Harm Reduction Be careful of dosing/ redosing nasal heroin

[mike.vick]

Heroin has 2 peaks when snorted, one at ~30min and one ~1-1.5 hrs. and even goes up a little bit in blood-levels at hour 3. This is why it is a killer and you should take extreme caution if your so desperate as to use heroin. Also, it doesn't have a linear dose-response curve. If you double your dose, blood-levels can nearly triple. This enhances its killing effect.

http://jat.oxfordjournals.org/content/21/2/105.full.pdf

 

[FlawedByDesign]

Interesting article but IMe insufflated heroin peaks within 15 minutes and and wears off within 4 hours. Definitely never experienced a second peak.

 

[mostly-human]

Interesting article but IMe insufflated heroin peaks within 15 minutes and and wears off within 4 hours. Definitely never experienced a second peak.

I'm not making claims one way or the other, but the 'experienced' peak of any drug can be vastly different to the actual levels in your blood - and with depressants, the euphoric high does not always correlate to the respiratory depressive effects; this is one of the reasons the strong, short-acting opioid fentanyl is so dangerous; the euphoria wears off quick, leaving the user eager to re-dose, but the respiratory depression may still be in full swing and re-dosing to chase the high may cause complete respiratory failure.

 

[FlawedByDesign]

The problem with fentanyl is that there really isn't much euphoria to begin with. That and it's short duration is what causes heroin users to chase a high that doesn't exist and is why it has such a high body count. As far as heroin goes the obvious rule of thumb should be not to redose if you're still nodding off even the least bit.

 

[Mad Dash]

Thanks for the post Mike. That is actually very interesting information to have from a toxicity standpoint. If you have enough dope to keep tooting away this could be especially dangerous because I have noticed with opiates when you redose nasally it does not really increase the euphoria, I am guilty myself of having gone through WAY too much dope to try get higher than I was and it all going to waste essentially. I did not even realize at the time I was bringing myself closer and closer to OD.