Possible Source of Red Rock Myth?

[frizzantik]

The other day my buddy decided to try to make a poppy pod extract, hopefully of high enough quality to smoke. He made poppy tea his normal way and then simmed off a lot of the water. He filtered the tea concentrate 1st thru a french press, then a tshirt and finally paper coffee filters. He then put this solution in a ceramic pie plate and put in the oven on low heat
once all of the water was gone he was left with a deep red glassy substance coating the bottom of the pan. he scraped this off and we compared the ground up opium extract to some ground up dragons blood that I had purchased a while back and they looked very similar
when smoked the opium extract bubbles just like dragons blood. perhaps DB was originally used as a cut for real opium? over time perhaps people just started selling the DB as opium?
one easy way to differentiate the real deal from the DB is that DB is not soluable in water, while the opium concentrate is very soluable
i was suprised to see his outcome looked very much like "red rock" which makes me wonder if not all red rock is fake, as most bluelighters will say.

 

[Murple]

My guess would be that the red rock myth started when some sleazy fuck realized that most Americans never have and never will see real opium. Because of the perfume and incenses called "Opium" people have this misconception that opium should have a sweet perfumey smell and taste. If people think that, and they have no idea what real opium looks, smells, tastes or feels like... well, the possibilities for rip-offs are endless.

 

[ehqme]

Yup, red rock is bs. Smells and looks like the real thing, which Ive had in morocco...
... tried it in college, my friend and i were curious as to why everyone else was, um, getting high and we werent... apparently you have to ´smoke a lot of weed´ with it... yea... hippy scam!

 

[day_for_night]

did this substance your friend ended up with have any effect?

 

[themadhungarian]

Many years ago before I knew better, quite of a bit of dragons blood was going around misrepresented as opium. I had the chance to smoke quite a lot of it and it does have some effect. If you smoke a ton, it does give a bit of a dreamy feeling and a very slight body buzz. The person who sold it said to put it on top of weed because that was how it is done. So of course you are also getting stoned which greatly heightens the slight effect that DB gives you. I know that a few people have tried to sell pod putty as smoking opium which it is not. Putty is not a good subsitute as much of the morphine content is not available when smoked, it works worlds better when taken orally. I have found that black tar heroin can also be represented as opium to people who don't know. Buyer beware.
[ 09 March 2003: Message edited by: themadhungarian ]

 

[Murple]

I suspect whatever you smoked in Morocco was a tourist scam... real opium looks and smells nothing like red rock. I don't think poppies are grown very much in Morocco even... hashish, on the other hand, is extremely common there. Hashish can be reddish, can be rocky, and can have a perfumey taste and smell. I suspect whatever you had was made at least in part from hashish.
Hell, even the flower on opium poppies doesn't smell like perfume. They're gorgeous flowers to look at, but try sticking your nose in one sometime. They smell more like rotting meat than perfume.
Extracts made from poppy pods are not the same as opium latex. In addition to the opium itself you'll also have a bunch of additional plant matter, especially if you're just using water to extract the stuff. While a crude poppy extract is likely to be a hard crystalline substance, unlike proper opium, its not going to have a perfumey taste or smell. It's also probably going to be more a black/brown than red.

 

[frizzantik]

after further comparing the two, the dragons blood, when crushed, is a lot more red colored, while the poppy extract is like a dark reddish/purplish brown
ironically the dragons blood has more of an immediate and obvious effect i would say, and I bet if one were into that thing that the dragons blood would be easier to sell than the pod extract to the unintiated. The pod extract also takes more to feel intoxicated, but the more you smoke the more you get 'fucked up' while with the DB its pretty much the same level no matter how much u consume. im through smoking red rock so the above about it is from memory
smoking/vaporising the extract straight is like smoking rasins or something.. blech i think i'd rather stick to the tea, although the taste is not too bad if mixed with some pot.
[ 09 March 2003: Message edited by: frizzantik ]