Opioids Injecting Morphine w/ needle that has been cut at angle - worried about friend!

[Heidi]

I am worried about my roommate who has an on-going history of crushing up her legally prescribed morphine XR and injecting it. What are the dangers? To make it worse - she is using intra-muscular needles. She has a hard time obtaining needles. Now I found some needles hidden from me with hacked-off at an angle tips. They are so thick! Is this something she might do when the tip gets too dull? I found the wire-cutters have been pulled out of the tool-box. I see she has a large gash on her leg. Now she is so sick with a fever and refuses to go to the ER until her wounds heal. She is just taking some anti-biotics that she took from her mother's house. She has legit pain issues - but I feel this has gone beyond addressing her physical pain... when I suggest such, she becomes defensive and angry. I can understand her fear of no longer obtaining means of pain control... but can she ever again adjust to a normal dose now that her pain-meds have become a recreational drug as well? She takes up to 100-150mg via syringe at a time. If she takes it orally she seems fine - not high. If injected, she is loopy, and obviously very high. She wants me to help - she BEGS me to. But she wants help in a way that no doc finds out about her taking her morphine incorrectly... out of fear she will no longer be able to get it. I want to help - but need advice. Maybe telling her the dangers she faces from doing this will help? She trusts me it seems - but not others. She begs me to not tell anyone. I don't want her to feel she cannot trust me, because then she will feel I have abandoned her like her family REALLY has. I am all she has - this is hard on me - any advice would be nice.

 

[DooMMooD]

Wow thats pretty hardcore....She obviously needs help.

At the very least you should show her the image of the needle after 1 use, 2 use, etc. Can someone else post this pic? (I cannot find it!) She is straight up going to lose a limb if she keeps doing what shes doing.

Drug problem aside, the NEEDLE PROBLEM is the one im' most concerned for. Using wire cutters to 'resharpen' your needles is a horrendous, horrendous, HORRENDOUS accident that is one hand twitch away from happening.

Tell her if she wants to keep using to go buy a box of needles, and use them ONCE EVER. It will probably only run her a few dollars at most AND will keep her from stabbing herself with dull points, or points she created herself with "wire cutters". A needle should be used 1 time, thats it. After that it is incredibly dulled, and instead of poking through a vein nice and clean like, you are actually kind of TEARING THROUGH the vein. I know its hard to conceptualize "Oh but its still sharp and pointy! It pokes through fine!" but on a small, (near; sometimes it IS visible if you have great eyes) microscopic level, in reality, it is NOT cleanly going through into a vein. Its ripping a hole through skin and vein (in laymans terms).

Plus shes prob not micron filtering her morphine....basically everything she is doing now, if it doesn't have immediate horrendous consequences, will add up and fuck her later down the road. Again, near impossible for an addict to grasp the severity and depth of this, or even give a shit about. "Oh thats a load of shit people made up! I just shot up my morphine last night and I dont have any problems! And if im fine now, I doubt 10 years from now anything will be wrong!" is probably a response you will hear. I mean shit, something 10 years off to an addict might as well be make believe, compared to the next shot of morphine. But 10 years from now when her veins are shot and shes got chunks of pill floating around and they rip through an artery and kill her randomly one day while shes doing nothing more than sitting around....yeah.

She'll learn one way or the other unfortunately.

Honestly reading that made me like....just wow. Thats crazy to me, using wire cutters to re-cut a needle? That is simply INSANE and is such a huge indicator of a giant giant problem that idk what else to say. If she doesn't realize the giant problem she has, while doing THAT, idk if your going to be able to do anything for her. By all means, try your hardest, but if a needle she has recut with wire cutters isn't enough to get her to stop and say "I have a problem" then god damn, i dunno what WILL.

Thats really hardcore. I know sometimes we read some CRAZY posts on BL, about hardcore junkies. But god damn this one really made me sit back and go "Ho-lee shit."

 

[Hiltoniano]

Uhh damn she needs a lot of help. She could easily cause irreversible damage to herself if this continues. Get her help ASAP!

 

[tricomb]

Under no circumstances do you allow your friend to inject with a needle that has been cut at an angle. I don't even want to know what she cut the needle with nor do I want to see the tip under a microscope.

She's not filtering, she's not using proper injection technique, this girl needs to get off morphine if you ask me, she's not responsible enough to abuse it with any degree of safety, time to consider maintenance drugs if you ask me. You can call her doctor if you like.

She's shooting 150mg per shot, I don't know what syringe she's using but morphines solubility in water taps out around 60mg/mL and that's generous, so unless she's using a big rig then she's wasting a substantial bit, not that this matters really, it's just yet another clue that this person knows nothing about what they're doing.

I would seek medical attention for your friends leg injury, untreated these things only get worse.

 

[Albion]

Checking out our IV Complications Megathread might be a good way forward.

 

[tricomb]

^ definitely, and also the case studies.

 

[chase_in_56ace]

The fever was the big red flag for me. She needs ER attention immediately.

 

[tricomb]

The fever was the big red flag for me. She needs ER attention immediately.

I didn't read fever anywhere the first time reading the OP, good eye.

ER right now, fever is a bad sign, do not ignore this, if she will not get in the car with you, call 9-1-1 and tell them your roommate requires immediate medical attention from an infection.

That's all you need to tell them, you don't need to mention the drugs to the 9-1-1 operator, just have your friend admitted to the hospital ASAP.