Heroin Is it a myth??? Passing out when smoking before OD?

[menidiatis]

I cna smoke 2 and half grams in a day. I have never OD and I use the same heroin (same source, other heroin here in NL is pretty much of that level)

I have never felt closely to passing out. My question is: if I smoke normally through out the day and never feel closing to pass out, could I actually overdose hours later?

Or if I don't pass out while smoking, then I am good to go? Like how many hours after using am I safe to go to sleep without needing to be afraid I die on my sleep?

 

[menidiatis]

Specifically I will have taken 0.75mg eti 12 hrs ago by the time I go to sleep (am not completely benzo naive), drank 1 beer about 4 hours ago (alcoholic can easily drink 5 ltrs a day) , and smoked maybe half G heroin immedietaly before (through some hours, max I ve done with this H is 2.5g in day)

Is it possible even though I feel fine awake, that I could OD in my sleep, my breath is cut and I am. Not conscious to force myself to breathe?

 

[JTemperance]

I cna smoke 2 and half grams in a day. I have never OD and I use the same heroin (same source, other heroin here in NL is pretty much of that level)

I have never felt closely to passing out. My question is: if I smoke normally through out the day and never feel closing to pass out, could I actually overdose hours later?

Or if I don't pass out while smoking, then I am good to go? Like how many hours after using am I safe to go to sleep without needing to be afraid I die on my sleep?

I don't pretend to be a doctor, let alone a pharmacologist, and I'd hate to give reassurances that promote a *carte blanche* attitude towards smoking heroin....

But that said, my layman's view is that you are probably in the clear and don't need to worry unduly. I can't really fathom a way in which your blood morphine levels could continue rising more than a short time (15 minutes? Half an hour?) after your last smoke, since we know that heroin is absorbed very rapidly in the lungs. I've never heard of this happening before; even with fentanyl smokers, who have a higher OD risk, it tends to happen during the smoking session or soon thereafter, not several hours later.

 

[menidiatis]

I don't pretend to be a doctor, let alone a pharmacologist, and I'd hate to give reassurances that promote a *carte blanche* attitude towards smoking heroin....

But that said, my layman's view is that you are probably in the clear and don't need to worry unduly. I can't really fathom a way in which your blood morphine levels could continue rising more than a short time (15 minutes? Half an hour?) after your last smoke, since we know that heroin is absorbed very rapidly in the lungs. I've never heard of this happening before; even with fentanyl smokers, who have a higher OD risk, it tends to happen during the smoking session or soon thereafter, not several hours later.

Thanks this is so relieving to hear

 

[TheUltimateFixx]

You can titrate your dose smoking much better than snorting or injecting because the full dose doesn't hit you all at once; so you can ease off whenever you feel you've had enough. So doing it that way is definitely safest. And you seem to have a good idea of what your tolerance limit is.

However I will caution you that overdoses can still occur two to three hours after intake because of a cumulative effect. (In a similar way to how you can keep drinking and drinking and still not subjectively feel all that drunk, and then all of a sudden you're wiped out.)
Everyone thinks an OD is instant and dramatic, as in guy takes a fix and slumps over in seconds with the needle still stuck in his arm. Has happened in that very obvious way to me several times but I've also OD'd when I thought I'd simply passed out or gone to sleep only to find myself in the back of an ambulance. My mates would initially think I was fine and just needed to 'sleep it off' up until the point I turned blue and was hardly breathing.

PS also even if you get brought round, anything more than about 3 minutes of oxygen deprivation will start to cause brain cells to die off. So just because an OD doesn't happen instantaneously and isn't fatal doesn't mean you're not at risk of permanent damage. I don't wanna be alarmist or a spoilsport but these are simply the facts. Be safe

PS for the record, not a doctor or any kind of medical professional myself, but am the son of one.