news to me and really obvious but clever. stuff I hope I never have to put to use again).
Ok, so half an hour in the hand was evenly swollen, no longer in pain, still scaring me, but not getting worse. It looked awful, though--not presentable to outside world by a long shot. It stayed that way for the next 48 hours, slowly diminishing. The tingling left first; then the numbness left within a few hours; the redness could still be seen like a map up to 24 hours later, and the swelling was thte last to go, 48 hours after. I'm now well, I believe, and have yet to see any abscesses or unfortunate consequences of this misadventure. I have no idea, ultimately, what happened to me, or which symptom was caused by what--nerves, arteries, the adulterants in the cut, which affected what, etc. But I thought I would share my experience. If I did not have a friend who had been shooting various forms of dope for more decades than I was alive, had been sober for over a decade including and up to now, and was awake and willing to call 911 without any compunction or fear of consequence, at age 60+ understanding the value of a 26 year olds life over stupid phobias and desires--if I had not had this guarantee, and been alone or had an audience of my peers only, I think I would have called an ambulance. I may have regretted it, because of how it would affect my relationship with the doctors in the future, but I think it would have been the smart thing to do. It was a BAAAD experience. The rest of the days were not as eventful, but not one shot or moment was
good, and not one good thing happened during them; the only good outcome is that nothing bad happened, including the pain of methadone withdrawal, which was averted. But: I will never ever do tar again, and not because of this experience, which I attribute not to the tar but also to stupidty on my part in injecting when everything in my body said: STOP. RETRACT. RETHINK. REDEPLOY! Tar is just really not for me. Street drugs in general are really not for me. And, as I realized over these two days, really not for me is the inability to be honest with all those around you, and also the feeling that you are medically on your own and not in your doctor's care. It makes me realize just how much responsibility good, caring doctors take on when they take you as a patient--especially addiction doctors, who know the self-sabotaging, jekyll/hyde difficulties of the population they deal with. I remembered, midway through this lost weekend, me being intentioanlly childlike with my doctor as he prepped to drive me to the pharmacy when I was too dopesick to bike there myself, as I was switching between two painkilling maintenance drugs, asking, "will it help!? are you sure!? I think I need a bigger dose! I don't think you realize how sick I am! Help! are you
sure it will help!? I don't think you're sure!" kind of intentionally trying to get his goat but also conveying fear through humor. [he and I have a close, above-and-beyond patient/doc relationship]. and he said, very methodically back at me: "I am still your doctor, yes? And you are still my supposed patient, yes? And I have not killed you yet, correct? And I've never done anything that has made you worse than you were before, right? Now be quiet and focus on surviving--why aren't you holding the script I just gave you in your hand!? Don't make me nervous. Here, get in the car and hold it in your hand, in your lap, where I can see that you're not losing it as I drive you to the pharmacy."
And in the middle of these two days, with my arms like pincushions and the one hand still blown up and gross, and me not dopesick but messed up and sad, I thought of how badly I wanted to ask my doctor if I was going to be ok, and if this was going to make me better, and how impossible that was. And I realized then the power of the responsibility with my life I entrust upon my doctor(s) when I follow their directions and put myself in their care, truly. I realized the surrender, and the faith, and the relief, and the trust involved in that relationship, and just how intimiate and.... serious it is. I wanted someone to say 'you're still my suppopsed patient, yes?' but for that moment, I wasn't. And I couldn't want to get back to being one. So that's my ten (hundred) cents about hitting an artery, shooting tar, and drug use in general.
Why avoid the ER that everyone here has so strongly suggested? For one, the medical institutions and records around here are connected to one another, so that with my insurance and with the ambulance taking me to the nearest hospital, they would record this and it would come back to my doctor or at the very least tarnish my record with that hospital; while I think it important to be honest with doctors, I don't think a one-time mistake is worth losing their trust and several controlled prescriptions that have truly helped me stay off of hard drugs on and have helped me stabilize my life thanks to. Forever after this I would be on red alert, and potentially risk losing my other meds. I would for another several years be categorized as an addict, and a 'chronic relapser' at that, vs the recovering addict they have me down as now--meaning not only would certain doctors look down at me, but I wouldn't get the same care and treatment that others would, which I think is often unfair and injust in the medical system and can best counter by error of omission myself. So: I didn't want my doctor to find out, I didn't know how to get to a state hospital where I wouldn't have to show insurance or identity quickly enough; and since I was at heart panicking, I couldn't think straight and knew that if this
was not life-threatening, then I believe I gained the most benefit by staying put and seeing my awful little experiment through and getting back on the straight and narrow ASAP rather than have the hospital offer to send me to detox, take me off all maintenance drugs, tell me all about the existence of NA all over again, etc. In sum: I don't believe that this experience characterizes me to the extent that I believe it would come to define me in my medical records. I did not want my trust with my main doctor to be broken because of this one lie I was perpetuating by my behavior over these two days (and my running out of the script early by using a little more--say, an extra 10-20mg on top of my 85-on several days than I should have); this is dishonest, yes, but also the truth and I think ultimately, from a harm reduction viewpoint, better for all involved. Like cheating: if you're really only going to do it once and never again, then don't tell your partner [ I say this because the love of my life told me after screwing up and sleeping with a girl once in the name of honesty and ultimately, his own selfish need to 'unload the truth'; after that I developed adjustment stress disorder and dropped out of college and became fixated on the cheating and the betrayal, as he had been one stable factor in a sea of uncertainty in my life and family just then; it broke me, and it broke our relationship; and it broke a lot of beautiful ideas we had like bubbles just popping in the air, where we had thought them a solid plan. we both came away, months later, with this same conclusion: if you screw up and in your deepest heart of hearts know you did and know it will hurt the other person or even just yourself to share about it, then don't. but if you find yourself ever doing it again, then shake the scales from your eyes and come clean to somebody--try to hurt the least number of people possible, if you've betrayed them already.]. These are reasons people might not want to go to the ER. Add to this that many are scared of and don't like doctors; fear or find doctors to be dismissive toward addicts and especially injectiors; are scared to go alone but find that their 'friends' are too scared to present in the ER with them, the friends being druggies also; and in some cases are scared of police involvement--on college campuses, for instance, the police
do at least sometimes come to reported OD ambulance calls; not so in the outside world, in my experience, but I'm sure it differs by case; hope that this too will quickly pass and they will be able to continue using, vs getting help up in a hospital means they will miss out on the fun or worse yet, go into untreated withdrawal which might end up being worse than the benign issue that freaked them out in the first place.... lots of reasons people could fear to go. I recommend: if you have that gut animal feeling that says,
oh shit, what have I done, this is my life and not a drug game and I want to keep it that way and the feeling doesn't go away but grows and is accompanied by
oh shit, i am all alone and if i die, i die alone; all the people around me in the world don't right now know for sure that I'm going to be ok and especially if you
are also alone with no tripsitters or responsible friends,
GO TO THE ER! They don't want to waste time there themselves; if it's serious, they don't want you to die on them and will help you. If it's not, they won't keep you in there just for the fun of wasting your time and interrogating you; a nurse may ask you with a judgmental smirk why you go on doing this despite experiences like this, but after that they want to free up the bed and the space and time you're using up and send you on your way, with the antibiotics, or the advice, or just the reassurance that you're ok but need to stop killing yourself one day maybe. In my experience, unless they 5150 you and commit you, they don't go through your bag, and even if they do, if they find drugs they don't automatically call the police. If you're not 5150'd (ie. suicidal, deemed an intentional threat to yourself), they won't go through your stuff--not your bag, not your pockets. They send you on your way and you can go use their bathroom and snort a bump of whatever it is that you do. I'm not encouraging this, I'm just saying: the ER is not bad, nor a place of last resort; doctors really are your friends, they're in the profession to help people, and if they're ER doctors then believe me, they've seen the likes of you at least five times already today, not to mention during their lives as doctors.
Don't not go because you're more afraid of the ER or more afraid of being deprived from your drug than you are of your body showing signs of dying!
I know this thread is old but I'm bored and reading all the threads on here lol. Besides, I have some information to add.
First of all, when someone says they shot into an artery, if they know what the symptoms are... then they probably did. Telling them that "oh it's just a missed shot, you're fine" is completely ridiculous.
I've shot into an artery twice. Once in my hand, the other time in my wrist. I don't use those spots anymore. Actually, it was three times... just recently I let someone else shoot me up (why I don't know because I prefer doing it myself... don't remember the reason. Oh yeah he was impatient because I was having trouble finding a vein.) Anyway this genius hit the artery in the crook of my elbow.
Shooting into an artery is FAR more painful than a missed shot. A missed shot will burn a bit at the injection site, lump up, and possibly travel UPWARDS, toward your heart. It hurts, but it's not unbearable. An artery hit will feel like your hand has been lit on fire and jolted by electricity at the same time, and it's basically second nature to just pull out without even thinking about it because the pain is so intense. Furthermore, when you hit an artery in your hand, wrist, or elbow, the pain travels AWAY from your heart and towards your hand. Your hand, as well as a few fingers (thumb and ring finger are what I mainly remember, possibly the pinky as well?) will swell up to the point where you can even move it and it will hurt BAD. And there will feel like there's a lot of pressure in the swollen areas. Please tell me how that refers to simply being a missed shot? Missed shots hurt for a few minutes, create a bump, and then... the end. It might cause an abscess or something, but it doesn't put you into excruciating pain for hours and leave a completely different area OTHER than the injection site swollen as hell.
I've asked many people about this, including pharmacists, veteran junkies, and my primary doctor/addiction specialist. Almost all of them told me the same thing: Ice the affected area (where you shot into the artery and where it's swollen), keep the affected area raised, don't overuse the hand/arm in question, and if you see no improvement within 6 or so hours, get your ass to a hospital or the ER stat!
I do tar though... so it might be different for bupe. But honestly, following those directions, I've never hand permanent damage to my arm or my hand. It always goes away in an hour or two. The elevation and ice works wonders!
BUT... I think you are talking about bupe. And shooting bupe into an artery is FAR more dangerous than shooting tar in there. I have no advice for that, other than to go to the ER. I wish I could find the story, but I once saw a PDF file that showed some really gnarly pictures of people who shot bupe into an artery, and they had wet or dry gangrene, their fingers were black, had to be cut off, etc. etc. And some of those cases didn't happen until 12 hours later. Personally I wouldn't shoot up bupe at all unless it's been completely filtered by a micron filter... actually I probably wouldn't even do it then, that PDF shit scared me! Tread carefully when you IV bupe dude...
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