Okay so I'm not not new to IV use. Been shooting meth and Heroin for a couple years now. But I'm really struggling with hitting myself. It's because of these new long tip rigs I'm using. They are brand new, I'm attempting to hit veins that are hardly used and not small in my fore arms. I can't get a fucking shot in can't register even. I must be going thru the vein or something. Any tips on better ways I could try to inject? Different angles? Idk.
I would suggest to always use the "short needle" and adjust the angle...I was a phlebotomist for years and years at hospitals, clinics, labs, and doctors offices.
I found out pretty quick that the hardest people to draw blood from, bar none, are IV drug users...So, over the years I've done a lot of personal research in order to figure out precisely why that is the case...
This is a short list of the main problems and possible remedies for the problems you're having injecting...
#1 is the scar tissue created on the veins themselves (subcutaneous) Most people don't think about the scarring under the skin, only the superficial scars you can see, but it's there...
What this translates into for venipuncture of any kind is that the needle seems to kind of "bounce off" the vein(or vice versa).
To combat this you need to (a) always use a new, sharp, needle every time...every stick dulls the point.
(b) increase the angle of the needle at least a little... and last but not least (c) when you insert the needle, go in with a quickness... kind of like you're throwing a dart at a dartboard, but close up...
The biggest problem I've seen in regard to this is most people slowly push the needle in...which may work if you don't have much scar tissue or have huge veins, but I've always used the "dart" method and have had a lot of success, plus it hurts less IMHO...
A couple of more tricks we used to employ were getting the patient to run really warm water over their arms and hands before the stick and if that didn't work or wasn't feasible, we would use a blood pressure cuff instead of a tourniquet (tie-off) It usually worked like a charm...Hope this helps and good luck!