Heroin Snortable black tar turning into morphine?

[Hobble]

I've read that you can turn black tar heroin into a dry snortable form by putting it on a plate adding a tiny bit of water to it, letting it disolve and then sprinkling a powder of your choice on it and thoroughly mixing the powder around, letting it dry and then scraping it off the plate to yield a crumbly substance which can be crushed, chopped and snorted.

My question is that since adding water to heroin will eventually make it turn into morphine, would I have to snort it within a certain amount of time in order to prevent it from turning into morphine? In other words once I add the water to the black tar does it begin an unstoppable process of reverting back into morphine? Or after adding the water and the powder, when it dries does it stop turning into morphine?

Sorry if this has been covered before. I did use a search and I did read several sources about turning tar into snortable forms but I don't recall any of them saying whether or not it could turn back into morphine.

 

[Swimmingdancer]

Heroin in water doesn't actually turn into morphine. It turns into 6-monoacetylmorphine, which is actually more potent than heroin. AND it only starts converting to 6-MAM after 24 hrs+ and a study on this found that less than 7% of the heroin actually turned to 6-MAM anyways.

 

[tricomb]

If you have it readily available, I'd enjoy reading that study.

@OP if you're going to use intranasal heroin, why be more wasteful and inefficient by mixing in adulterants? I would just administer it as a liquid.

 

[Swimmingdancer]

I don't have it on hand, I'm just on my phone right now, but here's the first thing I found on Google:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/688091/

Spontaneous hydrolysis of heroin in buffered solution:
Electron-capture gas-liquid chromatography was used to study the spontaneous hydrolysis of heroin in phosphate buffer (pH 6.4 and pH 7.4) at 23 degrees C. Aliquots of solution were taken over a 24-h period. After extraction at pH 8.9 into propan-2-ol (10%)-ethyl acetate, deacetylated products were made into hepafluorobutyrate derivatives which were analyzed quantitatively using nalorphine as the internal standard. Heroin decomposes to 06-monoacetylmorphine (06-MAM) under these conditions. Further decomposition to morphine was not observed. Spontaneous hydrolysis was faster at pH 7.4 (first-order rate constant, 9.6 x 10-5 min-1) than at pH 6.4 (first-order rate constant, 3.0 x 10-5 min-1). In 24 h, the decomposition to 06-MAM was 13 and 4%, respectively.

 

[Znegative]

I don't really think this would work, tar leaves behind a sticky residue when left in water, it doesn't turn into powder. Or at least not IME. You can however crush it up into smallish shards, but it seems like that would be rather abrasive on the nasal passage. I would stick to water lining it.

 

[Sprout]

I've read of people adding caffeine powder and putting it in a blender for this purpose.

 

[Hobble]

tricomb: "OP if you're going to use intranasal heroin, why be more wasteful and inefficient by mixing in adulterants? I would just administer it as a liquid."

So I could do it on the go and not have to lay on a couch and keep my head tilted back.

swimmingdancer: That study looks like they only measured it for 24 hrs and after 24 hrs they didn't take anymore measurements. I do recall reading somewhere that it takes over 24 hrs for it to turn into morphine but I don't remember where I read that. I do remember it was anecdotal information, not a study.

 

[Swimmingdancer]

tricomb: "OP if you're going to use intranasal heroin, why be more wasteful and inefficient by mixing in adulterants? I would just administer it as a liquid."

So I could do it on the go and not have to lay on a couch and keep my head tilted back.

swimmingdancer: That study looks like they only measured it for 24 hrs and after 24 hrs they didn't take anymore measurements. I do recall reading somewhere that it takes over 24 hrs for it to turn into morphine but I don't remember where I read that. I do remember it was anecdotal information, not a study.

The only place I have ever heard that heroin converts to morphine when left in water is on BL and other drug forums. That does not mean it's correct

I have injected heroin that has been left sitting in water for up to 2 days and I did not notice any perceptible difference at all, which prompted me to do some research on the topic.

You're right, it does kind of sound like when they said "Further decomposition to morphine was not observed" they meant within that 24hrs. Either way, if heroin is left sitting in water for 24 hrs none of it will convert into morphine. I'm having trouble finding the original study I was referring to, but I found some others:

A kinetic study of heroin hydrolysis in alkaline aqueous solution at room temperature was conducted by a gas chromatographic method to measure the consecutive reactions of diacetylmorphine to monoacetylmorphine and of monoacetylmorphine to morphine. A first-order reaction was observed in both instances, and the rate for the deacetylation of heroin was greater than that of monoacetylmorphine. The rates of in vitro hydrolysis of diacetylmorphine in human whole blood and in serum were compared by the same method. Diacetylmorphine was hydrolyzed twice as rapidly in blood as in serum. While morphine was an end product of hydrolysis in the blood, it was absent in the serum.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7205572

That one doesn't give the time periods in the abstract, but it says that in water heroin converted slowly to monoacetylmorphine (doesn't specify 3-MAM or 6-MAM), and that it never converted to morphine.

This is a post I found on opiophile, it's not quoting any studies but I thought I'd include it because it at least sounds educated:

Heroin is most stable in mildly acidic conditions, and when kept refridgerated it will keep for a month. But it's not stable in basic conditions, especially hot basic conditions where it breaks down rapidly.
So if you were to add dissolve the heroin in water, and a pinch of baking soda, then boil it for a few minutes, most of the heroin would break down, first into 3-MAM and 6-MAM, and these slowly get broken down into morphine. The solution would then contain mostly morphine freebase and baking soda, so you'd have to add citric acid to get it to dissolve into water again.

The following study seems to support that post:

In aqueous solution, diamorphine was quantitatively degraded to give 6-monoacetylmorphine as the major product and morphine as a minor product, the rate of deacetylation being dependent on temperature and pH. At pH 4.0 and 5.6 diamorphine had a half-life of greater than 14 days at all temperatures but at alkaline pH diamorphine was more rapidly deacetylated.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1357144

Plain water should have a pH of around 7. A pH less than 7 is acidic and a pH greater than 7 is basic/alkaline. So it sounds like the above study is saying that at a pH above 7 heroin converts to 6-MAM and a tiny bit of morphine, but does not say exactly what happens when the pH is at 7 or even above 5.6, or give the time frame or percentage converted. I suppose if you are that concerned about it you could make the water more acidic by adding some vitamin C or something.

Personally, everything I have read and experienced leads me to believe that heroin converts to morphine extremely slowly or not at all when left in room-temperature water. Even if a tiny bit of it were to convert to morphine eventually I really don't think it would make a noticeable difference to the effects. If you are just leaving it in water for a short time and then drying it, it shouldn't convert at all, or even if you left it in water for a while and then dried it, I assume that would stop the conversion process. As to whether it's a good idea to snort tar heroin mixed with some sort of powder, I can't say