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Heroin Why does heroin last so long?

Starshowers

Starshowers

Bluelighter
Joined
Nov 3, 2010
Messages
193
With a supposed half-life of under 30 minutes, why does heroin last so long???

I do it intranasally and I still have total pupil constriction 12+ hours later! It lasts much longer than any other opioids I do, by a long shot! I have always wondered why.
 
yeah Ive noticed that if you do some good heroin it will lasttttt, especially if you dont have a tolerance. I can get faded out of my mind on opana at night but by the time I wake up in the morning I will withdrawing. I had a tolerance and did about a bundle of some really good H one night and I couldn't piss at the probation office the next morning at 8 am still. I had to stay there until about noon or 1pm till I could piss, and I was nodding out in the waiting room the whole time. Needless to say how that piss test ended up.
 
Id have to say that bupe lasts a very long time itself though. It doesnt mess you up like heroin but you can feel the effects for days sometimes.
 
It really depends on a whole bunch of factors, including the person and their physiology, the drug itself and what it's mixed with, how it is administered etc. But the "half-life" does not correspond to a drug's effects. I've noticed that many people go around quoting drug half-lifes presuming that the half-life means the amount of time the noticeable effects of a drug will last, but that isn't true. A half-life simply measures the amount of time that an average person's body usually takes to eliminate half of the drug. Heroin used intranasally (snorted) generally also has a supposed peak euphoric effect at around 30min; all that means is that for most people, the strongest high is around 30min after they snort it. That does not mean heroin only lasts 30min, or that it only lasts 60min. As for half-lifes, the way they work is that after every half-life half of the drug should theoretically be eliminated. That means that if a drug's half life is 30 min, in most people, after 30 min 50% of the drug should be gone. Then after another 30min, half of the remaining drug should be gone, so it would be at 25% it's original level after 1 hr. Then after another 30min, half of that remaining drug should be gone, so it would be at 12.5% it's original level after 1.5 hrs. And so on and so on and so on, taking a very long time to actually get to zero, which would explain why heroin can often still be detected in the body up to a week after a person has taken it. But it does not necessarily mean that half the effects of a drug will be gone at these intervals. And both the half-life and length of a drug's effects can vary greatly from person to person and they are not directly related. Some drugs, for example, have a half-life of 12 hrs but their effects only last for 3 hrs. A drug's half-life can also refer to several different things, including the amount of time it takes for a substance to lose half of its pharmacologic or physical activity, or the amount of time it takes for the blood plasma concentration of a substance to halve its "steady-state".
 
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The half life is meaningless in this case because heroin has powerfully active metabolyes such as morphine.
 
Pretty much as above. Heroin is a prodrug in that it is inactive in itself but metabolises very rapidly to the active 6-mono-acetylmorphine ( 6-MAM ), with a half-life measured in minutes, and then further to morphine with a half-life of approx 2-3 hours on average, though can be anything up to 6-7 hours for some. It's the morphine half-life that's the key one then. Morphine further metabolises to morphine-6-glucuronide ( active at the mu receptor ) with a half-life of approx 4 hours. Basically then even 12 or 18 hours in there will be enough of the active metabolites still at enough receptors to produce either residual effects in those with little tolerance, or to stave off withdrawal a little while longer yet for addicts. Total elimination from the body of morphine and metabolites will take anything up to 72 hours or so, which explains why heroin withdrawal typically peaks on day three for most users.
 
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Very good posts here by Swimmingdancer and Sepher.

Awesome link btw, Phrozen.
 
I realize it's metabolized into 6-MAM and then morphine. I guess it's just me then, because any type of heroin will last me 12-16hrs.... but morphine is an incredibly short high for me. I don't withdraw, so I'm not talking about time-to-withdrawal. I'm only talking about the high itself. Yeah I peak after 30min from snorting H, but I still have at least 50% of the peak 12-16 hours later is what I mean. All other opiates (hydro, morph, oxy, oxymorph, etcetc) are short highs for me (4-6 hours) no matter what the ROA.
 
Yeah when I was first doing heroin it would last into the next day sometimes, it was crazy. Even years later after some clean time, one shot would last forever, but it seems that as tolerance builds up the high seems to last shorter and shorter unless you do a whole bunch..

I think a good example of showing how a long half life doesn't mean a longer duration would be clonazepam. You would assume that due to its much longer half life than say alprazolam, that the duration would be way longer, but I never found that to be true, it was only more effective at keeping the withdrawals at bay longer. Also with drugs with long half life's that stack up like bupe and methadone, you are walking around under the influence of opioids, it's just that for maintenance users, that's become there normal state of being and no longer get a high out of the drug due to repeated exposure and long half life. I don't know, I guess that's kind of obvious but it baffled me for a while
 
Znegative said:
Yeah when I was first doing heroin it would last into the next day sometimes, it was crazy. Even years later after some clean time, one shot would last forever, but it seems that as tolerance builds up the high seems to last shorter and shorter unless you do a whole bunch..

I think a good example of showing how a long half life doesn't mean a longer duration would be clonazepam. You would assume that due to its much longer half life than say alprazolam, that the duration would be way longer, but I never found that to be true, it was only more effective at keeping the withdrawals at bay longer. Also with drugs with long half life's that stack up like bupe and methadone, you are walking around under the influence of opioids, it's just that for maintenance users, that's become there normal state of being and no longer get a high out of the drug due to repeated exposure and long half life. I don't know, I guess that's kind of obvious but it baffled me for a while
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I disagree. For me, clonazepam lasts significantly longer than alprazolam, and if I'm not mistaken it is considered a long acting benzo while alpraz is considered short acting. A kpin will have me messed up all day.
 
Starshowers said:
All other opiates (hydro, morph, oxy, oxymorph, etcetc) are short highs for me (4-6 hours) no matter what the ROA.
Click to expand...

I'm not familiar with the pharms you have available to you, but surely it's cos the metabolisation of those particular substances is entirely different? You only get 6-MAM for one if you've taken heroin, either as a metabolite or as an ingredient in the gear itself, and that's why it's what they use for tests. It's not the same path for other opiates, so comparisons are useless?
 
Oxide said:
Very good posts here by Swimmingdancer and Sepher.

Awesome link btw, Phrozen.
Click to expand...

Thanks Oxide :) Sepher does a better job than me of going on to explain some of the reasons why the noticeable effects of heroin do not correspond to the half-life.

I think this is an interesting thread because I've seen a ton of posts where people assume that a drug's effects should in some way correspond to the drugs levels in the body or elimination time. I've even seen people tell someone that x drug has a half life of 5hr, so it is "impossible" that they could still be feeling effects after 10 hrs or, alternately, already not be feeling effects after 4 hrs. The other thing that I've noticed a lot of people don't seem to realize is that a particular drug's effects and duration of effects vary greatly from person to person.
 
Sepher said:
I'm not familiar with the pharms you have available to you, but surely it's cos the metabolisation of those particular substances is entirely different? You only get 6-MAM for one if you've taken heroin, either as a metabolite or as an ingredient in the gear itself, and that's why it's what they use for tests. It's not the same path for other opiates, so comparisons are useless?
Click to expand...

I was illustrating the fact that I have plenty of experience with many different opiates and all of the common ones. The fact that every single opiate I've done except H lasts the regular 3-6 hours but H doesn't... this is a comment on my body's chemistry. How I metabolize opiates in general. I was showing that I do not slowly metabolize any other opiate, as there are many people that for example slowly metabolize ALL opiates.

Regarding half-lives, they are not totally 'USELESS' information as some would assume. I believe their use is in comparing say alprazolam (very short HL) to clonazepam/diazepam (very long HL).
 
Starshowers said:
I was illustrating the fact that I have plenty of experience with many different opiates and all of the common ones. The fact that every single opiate I've done except H lasts the regular 3-6 hours but H doesn't... this is a comment on my body's chemistry. How I metabolize opiates in general. I was showing that I do not slowly metabolize any other opiate, as there are many people that for example slowly metabolize ALL opiates.

Regarding half-lives, they are not totally 'USELESS' information as some would assume. I believe their use is in comparing say alprazolam (very short HL) to clonazepam/diazepam (very long HL).
Click to expand...

Perhaps you could say then that generally when comparing drugs within the same class one with a longer half-life should have longer-lasting effects. But that's about it, and I'm not sure how accurate that even is. I think it's much more helpful to just compare average duration of noticeable effects. You can't predict a drug's duration of effects based on its half-life. Some drugs can have a long half-life and short duration of effects, and some can have a short half-life and long duration of effects. On top of that the effects and duration of effects of any given drug vary (sometimes greatly) from person to person. Take methadone for example. It has a half life that varies depending on how long a person has taken it and how many doses you've had, but after 3 days of daily dosing it's supposed to have a half-life of 72 hours. However, for me, the actual effects last for only about 9 hours. And it varies depending on the dose, at much higher doses I could get about 16 hrs out of it or more before getting withdrawal sickness.
 
twice i have had heroin last way longer then its supposed to i started a thread but it got moved to OD social, kinda bothered me since i know im not the only one this has happened to so good thread

only thing is i have HAD and seen oxycodone last way longer than its supposed to ,in myself and 2 cousins

had this happen also with xanax and didnt use anything to stop the metabolism
 
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