Misc Why do Crack, Heroin and Meth all need to be vaporised in different ways/different pipes?

[sadmachine]

So I'm from Australia where Meth is extremely common, heroin is all #4 and usually shot/snorted and crack is pretty much non-existent.

I've smoked my share of meth back in the late 00's-early 2010's but never encountered crack or heroin being smoked. What it about Heroin and Crack that make it unsuitable for a meth pipe? Is it not all the same game of getting a puddle going to release vapours? I've smoked meth off of foil once in absolutely desperate circumstances and it got the job done but far from efficient, would smokable H not work the same in a meth pipe?

 

[thelung]

Different chemicals, drugs in this case, sublimate at different temperatures. Sublimation is when a substance changes from a solid to a gas without becoming a liquid.

 

[xXTheGrimOneXx]

They’re all different compounds, acidic salts, freebase. They’re obviously going to have different properties.

Did you pay attention in chemistry? Nope. Obviously not.

 

[Keif' Richards]

As others have stated, these are different chemical compounds. Crack Cocaine is a freebase. Heroin can be either a free base (common in europe) and when Heroin was common in North America, it would typically be a Hydrochloride Salt East of the Mississippi and it would more typically be found as Black Tar, which is basically a form of Heroin that has not been fully distilled, which is why it resembles Opium in its consistency. These substances will burn at different rates/temperatures, hence the different means of vaporization.

 

[cornerchemist]

Why do I get the feeling that none of those responses really scratched the itch to your query?

Anyway, lemme try something else because I'm not gonna pretend that I understand those explanations in any way that is much deeper than the literal words that they are comprised of, but to their credit Im sure they are right and that in the end what I will say and what they have explained will jive very well. My offering is a mostly experiential understanding with very basic visits to the science of it all.

So, to answer your question strictly, the answer is no, they don't. That is however, a trick answer of there wasn't a trick question. What I mean is, that as far as what i understand the definition of a pipe to mean, it is true that what you describe cannot be done. However, with the use of strip of aluminum foil and a heat source, it is possible.

If it isn't too selfish of me, I'd also like to bring up my own question within this answer of sorts for more informed minds to shed light on and i will get to it in a moment.

So as i was saying, with some foil, you can get most substances to slide down and issue you some smoke, that goes for base and hci. How this anachronism can be true, i do not know. Im not saying they all will, but, through personal experience the following have yielded those results:

Methamphetamine
MDMA
Freebase Cocaine
Crack Cocaine
*Brown Heroin
*China White Heroin
THC Oil
Oh and almost forgot, DMT

These arent all the drugs in the world but they are essentially the ones youde wanna smoke anyway.

Here are the caveats.


-Crack and freebase are not hci but you can smoke them on foil, but the rate at which this occurs is not conducive to a good high. You need the substance to vaporize at a far greater rate than that to hear the legendary bells. A crack pipes effectivity, essentially a glass tube with steel wool on one end, can be thought of as being due to a whole ball of tiny little foil strips to vaporise the crack at once.

-The reason for the * is that Nobody ever explains this but Heroin will smoke and will slide, but not very much unless youve got meth or something similar in chemical composition to it mixed in. So this chasing the dragon nonsense only makes sense of the preparation has been done, if not you'll be chasing the dragon a whole 2 centimeters, maybe 2 inches if you dump your whole bag in there and then its just gonna bubble on the spot burping meager smoke like some lava. Oh youll get fucking high, but your money will go a much longer way if you prep it properly. I once came across a drug report from like the 1940s in Hong Kong where they mentioned that heroin was always sold along with this inert compound just to make it slide. This was clearly before methamphetamine was popular but for whatever reason, meth seems to have the chemical properties necessary for this and has since become the go-to.

Hope that helped.