Druidus
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Mar 28, 2006
- Messages
- 598
(The relevant question is after these first two paragraphs, which is really just some background on my friend and an explanation for why I'm asking for the dude, so this doesn't look like SWIMming even though it could be misconstrued as a very poor attempt at it. Feel free to skip them, or read them if you'd like. The following is just context, interesting to me, maybe to some of you, but not necessary to answer my friend's query; at least I don't think it's necessary. Skip to the third paragraph to get to the question I'm asking for him.)
Until I met this guy, it was hard for me to imagine a nation existing, on present-day Earth, that had such little access to industrialization, advanced technology, and where children spend more time herding their family's livestock than in 'schooling'. I mean, I vaguely knew they must still exist, somewhere remote, but didn't really think much about it, and I guess I thought that they must be going extinct as a class of nation/country at this point in humanity's ascent into the glories of modern tech. I'd lived, briefly, in Kenya [even spending some decent time in a Maasai tribe's village - these guys are/were shepherd/farmers, too {lol, they used to drink milk from their cattle, but they'd mix it with cattle-blood, too, so they wouldn't have to kill their valuable live animals - also a taboo-thing, they viewed it as unethical/barbaric/cruel to slaughter one of their own cattle, something they'd raised from infancy, cared for, fed, etc., and which would provide a large immediate/lump gain in terms of calories and nutrition if they broke the taboo, but at the expense of losing a cow for good, and the Maasai literally measure their personal/familial wealth in terms of living cattle and seed-stock - if it's dead, because you wanted a steak, then you can't keep milking/bleeding it until it naturally dies, so you aren't getting the most out of your own wealth} as well as some of the more rural areas of Egypt and China, but none of those places come close to my new friend's homeland's deprivation of modernity/technology/industrialization. Even the Maasai had a few cell phones, had seen computers, had a couple TVs to share, could go school as a kid full-time, could use computers at that school, and thus had at least some knowledge of most modern technology including the internet - this new friend, yeah, it's all completely foreign to him (The Maasai, btw, and I say this with sincere and significant respect and not at all to ridicule or critique a tribe that opened their village and their huts to me, that let me eat their food with them, that taught me about the native flora/fauna, and beyond that even, I learned from them so much that I could probably write a book - for example, one of their Guardsmen, who patrolled the village grounds and around their bramble/vine/thorn wall at night, armed with one simple spear and club each even though lions, hyenas, elephants, etc., could all get in if they really wanted: he taught me how to get out of being charged by a full-grown male or female lion, and get out of it alive virtually every time [unless they outnumber you or you fail at defending yourself with the technique right, and it'd have to be such a terrifically/utterly/spectacularly stupid and unlikely failure to get the technique wrong, once you know it and have it down/practiced - anyway, I'll put a simple description of it at the end of this post], possibly with a lion's hide, fur, teeth, claws, and meat, so long as I always carried or had quick access to a long, thick/sturdy, and ideally, though not necessarily, sharp/pointed stick [spears work better, they're what he would've used, but I don't and didn't have one, myself] - or their 'shaman' [it's not the word they used], who actually smoked pot with me and some other native herbs that mixed nicely with it, amongst other things he showed me - so, again, I'm not disparaging them, I sincerely loved my time with/among them, I respect them greatly, and I cannot possibly be grateful enough for the rare and unique knowledge they gave me in my time there, and for the people I knew, and the experiences I have; no gesture of thanks would be enough and I will be in debt to them, collectively and individually, eternally and in an format that disallows me to really pay the debt [it's not like I can give them what they gave me, or analogues of those gifts of time/shelter/food/water/knowledge/friendship/love/etc., though I like to send them gifts each year, such as various {certainly not illegal
} seeds and such every so often, or some actual currency, or books, or whatever, it changes each year]... The Maasai were clearly not exactly scientists, engineers, or industrialized producers of misc. goods, they were merely simple shepherds, farmers, hunters, Guardsmen, and gatherers [except the Elder/Shaman types among them]. Yet they were more technologically advanced then this friend of mine, by far. Even in Bum-Fuck-Nowheres-Ville, Kenya [nowhere near Nairobi or any big city], they had achieved a level of modernity that definitely was far ahead of this new friend's homeland's level of 'development'. I mean, it's 2015. People should know about the internet. Seriously, it makes me depressed to imagine being forced to grow up without the extensive access I had to such a wondrous realm of free and extensive information and knowledge... But I digress [definitely - my apologies].)
This isn't an abuse of the BL Rules/Guidelines, I'm not trying to SWIM, and I've been around for nearly a decade, so I've very little to hide, lol. Just want to make that clear in advance, so I don't get moderated for asking a question for a completely illi-techno-ate friend (as in illiterate, but, well... It's not a very funny joke/word/insert-appropriate-noun, TBH, and you'll likely get it, so... [If you didn't: technologically disadvantaged/handicapped/level-1{if-that - likely not even a single 'XP point' yet, never used a computer/tablet/smartphone in his life; beyond as a word processor, a clock, and recently, I've been showing him how the internet works; though BL is beyond his abilities so far... Yes, he's that much of a full-on techno-noob, folks, lol, it's just where he grew up he had no access to technology like that, and he's only recently moved to this country, having never lived anywhere before this that could be called a "modern/technologically-advanced 'civilization'" |To get an idea what it was like, though I won't name the country, imagine pretty much being a shepherd/farm-labourer, not even using things that, in literally any western civ., we call necessities and have had for nigh on 100 years at least, such as cars/vehicular-transportation, TV (to be fair he did see one a couple times a year at a relative's home, but it was very old and there was nothing to watch but old videotapes, and they had to generate their own electricity to even turn it on), from 10 until into your mid-twenties, excepting some time spent in their educational system; which, as well, is/was not exactly 'top-tier' in quality, to put it generously|}]).
Alright, the question, finally: So, let's call him C. C uses opiates/opioids on occasion. He's got a fair bit of pain right now due to a mishap getting used to vehicles, but it could have been worse. He usually just uses them to get high, but he's using them a little more frequently right now, to manage the pain. I take suboxone, and I'll help wean him off with that once he's healed up. Until then, I'll help him in procurement, and advise him (though it's not like he's a noob to drugs, not at all) so that he doesn't get too deep into that rabbit-hole of addiction/dependance. He'd been using hydromorphone 8mg tablets for a while (I know they're not 'safe' to IV, as they dissolve completely and have various chems/additives in them that are not amenable to the human body once pumped/injected straight into said body's circulatory system - that said, I can't stop him, and it's better to help him, IMO, because he'd be relatively alone without me), but my source was dry and so I had to substitute another one, who only had 100mg Morphine ER tablets. The last few times he's done the morphine tablets, he's had a small amount of blood present in his saliva/mucous/throat. Not gushing out or anything, no, but it's gotten a little worse in just the last 3-4 weeks. The first time I saw it, he didn't feel any discomfort or anything, but he spat, and I saw red. I pointed it out, we looked closer, and, yeah, there was a relatively faint tinge of red/blood in his spit. Just to check, I had him spit a few more times over the next few minutes, but within 5-10 minutes, there was no more blood in his spit. It's only basically right after he's injected, and I don't *think* we've ever seen this with the hydromorphone, though I could be in error on this, just with the morphine ER tablets (at the least, they make it happen more predictably and severely, if the 8mg hydromorphs even do cause it at all). Today, when he shot, he spat up more blood than any of the previous times. Still not torrential rivers of gushing red liquid, but his spit was much more darkly tinged, the blood tinging it looked thicker and there was more of it, he felt a slight tightness or a very mild discomfort in his throat, and a feeling like he needed to cough something up or else swallow it down (even if he coughed, nothing would come up, just normal amounts of saliva/mucous which, for 5-10 minutes, contains blood).
Has anyone gotten this from 100mg morphine ER tablets before? They're the ones with a purple coating that you wipe off with alcohol swaps, they have an imprint on each side (an 'N' and a '100'), and they're circular. Should he not do these again? I don't think I've seen this symptom from them before, TBH. I've taught people how to prepare them for IV, and I used to do them on occasion myself (ok, more than on occasion, at one point, unfortunately). Can't recall noticing this symptom before, though. Maybe the preparation has changed for these pills? Different chemicals, or newly added ones, that make it more hazardous? Predictably getting blood in one's spit each time one injects something is probably not a good indication that the injections are safe... It's probably indicating some actual damage to his circulatory and respiratory systems, if it's not worse than just those two.
The way I prep these is to wipe off the purple coating, getting as much as possible off. I even use a dull needle after to scrape out the bits that hang around in the imprints on the pill. Then I crush the pill up very finely, after it dries. Finally, I load a cooker/spoon with 2 or a little bit more millilitres of water, and then boil that water. When the water boils for a bit, and is going intensely, the morphine powder is dumped into it. At this point, it's best to stir very well, and then wait for ~5 minutes. The boiling stops the pills from immediately gelling up, though they will over the next five minutes that are just for dissolving the desired chemical, really. After the short wait, 0.25-0.6 millilitres of hot water is added on top of the gelled up pill solution/suspension. Stir and mix as well as is possible, flattening and vigorously moving any of the gel around, because otherwise there won't be enough surface area to dissolve the gel's locked-in morphine. Next, prepare the filter. When syringe is ready and fitted with filter, heat the solution/suspension once more. Boil it for a decent amount of time, 1-2.5 minutes of total heating, maybe a bit more, should do it. The gel congeals together and begins to bubble, and finally reaches a state wherein it is no longer mixed with the water, but merely floating on top of it. Use a dedicated syringe (not the one you'll use for yourself) to scrape the gel out of the water and to the top edge of the spoon/cooking-device. Now you're good to insert filter-prepped syringe, draw up the solution (which is clear and almost as thin as water, though not quite, meaning some unwanted additives have to be getting through - just water and morphine would not make the water noticeably [yet still slightly] thicker, not at this percentage by volume of morphine; only 100mg goes in and some will inevitably be lost), and you should get between 0.4-0.6cc's of solution. That's wash #1, the hard/tedious work is over. Now you can just add 1 more fresh millilitre of hot water, mix/stir vigorously, heat to a boil once more for a little bit (make sure the gel gets to the floating and solution-separate state), then once again scrape/drag the gel out of the solution, setting it aside on the cooking device, and then draw up the solution that remains. That's wash #2. Really, that should have gotten almost everything possible out of the pill, but depending on one's preference, one can go for a final third wash if one desires. I always aim for 2-3, because it takes that many anyway to get a full 1cc of solution drawn up. The gel that remains after the procedure can be discarded or safely stored and washed one more time for use in your next dose and then discarded (I suppose it can be swallowed, too, if you want to be sure you get all the morphine you can, but I find my method of prepping these gets me at least 80-90mg, with very little losses. IV'd, that's a pretty decent fuckin' dose of morphine, so ingesting the washed gel isn't necessary, but if you're worried about losses during the procedure, have a higher tolerance, or just want more, then it shouldn't hurt to swallow it.
Finally, inject (safely & cleanly) into a vein of one's choice, making sure to rotate sites and make sure to avoid missing any because I can certainly tell you it won't be pleasant if you do, though it won't kill you straight away or anything (over my years of IV use, back when I was actively using, I must have missed various amounts of morphine-ER/water solution a couple dozen times or so - all that happens, to me, is I get an allergic reaction at the site that varies in intensity depending on the quantity of solution I missed and the site I used; I get slightly to moderately raised bumps, like mild hives, and paler + redder [in differing spots, differing in intensity] that are clearly evidence of an allergic reaction to either the morphine or a soluble ingredient in the pills - this symptom will fade over the next 10-15, maybe 20 minutes, gradually). If gotten fully into a vein, the allergic reaction either doesn't happen or is MUCH less pronounced.
Anyway, so, that's a relatively accurate and quick description of my method for preparing these (which haven't changed since I was using them). I don't get this blood-in-saliva thing, myself, though. It worries me, I've advised him to stop IVing these particular tablets, and stick with the hydromorphone. Nonetheless, if anyone else has experienced or seen this, I would appreciate whatever info you can provide. Any ideas what this is? Is there a safer method of preparation (can't be done safely, but, safer is a possibility)? Maybe it's been too long and I'm not doing this right anymore, and that's why it never used to happen to me? My guess is dissolved particles of pill ingredients staying in the solution, and then causing some damage to your circulatory system as these disperse. But the blood thing is like instant, literally 10-30 seconds after an injection his saliva is already tinted red.
I dunno... Ideas?
Thanks in advance, folks; this is something I'd like to nip in the bud.
[Oh, and the lion thing, it's really very simple if anyone wants to read it. If you don't, just skip this part, I'm just putting it here because I said I would before and my word is my goddamned bond:
Big cats are psychologically programmed to go for the neck when they attack either other quadrupeds, or bipeds like us, or ostrich/other-birds. Every. Single. Time. It's your neck they'll jump for, and generally from the same (roughly) distance each/any time they make a try. If you don't have a stick ready, quickly grab one, and hope it doesn't break. If you do, good, your chances of survival just went up tremendously. Several metres away from you, while running at you, the lion will sort of crouch a little while still moving rapidly. Watching the lion, estimate where it will end up in the air based on it's current location and a jump trajectory that assumes a final destination of your neck/throat. Now, after the crouch you've got a second or so, so using your estimate, aim the large stick (as spearlike as possible) so that the lion will basically deepthroat the stick instead of actually reach your neck. You've gotta have courage, 'cause if you run, you're dead, and if you panic and get the aim or the timing off, your dead. If that lion gets its teeth into you at all, you're probably dead, and this stick is the only thing that can reliably stop that from happening. When the stick is thrust into the lion's wide open maw, thrust it forward with all of your strength. If you do it right, the lion will have an instant and intense gag reflex response to the large stick its being forced to deepthroat (lol). Once you're in it's mouth/throat for sure, don't relent. Keep thrusting and violently stabbing/swirling around in there. You want it to gag and choke as much as possible, or, if you have a spear or sharp stick, potentially cause it to die of these internal injuries. If you do get the lion to gag, it will abort it's launch toward your carotids/jugulars/windpipe/spine. No other animal would have defended itself like you just did, and the lion will be shocked, surprised, frightened (at least temporarily), and will most likely abort any attempt at attacking you altogether in favour of running off into the bush to get away from you (or to find reinforcements, so do get out of the area and to safety ASAP - just DON'T FUCKING RUN.). It should be pretty startled, possibly/hopefully injured (maybe severely/lethally, depending on your 'weapon'), and it will react with flight instead of fight, because it's never just started to choke during an attack before, doesn't understand why it's happening, how you did it, or how to avoid it next time, and it will be, for a time, very wary of humans, very fearful of you in particular. If you don't kill it, now's the time to leave. Don't look away from the lion, just start backing away slowly while staring straight at it, in the eyes if it's looking at you. If it starts to come toward you again, at any pace, take a step or two forward and scream aggressively and as loudly as you can - display like a chimp would, anything to look less vulnerable and fragile than you actually are, lol. But, from experience, it probably won't even try to advance on you again. Keep the stick ready, your eyes on it, and keep backing away slowly unless it's advancing (in which case you're either going to move toward it, slowly, as well, which indicates that you aren't defenceless to the lion, or you're going to stand your ground. Panic like a gazelle and you'll die just as quickly and easily as it would.). Only back away if it is not moving toward you but is staying still or moving away (can't show it your true fear/anxiety level like that would).
With a measure of luck and the favour of Fortuna, the lion will just run away like a housecat sprayed in the face with a powerful irritant (or, indeed, like you would if you tried to kill some small-medium animal, but then found yourself choking, gagging, and probably bleeding due to a large stick being forcefully (and through surprise) inserted deep into your esophagus before being flailed violently around inside your throat for maximum pain, shock, fear, and damage. If that happened to you, you would basically freak out (if you couldn't understand or explain it in the moment, especially), you'd lose your will to fight and the driver of your psyche would become flight (at least temporarily). You would run like little girl while pissing all over yourself if something you thought would be a relatively easy kill happened to start violently deepthroating you horribly and agonizingly with a long, thick (ideally sharp/pointed), spear-like stick (which would make you bleed and leave terrible splinters that would be extreme irritants and potentially lethal injuries, as well as it would if done on the lion, which is part of the shock and a cause of the shift into flight from fight), and it was assaulting your throat with this instrument rapidly and unrelentingly (it would feel like terrible torture, and would kill you if it lasted long enough or was pushed in strong enough, just as it has the capacity to do to the lion) as you were trying to process what was happening, stop the pain, stop the choking/gagging, deal with the splinters (coughing up blood, due to said splinters), and consequently also freak out and panic. Get the lion to panic with this method, and you'll win, it's basically an IRL cheat code if you practice it. If you panic, well, you'll lose. And likely die. Collect the animals meat, fur/hide, claws, teeth, etc., if, indeed, it does go down forever due to the injuries you inflict, but don't wait around to see if it will or won't die. Get out of there and come back later with friends to track the blood trail from it's mouth. If it died, you'll find it, don't worry.
And that's it, how to survive a lion attack, assuming one opponent, a spear-like instrument/weapon, and enough warning to see it coming and aim that weapon before it gets to your neck. I've seen it done, I've done it twice IRL myself, and I practiced it a lot when still in Kenya. It should work if you do it right, which is the key here, really. I hope you never have occasion to use this information, but, should you find yourself in such a situation, now you know what to do (besides try to run and get mauled or more likely killed and eaten) - grab the nearest appropriate stick as quickly as possible, aim, thrust, then tactical retreat + displays (visual or with sound) if necessary (because it starts to advance again). Good luck!]
Until I met this guy, it was hard for me to imagine a nation existing, on present-day Earth, that had such little access to industrialization, advanced technology, and where children spend more time herding their family's livestock than in 'schooling'. I mean, I vaguely knew they must still exist, somewhere remote, but didn't really think much about it, and I guess I thought that they must be going extinct as a class of nation/country at this point in humanity's ascent into the glories of modern tech. I'd lived, briefly, in Kenya [even spending some decent time in a Maasai tribe's village - these guys are/were shepherd/farmers, too {lol, they used to drink milk from their cattle, but they'd mix it with cattle-blood, too, so they wouldn't have to kill their valuable live animals - also a taboo-thing, they viewed it as unethical/barbaric/cruel to slaughter one of their own cattle, something they'd raised from infancy, cared for, fed, etc., and which would provide a large immediate/lump gain in terms of calories and nutrition if they broke the taboo, but at the expense of losing a cow for good, and the Maasai literally measure their personal/familial wealth in terms of living cattle and seed-stock - if it's dead, because you wanted a steak, then you can't keep milking/bleeding it until it naturally dies, so you aren't getting the most out of your own wealth} as well as some of the more rural areas of Egypt and China, but none of those places come close to my new friend's homeland's deprivation of modernity/technology/industrialization. Even the Maasai had a few cell phones, had seen computers, had a couple TVs to share, could go school as a kid full-time, could use computers at that school, and thus had at least some knowledge of most modern technology including the internet - this new friend, yeah, it's all completely foreign to him (The Maasai, btw, and I say this with sincere and significant respect and not at all to ridicule or critique a tribe that opened their village and their huts to me, that let me eat their food with them, that taught me about the native flora/fauna, and beyond that even, I learned from them so much that I could probably write a book - for example, one of their Guardsmen, who patrolled the village grounds and around their bramble/vine/thorn wall at night, armed with one simple spear and club each even though lions, hyenas, elephants, etc., could all get in if they really wanted: he taught me how to get out of being charged by a full-grown male or female lion, and get out of it alive virtually every time [unless they outnumber you or you fail at defending yourself with the technique right, and it'd have to be such a terrifically/utterly/spectacularly stupid and unlikely failure to get the technique wrong, once you know it and have it down/practiced - anyway, I'll put a simple description of it at the end of this post], possibly with a lion's hide, fur, teeth, claws, and meat, so long as I always carried or had quick access to a long, thick/sturdy, and ideally, though not necessarily, sharp/pointed stick [spears work better, they're what he would've used, but I don't and didn't have one, myself] - or their 'shaman' [it's not the word they used], who actually smoked pot with me and some other native herbs that mixed nicely with it, amongst other things he showed me - so, again, I'm not disparaging them, I sincerely loved my time with/among them, I respect them greatly, and I cannot possibly be grateful enough for the rare and unique knowledge they gave me in my time there, and for the people I knew, and the experiences I have; no gesture of thanks would be enough and I will be in debt to them, collectively and individually, eternally and in an format that disallows me to really pay the debt [it's not like I can give them what they gave me, or analogues of those gifts of time/shelter/food/water/knowledge/friendship/love/etc., though I like to send them gifts each year, such as various {certainly not illegal
} seeds and such every so often, or some actual currency, or books, or whatever, it changes each year]... The Maasai were clearly not exactly scientists, engineers, or industrialized producers of misc. goods, they were merely simple shepherds, farmers, hunters, Guardsmen, and gatherers [except the Elder/Shaman types among them]. Yet they were more technologically advanced then this friend of mine, by far. Even in Bum-Fuck-Nowheres-Ville, Kenya [nowhere near Nairobi or any big city], they had achieved a level of modernity that definitely was far ahead of this new friend's homeland's level of 'development'. I mean, it's 2015. People should know about the internet. Seriously, it makes me depressed to imagine being forced to grow up without the extensive access I had to such a wondrous realm of free and extensive information and knowledge... But I digress [definitely - my apologies].)This isn't an abuse of the BL Rules/Guidelines, I'm not trying to SWIM, and I've been around for nearly a decade, so I've very little to hide, lol. Just want to make that clear in advance, so I don't get moderated for asking a question for a completely illi-techno-ate friend (as in illiterate, but, well... It's not a very funny joke/word/insert-appropriate-noun, TBH, and you'll likely get it, so... [If you didn't: technologically disadvantaged/handicapped/level-1{if-that - likely not even a single 'XP point' yet, never used a computer/tablet/smartphone in his life; beyond as a word processor, a clock, and recently, I've been showing him how the internet works; though BL is beyond his abilities so far... Yes, he's that much of a full-on techno-noob, folks, lol, it's just where he grew up he had no access to technology like that, and he's only recently moved to this country, having never lived anywhere before this that could be called a "modern/technologically-advanced 'civilization'" |To get an idea what it was like, though I won't name the country, imagine pretty much being a shepherd/farm-labourer, not even using things that, in literally any western civ., we call necessities and have had for nigh on 100 years at least, such as cars/vehicular-transportation, TV (to be fair he did see one a couple times a year at a relative's home, but it was very old and there was nothing to watch but old videotapes, and they had to generate their own electricity to even turn it on), from 10 until into your mid-twenties, excepting some time spent in their educational system; which, as well, is/was not exactly 'top-tier' in quality, to put it generously|}]).
Alright, the question, finally: So, let's call him C. C uses opiates/opioids on occasion. He's got a fair bit of pain right now due to a mishap getting used to vehicles, but it could have been worse. He usually just uses them to get high, but he's using them a little more frequently right now, to manage the pain. I take suboxone, and I'll help wean him off with that once he's healed up. Until then, I'll help him in procurement, and advise him (though it's not like he's a noob to drugs, not at all) so that he doesn't get too deep into that rabbit-hole of addiction/dependance. He'd been using hydromorphone 8mg tablets for a while (I know they're not 'safe' to IV, as they dissolve completely and have various chems/additives in them that are not amenable to the human body once pumped/injected straight into said body's circulatory system - that said, I can't stop him, and it's better to help him, IMO, because he'd be relatively alone without me), but my source was dry and so I had to substitute another one, who only had 100mg Morphine ER tablets. The last few times he's done the morphine tablets, he's had a small amount of blood present in his saliva/mucous/throat. Not gushing out or anything, no, but it's gotten a little worse in just the last 3-4 weeks. The first time I saw it, he didn't feel any discomfort or anything, but he spat, and I saw red. I pointed it out, we looked closer, and, yeah, there was a relatively faint tinge of red/blood in his spit. Just to check, I had him spit a few more times over the next few minutes, but within 5-10 minutes, there was no more blood in his spit. It's only basically right after he's injected, and I don't *think* we've ever seen this with the hydromorphone, though I could be in error on this, just with the morphine ER tablets (at the least, they make it happen more predictably and severely, if the 8mg hydromorphs even do cause it at all). Today, when he shot, he spat up more blood than any of the previous times. Still not torrential rivers of gushing red liquid, but his spit was much more darkly tinged, the blood tinging it looked thicker and there was more of it, he felt a slight tightness or a very mild discomfort in his throat, and a feeling like he needed to cough something up or else swallow it down (even if he coughed, nothing would come up, just normal amounts of saliva/mucous which, for 5-10 minutes, contains blood).
Has anyone gotten this from 100mg morphine ER tablets before? They're the ones with a purple coating that you wipe off with alcohol swaps, they have an imprint on each side (an 'N' and a '100'), and they're circular. Should he not do these again? I don't think I've seen this symptom from them before, TBH. I've taught people how to prepare them for IV, and I used to do them on occasion myself (ok, more than on occasion, at one point, unfortunately). Can't recall noticing this symptom before, though. Maybe the preparation has changed for these pills? Different chemicals, or newly added ones, that make it more hazardous? Predictably getting blood in one's spit each time one injects something is probably not a good indication that the injections are safe... It's probably indicating some actual damage to his circulatory and respiratory systems, if it's not worse than just those two.
The way I prep these is to wipe off the purple coating, getting as much as possible off. I even use a dull needle after to scrape out the bits that hang around in the imprints on the pill. Then I crush the pill up very finely, after it dries. Finally, I load a cooker/spoon with 2 or a little bit more millilitres of water, and then boil that water. When the water boils for a bit, and is going intensely, the morphine powder is dumped into it. At this point, it's best to stir very well, and then wait for ~5 minutes. The boiling stops the pills from immediately gelling up, though they will over the next five minutes that are just for dissolving the desired chemical, really. After the short wait, 0.25-0.6 millilitres of hot water is added on top of the gelled up pill solution/suspension. Stir and mix as well as is possible, flattening and vigorously moving any of the gel around, because otherwise there won't be enough surface area to dissolve the gel's locked-in morphine. Next, prepare the filter. When syringe is ready and fitted with filter, heat the solution/suspension once more. Boil it for a decent amount of time, 1-2.5 minutes of total heating, maybe a bit more, should do it. The gel congeals together and begins to bubble, and finally reaches a state wherein it is no longer mixed with the water, but merely floating on top of it. Use a dedicated syringe (not the one you'll use for yourself) to scrape the gel out of the water and to the top edge of the spoon/cooking-device. Now you're good to insert filter-prepped syringe, draw up the solution (which is clear and almost as thin as water, though not quite, meaning some unwanted additives have to be getting through - just water and morphine would not make the water noticeably [yet still slightly] thicker, not at this percentage by volume of morphine; only 100mg goes in and some will inevitably be lost), and you should get between 0.4-0.6cc's of solution. That's wash #1, the hard/tedious work is over. Now you can just add 1 more fresh millilitre of hot water, mix/stir vigorously, heat to a boil once more for a little bit (make sure the gel gets to the floating and solution-separate state), then once again scrape/drag the gel out of the solution, setting it aside on the cooking device, and then draw up the solution that remains. That's wash #2. Really, that should have gotten almost everything possible out of the pill, but depending on one's preference, one can go for a final third wash if one desires. I always aim for 2-3, because it takes that many anyway to get a full 1cc of solution drawn up. The gel that remains after the procedure can be discarded or safely stored and washed one more time for use in your next dose and then discarded (I suppose it can be swallowed, too, if you want to be sure you get all the morphine you can, but I find my method of prepping these gets me at least 80-90mg, with very little losses. IV'd, that's a pretty decent fuckin' dose of morphine, so ingesting the washed gel isn't necessary, but if you're worried about losses during the procedure, have a higher tolerance, or just want more, then it shouldn't hurt to swallow it.
Finally, inject (safely & cleanly) into a vein of one's choice, making sure to rotate sites and make sure to avoid missing any because I can certainly tell you it won't be pleasant if you do, though it won't kill you straight away or anything (over my years of IV use, back when I was actively using, I must have missed various amounts of morphine-ER/water solution a couple dozen times or so - all that happens, to me, is I get an allergic reaction at the site that varies in intensity depending on the quantity of solution I missed and the site I used; I get slightly to moderately raised bumps, like mild hives, and paler + redder [in differing spots, differing in intensity] that are clearly evidence of an allergic reaction to either the morphine or a soluble ingredient in the pills - this symptom will fade over the next 10-15, maybe 20 minutes, gradually). If gotten fully into a vein, the allergic reaction either doesn't happen or is MUCH less pronounced.
Anyway, so, that's a relatively accurate and quick description of my method for preparing these (which haven't changed since I was using them). I don't get this blood-in-saliva thing, myself, though. It worries me, I've advised him to stop IVing these particular tablets, and stick with the hydromorphone. Nonetheless, if anyone else has experienced or seen this, I would appreciate whatever info you can provide. Any ideas what this is? Is there a safer method of preparation (can't be done safely, but, safer is a possibility)? Maybe it's been too long and I'm not doing this right anymore, and that's why it never used to happen to me? My guess is dissolved particles of pill ingredients staying in the solution, and then causing some damage to your circulatory system as these disperse. But the blood thing is like instant, literally 10-30 seconds after an injection his saliva is already tinted red.
I dunno... Ideas?
Thanks in advance, folks; this is something I'd like to nip in the bud.
[Oh, and the lion thing, it's really very simple if anyone wants to read it. If you don't, just skip this part, I'm just putting it here because I said I would before and my word is my goddamned bond:
Big cats are psychologically programmed to go for the neck when they attack either other quadrupeds, or bipeds like us, or ostrich/other-birds. Every. Single. Time. It's your neck they'll jump for, and generally from the same (roughly) distance each/any time they make a try. If you don't have a stick ready, quickly grab one, and hope it doesn't break. If you do, good, your chances of survival just went up tremendously. Several metres away from you, while running at you, the lion will sort of crouch a little while still moving rapidly. Watching the lion, estimate where it will end up in the air based on it's current location and a jump trajectory that assumes a final destination of your neck/throat. Now, after the crouch you've got a second or so, so using your estimate, aim the large stick (as spearlike as possible) so that the lion will basically deepthroat the stick instead of actually reach your neck. You've gotta have courage, 'cause if you run, you're dead, and if you panic and get the aim or the timing off, your dead. If that lion gets its teeth into you at all, you're probably dead, and this stick is the only thing that can reliably stop that from happening. When the stick is thrust into the lion's wide open maw, thrust it forward with all of your strength. If you do it right, the lion will have an instant and intense gag reflex response to the large stick its being forced to deepthroat (lol). Once you're in it's mouth/throat for sure, don't relent. Keep thrusting and violently stabbing/swirling around in there. You want it to gag and choke as much as possible, or, if you have a spear or sharp stick, potentially cause it to die of these internal injuries. If you do get the lion to gag, it will abort it's launch toward your carotids/jugulars/windpipe/spine. No other animal would have defended itself like you just did, and the lion will be shocked, surprised, frightened (at least temporarily), and will most likely abort any attempt at attacking you altogether in favour of running off into the bush to get away from you (or to find reinforcements, so do get out of the area and to safety ASAP - just DON'T FUCKING RUN.). It should be pretty startled, possibly/hopefully injured (maybe severely/lethally, depending on your 'weapon'), and it will react with flight instead of fight, because it's never just started to choke during an attack before, doesn't understand why it's happening, how you did it, or how to avoid it next time, and it will be, for a time, very wary of humans, very fearful of you in particular. If you don't kill it, now's the time to leave. Don't look away from the lion, just start backing away slowly while staring straight at it, in the eyes if it's looking at you. If it starts to come toward you again, at any pace, take a step or two forward and scream aggressively and as loudly as you can - display like a chimp would, anything to look less vulnerable and fragile than you actually are, lol. But, from experience, it probably won't even try to advance on you again. Keep the stick ready, your eyes on it, and keep backing away slowly unless it's advancing (in which case you're either going to move toward it, slowly, as well, which indicates that you aren't defenceless to the lion, or you're going to stand your ground. Panic like a gazelle and you'll die just as quickly and easily as it would.). Only back away if it is not moving toward you but is staying still or moving away (can't show it your true fear/anxiety level like that would).
With a measure of luck and the favour of Fortuna, the lion will just run away like a housecat sprayed in the face with a powerful irritant (or, indeed, like you would if you tried to kill some small-medium animal, but then found yourself choking, gagging, and probably bleeding due to a large stick being forcefully (and through surprise) inserted deep into your esophagus before being flailed violently around inside your throat for maximum pain, shock, fear, and damage. If that happened to you, you would basically freak out (if you couldn't understand or explain it in the moment, especially), you'd lose your will to fight and the driver of your psyche would become flight (at least temporarily). You would run like little girl while pissing all over yourself if something you thought would be a relatively easy kill happened to start violently deepthroating you horribly and agonizingly with a long, thick (ideally sharp/pointed), spear-like stick (which would make you bleed and leave terrible splinters that would be extreme irritants and potentially lethal injuries, as well as it would if done on the lion, which is part of the shock and a cause of the shift into flight from fight), and it was assaulting your throat with this instrument rapidly and unrelentingly (it would feel like terrible torture, and would kill you if it lasted long enough or was pushed in strong enough, just as it has the capacity to do to the lion) as you were trying to process what was happening, stop the pain, stop the choking/gagging, deal with the splinters (coughing up blood, due to said splinters), and consequently also freak out and panic. Get the lion to panic with this method, and you'll win, it's basically an IRL cheat code if you practice it. If you panic, well, you'll lose. And likely die. Collect the animals meat, fur/hide, claws, teeth, etc., if, indeed, it does go down forever due to the injuries you inflict, but don't wait around to see if it will or won't die. Get out of there and come back later with friends to track the blood trail from it's mouth. If it died, you'll find it, don't worry.
And that's it, how to survive a lion attack, assuming one opponent, a spear-like instrument/weapon, and enough warning to see it coming and aim that weapon before it gets to your neck. I've seen it done, I've done it twice IRL myself, and I practiced it a lot when still in Kenya. It should work if you do it right, which is the key here, really. I hope you never have occasion to use this information, but, should you find yourself in such a situation, now you know what to do (besides try to run and get mauled or more likely killed and eaten) - grab the nearest appropriate stick as quickly as possible, aim, thrust, then tactical retreat + displays (visual or with sound) if necessary (because it starts to advance again). Good luck!]
