Opioids Individual opiate solubilities in water?

[ShaunG]

Can anyone run down the list of major opiates and their solubilities in water? I had a hard time finding this information and the only one I think I remember is morphine is like 60mg/ 1ml.

Also, if pills are involved, does this take into consideration the filler involved since some may be water soluble?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Lorne???]

Firstly, no, the solubility figured DO NOT take into account the binders present in pills. Listed solubilities are always under "ideal" conditions, so just pure drug with no filler.

Inevitably, when injecting pills, solubility will be slightly less than listed. How much less, is harder to say.

But with the stronger opies(hydromorphone, oxymorphone, heroin) this is no problem, because they have solubilitied of 100'smg pet ml, which is more than you'll need.

With oxy and morphine, though, you can run into problems.

Unfortunately I don't seem to remember solubility figures off hand, but as you said, morphine is 60mg, while diamorphine is around 600mg/ml.

As I said, hydro/oxymorphone are in the hundred of ml, as well(more so than dia, if I recall.

Oxy I've seen listed at both 60mg and 100mg, either is believable, but I'd lean toward 100, as it would be hard to believe it and morphine are the same.
Anyway, hope this helps!

 

[ShaunG]

Thanks. Ya, I figured these numbers were based on ideal situations (no binders). I ask just because I was thinking of filtering out some binders in a pill (10mg IR opana) since there is so much of it or at least trying if all the binder is not soluble or as soluble in water and then letting it vape dry. This would be to sniff and not for injection, but I am sure this thread will be valuable to others for that. I guess total weight of pill/powder must be taken into consideration then, but it should remove some of the binders at least. I did not realize some of these were in the several hundred mg per ml solubility...

 

[Lorne???]

Well, if your curious, I pulled the solubility figures for the most popular opies:

Morphine: 60mg/ml
Hydromorphone: 333mg/ml
Oxymorphone: 250mg/ml
Methadone: 76.92mg/ml
Hydrocodone: 76.92mg/ml(!?!)
Buprenorphine: 8mg/ml
Oxycodone: 166mg/ml
and

Diamorphine: 500mg/ml

 

[gauchoamigo]

Well, if your curious, I pulled the solubility figures for the most popular opies:

Morphine: 60mg/ml
Hydromorphone: 333mg/ml
Oxymorphone: 250mg/ml
Methadone: 76.92mg/ml
Hydrocodone: 76.92mg/ml(!?!)
Buprenorphine: 8mg/ml
Oxycodone: 166mg/ml
and

Diamorphine: 500mg/ml

The Patient Information Leaflet which comes with boxes of 5 x 500mg vials of Auralis/Teva Diamorphine hydrochloride Powder for Reconstitution (Rx UK 2015) states that 500mg should be used with a 5mL syringe. The strength with which I have most experience, 30mg, may be dissolved in slightly under 1mL and administered using a 1mL syringe. I can not recall where I read it, but I am virtually certain that diamorphine HCl solubility in water is a lot lower than the 500mg/mL you quote (from where?), because I was looking into just this issue a year or two back with a view to making a delivery system for opioids using aqueous solution in the sort of metered dose bottle used by GlaxoSK for their BECONASE nasal spray, particularly for those drugs whose intranasal bioavailability is far higher than oral; the three most important available on prescription and which would save money & ingredients as well as giving a much-improved onset of action being hydromorphone, oxymorphone and diamorphine. I remember thinking that, going by the figures I had pulled from whatever source I was using, diamorphine would be much better used with a dry powder inhalator of the type sold at medical stores. The 10mg tablets are very rarely prescribed these days (in fact I am surprised that they remain on pharmacy shelves given the level of injecting users here in Scotland, a percentage which is one of the highest in the world) and are only slightly higher in bioavailability than OPANA.
Oxymorphone and hydromorphone are the obvious candidates for this very effective method of delivery because of their very high aqueous solubility and the differences in b/a - in the case of oxymorphone, oral bioavailability is an extremely low 10%, which rises to 90% when taken intranasally, making that the perfect drug for such a delivery system.
Does anyone know where to find a definitive table? I have been unable to find the figures for either dipipanone hydrochloride or dextromoramide tartrate anywhere, though the former might prove to cause far too much nausea in far too high a percentage of patients to be any use in the nasal spray system; some people I know have even experienced sickly feelings when taking a pretty commonly prescribed dose of two tablets (which would contain 60mg cyclizine, contained in all tablets as an antiemetic, and a very effective one it normally is, which is why much of the morphine used by doctors IV in non-tolerant patients is the Cyclimorph brand, each vial containing [in the 15mg strength] 25mg cyclizine)...

 

[tightlywound]

Well, if your curious, I pulled the solubility figures for the most popular opies:

Morphine: 60mg/ml
Hydromorphone: 333mg/ml
Oxymorphone: 250mg/ml
Methadone: 76.92mg/ml
Hydrocodone: 76.92mg/ml(!?!)
Buprenorphine: 8mg/ml
Oxycodone: 166mg/ml
and

Diamorphine: 500mg/ml

huh. I've read bupe is 17mg/ml ...
I would be interested in finding out which one is accurate as I IV my zubsolvs.

 

[Znegative]

It's 17mg/mL

BTW this is a good idea for a thread. We have one devoted to benzos but as far as I know, we don't for opiates. If the OP doesn't mind I'd like to add the findings to the OP and put it in the directory

-Fentanyl seems to be soluble at 200mg/L or 200mc/mL, though in citrate form it's soluble at 25mg/mL-source
-Nalbuphine (HCL) 35.5mg/mL -source
-Desomorphine (freebase) 1425 mg/L at 25 degrees C -source
-O-Desmethyltramadol 3.53 mg/mL (this strikes me as strange, maybe someone could do some more research) -source

Also, from what I found hydrocodone is soluble at like, 2.7mg/mL, but I imagine that's in some other form otherwise CWE wouldn't work, unless people used massive amounts of water.

 

[tmaca]

Something nobody is mentioning is the anti-drug abuse factor. For quite some time now, at least since the 1980s that I know, some makers have included things in the fillers of pills/tablets that contain opoids which make it vwry difficult to dissolve the drug in water. And some have included materials which will make the crushed pill/water mix instantly gel the second heat is applied.

A bit of advice if you're trying to dissolve pills and inject them. Make darned sure you filter really well. In fact, it's a good idea to draw through the filter, rinse out the container, put the solution back in, and draw it up again through a second, new filter. Cotton fever is fairly nasty, and you don't want to be injeting particulate matter, which can happen even though the solution looks completely clear to you.

 

[Slow_Mobius]

It's 17mg/mL

BTW this is a good idea for a thread. We have one devoted to benzos but as far as I know, we don't for opiates. If the OP doesn't mind I'd like to add the findings to the OP and put it in the directory

-Fentanyl seems to be soluble at 200mg/L or 200mc/mL, though in citrate form it's soluble at 25mg/mL-source
-Nalbuphine (HCL) 35.5mg/mL -source
-Desomorphine (freebase) 1425 mg/L at 25 degrees C -source
-O-Desmethyltramadol 3.53 mg/mL (this strikes me as strange, maybe someone could do some more research) -source

Also, from what I found hydrocodone is soluble at like, 2.7mg/mL, but I imagine that's in some other form otherwise CWE wouldn't work, unless people used massive amounts of water.

I think I've mentioned this somewhere else before, but it's important to check whether you're looking at the figure for the free base compound or the salt. Often, drugs have low solubilities in their free base but are protonated via HCl to form a much more soluble salt. I see some of them are looking at free base and others salt... I think most opioids are manufactured as HCl salts.

Ive always wondered how consistent generic products were regarding pH, drug dispersion, etc. I know they're recalled from time to time for absorption issues.

 

[tacodude]

Could be freebase hydrocodone like the 1.425 mg/ml for the freebase desomorphine (just thought I'd make it easier).

Good call on the fentanyl addiction especially the note of the major difference in solubility amount vs regular fentanyl and fentanyl citrate. I'm assuming the first number is freebase fentanyl and something like fentanyl acetate/absorbate/HCL could all be much more soluble than 200 mcg/ml. At that solubility rating if one really knew what they were doing they could just throw a cooker full of fentanyl and keep dropping in 1 ml to draw at a time.

Edit: I'll add my statement above about the fentanyl solubility allowing one to make sure to get 200mcg per ml by loading more fent than the water can hold and just keep washing however many ml or fractions of ml needed to get the right dose. No one should attempt this without someone present with narcan available.... I mean a lot of doses of narcan too just in case maybe even a stronger antagonist as fentanyl binds to the receptor tighter than bupe, which binds stronger than narcan so it's likely fentanyl would be very likely unaffected by standard possibly even also large narcan doses.

 

[Captain.Heroin]

Perhaps someone could compile a massive list

I know I made the benzo solubility mega thread.