Opioids I'm fascinated with the idea of making my own drugs - especially a poppy garden.

[Bomb319]

Part of it is the potential steady supply of cheap, uncut drugs of course. but it mostly has to do with interest in the process itself, and the fact that such a thing can be done in the first place. I just know I would be so excited waking up daily and checking growth progress, bulb size and eventual extraction, followed by the proper techniques leading to purification.

I have nowhere near advanced enough skill in organic chem to pull this off - nor would I take the risk with the law, especially since I've been "clean" for almost 2 years now (that is, if you consider being on MMT to be clean). But doesn't it just seem like it would be so much fun to have your very own private poppy garden? You would grow as many as you can in an area free from observation. They are hardy and grow very fast, which is a plus. When you harvest all that latex though, you have to know how to purify and isolate the morphine in it perfectly, and then acetylate it - otherwise you are injecting impurities and quite possibly deadly toxins.

Like I said, I would never do it because of these risks, but it does fascinate me. A few summers ago in fact, some friends and I tried this. One of them got a nice load of seeds online called "Izmir Afghani" which supposedly produced mammoth-sized heads. We tilled a moderate section of earth in another friends backyard (which being in the foothills of the mountains made it quite private and relatively safe; there were severa; acres of fruit orchards directly behind it, owned by a neighbor. Anyway, we planted them and watchem them all sprout which was sweet enough on its own, somehow. Then we had to thin them and water the shit out of them daily as it gets VERY hot here and summers are bone dry.

It was somewhat of a success in that we eventually did end up with lots of poppy plants with minimal knowledge of gardening. Honestly, those bastards grow like weeds. You could probably toss a handful of them into a nearby forest and come back months later and simply harvest them. Problems arose when we failed to make the proper cuts to exude latex; this was VERY tricky! Most bulbs were nowhere near as bug as they should have been, and of course we were all way too impatient for them to grow, and so we ended up lancing ones that were very likely too small and unproductive. Even spending much time lancing as many as we could, opium latex residue was minimal. We barely ended up with a few pinheads worth. Of course none of us had the chemistry knowledge to actually do anything more to the raw opium anyway. Since the result was a decent number of poppy plants with small to medium heads but little latex, we decided to dry them and later make tea. I'm happy to say that we ended up getting several large bags of poppy pods, and when we ground them up and made our tea, it was nearly as good as it was back in the days where you could simply buy hundreds of pods on ebay (incredible times!). They certainly had decent levels of morphone in them, yet since they were small and grown by amateurs, it wasn't knockout shit like the giant ebay ones. We then shared them and used it mostly to mitigate withdrawal after running out of pills and heroin regularly.

Overall it was a fun experiment, but it would have been FAR better for each person to grow them individually if possible. Unfortunately. the friend who had them growing in his yard turned out to be a real slimy dick, and he cheated us out of most of them, lied about extracting latex, etc. Still, it was really cool and I learned that poppies really ae very easy to grow en masse. If we did it individually, watered the hell out of them and took really good care of them, I have no doubt that we could have produced pods equal to the giant ebay ones. I really doubt if I could ever manage to get all the materials and properly learn how to make actual heroin (or even morphine) out of them, but it remains fun to speculate how awesome this could be, and exactly why more people don't do this. It seems as if it would be orders of magnitude safer than dealing with arrests and potentially dangerous cutting agents (not to mention losing all your money).

Even though further processing is a possiblity, by far the easiest and most efficient way most people could get a good thing going by doing this would be to do what U described -grow as many plants as you can and as large pods as you can, harvest everything, dry em and enjoy the incredible opium tea they produce for months.

In the context of harm reduction, I support doing this over buying pills or H on the street. At least you know more or less what you're getting by doing it this way and protecting yourself from potentially dangerous cuts. But be warned - if you don't already know this, poppy pod tea can be VERY INTOXICATING AND VERY ADDICTIVE. When you do H or pop pills, you are likely to become addicted to that one chemical. With pids however, you're getting addicted to MANY different opiates at once - possibly hundreds of minor variations. What are your guys' thoughts on this topic? I really don't see it often discussed which really surprised me due to the relative safety of this method and the potential savings and yield.

 

[Nom de Plume]

Well, I scanned your comment about four times looking for a question, and only came upon a single one, which is in the penultimate sentence of the seventh paragraph. You certainly didn't make it an easy search.

Now, as to my thoughts on the matter. First, growing a garden of poppies is really stretching the meaning of 'make' as it relates to drugs, no? I wouldn't think—and presumably I'm not alone in this—that growing a plant is tantamount to making a drug. After all, you aren't making anything, are you? No.

Second, the only opioids or opioidergics worth the effort to synthesise are the synthetics (e.g.; fentanyl, ketobemidone, dextromoramide), for a couple reasons, namely:
1.) You'd have to be one educated son of a bitch to perform a successful total synthesis of, say, heroin (which is highly improbable).
2.) You'd have to have hundreds of kilograms of opium to make a semisynthesis of, say, heroin worthwhile (which is highly impractical).

There are many thousands of synthetic opioidergic drugs and analogues from which the chemistry tyro has to choose. Do some research, find your drug to synthesise; good things come to those who read. Also, don't be so audacious and asinine to suppose that any consummate clandestine chemist would be clumsy enough to just spoon feed this information to you—and in public.

 

[swimmingencouraged]

Well, I scanned your comment about four times looking for a question, and only came upon a single one, which is in the penultimate sentence of the seventh paragraph. You certainly didn't make it an easy search.

Now, as to my thoughts on the matter. First, growing a garden of poppies is really stretching the meaning of 'make' as it relates to drugs, no? I wouldn't think—and presumably I'm not alone in this—that growing a plant is tantamount to making a drug. After all, you aren't making anything, are you? No.

Second, the only opioids or opioidergics worth the effort to synthesise are the synthetics (e.g.; fentanyl, ketobemidone, dextromoramide), for a couple reasons, namely:
1.) You'd have to be one educated son of a bitch to perform a successful total synthesis of, say, heroin (which is highly improbable).
2.) You'd have to have hundreds of kilograms of opium to make a semisynthesis of, say, heroin worthwhile (which is highly impractical).

There are many thousands of synthetic opioidergic drugs and analogues from which the chemistry tyro has to choose. Do some research, find your drug to synthesise; good things come to those who read. Also, don't be so audacious and asinine to suppose that any consummate clandestine chemist would be clumsy enough to just spoon feed this information to you—and in public.

To be fair the leap from cooked opium to heroin is not as great as you make it seem.

The DEA actually pretty much published a semi complete guide to it. Something OP would probably be pretty interested in and can find it on errowid with a simple Google.

That said this isn't OD material.

 

[Nom de Plume]

To be fair the leap from cooked opium to heroin is not as great as you make it seem.

The DEA actually pretty much published a semi complete guide to it. Something OP would probably be pretty interested in and can find it on errowid with a simple Google.

Oy vey! You misunderstood me. I had essentially said that a total synthesis (i.e., from scratch without any opium) of heroin is improbable without expertise, and that a semisynthesis (i.e., from opium) of heroin is impractical because it requires kilograms of opium to be worthwhile.

This is important because heroin production either necessitates many hectares of papaver somniferum or many years of chemistry education to make the penalties for the felony of heroin manufacture worth the risk.

The DEA published a guide to heroin's semisynthesis because they are knowledgeable enough to understand that nobody reading it would have the resources to acquire enough opium to manufacture an amount of heroin they (the DEA) would even care about; the people that do have these quantities of opium a.) probably know how to make it into heroin already, and b.) are more likely spending their time running from DEA than reading their publications.

 

[Bomb319]

Why would it take kilograms of raw latex to produce only a tiny amount of heroin? I was always under the impression that once you have pure morphine, it's a piece of cake since all you really have to do is heat it together with acetic anyhydride and be able to filter out the remaining impurities. Although it's still a reasonably large assumption that isolating morphine from raw latex is simple and easy - although as it is the most prevalent component of the mixture, it can't be THAT hard. Again, I am not planning on actually doing this but simply inquiring as to the thoughts and opinions of others on the matter and am particularly curious as to why such a home synthesis isn't more prevalent, especially considering how crazy strong pure heroin is, and the dangers and difficulties often involved in buying it off the street. Even the very best street-level heroin is usually cut so much that the actual heroin content is very low. I've read that actual heroin content can be as low as 10 percent while still considered to be "pure and euphoric" by the user. A competent chemical synthesis that can produce even a few grams of pure heroin would absolutely be worthwhile to one or two addicts, as it can represent more than a hundred separate doses for the average addiction.

A highly-bred cultvar of P somiferum selected for morphine production can constitute 13 percent opium or more. In that case, I fail to see why it would require "many hectares of land", especially if pods are large, narcotic content is very high, and land is used efficiently. If you ever do grow poppies, you will see that the plants initially grow very densely without thinning them, and a great deal of large pods can be harvested using a relatively small piece of land. The garden I described was just roughly 10 x 3 feet in area but despite the small sizes of the pods, we managed to harvest a few very large bags loaded with pods. Keep in mind that I wasn't referring to this in the context of growing and producing it to sell - but rather just enough to keep a personal supply and single habit going. It's doubtful that hectares of space would be required for this.

I'm also not sure why you said this thread doesn't belong on OD...not only does it seem to be an extremely uncommon topic, but it is actually of great importance in harm reduction. After all, we all know that heroin itself is not dangerous to your body per se, as long as you don't overdose or end up with a toxic cut. Growing yourself all but eliminates the latter.

 

[dez79]

Growing poppies is a wonderful hobby I'm not gonna lie but collecting latex and synthesising H ur dreaming just stick to pod tea IMO happy gardening

 

[infantannihilator]

honestly dude you're better off just buying the precursors you need from china to make fentanyl. or buying OTC t1s. extractomg the codeine and converting to an opiate analoge

but I understand your desire to grow poppies and go from there. Its a lot of work with minimal gain other than the pure satisfaction. Ive thought about with poppies, with coca, with san pedro etc..

Fact is.. you need a LOT to get any sort of quantity.. and likely you dont have or cant replicate the ideal growing conditions. Another fact is that youre gonna spend a million times more effort than it would take to just buy the shit.. unless you're truly in it for the satisfaction of making it yourself

 

[Bomb319]

Growing poppies is a wonderful hobby I'm not gonna lie but collecting latex and synthesising H ur dreaming just stick to pod tea IMO happy gardening

Well that would certainly be the easiest thing to do with them. And of course I agree on the relative difficulty of actually producing heroin. But again, I'm not really sure why harvesting latex would be that difficult. A very good cultivar when cut properly with a scalpel (ie just enough to scratch so it exudes latex, but not cut through right into it) is supposedly easy to harvest, as it can literally drip with milky white pure latex - each pud producing a macroscopic amount which is large enough to harvest and eventually combine, forming a ball of opium.

Man, that really would be so cool if this were easy to do and accessible%) There are times where I really wish I didn't live in a yard-free apartment. A private backyard in the suburbs that is protected from view would be ideal for this. Even if you're only doing it for the pods and decide not to milk them (which seems to me to be the most logical thing to do if they are for self-consumption, as the latex will still be there in full with no loss). When we tried doing this, we did manage to harvest a small amount of it as a sticky ball, however it was rather disappointing upon putting it in a pipe and smoking it for some reason. Pod tea is VERY strong if concentrated, and there are no worries of losing any valuable latex.

Another option that would still require a ton of pods and an equal amount of skill would be to make an extremely concentrated tea, and then very slowly boil off the water. This would leave you with a certain amount of powder which is concentrated with the various opiates and alkaloids found in latex. Again, if morphine content is high and you use enough to produce a useabe amount of powder, it would be exceptionally powerful and require many splot dosings. It also seems easier to extract pure morphine from this powder and subsequenty acetylate it, but asa I said before this is likely a gross under-estimation of the ingredients and skill required to do so.

 

[Bomb319]

honestly dude you're better off just buying the precursors you need from china to make fentanyl. or buying OTC t1s. extractomg the codeine and converting to an opiate analoge

but I understand your desire to grow poppies and go from there. Its a lot of work with minimal gain other than the pure satisfaction. Ive thought about with poppies, with coca, with san pedro etc..

Fact is.. you need a LOT to get any sort of quantity.. and likely you dont have or cant replicate the ideal growing conditions. Another fact is that youre gonna spend a million times more effort than it would take to just buy the shit.. unless you're truly in it for the satisfaction of making it yourself

I would be. I think gardening itself is fun, and the thought of growing your own fresh food appealing. Translating this concept into drugs would be even more so. But yes, I agree that the effort would be too high to be practical, although I've been through times where opiates have been simply impossible to come by, and often times where finding a product that's actually acceptable is next to impossible. This seems like a great backup, especially if you only plan to make pod tea.

 

[Bomb319]

honestly dude you're better off just buying the precursors you need from china to make fentanyl. or buying OTC t1s. extractomg the codeine and converting to an opiate analoge

but I understand your desire to grow poppies and go from there. Its a lot of work with minimal gain other than the pure satisfaction. Ive thought about with poppies, with coca, with san pedro etc..

Fact is.. you need a LOT to get any sort of quantity.. and likely you dont have or cant replicate the ideal growing conditions. Another fact is that youre gonna spend a million times more effort than it would take to just buy the shit.. unless you're truly in it for the satisfaction of making it yourself

By the way, wouldn't extracting anything useful out of OTC T1's be much more difficult? I've done enough CWE's to know that the final product is barely even worth the effort since the caffeine seems to be unavoidable and tends to completely cancel out the effects of the codeine. I'm certainly not aware of any simple technique to isolate codeine alone - never mind using it for a semi-synthesis of a stronger opiate. I know that krokodil and related methylations of codeine can be very powerful and euphoric, but also exceptionally dangerous to inject unless you have a PHd in organic chem and access to a state of the art lab. Have you ever heard about that kid who was a chem graduate student and he synthesized a strong opiate in his own basement? He produced the drug himself (whose name currently eludes me) without realizing that it contained a highly neurotoxic impurity. After only a couple injections, he began to display signs of Parkinson's disease.

It turned out that the toxic metabolite he was unaware of producing in the mix had completely destroyed all of the dopaminergic cells in his brain which left him with very severe and irriversible Parkinson's disease. Can you imagine this happening from injecting your very own brew? If an expert couldn't do it right then I certainly can't.

Still, your idea of somehow isolating and altering codeine from T1 is very intriguing - especially because T1s are available all over the place here in Canada. Yet as I said before, I have done extensive research on how to eliminate caffeine from the mix, and have found it to be essentially impossible to do without access to restricted or hard to obtain chemicals.

EDIT - I think it was MTTP that the grad student injected whose toxicity rapidly destroyed his abilityto produce dopamine.

 

[mostly-human]

Many times I have fantasized about being 'CLEAN' and having this lovely poppy garden. Where, basically I am clean, yet a 'hobbyist' poppy grower/smoker. Where - I'm not an addict, but I just have some lovely poppies around, I'm not a junky at all in this fantasy.. I just take it as it comes, never often enough to be addicted.. Sometimes I have guests around and I impress them with my eccentric hobby and we indulge, but it seems classy. It's a wonderful little dream, very comfortable and definitely not at all like being a junky.




However.. a fantasy is what it is.. If you are (or have ever been) a heroin addict, or I would imagine - any other kind of opiate addiction. Then forget about doing this. It is just another way to be(come) a junky again. I'd almost guarantee that any (past) addict growing a garden of poppies would A) At worst- become a complete poppy addiction B) In all likelihood, you would extremely rapidly move past the poppies and be straight back into slamming dope, no matter how long you had been 'clean' for.

So,bottom line in my opinion is that it sounds like a fantastic and fun idea but in reality it's just another path to being a regular junky.

 

[swimmingencouraged]

Oy vey! You misunderstood me. I had essentially said that a total synthesis (i.e., from scratch without any opium) of heroin is improbable without expertise, and that a semisynthesis (i.e., from opium) of heroin is impractical because it requires kilograms of opium to be worthwhile.

This is important because heroin production either necessitates many hectares of papaver somniferum or many years of chemistry education to make the penalties for the felony of heroin manufacture worth the risk.

The DEA published a guide to heroin's semisynthesis because they are knowledgeable enough to understand that nobody reading it would have the resources to acquire enough opium to manufacture an amount of heroin they (the DEA) would even care about; the people that do have these quantities of opium a.) probably know how to make it into heroin already, and b.) are more likely spending their time running from DEA than reading their publications.

The key word here is worthwhile. While it may not be worthwhile for a drug syndicate to produce heroin from small amounts of opium, the perspective of a user is entirely different. Or a hobbyist heroin cook for that matter. The same goes for codeine, there are real world examples of it being made into heroin but it's just not the same. We don't see al qaeeda diverting large amounts of codeine now do we? Instead we see small scale mostly user run operations because while not nearly as productive it is certainly worthwhile to them. Same goes for small scale production from a patch of poppies in some junkies care.

 

[Nom de Plume]

The key word here is worthwhile. While it may not be worthwhile for a drug syndicate to produce heroin from small amounts of opium, the perspective of a user is entirely different. Or a hobbyist heroin cook for that matter. The same goes for codeine, there are real world examples of it being made into heroin but it's just not the same. We don't see al qaeeda diverting large amounts of codeine now do we? Instead we see small scale mostly user run operations because while not nearly as productive it is certainly worthwhile to them. Same goes for small scale production from a patch of poppies in some junkies care.

That's not what I meant. The manufacture of a schedule I or schedule II drug is a felony (in the USA). Is it worthwhile to risk over a decade in prison for a mere gram or two of heroin? One would incur less jail time for just buying it off the street.

Moreover, you'd risk the same penalty for manufacturing one gram as you would if manufacturing half a kilogram.

What the hell is your definition of worthwhile?

 

[falsifiedhypothesi]

why would you even want to make H out of opium? Carefully caring for the plants only to butcher them and create a small amount of heroin seems like a waste. It seems much more rewarding to smoke the opium as is and make tea from the pods.

 

[swimmingencouraged]

That's not what I meant. The manufacture of a schedule I or schedule II drug is a felony (in the USA). Is it worthwhile to risk over a decade in prison for a mere gram or two of heroin? One would incur less jail time for just buying it off the street.

Moreover, you'd risk the same penalty for manufacturing one gram as you would if manufacturing half a kilogram.

What the hell is your definition of worthwhile?

Then I misunderstood again.

I will say this though, people in the throws of opiate addiction are willing to do almost anything to avoid getting sick. Producing your own is more worthwhile than say robbing a pharmacy. Most junkies would be willing to commit innumerable felonies for dope, and I say that as someone who's done it, not just from the outside looking in.

What's worthwhile to some isn't to others as I've already said. Worthwhile=entirely subjective.

 

[swimmingencouraged]

By the way, wouldn't extracting anything useful out of OTC T1's be much more difficult? I've done enough CWE's to know that the final product is barely even worth the effort since the caffeine seems to be unavoidable and tends to completely cancel out the effects of the codeine. I'm certainly not aware of any simple technique to isolate codeine alone - never mind using it for a semi-synthesis of a stronger opiate. I know that krokodil and related methylations of codeine can be very powerful and euphoric, but also exceptionally dangerous to inject unless you have a PHd in organic chem and access to a state of the art lab. Have you ever heard about that kid who was a chem graduate student and he synthesized a strong opiate in his own basement? He produced the drug himself (whose name currently eludes me) without realizing that it contained a highly neurotoxic impurity. After only a couple injections, he began to display signs of Parkinson's disease.

It turned out that the toxic metabolite he was unaware of producing in the mix had completely destroyed all of the dopaminergic cells in his brain which left him with very severe and irriversible Parkinson's disease. Can you imagine this happening from injecting your very own brew? If an expert couldn't do it right then I certainly can't.

Still, your idea of somehow isolating and altering codeine from T1 is very intriguing - especially because T1s are available all over the place here in Canada. Yet as I said before, I have done extensive research on how to eliminate caffeine from the mix, and have found it to be essentially impossible to do without access to restricted or hard to obtain chemicals.

EDIT - I think it was MTTP that the grad student injected whose toxicity rapidly destroyed his abilityto produce dopamine.

Sorry for the double post but I found this interesting info on wiki.

"In 1976, a 23-year-old graduate student in chemistry named Barry Kidston was searching for a way to make a legal recreational drug. Having read the paper by Ziering and Lee, he deduced that he could make a drug with pethidine's effects without its legal restrictions, since desmethylprodine is a different molecule and had never been addressed by law. Kidston successfully synthesized and used desmethylprodine for several months, after which he suddenly came down with the symptoms of Parkinson's disease and was hospitalized. Physicians were perplexed, since Parkinson's disease would be a great rarity in someone so young, but L-dopa, the standard drug for Parkinson's, relieved his symptoms. L-dopa is a precursor for dopamine, the neurotransmitter whose lack produces Parkinson's symptoms.[3][4]"

 

[sekio]

We don't actually allow threads that discuss production of opium.

I think I'll leave this open for a while but y'all have been warned.

Also, opium is not a drugs that lends itself to home cultivation. If you do some back of the napkin math you realize you'd need a whole farm of the fucking things and a team of Mexican migrant labourers to harvest the stuff just to sustain one healthy opium habit year-round. And that's without factoring tolerance in.

At 4 moderate doses per day you would need to cultivate at least 2000 square meters of poppies per person. If you're in a temperate climate you will only get one good harvest a year. So unless you start out with a small farm to cultivate your "personal usage" supply, you're doomed.

Factor in costs of keeping a concealed poppy farm running and most people will inevitably just go to their friendly heroin dealer - they have the economy of scale on their side.

(I've not actually read into it very much, but the US Gov't invests money into figuring out how to distinguish poppy fields from satellite and aerial photography. So good luck growing an industrial qty of opium on Canadian soil.)

Extracting codeine from tylenol 1's is possible but it sure as shit is not home chemistry. And you'd really want some sort of analytical equipment to verify you're extracting what you think you are.

(And by the way, cultivating opium or extracting codeine in Canada is production of schedule 1 controlled substances, so on paper you can go to jail for a long time for even doing a CWE!)

 

[Nom de Plume]

Then I misunderstood again.

Well, it was an honest mistake. In all fairness, my use of language is not the most lucid it could be. I'm working on it, though.

I will say this though, people in the throws of opiate addiction are willing to do almost anything to avoid getting sick.

Heroin is a very ubiquitous drug. I'd presume its geographic area of availability is surpassed only by cannabis, insofar as illicit drugs are concerned. Heroin is commonly sold in practically every major city (>500,000 population) on every continent (with the obvious exception of Antarctica).

If a heroin user can afford the land and accoutrements necessary to grow a sufficient quantity of papaver somniferum to manufacture enough heroin to quench their habit, then they likely have enough money to travel to the nearest metropolis and purchase quadruple the heroin.

Producing your own is more worthwhile than say robbing a pharmacy.

Not really. Manufacturing a controlled substance will probably carry a heftier penalty than would just stealing it.

Most junkies would be willing to commit innumerable felonies for dope, and I say that as someone who's done it, not just from the outside looking in.

However, smack doesn't tramsmogrify one into an idiot. Junkies may be desperate, but they're not dolts. They are able to weigh the risks of their actions. I'd suppose the inordinate amounts of time and energy one would need to invest into growing a garden of poppies would deter the more desperate junkies. Why wait months for a plant to grow when a brief drive can have one as much heroin as they can afford and in no time at all?

 

[swimmingencouraged]

I say close it, little more than a pissing match now. There's a pretty good article titled "opium made easy" that addresses nearly everything we've talked about here.

Like I said not od material.

Also didn't even think about the codeine thing, good catch sekio.

 

[sekio]

ok, closing