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Heroin Interesting study on opiod injection and endocarditis risk

cj

cj

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So I just found a fascinating study on the risk of endocarditis in iv drug users sorted by injection technique and practice. The study shows that alcoholing off your skin and not reusing needles drastically lowers the risk of death from endocarditis. The study goes from age 20 to age 60. Stratified by high risk techniques and high use vs lower risk techniques and high use. It's startling. Simply using alcohol in the injection site and using clean needles lowers your risk drastically. if you iv drugs you need to read this!!! My wife had endo and now has a artificial valve while her first husband died at age 24 from endocarditis. Its a gnarly disease. I can't stress enough how scared iv users should be if endocarditis.https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8662770/

The probabilities of death from IE by age 60 years for 20-, 30-, and 40-year-old men with high-frequency use with higher infection risk techniques compared to lower risk techniques for IE were 53.8% versus 3.7%, 51.4% versus 3.1%, and 44.5% versus 2.2%, respectively. The predicted population-level attributable fraction of 10-year mortality from IE among all risk groups was 20%. We estimated that approximately 257 800 people are expected to die from IE by 2030.
 
cj said:
So I just found a fascinating study on the risk of endocarditis in iv drug users sorted by injection technique and practice. The study shows that alcoholing off your skin and not reusing needles drastically lowers the risk of death from endocarditis. The study goes from age 20 to age 60. Stratified by high risk techniques and high use vs lower risk techniques and high use. It's startling. Simply using alcohol in the injection site and using clean needles lowers your risk drastically. if you iv drugs you need to read this!!! My wife had endo and now has a artificial valve while her first husband died at age 24 from endocarditis. Its a gnarly disease. I can't stress enough how scared iv users should be if endocarditis.https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8662770/

The probabilities of death from IE by age 60 years for 20-, 30-, and 40-year-old men with high-frequency use with higher infection risk techniques compared to lower risk techniques for IE were 53.8% versus 3.7%, 51.4% versus 3.1%, and 44.5% versus 2.2%, respectively. The predicted population-level attributable fraction of 10-year mortality from IE among all risk groups was 20%. We estimated that approximately 257 800 people are expected to die from IE by 2030.
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So the difference between high and low risk techniques was only the needles and the alcohol? Or also anything else? (Pls don't blame me for not reading the article 😅)
 
I wish people wouldn't IV drugs period. Although I know we live in reality & people are gonna do it anyway.

But this is great information for harm reduction.
One of my friends just lost their girlfriend from shooting up.

I've been an opioid user for 18 years & I've never injected one. Thought about it, but I thankfully have always had an "Ick" thing with needles going into my veins. I don't even like having to get blood drawn. I have inject stimulants & other drugs though.

It's hard for me to understand. I'm assuming people are just addicted to the needle itself, because the rush really isn't THAT much better than through other less risky routes. I use to snort my heroin & it would come on within 2 minutes or so. I mean if a drug is capable of passing through your mucus membrane, then snorting/smoking is basically going to enter your bloodstream right away anyway, no endocarditis or cardio risks at all, it's just gonna take a slightly little bit more time for it kick in. So I hope people who use needles one day see that other ROA's are just as effective & are much safer. It's worth it, so you can stay alive to do more drugs. lol
 
DeathIndustrial88 said:
I wish people wouldn't IV drugs period. Although I know we live in reality & people are gonna do it anyway.

But this is great information for harm reduction.
One of my friends just lost their girlfriend from shooting up.

I've been an opioid user for 18 years & I've never injected one. Thought about it, but I thankfully have always had an "Ick" thing with needles going into my veins. I don't even like having to get blood drawn. I have inject stimulants & other drugs though.

It's hard for me to understand. I'm assuming people are just addicted to the needle itself, because the rush really isn't THAT much better than through other less risky routes. I use to snort my heroin & it would come on within 2 minutes or so. I mean if a drug is capable of passing through your mucus membrane, then snorting/smoking is basically going to enter your bloodstream right away anyway, no endocarditis or cardio risks at all, it's just gonna take a slightly little bit more time for it kick in. So I hope people who use needles one day see that other ROA's are just as effective & are much safer. It's worth it, so you can stay alive to do more drugs. lol
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I second most of that but why is there a difference to injecting stimulants? They're way more risky to iv because of the cardiac arrhythmia they can cause... And it's not like I didn't shoot coke when I was young either, but I wouldn't dare it now...
 
I gotta disagree iv heroin is way better then any other roa to me. It's not even close. But then again I've been injecting for 20 years now almost.

My current wife had severe infective endocarditis requiring a prosthetic valve. We've been iv for years now with no reinvention just from very basic sterility
 
Mushoku_Sensei said:
I second most of that but why is there a difference to injecting stimulants? They're way more risky to iv because of the cardiac arrhythmia they can cause... And it's not like I didn't shoot coke when I was young either, but I wouldn't dare it now...
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Oh I didn't mean there was any difference. I just meant I've only ever really injected stimulants. Mostly because I let other people inject me with them. And there was a period after my mom died where I went through a self destructive phase, so I let some one inject me with meth daily for a few weeks.


cj said:
I gotta disagree iv heroin is way better then any other roa to me. It's not even close. But then again I've been injecting for 20 years now almost.

My current wife had severe infective endocarditis requiring a prosthetic valve. We've been iv for years now with no reinvention just from very basic sterility
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I feel like people say this just to justify their IV use. But I've also never injected my heroin, so since I don't know, I could be wrong.
It just doesn't seem worth it to me. I got plenty high snorting my heroin, no IV complications necessary.

There's also plugging. Almost every route except oral is going to enter your bloodstream pretty quickly anyway. If you smoke a drug, it immediately absorbs into your lungs & into your bloodstream. If you snort a drug & it's water soluble & lipophilic, then it's going to go right into the closest blood vessels & penetrate the blood brain barrier.

The only real difference is the time it takes for the drug to reach your brain & it's bioavailability. That's all really. Shooting is usually 100% bioavailability, so I can some what understand it in that regard, for people who don't wanna waste any of their drugs. To say that shooting a drug directly into your vein is so much better/different than snorting it or smoking it just seems absurd to me though. Because other than the length of time for it to kick in, it's all still the same drug & it's all entering your brain & CNS some how, at some point. Snorting goes straight to the blood brain barrier, so even though it'll take an extra minute or so, it's basically going directly into your bloodstream as well. I have a hard time believing that the different ways of putting it directly into your bloodstream would make it a completely different drug.

When I had low tolerance, a small bump of good brown had me nodding & itching anywhere from 4-8hrs. So why bother with injecting if I already get plenty high that way?

I found shooting meth VS smoking meth to be different.. but only at first. After a little while, it all feels the same anyway. I needed less meth when I injected & obviously there's a rush to it. And when smoking it, I needed to smoke a lot of it to get high. But once I got high & the high was going, it honestly all felt subjectively the same to me.

Other than the faster onset, I did not find IV meth to be any more enjoyable than smoking it. Not enough to continue to IV it anyway. The risks outweigh the benefit of just 'faster onset' time. In fact, I found twirling the pipe to be more of an addictive "ritual" than IVing it. Seeing how well you can vaporize it, twirl it & get those dragon hits is a pretty addictive feeling all on it's own.

I think it's possible for people who are already predisposed to liking needles to subjectively feel that it's "better", simply because they get a rush just from injecting. Hell needle users will inject water just for a "placebo" rush. So if you already like shooting up, of course you're gonna find drugs "better" that way than any other way.

Maybe the IV heroin high is subjectively better to some, but it also doesn't seem worth it at all. Not only do you need to worry about bacteria, but unless you're getting pure heroin, then you have no idea what else you might be shooting into your veins. And if whatever it's cut with isn't water soluble, it's just going to clump up in your cardiovascular system & cause problems later down the road. I've heard that the heroin in places in Europe gets cut with milk powder & caffeine. Can't imagine shooting milk powder & caffeine several times a day is going to be very good for you.

I've known 2 people actually that have died from strokes/heart issues after injecting drugs in the past year. So in the spirit of harm reduction, I will have to disagree that shooting heroin is "better" (even if it's true, since I am ignorant to what IV heroin actually feels like) than just snorting it. It's all the same drug, but with snorting you're gonna have to wait an extra minute or two to feel it & you're not gonna get 100% of the drug, but it's better than dying or living with cardiovascular disease. Heroin reaches the brain pretty quickly with snorting anyway, so I just don't get the hype. In fact heroin was made to be able to pass the BBB more quickly than morphine, so shooting it directly into a vein just kinda seems.. redundant.
 
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Better was a poor word choice on my part. It's certainly much more dangerous for multiple reasons. Personally shooting is all about the rush. I mainly use for the rush. But your point is well taken. If I had to do it over I would avoid iv drugs.
 
The more I think it over the more I disagree with the snorting is just like shooting. It's not at all comparable. Honestly I'v is dangerous but it is significantly better feeling
 
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