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  • BDD Moderators: Keif’ Richards | negrogesic

Why is heroin more euphoric than morphine?

O

OverDriven

Bluelighter
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Nov 2, 2006
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I have a lot of experience with morphine and a long list of other opiates. The one I've never tried is the big H. Now, I don't find morphine (IV or otherwise) all that euphoric compared to say, Oxy. Everyone I've talked to says heroin is more euphoric than oxy. Since heroin is morphine with 2 acetyl groups added, it simply breaks down to morphine in the brain. Granted, it ENTERS the brain faster and therefore can give more of a rush, but shouldn't the actual high be the exact same as morphine? Why would heroin be more euphoric?
 
according to the user morphinator, it's not. here is a source he posted a couple days ago which i copy and pasted from his post:

Morphine is an highly addictive substance, both psychologically and physically, with an addiction potential indistinguishable from heroin, which is a morphine pro-drug. In a study comparing the physiological and subjective effects of heroin and morphine administered intravenously in post-addicts, the post-addicts showed no preference for one or the other of these drugs when administered on a single injection basis. Equipotent doses of these drugs had quite comparable action time courses when administered intravenously, and on this basis there was no difference in their ability to produce feelings of "euphoria," ambition, nervousness, relaxation, drowsiness, or sleepiness. Although the heroin abstinence syndrome was of shorter duration than that of morphine, the peak intensity was quite comparable for the two drugs. Data acquired during short-term addiction studies did not support the statement that tolerance develops more rapidly to heroin than to morphine. These findings have been discussed in relation to the physiochemical properties of heroin and morphine and the metabolism of heroin. When compared to other opioids — hydromorphone, fentanyl, oxycodone, and meperidine — post-addicts showed a strong preference for heroin and morphine over the others, suggesting that heroin and morphine are more liable to abuse and addiction. The findings in this relatively new study lends more credence to more than four dozen research experiments previously conducted in the United States, Canada, Sweden, Germany, and Japan on the abuse potential of various narcotics. All research papers have concluded that morphine and heroin were much more likely to produce feelings of euphoria and other such subjective effects when compared to most other opioid analgesics. Virtually every narcotic analgesic on the market has been put up against heroin and morphine, including oxymorphone, hydrocodone, codeine, levorphanol, methadone, nicomorphine, and as already mentioned, fentanyl, pethidine, hydromorphone, and oxycodone.

Sources:

Journal of Pharmacology And Experimental Therapeutics, Vol. 133, Issue 3, 388-399, 1961

1 National Institute of Mental Health, Addiction Research Center, U. S. Public Health Service Hospital, Lexington, Kentucky

W. R. Martin 1 and H. F. Fraser 1

University of Arizona, Tucson - Pharmacology Department

Wang C-Q, Li Y, Douglas SD, Wang X, Metzger DS, Zhang T, Ho W-Z: Morphine withdrawal enhances hepatitis C virus (HCV) replicon expression. Am J Pathol 2005, 167:1333-1340

David Shewan, Phil Dalgarno (2005). "Evidence for controlled heroin use? high levels of negative health and social outcomes among non-treatment heroin users in Glasgow". British Journal of Health Psychology 10: 33-48. doi:10.1348/135910704X14582

Thomas, Josephine (May 2001). Buprenorphine Proves Effective, Expands Options For Treatment of Heroin & Morphine Addiction (PDF). NIDA Notes: Articles that address research on Heroin 23; Morphine resurgance; Smokeable Crystalized Morphine. National Institute on Drug Abuse. Retrieved on May 5, 2006
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ummm let me get this straight, u dont think IV morphine is better than IV oxy? wow thats insane, pins and needles rush is amazing...

Heroin is ALOT mroe euphoric than morphine in my opinion... the rush is sooo intense its crazy, because it immediatly breaks through your blood brain barrier. So you feel boom boom boom all the heroin hitting immediatly... whereas morphine injected does hit within minutes but it doesnt immediatley get overloaded like it does with heroin.

Also remember, heroin doesnt only breakdown to morphine in the brain, it also breaks down to 3-monoacetylmorphine, and 6-monoacetylmorphine which are both equipotent as heroin... there is a big difference between the 2, despite its only 2 acetyl groups..

Hell there is a huuuuge difference between methamphetamine and ephedrine, but the only physical difference is 1 oxygen group!


And yes i prefer morphine and heroin to any other opiate.. although hydromorphone is pretty good. Oxy doesnt give any good rush. Oxymorphone DOES give an amazing rush but the opana ERs take alot of trouble to finally get into a shootable solution.

Fentanyl for me gives a rush equally as good as heroin when injected, but the euphoria is non existant.

Morphine and heroin all the way
 
DAM is stronger than morphine because it's not simply a morphine pro-drug as many sources claim. It's also a 6-MAM prodrug, which is actually more euphoric than either morphine OR heroin.

It's about as euphoric as you can get!
 
Well thats not really true hammilton... no one has ever done 6-mam. At least not to my knowledge. All thats known is that it is a little more potent than heroin, but then again so is fentanyl and thats not more euphoric. So you could say its a little stronger but definatly u cant say its more euphoric without having tried it.
 
it preety the same. maybe heroin is kinda more intense, same kind of high.
i actually will prefer high dose morphine to some low grade street heroin...
 
The difference simply lies in heroin's advantageous lipid solubility. It is 3 times as effective in this area. The advantage allows it to cross the BBB 3 times as fast, thus saqting the relevant, in this case Mu, receptors that much faster.
 
I dont have as much experience with morphine than I do with heroin and oc's but out of heroin and oxys I would say that oc's are more euphoric. Then again, you have to take into account that I have only smoked heroin (except for one time when I dissolved some tar in water and snorted that) but I've never IVed...not sure if ROA would really change the experience that much...i just find the oxy high a lot more stimulating and euphoric, but then i had to spend 80 bucks to get high and decided black tar heroin is a cheaper more profitable route...note that the shit tar heroin available on the west coast is also probably not as good as some of the h u may be able to find living somewhere else.

now that i think about it...hydrocodone is actually more euphoric to me than oxys (that is when I was actually able to get high off norcos)...oxys just have that extra stimulating kick to them which i love.
heroin though...well i dunno it kindda just fucks me up like all opiates and makes me nods the fuck out, but it doesn't make me as happy as hydrocodone or oxy.

oh yeah and another thing- it may be different depending on where you're at with your addiction. i may have thought of heroin as being the better of the 3 I mentioned had I tried it before I had a ridiculously high tolerance.

....uuurrrrgg, something tells me im rammbling on way too much in this thread, must be the booze.
 
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burn out said:
so why does the study say its the same?
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I don't really think they are saying they're the exact same thing, if they did then there would be no point to the study, right?

They know (and we all know) heroin and morphine are basically ALMOST one drug. Heroin delivers morphine across the BBB faster than morphine by itself would - the high itself after the initial rush is what they are saying was indistinguisable because the post-addicts didn't prefer one over the other (morphine, heroin), but they did prefer them over the drugs they were tested against and yet, the post-addicts had no idea what they were getting. This basically means that

Heroin is a pro-drug for morphine, as you can see in the study, addiction potential between the two indistinguishable - both phsyical and psychological (but psychological dependence potential for morphine/heroin were evidently greater; physical dependence is likely greater I assume aswell). There was a difference in the withdrawals though, heroin's withdrawals were slightly shorter in duration, but the peak intensity was identical for both.
 
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narutokun said:
It's called placebo. :|
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I really doubt that you could trick a "post addict" into thinking that he/she was just given heroin or morphine when in reality it was only saline :\

I could be wrong, but personally I would think that having IV'ed heroin quite a few times that I could distinguish between the two.
 
eon_blue said:
I really doubt that you could trick a "post addict" into thinking that he/she was just given heroin or morphine when in reality it was only saline :\

I could be wrong, but personally I would think that having IV'ed heroin quite a few times that I could distinguish between the two.
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no, he means that the people who are saying heroin is more euphoric are doing so because they believe since it crosses the blood brain barrier faster, it will be more euphoric and because of this belief, they experience more euphoria. the placebo affect.

however, if you give addicts the two drugs and they don't know which they are getting, then they experience the same level of euphoria from both drugs.
 
burn out said:
no, he means that the people who are saying heroin is more euphoric are doing so because they believe since it crosses the blood brain barrier faster, it will be more euphoric and because of this belief, they experience more euphoria. the placebo affect.

however, if you give addicts the two drugs and they don't know which they are getting, then they experience the same level of euphoria from both drugs.
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ahh ok that makes sense, thanks for clarifying.

Having only ever IV'ed heroin (never morphine), I can't say from experience whether or not I agree, but that does make sense.
 
burn out said:
no, he means that the people who are saying heroin is more euphoric are doing so because they believe since it crosses the blood brain barrier faster, it will be more euphoric and because of this belief, they experience more euphoria. the placebo affect.

however, if you give addicts the two drugs and they don't know which they are getting, then they experience the same level of euphoria from both drugs.
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Yes that's what I meant. I guess I wasn't very explicit, sorry.
 
Burnout: there is a much ballyhooed study from the late 60s claiming that d-LSD produces genetic damage. Studies are not the here all,end all unless they are backed up by concurrent results.

We are able to relatively quantify euphoria via tial flick and other physiological responses, and yet whenb given subjective expression we will all describe it differently, hence your study. Ask 10 people to describe a Rush to a non-user and look for the uniform response.

Euphooria is tied to Mu, to reach Mu , are the bulk you need to cross BBB, heroin corsses it 3 times more efficiently, and there is the proof.
 
Think of heroin not so much as a different drug than morphine but as 2 acetyl groups which act as a vehicle for the faster and more efficient transmission of morphine across the blood-brain barrier. Non-parenteral administration of morphine and diamorphine produces identical effects, IV heroin produces a bigger rush because it crosses the BBB faster.
 
morphine seems like the rush comes on slower, heroin comes on almost instantly.

i do looooove IV morphine tho, its old as hell but its still one of the best. def way better than IV oxy.
 
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