Heroin black tar heroin cut with buprenorphine in Los Angeles

[eggcrate2]

I have been determined to get clean from heroin and signed up for a study comparing OX219 to Suboxone...

i was ecstatic about the opportunity to get free suboxone for 2 months and even get paid for it!

finally my chance to get clean since I cannot afford suboxone and have no health innsurance

The ONLY drug I use is black tar heroin and NOTHING else... no alcohol, cannabis, meth, etc...

After my screening I was DENIED from the study because they said I tested HIGH and POSITIVE for buprenorphine!!!

I have never taken suboxone before and I have no idea how it could have entered my body. I immediately thought it must be a false positive but my girlfriend tested the same way and we have the same habits.

This must mean that street heroin in Los Angeles has a large amount of buprenorphine in it...

Is anyone else aware of this? Is this common? Why would they cut black tar with buprenorphine, which seems like a harder drug to get??

I am baffled and extremely disappointed

 

[RTrain]

To me it seems to make little sense for anyone to cut heroin with a medication containing buprenorphine. That is not to say its out of the question, sometimes anything will do that is lying around. Also some idiot out there might think the bupe will make it stronger or be an adequate replacement for the heroin high at a cheap price. Someone not aware of bupe's blocking effect of other opiates. Of course if you it depends how much they put in, still 1 8 mg sub put into like 10 g and someone does a 1 g shot they are getting enough bupe for a pretty strong blockade effect.

So like I said, it doesn't make sense to me, you are trying to add weight at the least expense of strength. To put any amount of Sub in there that it adds significant weight, you are going to cause a strong blockade or put someone into precipitated w/d. But low level middle men with no drug knowledge will cut their shit with anything. If you got reliable connects and you trust whos touching the stuff, then its tougher understand. But if you got multiple connects and run thru a lot of middle men, good chance someone could crush a sub up into some dope to make some bucks.


Did the oganization running the study by chance mention what level of bupe was in your system, or just that you were over the cutoff? The cutoff could be very low and just a matter of some bupe accidentally getting in contact with some dope you did, not something that was done purposely. Stuff is so strong that even a sub 100 mcg amount, in injected, could linger in detectable amounts for a while.

 

[Mr.Scagnattie]

Doing that would make absolutely zero sense.. If there was a high level of bupe in heroin, the dope wouldn't even work because the bupe has a much higher affinity and would just block the receptors. It would be beyond pointless for someone to do this, unless they are completely oblivious and know nothing about how these two drugs work.

 

[neversickanymore]

It could be a crazy attempt at cornering the market as if you hit the supposed bupe stuff the competitors wont work for awhile ad people will be forced to use the crap.. but also anyone who is on strait H and bangs back the buep will know it right away as they will become pretty sick.

 

[eggcrate2]

I don't recall feeling sick or anything like precipitated withdrawal feelings. All the stuff I've got seems like heroin to me. I usually buy at least 7gs at a time so its not like it was a one time thing.

I know suboxone is a mix of buprenorphine and naloxone. Is it the naloxone that blocks other opiates and buprenorphine by its-self is fine to mix with heroin?

I don't know exactly where the heroin I get comes from and who cuts it, but it always seems to be good stuff, and I always seem to feel it just fine. What would the symptoms be of mixing heroin with buprenorphine? If I really have been getting large amounts of buprenorphine you would think that I would experience some of those symptoms.

I started to suspect that maybe the doctor was fabricating this because they want to kick us out of the study, but I called back and they even offered to send us our test results from the blood work. The doctor said that these are the preliminary results and not the final results so it can change, but in her experience it never has.

She specifically said that we have a HIGH amount of buprenorphine in our systems, and we have been using ONLY street heroin so unless they somehow fabricated the results, this must mean that our heroin has been cut with a large about of buprenorphine. This really blows my mind and I really needed this study so I am extremely bummed out. I needed to get off this stuff before the holidays and I cannot afford to buy more and I hate thinking about driving to a methadone clinic every morning again UGH!

 

[FlawedByDesign]

I know suboxone is a mix of buprenorphine and naloxone. Is it the naloxone that blocks other opiates and buprenorphine by its-self is fine to mix with heroin?

When using suboxone it is the bupe itself that blocks other opiates. I would think taking a substance that contains both heroin and buprenorphine would cause precipitated withdrawals unless the bupe some how beats the heroin to the receptors, which I doubt is the case as most people who IV bupe says it takes longer to kick in compared to other drugs when IV'd. I would also think that anyone who has ever shot heroin could easily tell the difference between it and suboxone(from what I hear bupe doesnt have much of a rush). Did you also test positive from heroin?

 

[neversickanymore]

When using suboxone it is the bupe itself that blocks other opiates.

+1.

and egg you most likely tested positive for bupe not subs and if your theory is correct they were making a tar out of bupe and not subox.. how long could you go in between doses with out getting sick?

 

[outrigger]

If the Doc says it's a "high level" of buprenorphine, it can't be down to low cut-offs and accidental adulteration.

As the Doc said they were "preliminary results" it was almost certainly just an immuno-assay test.

If this is your first positive test for bupe it's probably a false positive.

The pharmacology info from Oh_ROXIanne! is spot on. The naloxone was added to Suboxone because of Reckitt Benckiser's need to maintain market share against generic bupe, and as a response to negative media attention, not because pharmacology or practice wisdom suggested this would reduce misuse.
Buprenorphine outcompetes naloxone.
If the only drug you inject is Suboxone, the naloxone has no real clinical significance at all.
Most people who inject Subutex (bupe) and are crossed over to Suboxone (bupe/naloxone) and who continue injecting report that the only difference is a lemon taste when they inject the latter- (although some people report slightly blunted onset of action with Suboxone compared to Subutex).

If someone who is not dependent on heroin, (or any traditional opioids that act like morphine), takes some buprenorphine they will get very pinned.

If someone who is dependent on "traditional" opioids takes bupe, it competitively binds with the receptors and kicks any other opioids off them, precipitating withdrawal because it's agonist action doesn't outweigh it's antagonist/blocking effect. Naloxone can put a heroin dependent person into precipitated withdrawal for 20 mins to an hour, but bupe can do it for 2 to 4 days.

If someone uses opioids dependently but has none in their system right now (and how long that takes depends on the half-life of the specific opioid), they'll typically find bupe will treat the withdrawal symptoms.

So, if you only use heroin occasionally, or if you are dependent but haven't had any for 2 or 3 days, bupe will not precipitate withdrawal. It will either make you feel very stoned or it will ameliorate withdrawals from the opioid of choice, depending largely on your tolerance.

So, if you are seriously dependent on Black Tar Heroin, I would be very surprised if a significant amount of bupe could be in your system without you noticing for yourself... ...has the source and/or appearance of the gear you are buying changed at all?

Based on your account, I would expect that the most likely explanation is that your Doc is reporting a false positive result from an immune-assay test, (which is surprisingly common), or the results of an adulterated or mis-labelled sample (extremely rare but not unheard of).
If it is the former, and your Doc has sent it off for LC-MS or GC-MS confirmation, you will be absolved. Immuno-assay is unreliable. LC-MS don't lie.
If it is the later, then LC-MS will just confirm what is in the sample, whether it originated in your body or not...

If the Doc has ordered LC-MS testing, the following info may be relevant;

If you had used any real heroin within <20 hours before the urine screen, there will almost certainly be mono-acetylmorphine and possibly some related metabolites in the sample. It should say something like "+ for MAM indicative of heroin use" on the test report.

If you had used any real heroin within ~2, perhaps even 3, days of the urine sample being taken, it should contain detectable amounts of morphine.

If someone had somehow been selling you buprenorphine and pretending it was heroin, and you had used within 2 days before the sample was taken, there will be + result for buprenorphine but no morphine and no heroin metabolites detected.

Hope that's useful.

Regards,
Outrigger.

 

[aarondank]

Seems unlikely that your dope was cut for the following reasons:
1. Bupe is arguably more expensive
2. Bupe bonds tighter to receptors than heroin, so it would block heroin from taking effect.
3. I believe smoking bupe would ruin it...

very odd homie