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Heroin Heroin and a Coroner's Report

arcarsenal

Bluelighter
Joined
Aug 14, 2001
Messages
151
Hopefully somewhere here can give me a clue.

A friend of a friend recently died in a car accident. My friend wants to know if the individual was high. We have the coroner's report.

Ethanol says .16g%. I am assuming that means a BAC of .16, legally drunk.

However, the person was a known heroin addict. Here, the report is confusing.

They tested for two things, 6-MAM and Morphine, which makes sense.

6-MAM (monacetyl morphine) was not detected.
Morphine was detected in the amount of 49 ng/mL.

I am not sure how to read this. I know it doesn't make a lot of sense to speculate, but the only two things I can think are that the person had not done a shot in a while, and so the 6-MAM was undetectable, or that they had just done a shot, and that it was not YET detectable.

Am I wrong to say that Morphine at 49 ng/mL is rather low and suggests that it had been a while since the individual had shot up?
 
You are neglecting the possibility that this person had simply just used morphine and not heroin during the time right before the accident. Sometimes ppl can't get their hands on heroin and take some other opioid to stave off withdrawal.
 
I honestly don't know man. I know a little bit about how heroin is metabolized. I'm pretty sure once in the brain it is turned into both 3MAM and 6MAM, and then into morphine. So you are correct in your assumption that if 6MAM wasn't detected, the person probably hadn't shot up recently. How recently one would of had to have shot up for the 6MAM to be detectable i don't really know though. I would guess the 6MAM would only be detectable for a few hours after one shot up, but that is a complete guess and could be totally wrong.

Maybe you can ask the coroner? They probably know, either them or a doctor. I'm not sure how many people on here would be qualified to accurately answer your question, though there are some pretty knowledgeable people on here so you might get a good answer.
 
I do not believe that that amount is enough for an opiate-tolerant person to have OD'd on. A study has show that intoxicated drivers have survived with up to 128 (maybe 138)ng/ml. but then again, i dont know the tolerance of your friends friend and whether the booze had a significant effect when combined with the morphine. lib.bioinfo/pl.paper:12427450
 
Could be heroin, could be just morphine

Every time I've gotten tested and was dirty it came out as just morphine instead of diamorph. Don't know though.

Speculation threads ftw
 
Diamorphine breaks down into 6-MAM, 3-MAM (not too sure about this one), and morphine within the first half hour at tops i believe. 6-MAM breaks down very fast too so it is very possible he did a shot a while ago and just has the morphine in his system. we will never know for sure. but cases like these are always sad because the families of the victims will never REALLY know what happened to their child...
 
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