• Select Your Topic Then Scroll Down
    Alcohol Bupe Benzos
    Cocaine Heroin Opioids
    RCs Stimulants Misc
    Harm Reduction All Topics Gabapentinoids
    Tired of your habit? Struggling to cope?
    Want to regain control or get sober?
    Visit our Recovery Support Forums

Heroin leukoencephalopathy from smoking heroin

rimbaud12

Greenlighter
Joined
Mar 2, 2014
Messages
14
I live in SE Asia, and regularly smoke no.4 Heroin. I was just reading about this disease...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic_leukoencephalopathy I had a look on the internet and I can't work out if it's something to worry about or not. The occurences seem rare and restricted to area/batches, and I can't find any recent cases (other than maybe in China). However, everyone seems to agree that it's an undereported phenomenon. What are peoples opinions about the risk of this? I've never heard of anyone getting sick like that. Is it enough to convince you to take heroin by other routes (e.g snorting?) How do yout think it occurs - a rare contaminant,I guess?
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Yea, Ive heard of this disease before, and since I also smoke my h, I looked into it a little bit, from what I understand,it has to do with something on or in the foil, and when you heat it up to inhale the dope smoke, you are also inhaling this toxic vapor from the foil, Ive heard some other people say before they put the dope on the foil, they run a lighter over the foil to burn off this stuff, dont know if its effective or not though, I never did this either...most of the time when Im smoking, I cant get the dope on the foil and straw in my mouth fast enough lol

I wouldnt worry too much about it, Ive never heard of anyone getting sick or dying from this disease.
 
why not smoke from a lightbulb vaporizer? not the one u can make urself cuz lightbulbs contain toxic chemicals!!!
but the ones u can buy to vaporize weed in.
 
why not smoke from a lightbulb vaporizer? not the one u can make urself cuz lightbulbs contain toxic chemicals!!!
but the ones u can buy to vaporize weed in.
Ive tried this before, thinking I could stop wasting so much smoke, but it didnt work out too well, the 'pipe' I used was very thin glass. In the end, the glass doesnt cool down quick enough and imo, wastes dope, so far, foil seems to be the best thing for smoking heroin, it just takes time to get efficient at it, so you dont waste so much.I will admit though, Im more concerned with wasting H smoke versus this disease.
 
yea i am more concerned about diseases in general. people that like getting high u need to try to find balance between getting high and living healthy to live longer, to maximize the amount of times they can get high. (and ofcourse, live a more balanced life in general)

you could cool down the glass by dipping it in a glass of icewater
 
Yea, Ive heard of this disease before, and since I also smoke my h, I looked into it a little bit, from what I understand,it has to do with something on or in the foil,

It's not though. If you read the wiki article it points out that even people doing things like taking oral methadone or oral morphine can get TLE. It seems like there's not really a discernable pattern either.

This looks to me like one of those really wierd idiosyncratic reactions that happens 1 per 500,000 cases, like Stevens-Jonhson Syndrome, or drug allergies.

Dipping a hot glass pipe in ice water is a good way to shatter it.
 
yea i am more concerned about diseases in general. people that like getting high u need to try to find balance between getting high and living healthy to live longer, to maximize the amount of times they can get high. (and ofcourse, live a more balanced life in general)

you could cool down the glass by dipping it in a glass of icewater

the thing is, from what I've read, the disease isn't linked to smoking off foil. It's something to do with the heroin itself. The strange thing is, it can't be reproduced in rats and when they tested the gear that one group of people got sick from, there was nothing unusual in it.
It's probable that its some kind of cut that is activated by heat - the iv users that caught it probably got it by not waiting until the H cooled before shooting.

It may be dose related so it's possible that plenty more smokers have mild forms that have been undetected.

Perhaps I'm being too OCD about this. I enjoy heroin, I can use it and remain functional/not looking like a drug-addict, but the risks and general unhealthiness that come with it are playing on my mind lately.
 
and I doubt it's as rare as 1/500,000 cases - I mean, how many people in Canada for example (where they had an outbreak of like 30 people catching it, and remembering that its likely underreported), would even smoke heroin? A lot of people where I live now do, but I remember when I was living in my native country (in the west), practically no-one did
 
Top