Cocaine Snorting Lungs or Nose?

When snorting should you snort hard into the lungs and throat or just the nose itself?

The nose. Snorting up (or squeezing or a bottle) a few drops of saline water every few snorts or so will keep you going too.
Don't go overboard.

^ definitely this! You don't want to snort hard so your drugs fly into your lungs, it can damage them. This is especially important when snorting pills containing filler/binders but cocaine particles plus whatever it has been cut with aren't going to do your lungs much good. The drug is absorbed by the mucous membranes in your nose and snorting thin lines sloooowly + using a saline spray/douche will mean you absorb the drug faster and keep yourself healthier. Win-win. Don't forget though that cocaine can be damaging to your nose even if you take precautions. It constricts the blood vessels (therefore it reduces the blood supply) which can cause necrosis (tissue death) of the septum, eroding it away and causing a hole which can lead to collapse of the septum. Not so win.

interesting. So you guys suggest after doing a line or two to use a saline spray for your nose? also even if some of the coke goes right down your throat and you swallow it, wont it still be effective? or does it metabolize and become useless hence taking cocaine orally very ineffective?

I spray my nose after every line I take. If you do this you'll notice a lot less drips, and the ones that come are a lot smaller. This is a good thing because it tells you that most of it is being absorbed in the nose.

In my experience the angle of the straw really plays an effect. If I hold it perpendicular to my face I can feel the line going straight to my throat, but if i hold it more parallell this doesn't occur.

The stuff that drips down your throat will be effective, but not nearly as much as if it were absorbed into your moucus membranes.

Most of what you snort goes straight to your lungs. Your nasal cavity can't hold much powder. From a normal sized line, only about 10% of the powder is absorbed intranasally; the rest is absorbed by your lungs or as drip.

Also - pill filler/binder isn't necessarily bad for your lungs, it's the silicates you need to watch out for. Look up the inert ingredients for whatever pill you're snorting. Don't snort anything containing silicates unless you want silicosis. The good, snortable pills are the ones that use harmless cellulose as the bulk filler (sometimes listed as "microcrystalline cellulose"). Sugars such as lactose are also going to be harmless. Magnesium stearate is another common bulk filler, which seems to be rather harmless. Just avoid the silicates.

does this hold true when snorting other things such as opiods aswell?
it would explain why when i was in my opana craze i found that snorting my 80 mgs of opana in ~10 mg lines throughout an hour or so period instead of snorting 40 mgs in each nostril all at once was much much more effective
though with heroin i still find when i blow it (very rarely these days) that if i have 4 packs or i'd split it into two lines one up each nostril, would you think it'd be more effective doing it in a similar fashion like i used to do the opanas?

It holds true for everything, but pulmonary absorption percentages are usually about the same as intranasal BA percentages. So it doesn't really matter whether it gets absorbed by your lungs or your nose, either way it's absorbed about the same.

Pulmonary absorption is usually SOMEWHAT less effective, but I'm surprised if you actually noticed a difference. At any rate, smaller, more frequent bumps is always more effective. That's because when you snort a huge line, the mucosal lining in your nose/sinuses/lungs gets immediately saturated, so snorting any extra isn't entirely effective. You have to wait until the surfaces absorb the drug and become desaturated before you snort again.

It's the same reasoning behind why more, smaller hits from a pipe/bong are more effective than one huge rip that you hold in longer. Holding it in isn't very effective because the lining of your lungs is already saturated - the extra drug just basically sits in your lungs and doesn't absorb. So smaller, more frequent hits is more effective, just like smaller, more frequent bumps when snorting is more effective.

well that does make perfect sense the way you put that
i was just wondering if the absorbtion rate would differ depending on the class of drugs you're doing (be it stimulants or opiods) and how you get them into your system via an intranasal route
i guess with the heroin in my situation i just want to get it all in my system at once which is why i choose to iv my dope instead of snorting it, but in my case atm when i go cop i have a 45 minute ride home with the dope in my possession untill i can get home where my rigs are so sometimes i do get impatient and snort it on the ride home

so with what you're saying, if i were to sniff my dope again, i'd be better off doing it like i did my opana, as in smaller lines over a period of time instead of doing it all at once split into two lines - one up each nostril?
the reason i ask is because i know oral BA for heroin is absolute shit, so if most of it was getting absorbed by drips getting into my system orally it would be much less effective, no?

Fail Fighter said:

Most of what you snort goes straight to your lungs.

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erm, what? where is this info from?

Effie pretty much covered this.

In general if you're snorting drugs it is best & most effective to do one big dose of it vs redosing constantly.

Fail Fighter said:

Most of what you snort goes straight to your lungs. Your nasal cavity can't hold much powder. From a normal sized line, only about 10% of the powder is absorbed intranasally; the rest is absorbed by your lungs or as drip.

Also - pill filler/binder isn't necessarily bad for your lungs, it's the silicates you need to watch out for. Look up the inert ingredients for whatever pill you're snorting. Don't snort anything containing silicates unless you want silicosis. The good, snortable pills are the ones that use harmless cellulose as the bulk filler (sometimes listed as "microcrystalline cellulose"). Sugars such as lactose are also going to be harmless. Magnesium stearate is another common bulk filler, which seems to be rather harmless. Just avoid the silicates.

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Not really true, man. Your nasal cavity itself is not very large, but you still have the nasopharynx, oropharynx, and laryngopharynx (3 parts of the throat) before you even get to the trachea (plus various sinues). Then at the bifurcation of the trachea is something known as the carina, which triggers a cough reflex. If most of the powder was getting into your lungs, you'd know! You would cough!

i against i said:

erm, what? where is this info from?

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I've broken down the math several times in other OD threads over the years, you'd have to find one of those. What I can tell you is that the average pure/snortable pharmaceutical pill crushes up into 0.25g of powder, and the sinus cavity holds less that 50mg.

Trigeminal said:

Not really true, man. If most of the powder was getting into your lungs, you'd know! You would cough!

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Yes it is, "man." And inhaling pill dust doesn't make you cough when you're a seasoned addict... I remember snorting 8mg Dilaudids all day, which crushed up into approx. 200mg of powder. Even snorting a measly 100mg at a time, I still exhaled what appeared to be smoke afterwards, because most of the powder had gone straight to my lungs.

Fail Fighter said:

I've broken down the math several times in other OD threads over the years, you'd have to find one of those. What I can tell you is that the average pure/snortable pharmaceutical pill crushes up into 0.25g of powder, and the sinus cavity holds less that 50mg.


Yes it is, "man." And inhaling pill dust doesn't make you cough when you're a seasoned addict... I remember snorting 8mg Dilaudids all day, which crushed up into approx. 200mg of powder. Even snorting a measly 100mg at a time, I still exhaled what appeared to be smoke afterwards, because most of the powder had gone straight to my lungs.

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I really don't think that is correct. If you aren't inhaling excessively hard, the powder should go into your nasal passages, and if the line was too big to fit in your nasal passages the extra drugs will just go into your sinuses or drip down the back of your throat. The capacity of the maxillary sinus is about 12CC, which is much bigger than 50mg of powder. 50mg is a measure of weight not volume, so the volume will vary depending on the drug, but 1CC of flour weighs about 0.5g, so 12CC would hold a lot of powder. The capacity of the nasal passages is around 16CC per side. There is no reason to think that it is normal for 90% of a snorted drug to go into your lungs. Ideally you would want none of the powder to be entering your lungs. As said above, if you have a lot of powder you should just do smaller lines and inhale gently. Also a very fine powder would be more likely to get into the lungs.

Was this powder "smoke" coming out of your nose or your mouth? It's possible you got a bit in your lungs, but I doubt it's anywhere near 90%.

And if everyone is getting 90% of the powder they snort into their drugs, then that would include people who are not "seasoned users", and they would cough.

Fail Fighter, where do I start?

First, the nose can hold a decent amount of powder. There was a time when coke and heroin were sold very diluted. Heroin was like 3%, cocaine was sold in catarrh powders with about 1-4% cocaine. People snorted them and got high. The nose can hold way more than 50mg.

Second, you got it ass-backwards, 10% goes into the lungs and 80% the nose. And 10% in the lungs is if you get the powder down to 1-5 microns. I doubt most use more than a dollar bill and a lighter, or a razor blade, to powderize their shit. Don't think they use a ball mill and sieve it. Only the special technospheres used in the experimental drug Afrezza(inhaled insulin) would come close to 90% in the lungs.

Also pulmonary absorption is way more effective and faster than nasally, second only to IV. Some would argue more effective if the technology permitted.

And I find that taking a large hit from a bong or pipe is way more effective than a bunch of small hits spaced out.

You are right about the inactive ingredients, silicates like talc are bad, other ones not so much. And I have also sometimes seen the "smoke" too with some pills. I don't snort too hard but doesn't seem to make a difference.

Snort lightly, snorting too hard shoots possibly corrosive material back into your lungs. After a few lines i either rinse my nostil(s) with an aromatic spice nasal spray i picked up otc at the local pharm, or snort a very small amount of fresh spring water, make sure the water hasnt been sitting around, bacteria can form.

Sekio,

Can u explain why its more effective to snort 1 large dose as opposed to smaller doses snorted more frequently?

That agrees with my experience but is counter to what some/most have said in this thread...

Fail Fighter said:

Most of what you snort goes straight to your lungs. Your nasal cavity can't hold much powder. From a normal sized line, only about 10% of the powder is absorbed intranasally; the rest is absorbed by your lungs or as drip.

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along with others in the thread, i'd like to read some substantiation of this claim, in particular the 10% figure.

thanks.

alasdair

Fail Fighter said:

I've broken down the math several times in other OD threads over the years, you'd have to find one of those. What I can tell you is that the average pure/snortable pharmaceutical pill crushes up into 0.25g of powder, and the sinus cavity holds less that 50mg.




Yes it is, "man." And inhaling pill dust doesn't make you cough when you're a seasoned addict... I remember snorting 8mg Dilaudids all day, which crushed up into approx. 200mg of powder. Even snorting a measly 100mg at a time, I still exhaled what appeared to be smoke afterwards, because most of the powder had gone straight to my lungs.

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No it isn't, "man".

alasdairm said:

along with others in the thread, i'd like to read some substantiation of this claim, in particular the 10% figure.

thanks.

alasdair

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57% of statistics are made up.