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  • BDD Moderators: Keif’ Richards | negrogesic

Q about smoking bioavailability

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Fornax55

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Jun 17, 2010
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The stat that spurred this question was in the bioavailability megathread, it stated that meth had a 90.4% bioavailability when smoked, which was significantly higher than other ROAs.

My question is, how can meth (or anything) have a higher BA when smoked? Meth in particular confuses me because in general, people don't hold their meth tokes in until there's nothing left. They like to blow out huge clouds. What's in that cloud, then? Would that not be a huge percentage of the meth just being breathed out prior to absorption?

Same Q goes for anything else. Someone told me once that most of the THC in marijuana is absorbed within the first second of inhalation (no sources or anything for this, it's just for reference to further my question) so what's in the smoke that's breathed out?

I'd imagine that in CERTAIN cases, the active ingredients of a drug might be absorbed immediately, prior to any heavier vapors/smokes that are inhaled, but I highly doubt that's the case for all drugs that are smoked. Can anyone shed some light?
 
So for the contents of meth clouds, I do not know and am kinda curious as well. For you're other questions I think I can at least shed some light.

I believe the reason some drugs have a higher bioavailability from inhalation is because you are skipping a lot of the digestive system that might destroy the drugs before they reach the brain. Cannabis has a higher bioavailability from inhalation as well.

Now for your question about what is in smoke that's breathed out, I think it's best you first understand what smoke is. Many people, I believe, are under the assumption that smoke is a gas, which is actually not the case. Smoke is a colloid, a mixture of substances, where one (or more) substance's particles are dispersed within another's (milk is a common example of a colloid). More simply, smoke is a bunch of solid and liquid particles dispersed within a cloud of gas, these dispersed particles are what make the cloud visible.

Now cannabis smoke is going to have a myriad of contents, but the desired ones are the particles in the solid/liquid states and make up only a fraction of the entire mixture. Therefore, even after the desired particles are absorbed there will be smoke leftover to be exhaled.

I will look up and find the study that talks about holding hits in later because I am getting a little tired, but to my knowledge there is absolutely NO point to hold hits in and IMO it is a bad thing to do. I'm pretty sure I read somewhere the inside of your lungs have the surface area around that of a tennis court, so imagine 1 hits worth of smoke spread out over an entire tennis court and it's not very hard to believe that the desired particles would be absorbed rapidly.
 
What you're dealing with here is just a misunderstanding of how the lungs actually work. Don't feel dumb or anything, because I only know about this shit because I had the same question ages ago regarding Cannabis smoke. "How can exhale so much smoke, yet still be absorbing all of the active THC/Cannabinoids?"

Well, it's just because your lungs are very efficient at absorbing shit from air. Your lungs are absorbing the majority of the active compounds and exhaling what's left. I know this isn't an extremely scientific answer, but you can be confident that the Bioavailability statistics that you're working with are accurate.
 
meth is also a vapor when it enters your lungs not smoke, alot of the things in the vapor you blow out are inactive cuts and other byproducts of the meth. like keif said that figure is right. only way your ba is any higher is slamming it and fuck that
 
Some people DO hold in their meth vapor, btw. Why waste all that product trying to impress your friends with the size of your cloud?

Keep in mind though the various clouds are due to different phenomena.

In one case (joints/bongs/pipes/cigarettes) you have particulates from combustion (comparatively HUGE pieces of singed plant matter and paper) that will never be absorbed into your blood, they're just too big--that's a case where your "cloud" has zero bioavailability to begin with, other than the THC or nicotine vapors, the carbon monoxide and hundreds of other small molecules.

The other is vaporized product, which will have maybe a dozen different molecules, instead of thousands, and no particulates at all. It's a "mist" really.

I do think that absorption of vapors is pretty much instantaneous once it reaches the actual absorptive tissue, the alveoli. That means it's the act of slowly filling your lungs, plus then a positive pressure if you "hold it" for a second, that just forces vapor deeper into your lung tissue. And of course, holding your breath when you take a hit of anything can make the experience seem like more than it is.

FWIW, I've never been able to clear a massive meth hit completely of vapor. And as far as I know it's still an open question as to the exact composition of meth vapor. I can say from exhaling into containers, whatever it is persists for several minutes. Ie., it's not water vapor. The really high heat in a meth pipe means there'll be lots of pyrolysis products, so meth clouds are actually pretty toxic flammable mystery fogs.

For commercial vaporizers, keep in mind they have a carrier solution that helps get your nicotine or whatever airborne--they can be large and heavy molecules and it's that which makes up the cloud (and water vapor).
 
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nice explanation there scrofula. always enjoy seeing your answers, always well thought out and very intelligent
 
Why thank you.

Stuff like that comes up when you smoke a lot of meth though. I really have filled dozens of 2L bottles with meth clouds and studied them intently at 4am.
 
i know the feeling. a former friend of mine and i were smoking in his garage, and i will say those clouds have intoxicating effects there was a duck in the garage and the garage was pretty small. all ill say is the duck didn't sleep for 2 days along with us
 
I'm going to go ahead and close this, as I feel the original objective of the thread has been achieved and we need to make room for more unanswered queries.
 
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