Heroin Whats the ideal ph level for cooking heroin #3 with citric/ascorbic acid?

[RedHat]

I'm a heroin user who lives in the south/west United States, where the majority of users don't even know heroin comes in 4 different forms, let alone adding an acid to heroin #3 or the pH levels of the heroin they're shooting. I've recently started buying my H online, which means I'm switching from the god awful BTH to Heroin #3

The only trouble I'm having with the new stuff is cooking it up properly. I seem to have a difficult time using the proper amount of citric or ascorbic acid to help break down the H. So below are a series of questions that I've been trying to answer. These questions are for users that either have experience using citric/ascorbic acid with their heroin, or are knowledgable on the topic. (the questions are in bold with blue font, for those of you that don't have time for the details)

Questions

1. The acidity of a solution is directly proportional to the amount of "free" hydrogen atoms (the higher the amount of hydrogen atoms, the lower the pH). The Hydrogen atoms are attracted to the nitrogen atoms in the heroin molecule, once the Hydrogen atom binds to the Nitrogen atom, the heroin molecule is positively charged and is water soluble. This piece of information leads one to believe that the pH should really only start to drop once there's more available hydrogen atoms than there are nitrogen atoms to bind with on heroin molecules. So, in theory, shouldn't I be able to do a little experiment where I gradually add citric/ascorbic acid in very very small amounts, giving it time to react/bind to a nitrogen atom, then test the pH level, repeating this process until theres a noticeable drop in the pH level?
2. What would you say the most "optimal" pH level would be? This seemed like a simple question at first, but the answer doesn't seem to be as simple. I watched this video where the lady states that a pH of 2.55 was adequate, but that still seems pretty low. I also found this nifty chart that shows the pH for both ascorbic and citric acid. Multiple sources say that if it stings when you inject it, then the pH is too low, but even when the pH is within the ranges listed, it still stings! In the vein it stings on entry and I can feel a slight burn go up my arm, if I accidentally miss and it goes into the muscle it's way worse.
3. It obviously stings if the pH is too low and the solution is too acidic, but is there a pH level that will also sting if exceeded? (meaning if the pH of my solution gets too high, will also cause a sting)
4. Right now, after I cook it up and filter it and shoot it, if it stings, my process basically consists of: 1) adding sodium bicarbonate; 2) re-filtering; 3) pH test; 4) try shooting again until the stinging is at a tolerable level. And I understand the pH scale (>7 = base; 7 = neutral; <7 = acid), but I'm curious about what happens when the solution is pH neutral or higher than 7. Is that unsafe? or does it just waste some of the product?

Heres the latest mix I've put together in the picture below. The pH seems to be ~5


My goal is to be able to document the exact quantities of heroin/water/ascorbic acid I need so I can quit playing this pH balancing game with ascorbic acid and baking soda.. It's driving me crazy and killing my veins (I switched to H #3 to save my veins, not lose them faster). So what I planned on doing was basically get 5 or 6 vials (3-5ml), add the exact same amount of heroin and water to each, then add different amounts of ascorbic acid to each one, then heating each one the exact same (ie: on a heating plate), and judging which one seems to dissolve the heroin the best without letting the pH dip down too low.
Does that sound like a reasonable way of working this out?

Thanks

 

[steewith2ees]

It is probably the most systematic, but in my opinion (and I do stress it is my opinion only) the requirement for a low pH when injecting brown heroin still makes this ROA unsustainable in the long term as despite the degree to which you can keep the pH of your solutions as high as possible, you will always be injecting acidic cocktails. No. 3 heroin use will not save your veins in any manner as even if you manage to reduce the harm you currently perceive as manageable they will still degrade, albeit at perhaps a slower rate than present depending on your current practises.

I am not a phlebologist but in the absence of any other information I would imagine that most veins will not take kindly to repeated exposure to any solution with a pH much < or > than 7. I live in the UK, so 99% of our street heroin is No.3 and I know of not one IV user that has managed to sustain the route for over a decade without resorting to high risk sites (jugular / femoral) or who have not maimed themselves in the process.

 

[RedHat]

It is probably the most systematic, but in my opinion (and I do stress it is my opinion only) the requirement for a low pH when injecting brown heroin still makes this ROA unsustainable in the long term as despite the degree to which you can keep the pH of your solutions as high as possible, you will always be injecting acidic cocktails. No. 3 heroin use will not save your veins in any manner as even if you manage to reduce the harm you currently perceive as manageable they will still degrade, albeit at perhaps a slower rate than present depending on your current practises.

I am not a phlebologist but in the absence of any other information I would imagine that most veins will not take kindly to repeated exposure to any solution with a pH much < or > than 7. I live in the UK, so 99% of our street heroin is No.3 and I know of not one IV user that has managed to sustain the route for over a decade without resorting to high risk sites (jugular / femoral) or who have not maimed themselves in the process.

Hmm.. Interesting. There's obviously heroin users that have IV'd for an insanely long time and still manage to have their veins. What do they do? And what type of heroin do you think is the best for IV users? Do you know of a way to prepare a shot of H #3 in a method thats safest for your veins?

 

[RedHat]

In regards to the experiment I outlined in my first post, I was thinking that it would be useful to be able to separate the liquid portion (which would include whatever heroin has dissolved at that point) from the solid substances (which should consist of the undissolved heroin and any cuts), and weigh the solid quantity (with as much liquid removed from it as possible) to potentially give an approximate idea of how much heroin has successfully dissolved thus far. Then once that data is logged (along with the pH level of the solution, taken before the solid and liquid are temporarily separated), move the solid substance back into the liquid portion and move on with the experiment.

• In theory, while the citric/ascorbic acid is being added to the mix, as its bonding to the nitrogen atoms, the pH level shouldn't change very much (since there aren't any free hydrogen atoms, yet), but the amount of solids should steadily decrease.
• Then once the citric/ascorbic acid has successfully dissolved as much heroin as it can, the weight of the solids should change very little while the pH level should start to decrease (since the hydrogen atoms have no nitrogen atoms to bond to)

Does anyone see any problems with this logic? I think it should help out.

If so, whats the best (and quickest) way to separate the undissolved heroin from the liquid without losing any of the liquid or solid? This would be repeated frequently, so I'm looking for a method quicker than vacuum filtration or spinning it in a centrifuge and using a pipette to extract the liquid.

 

[steewith2ees]

Hmm.. Interesting. There's obviously heroin users that have IV'd for an insanely long time and still manage to have their veins. What do they do?

There most certainly is, but they are very much in the minority and are probably more likely to have had access to hydrochloride gear or at the very least various street brews which contain it as the active drug (who's prevalence in the US appears to have only been recently decimated by the amount of counterfeit gear going around adulterated by fentalogues).

I do not know of any way to inject #3 heroin without the use of an acid, the only way I personally countenance the damage is by injecting as little of my gear as possible (remember, #3 is perfect for smoking so I usually only begin my 'sessions' with a shot or 2 after which I keep the buzz topped up by chasing the rest) and even so I am acutely aware that the day is close where I will have to make the simple choice between my life or the needle.

 

[RedHat]

There most certainly is, but they are very much in the minority and are probably more likely to have had access to hydrochloride gear or at the very least various street brews which contain it as the active drug (who's prevalence in the US appears to have only been recently decimated by the amount of counterfeit gear going around adulterated by fentalogues).

Hmm... Interesting. Well, for the vast majority of my Heroin usage history (where IV was the ROA), I was shooting BTH. And I always thought that even the "brown heroin" (#3 from Afghanistan, or wherever) would be substantially better than the BTH (in regards to the quality as well as the impact on my veins). And while the heroin base I've been testing definitely is better, it's not nearly as much of an improvement as I was expecting. I suppose I just thought it would be so much better simply because neither I or anyone I've known have ever used it before (the "grass is greener on the other side of the fence" kinda situation).

But no worries! At least this heroin base opens a few new doors in terms of what I can do with it. The BTH around here seems to be different nearly every time I picked some up. Sometimes it would be sticky and soft, then rock hard and brittle; sometimes it would give me a little rush, then the next batch would barely keep me from getting sick, (and sometimes it would actually make me sick!); sometimes it would look somewhat clean (granted, calling BTH "clean" doesn't really mean anything. Shitty heroin is shitty heroin), then next time I would find all kinds of ridiculous shit in it (pieces of plastic, little bits of paper, dog hair, sometimes even an actual piece of cotton (WTF right?!)).

I do not know of any way to inject #3 heroin without the use of an acid, the only way I personally countenance the damage is by injecting as little of my gear as possible (remember, #3 is perfect for smoking so I usually only begin my 'sessions' with a shot or 2 after which I keep the buzz topped up by chasing the rest) and even so I am acutely aware that the day is close where I will have to make the simple choice between my life or the needle.

I smoked BTH for quite some time, back when I justified my heroin addiction by using that common "well I'm not as addicted as those who use needles" rational. Smoking BTH was so insanely disgusting... Sometimes I would take a hit and then throw up and dry-heave for like 10 or 15 minutes straight (I always thought that was my bodies way of saying "get this fucking poison out of me!", hah). I also have asthma, so you can imagine how well that worked out. I would always be coughing up nasty flem with new and interesting colors, which left my friends and family puzzled because I've never smoked cigarettes, yet I sounded like an 80 year old woman with emphysema striving for her oxygen tank.

After I switched my preferred ROA to IV, my lungs cleared up. However, I did recently give smoking heroin base a shot (last night, actually, for the first time), and while its definitely better tasting than BTH, it still tastes awful. It actually tastes like I'm eating dirt. So I wasn't able to smoke enough to get a high at all.

 

[LucidSDreamr]

Cooking a shot with citric shouldn't be this complicated.

Just add it bit by bit with light heat until your material is mostly dissloved. If the shot burns too much, add less next time.

 

[RedHat]

Cooking a shot with citric shouldn't be this complicated.

Dude, you're tellin me... I know im not an idiot, so this is bugging the crap out of me.

Just add it bit by bit with light heat until your material is mostly dissloved. If the shot burns too much, add less next time.

Thats what I do. But then it seems like most of the H doesn't get broken down. And its far too much to just be some impurities/cuts.
Do you have experience using citric/ascorbic in this manner?


I sometimes notice that if I leave the cooker with some undissolved H and water (with citric in it), coming back to it much later I'll notice that its actually mostly dissolved. So I'm wondering why that happens, but it wont happen when I heat it myself. I'll mess around with it more today.

 

[steewith2ees]

It really is horses for courses depending on the brew. My 1ml syringe kits come with pre packaged sachets containing approx. 200 - 300mg citric acid - the general HR rule of thumb that our drug service providers go on is that a single street shot of heroin (approx. 100 - 200mg of material) should only require about a 1/4 to 1/3 of the sachets to dissolve the majority of the heroin which results in varying degrees of detritus left in the spoon depending on the amount and / or nature of the adulterants.

Some heroins that I get dissolve almost completely, others can leave what appears to be half as much of the original material but this appears to be no indication of it's purity (most of what I get is a decent standard, so I can only assume that the drugs that almost completely dissolve have more soluble adulterants than the others).

#3 heroin should still dissolve in a low pH solution provided it as at least at room temperature - most people heat it due to impatience and cause further damage by not waiting for the solution to cool properly (guilty! but as I said - I do not believe that after 15 years of use, 6 via IV, I have much scope for considered continued vein care in the medium / long term).

 

[belligerent drunk]

Around 5-6. Heroin easily forms water-soluble salts below pH 8, so anything below 7 should be fine. If you're going to snort, plug, IM or IV, you don't want the solution to be acidic, so 5-7 should be your goal.

 

[Jekyl Anhydride]

This seems fairly spot on:

Author Manuscript
Ciccarone and Harris
pH
---------------
London
Ascorbic acid &
Heroin
3.4
Heroin
3.5
Heroin
Combined 3.4
Citric acid
Heroin
Low
2.3
Heroin
High
2.8 Heroin Combined
2.6
Snowball (crack)
High
3.2
Pharm. heroin
High
4.8
Pharm. methadone
High
6.1
Philadelphia Heroin
4.7
*
Speedball (cocaine) Low 4.2
---------------------------------------
Standards
?Spring? water7.1
Distilled water 5.8
Coffee 5.0
Orange juice 4.1
Grapefruit juice 3.5
Vinegar: red wine2.6
Coca Cola 2.5

Considering clandestine H doesn't have exact Stoichiometry**/ˌstɔɪkiˈɒmᵻtri/ is the calculation of relative quantities of reactants and products in chemical reactions. Stoichiometry is founded on the law of conservation of mass where the total mass of the reactants equals the total mass of the products leading to the insight that the relations among quantities of reactants and products typically form a ratio of positive integers.

..and being 2pH points under leaves 80%+ of the base converted/ ionized, hence Pharmaceutical Heroin being at pH 4.8. Even the pharmaceutical MS I prep has a pH of 4.8- 5.2. You can briefly wasy your H in a non polar solvent to strip some of the excess acid from it as well just like that which is done with excessively low pH coke. See: Le Junk's Cola, the final method for purification thread for reference.

BTW I will get back to your salting #3H thread, it's been a really busy week, sry RH.

 

[RedHat]

Just to conclude this - I found that the reason I was having problems before was because it was just crappy #3. Once I got some from a different vendor, I was able to get this process down to pat pretty quickly. And I find that the pH is best right around ~5 (which is what Jekyl Anhydride listed above), but no lower. Some of my mixes are probably even closer to 7. Its harder to deduce with a wide range pH paper, so I'll order some narrow range strips. I do have an electric pH meter, but it needs like 5ml to be able to test, and I usually only mix like 4ml at a time, max. But I'm sure ill use it eventually, seeing as how its pretty damn accurate.

I'm surprised that YouTube video shows that the pH should be around 2~3, thats insane! That would burn so badly... lol

 

[Jabberwocky]

I always assumed it was best to have it around the pH of blood. Interesting thread

 

[RedHat]

I always assumed it was best to have it around the pH of blood. Interesting thread

Hm... never thought about that. I'll have to see what pH blood is at.

 

[Jekyl Anhydride]

Blood is pH 7.4 +/- 0.05. H in citrate or HCl form is highly water soluble so small shots can be absorbed without making one acidotic. The list 4 posts^ up is eye opening to how acidic H is across the country and in the NHS.