Bacteriostatic Water vs Bacteriostatic Water w/Sodium Chloride

[KetamineVials]

So I understand the main difference is that one doesn't have salt and the other does (which I guess is enough to mimic the amount of salt in our body.)

I normally buy it with NaCl when I make vials of ketamine and have never had a problem. I've even been able to store vials of both K and of just bacteriostatic water for months with no repercussions. Now, the vendor I go through to buy it is out of stock of the NaCl variant. Would there be any issue with using the non-NaCl variant for making my vials of K?

For what it's worth, I only use it to IM, not IV. However, just curious, what difference would it make if it was used for IV?

I was reading somewhere something along the lines of that if the non-NaCl variant was injected into the veins, something called a hemolytic reaction would occur.

Thanks!

 

[sekio]

There's no difference, the amount of salt added is less than 1% and is really present to maintain tonicity (same amount of salt as blood, so your blood cells don't shrink or baloon from osmotic pressure changes). For small injections it's not necessary.

 

[KetamineVials]

What do you consider small? When I make my K vials, I make them 100mg/mL. When I IM it, I do at most 250mg (so 2.5mL.) I usually do between 100mg to 130mg (1mL to 1.3mL,) but if I'm going to K hole, I do 200mg (2mL.) On occasion, I'll go as high as 250mg (2.5mL) if my tolerance is high.

In a day, I might go through 3 to 4 IM shots of about 100mg to 130mg (and I won't K hole that day because I know I won't be able to without fully blacking out.)

Thanks!

 

[Solipsis]

That shouldn't be enough to make your cells burst at the seams but you could always consider just adding the 1.9% salt that is meant to be physiological concentration iirc as it costs virtually nothing to add it right when you add your ket before micron filtering - but hey i have some OCD-ish habits. I always used sterile physiological saline as a basis for my K and similar solutions so this was never an issue for me...

What would for example be considered NOT-small would be an IV drip of saline vs water over time. I mean: those bags are *quite* a bit more than a few mils.

 

[KetamineVials]

Great, thanks! Now this is a silly question, but it's a question nevertheless.

I normally use one Whatman .22 μm filter to a gram of K, and dissolved into 10 mL of bacteriostatic NaCl water. Now, I have a few grams of K left, but only maybe 3-4 mL of bacteriostatic NaCl water (if I'm even lucky that it's that much.) I don't want to waste a brand new vial and filter for so little K just to get a shot or two, so can I reuse a previous vial that I used to store K?

Is there any other way to filter out my K? If not, can I use a new Whatman filter (for about 200-300 mg of K (2-3 mL of water)) and store it until I receive my new order of bacteriostatic water, which should hopefully be here by the weekend, or early next week at the latest? I would then use the rest of the filter in a brand new vial (so if I filtered 300 mg of K tonight, I would filter another 700 mg of K into the new vial with the used Whatman filter, then discard the filter.) Would that raise my chance of an injection by a lot, or not very much if I keep sterile with all my equipment?

Thanks!

 

[Solipsis]

Hmm tricky...

To some extent how much K solution you think you should filter through one single filter is a matter of your ideas and to another extent it is due to how many impurities the filter can tolerate.

What you don't want is for your impurities to migrate through most of the filter so that they are ready to start popping out the other end. But it's also about numbers of particles, you can't do any of this perfectly but you just want to be in some safe order of magnitude. To have for example 10-100 bad particles passing through rather than 100.000 ...

I myself have questions about what boiling a used micron filter would really do...

Anyway imo there is no other way to filter your K so you'd have to extend the use of a previous or future used filter, but you might be able to get more comfortable about that by leading alcohol through it in the reverse direction? Part of the story is the clogging of the filter but another part is how many pathogens are passing through, so if you can kill or disable them that could help you to your advantage? Also you should capitalize on a preservative in your final vial. Adding something like benzyl alcohol in there could very well help to keep such contaminant under control, I used BzOH too.

 

[crOOk]

So I scored 100 x .2um and 100x .45um Whatman Syringe Filters for a total of EUR80. What a bargain!

The membranes are made from regenerated cellulose. Should this be of any concern? It seems the only difference is that PVDF has a higher throughout/less resistance while RC is a lot more eco-friendly and compatible with a broader range of solvents (e.g. DMSO, amides, ketones, esters, and ethers).

Enlighten me. PVDF seems the material of choice here, but I don't see why.

It's never necessary. You can shoot straight up pills ot street amphetamine (cut with caffeine pills), but eventually your lung will be a total mess which i likely to cause the premature end of your life.

With the 99% pure "crystal grade" product (if it's coming from china, do not believe those figures lol), there might still be contaminants, especially bacteria. It's pretty unlikely that you will catch an infection without the filtering, but if pathogens are in there in sufficient amounts or your immune system has a weak spot for the respective pathogen, the consequences can be grave to say the least.

It's not very unlikely there are bacteria in the drug. One scenario would be E. cloacae because somebody didn't properly wash his hands after wiping their ass, but pretty much any other type of bacteria (none of them belong in the blood) could be found because someone touched or just breathed on (!) the substance.

You have to decide whether you want to take that risk. Given relatively clean material, infections are very rare. However IF the chemical is contaminated with bacteria and they do cause an infection, you can catch such fun conditions as spinal osteomyelitis, tuberculosis, endocarditis, meningitis, the list is endless really.

So, it's up to you. If you don't want to invest 200 Euros or more for the filters, keep an eye out for them on "online auction houses" (cough cough). Like I said, I scored some for 20% of the usual price which makes filtering single shots an option.



A word of warning regarding preservation with benzyl alcohol:
Benzyl alcohol at a concentration of 0.9% will not immediatel kill all bacteria. Should you contaminate your prepared liquid somehow, keep in mind that the bacteria might be present for as long as two weeks. It would be best to refilter your material in such a scenario!


Another word on the osmolarity of your solutions:
You should bring the solution to an approximate isotonic concentration. Both hypoosmolar (~below 150mOsm/L) and hyperosmolar (sometimes above 600mOsm/L, but definitely above 900mOsm/L) fluids can cause some considerable tissue damage, most notably phlebitis and ulcers.

This is why Captain Heroin warned about injecting straight bacteriostatic water, NOT due to benzylalcohol toxicity which is minimal. The LD50 is around 1g/kg in rats.

So this really goes for all liquids you inject, be it tap water (which has a higher base osmolarity than destilled water), destilled, isotonic (0.9% NaCl) or bacteriostatic water. That is precisely why NaCl as a starting point is a very bad idea. It already has a physiological osmolarity, so everything you add will mean a shift towards hyperosmolarity! Benzyl alcohol does not have any osmolarity because the molecule is not charged, so we would treat it the same as distilled water without benzyl alcohol.

I have personally made the experience of extravasated liquid of a solution with 900mOsm/L and had an ulcer form within minutes that took months to heal. No fun.
Here is an article that gives you an idea of the osmolarity of various liquids: http://www.rxkinetics.com/iv_osmolarity.html

Osmolarity is the number of molecular charges found in a given volume of liquid. Across (cell) membranes liquids are drawn towards that side of the membrane with higher osmolarity, striving towards reaching an equilibrium. If the osmolarity of a liquid is too low, water is drawn into cells which youl cause hydrolysis of red blood cells.
On the other hand when osmolarity is too high, cells will essentially be sucked dry. This has the potential to do considerable damage to your veins, subcutaneous tissue and skin!
Add to this the damaging properties of some chemicals, e.g. ketamine causing vasoconstriction, ischemia and ultimately cell death at sufficient concentrations.

Generally, you should calculate the needed amount for isotonic osmolarity like this:

Find out the molecular weight of your drug. This is the mass in gram that 1 mol of the substance weighs. Then proceed as follows to find out the amount you need for 1ml of liquid to reach 300mOsm/L (isotonic osmolarity):
(Molecular weight in g/mol) * (0.0003mol/ml) * (1000 mg/g) = (needed substance in mg for 1ml of liquid)
or:
(Molecular weight in g/mol) * (0.3 (mg*mol)/(ml*g)) = (needed drug in mg for 1ml of liquid)

The molecular weight you are looking for is not just the specific weight of the substance that is listed on sites like wikipedia, but you have to add the weight of the conjugate acid as well, usually HCl but sometimes much larger acids are used to form salts.
So always add the molecular weight of the acid, for HCl this is 18g/mol.


Here are a few example for various substances, assuming the substance has high purity. Remember that the range that is still acceptable is between 50% and 200% of the calculated mass (to be safe 70-150%, but cave: the range is not as easily calculated for NaCl solution or tap water):
Heroin HCl: (369.41g/mol + 61.13g/mol) * (0.0003mol/ml) * (1000 mg/g) = (430,54 * 0.3) mg/ml = 129,16 mg/ml; Safe range: 90,41 - 193,74 mg/ml
Heroin Acetate: (369.41g/mol + 60.05g/mol) = (429.46 * 0.3) mg/ml = 128.84 mg/ml; Safe range: 90.19 - 193.26 mg/ml
Cocaine HCl: (321,36g/mol + 61.13g/mol) = = (382.491 * 0.3) mg/ml = 114.75 mg/ml; Safe range: 80.33 - 172.13 mg/ml
DMT Fumarate: (188.27g/mol + 116.07g/mol) = (304.34 * 0.3) mg/ml = 91.30 mg/ml; Safe range: 63.91 - 136.95 mg/ml
Methamphetamine HCl: (149.23g/mol + 61.13g/mol) = (210.36 * 0.3) mg/ml = 63.11 mg/ml; Safe range: 44.18 - 94.66 mg/ml
Amphetamine sulphate: (135.21g/mol + 98.00g/mol) = (233.21 * 0.3) mg/ml = 69.96 mg/ml; Safe range: 48.97 - 104.94 mg/ml
Amphetamine phosphate: (135.21g/mol + 98.08g/mol) = (233.29 * 0.3) mg/ml = 69.99 mg/ml; Safe range: 99.99 - 214.26 mg/ml
MDMA HCl: (193.24g/mol + 61.13g/mol) = (254.37 * 0.3) mg/ml = 76.31 mg/ml; Safe range: 53.42 - 114.47 mg/ml
Buprenorphine HCl: (467.64g/mol + 61.13g/mol) = (528.77 * 0.3) mg/ml = 158.63 mg/ml; Safe range: 111.04 - 237.95 mg/ml
Midazolam HCl: (325.78g/mol + 61.13g/mol) = (386.91 * 0.3) mg/ml = 116.07 mg/ml; Safe range: 81.25 - 174.11 mg/ml


For tap water you should subtract 0.000028mol/ml from 0.0003mol/ml, ending up with a factor of 0.272 instead of 0.3.

Now assume you would dissolve 25mg of Heroin in 0.1ml NaCl. This would end up having a molarity of 900mg/ml, while the same amount in bacteriostatic water would come out as roughly 600mg/ml. Both can be damaging, but the NaCl solution will unleash hell on your veins!!

0.9% NaCl is only recommended for substances which require extremely low doses, e.g. LSD or Fentanyl. These would either yield a hypoosmolar solution or you'd be using a tiny amount of liquid.

Of course you could ignore my advice without noticing any acute damage unless the solution ends up in extravasal tissue. However, your veins are likely to suffer long term damage.

I will try to structure this a little better and cut it down a bit. I'd also like to ask those who are familiar with the topic, to look over it and point out any mistakes I might have made. There are probably a few in there, so practice caution and calculate these values yourself. Happy slamming!

I'd also be happy if some of you could tell me which concentrations they have been using, to see if my advice is useful to some of you and you aren't all in the safe range anyway.

This should contain some of the information you are seeking. Short story: It doesn't really matter all that much how much sodium and chloride ions are in the water as long as the osmolarity is tolerable for your cells.


EDIT: Just read you are going to IM. Try using NaCl, since those same ions are present in the blood at roughly the same concentration. We don't have to get too far into what an electrochemical equilibrium is, just remember that your cells are used to having a certain concentration of sodium and chloride ions in the blood filtrate around them. So ideally, use NaCl, but using bacteriostatic water is not a big deal. Just make sure you use less substance when using water that has NaCl in it, so you won't fuck up your muscle, nervous and connective tissue. A single missed shot of hyperosmolar liquid can have you wake up with a hole in your arm, I am not shitting you. Happened to me when missing 300mg of ketamine dissolved in a single ml tap water.
Speaking of, I always use tap water and filter it with a 220nm syringe filter. Takes care of all bacteria and spores, might leave some cell wall fragments of dead bacteria though which can theoretically cause a small immunoreaction.