^I've heard of that method. It's called water-basing. It's done when you're low on tar to stretch it out a little.
verso said:
I've always wondered this myself, how one goes about smoking east coast dope; I had heard the caffeine thing and a couple of those methods that, albeit having a limited understanding of chemistry, I just could not wrap my head around or make any sense of at all.
What cutting heroin with caffeine or barbiturates does is form what's called a eutectic mixture. A eutectic mixture is a mixture that has a lower melting temperature then either one alone. Examples of eutectic mixture are salt and water, solder, and the local anesthetic EMLA.
With a caffeine/heroin mixture, it has a lower melting and vaporizing temperature than either one alone. Caffeine sublimes, mean it goes directly from solid to gas. Lower melting point means it can be dripped down the foil and smoked at lower temperatures causing less burning. Think of it like a spray can. The caffeine is the propellant and the heroin is sprayed out into tiny particles. With most vaporized drugs it's actually more a suspension of tiny particles than a vapor.
The caffeine and heroin eutectic mixture was discovered by accident in 1920's China. There was a red tonic pill with heroin, caffeine, quinine and strychnine. Later it was marketed as an 'anti-opium pill', and someone found out they could be smoked like opium. It became quite an epidemic, perhaps the largest heroin epidemic in history. Later they dropped making it into pills and just used heroin and caffeine with a trace of strychnine.
Also some users started mixing heroin with barbiturates. They found it easier to smoke. It's bioavailability is anywhere from 25-75%, depending on the skill of the smoker.
Freebase heroin also has a lower melting and boiling temperature. It's bioavailability can be anywhere from 40%, up to 89%.
With tar it's just so impure that the impurities lower the melting point, and it pretty much has to be smoked. Somehow impurities in substances lowers the melting point. This is the bases of the melting point test for drug like cocaine. I'd estimate that it's about 1/3 to 1/2 as strong as IV, a little less or equal to snorted.
It would be interesting if someone turned non-smokable heroin into a smokable form. It's be good for those that have used up all their veins or damaged their nose.