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Opioids Make track marks less noticeable?

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mcgrCONTIN

mcgrCONTIN

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Jun 6, 2011
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New York, NY
Anyone have any strategies for making track marks less noticeable? I usually wear short sleeve t-shirts, and I dont want my parents asking me one day about some of the different spots i hit, as i usually rotate between three spots.

Are there certain areas on the body where you guys find that the marks left from injection are barely noticeable if you only hit them between one and three times every few days? I don't want to use makeup to cover anything up either, as thats just gay.

Whats the best way to inject to reduce bruising the most and leave only a small red hole that will go away in a day or so.

Also, how do you know when an injection site is used up (i think one sign is that the vein becomes really hard, im assuming this is scar tissue)
 
You can reduce track marks and general tissue damage by practicing sterile and proper injection techniques. In general, this is more important than the actual location of the injection. That said, size matters: the smaller the vein (or more accurately, the smaller the vein in comparison to the needle gauge), the more it will be damaged by the physical act of being punctured by the needle. Stick with healthy, fat, well-presented veins.

Also, use fresh equipment. Obtain as many disposable, high-gauge (smaller) needles as you can, and try to use them as close to "once only" as your supply allows.

Practice sterility; take the extra 30 seconds to sterilize the site with alcohol prior to injection; it's not like you don't already have the cotton handy. Additionally, apply a healing, antibiotic ointment to the site post-injection.

Finally, if you are injecting 30s or other pills, which I guess you are based on your profile pic; invest in a micron filter. Simple cotton doesn't remove the fillers that are found in these pills, and the more particulate matter in the solution you inject, the more destructive it is to your circulatory system. Captain.Heroin has provided an excellent article on micron filtering, which can be read here: http://www.bluelight.ru/vb/archive/index.php/t-481622.html

These techniques, along with some lesser known injection practices which are listed in the article I have provided, will go a long way in ensuring that only you know that you are an IV user.

Proper Injection Techniques
http://www.anypositivechange.org/BVCSI_txtENG.pdf
 
^ This. I would like to emphasize the importance of proper IV technique. If you have to repeatedly stab yourself in order to puncture a vein, there will obviously be more track marks.

Also, try to shoot in other locations. I find my feet are excellent for hiding my habit, but missing a shot in your foot hurts a lot more and caused my foot to swell up like a balloon.
 
I heard it's easy to hit a nerve in your foot as well, which would undoubtedly be unbearably painful.

I havent had too much trouble because i use a 30 gauge 1cc insulin long needle (the thing is tiny, when i do it correctly it barely leaves a mark and sometimes doesnt even bleed one bit)
 
Dont shoot in your feet the risk for infection is high because of the lower blood pressure to the area plus those viens tend to roll like a motherfucker.
 
Biooil is supposed to help the track marks and other scars fade with time. It's a wee bit expensive but it's worth it in my opinion.
 
Very good response by narcoticon. In my experience, proper IV technique is the best way to reduce track marks. Using fresh, small gauge needles and rotating sites is important. Anti-biotic ointment also helps to decrease healing time. Also, some kind of ointment containing vitamin E is very helpful to reduce noticeable marks. There are numerous scar creams on the market, which actually do work quite well.
 
mcgrCONTIN said:
Anyone have any strategies for making track marks less noticeable? I usually wear short sleeve t-shirts, and I dont want my parents asking me one day about some of the different spots i hit, as i usually rotate between three spots.

Are there certain areas on the body where you guys find that the marks left from injection are barely noticeable if you only hit them between one and three times every few days? I don't want to use makeup to cover anything up either, as thats just gay.

Whats the best way to inject to reduce bruising the most and leave only a small red hole that will go away in a day or so.

Also, how do you know when an injection site is used up (i think one sign is that the vein becomes really hard, im assuming this is scar tissue)
Click to expand...

SO-- here's my personal take on some of these things (being an former IV-drug user of almost 12 years, if that gives me any sort of credential on the subject, haha...)

ONCE YOU ALREADY HAVE TRACK MARKS and you want to cover them up without make-up or neutralizer... this can be tricky. Many people believe that track marks are scars, but this is incorrect. Well, not scars on your skin, anyway. Its more or less scarring of the tissue in your veins, so using stretch mark cream or neosporin for this purpose is not really effective for this.

However-- the ACTUAL injection sites and/ or puncture wounds and pits, alongside with bruising near the site of the track marks ARE scars (obviously) of the skin tissue, so neosporin will definitely aid in the healing of these scars by about 10 fold, and the oils in the cream will also increase your skin's elasticity, and therefore reducing bruising as well. And to be honest, the puncture "tracks" are what most people think of when they think of track marks anyway, and not the dull bruised-looking lines that make up the ACTUAL tracks of fucked-up veins showing through the skin.

As mentioned in another post on this thread, your best bet altogether in reducing or coverinh track marks is to eliminate the cause of them or their severity all together by making sure your drug of abuse isn't cut with garbage, filtering, not hitting arteries, and basically just practicing safe shooting techniques altogether. (The links another posted above in response to you I, too, would say are valid for such instructions after looking through them.)

Good luck!
 
bleaching the skin in combo with cosmetics and longer sleeves :) I don't mean with bleach, use panoxle acne wash (10% peroxide) to remove the color of the skin/bruise and a light liquid and powder and that works for me. Washing it over and over in the shower helps a lot!
 
This was asked many times before. Needles for intravenous injections of e.g. heroin are 0.3mm to 0.45mm (about 30 to 26 gauge), 0.5mm is passable but it leaves a bigger mark. Using a needle only once is not an option, it's actually a must everyone who injects should follow. The more times the same needle is used, the more damage it does to your skin and your veins. Keeping hygiene is also important, the spot should be disinfected with salicylic spirit, isopropanol spray, or something similar. It's no excuse you're shooting up in some public toilet so you don't have a disinfectant and something clean to put on the place you injected with pressure for a few minutes and it's best when you've got e.g. your arm straightened (it depends on the person, some still get bruises even after applying pressure for 5 minutes).

Also, track marks appear faster when you inject hot solution right away after boiling heroin with citric acid. There's a common practice of pulling the plunger after everything is injected for blood to wash all the drug from the syringe, the blood is then injected back. These are not healthy things to do and I know addicts do it very often.

How to cure places with an inflammation of a vein has been described a few times for sure as I remember I wrote about applying a mash of sodium bicarbonate with little water (high pH kills bacteria). Ointments with heparin also help. But now I'm writing about situations when you can't straighten your arm because of the pain coming from vein inflammation. If you shoot up for a longer period of time, you will experience it sooner or later as there aren't infinite spots to inject and you don't even know when you find yourself in a situation when you have to shoot up even 6 times a day to get through it.
 
From what I was told by someone who injects, The doctor told them the reason people get track marks is because they dont clean the area properly and dont clen the needle. Use a small disposable thin needle along with cleaning the area and there will be no track marks. From the way it was explained to me, track marks are the result of the dirt on the skin getting stuck in the underlying layers of skin the way the tattoo ink stays in the skin layers.
 
mcgrCONTIN said:
I havent had too much trouble because i use a 30 gauge 1cc insulin long needle (the thing is tiny, when i do it correctly it barely leaves a mark and sometimes doesnt even bleed one bit)
Click to expand...
This. And in addition, I put neosporin (the kind with +pain relief, but I'm sure the regular kind will work too) on the spot immediately afterwards, and it helps diminish bruising considerably.

mrflowers00 said:
i think the question is how do you reduce the appearance of track marks once you already have them
Click to expand...
Yeah, do the neosporin trick. I just put it on all my bruises and marks and it makes them less sightly.
 
Other options are :

1) Blur the spot (eg the crook of the arm) with a tattoo.
2) Wait until real scars are gone and get a suntan
 
Concerning thin needles, well, if heroin base in a brown powder form is used, then it's kind of a thick solution after boiling it with citric acid/acetic acid. It's not really that healthy to use very thin needles but I admit I did it too... Larger needles should be used but it's virtually impossible if you're totally into heroin. And it's not like you can't hit a vein with a 0.8mm needle without harming a vein or leaving a lasting mark, it's a matter of technique really. I had my blood sample taken with a 0.8mm needle and a 20ml syringe (visualize it ;)) once upon a time and despite of some maneuvering because blood didn't want to go in the syringe after like 10ml, I had a regular mark just like after any blood giving.

But then again it's not a thing to be done when someone injects regularly a few times a day. I took this brown heroin off the street actually just for like 9 months, I would use insulin needles then coming with 0.3mm or 0.4mm needles. I used insulin needles for other opioids too but it concerned very potent by weight ones that were in bulk (e.g. 3-methylfentanyl 0.05mg/ml or pentamorphone 0.2mg/ml so I could inject the dose that made me high as a kite very fast). For drugs like morphine from ampules I would use 0.45mm needles and 5ml syringes (at the very beginning) and then 10ml syringes (that's actually how much you have to inject if you're addicted to taking 200mg...).
 
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