NEWS: Daily Telegraph - 'You pay for junkie drug rort'

[djsim]

^ That's why there should be an injectable pharmacotherapy available. Ampoules of bupe would be the go I think - good safety profile.

How will that help people get their shit together? I mean they are used to shooting dope.. what would happen if they had injectable bupe? We both know... it'd be IVd all at once over the space of a few hrs chasing a euphoric high that just wont come. The whole idea of bupe is to get you away from IVing everytime something gets difficult or stressful in one's daily routine. Whilst I certainly would never want to be in methadone (or bupe) 'handcuffs' (I actually chose naltrexone to get clean over sub/methadone), I defnitely believe Australia has the right approach (relatively) comapred with the USA where they just give bupe patients a whole months worth of pills and send em on their way. That's just a recipe for disaster... at least when I supervise bupe patients in the pharmacy, you can be reasonably certain it's not going to be snorted or IVd. Playing around with the tablets (ie snorting, IVing) just throws wild bioavailability fulctuations into a situation where routine and stability is required. Addiction is such that you dont have control anymore over drug use, so pretending that bupe patients wont abuse their meds is just insane... its not a matter of trust or any of that shit, its a matter of rewiring the brain back to how it should be.
And re this article -- I call bullshit. There's no fucking way people are forging scripts or doctor shopping for vast amounts of oxycontin, mainly for 2 reasons:
1. the PBS, contrary to what this article would have you believe, cares intensely about how much it spends. They have files of who gets RXd what and when. Double up on an s8, and they'll know quick smart.
2. getting Oxycontin in Australia is like getting blood out of a stone.

 

[djsim]

I believe that the figures for injectors at the room are accurate... there probably is more pill shooters there. But that'd be because they provide the filters for free! Duh! Couple that with a heroin drought, and yeh, more users will be shooting OCs than H. But the article has drawn an inference that ALL of the scripts written for the period were for junkies. Bull-fucking-shit. You can't take figures from an injecting room (full of hardcore drug users) than extrapolate the data for the rest of the country. It's like saying 90% of Australians drink because if you sit in a bar, 9/10 people in the room are drinking. Jesus

 

[Mr Blonde]

^ Mazel tov on 1000 posts brother, didn't notice that.

What do you think about the pill injection discussion in this thread? Regarding safety, etc...?

 

[kingpin007]

Also I forgot to mention I know a girl shoot up a pill once and she has iv experience so she knew what she was doing anyhow after injecting the injection site had swollen up to a ping pong ball sized lump , scared shit out of her went to hospital said it would go away over next few days and for her to take asprin to thin her blood. If the producers of oxy were to make it worthless to iv due to something similar to what I mentioned above then This Is probably what the government will do.

 

[Ahkei]

Also I forgot to mention I know a girl shoot up a pill once and she has iv experience so she knew what she was doing anyhow after injecting the injection site had swollen up to a ping pong ball sized lump , scared shit out of her went to hospital said it would go away over next few days and for her to take asprin to thin her blood. If the producers of oxy were to make it worthless to iv due to something similar to what I mentioned above then This Is probably what the government will do.

Sounds like she missed the vein.

 

[ayjay]

djsim - an injectable pharmacotherapy would be ace mate - check out the research results around prescription heroin for a start, then check out some recent research into bupe injection around Melbourne - injectable bupe would be the shizzle for some people and should definitely be available. Diversion of the sublingual tablets happens all the time (often just for dose titration and to circumvent the horribly restrictive dispensing regime) - if people want to inject their pharmacotherapy then give it to them in injectable form (it's called "harm reduction" which you may have heard of [/sarcasm]).

Good to hear the naltrexone worked for you and I'm glad it's available as one of a range of options for people but it has the worst evidence base (see NEPOD for a start) - and associated with several deaths.

Kingpin - making pills harder to inject just increases the harms caused when they are injected. Witness the temazepam gel caps fiasco; the manufacturers increased the viscosity of the synthetic oil in the caps to discourage injection - it just led to more catastrophic injecting injuries. They solved that one by removing the gel caps from the market entirely. This mostly worked - there was not a pre-existing culture of temazepam tablet injection, although in recent years there has been the odd spike in Xanax tablet injection and accompanying harms. Also people who were injecting temazepam gel caps in many cases switched to Unisom gel cap injecting - luckily a vastly less harmful preparation to inject.

 

[djsim]

^ Yeh I'm in Melbourne too. Would defnitely be intetrested in seeing the research results. It really is terrible how restrictive the bupe programs are, but I just can't see how giving injectable drugs is going to solve an injecting drug habit for people who want to get clean. For people who want to maintain though, then yes, I can see govt sanctioned IV heroin working.
As far as IVing pills, it's one of the worst things you can do. A micron filter makes a difference of course, but it doesnt seem to dawn on pill injecters that this shit never belongs in their veins. I mean, the only way you can put this stuff in your system is with a needle directly into the blood... thereby bypassing the natural barriers between these toxic substances and critical body parts. So if it comes to the arguement of whether street gear or pills is safer to inject, it's street gear hands down. It's not the active drug dose I'm considering, its the dose of dangerous adulterants when IVd. Also, concerning the temazepam/Unisom problem, yes, it defnitely would make more sense regarding HR to make injecting these compounds safer... but seriously, they dont need to be shot to take effect.
I think the drug laws are indeed futile. I think it should be our right to use whatever drug we wish as long as it effects no one else. Should heroin addicts get free heroin? Absolutely. If they want to shoot up everyday for the rest of their life, then that's their call. But we need to be realistic, its not going to happen anytime soon. I wish Obama had campaigned for that sort of change

PS. re: injectable pharmacotherapy. I used to shoot alot of meth years back. I got clean by cutting off contacts and picking up daily doses of Dexamphet from a pharmacy. How would injectable dexedrine have helped me get clean from being dependent on injecting amphetamine? I'm just trying to understand how shooting bupe would tie in with more success with staying off IVing opiates

 

[person]

^Once you start using micron filters, I would say that injecting pharm opioids is a shit load safer - certainly in terms of knowing exactly how much you are taking. Death by overdose would be far less likely for the daily pill injector versus the daily heroin injector.

A wheel filter definately helps for filtering pharms, I was watching my mate coldwashing some ritalin pills using a couple cigarette filters and was 100% sure that the fit was clean and ready to go. Told him to rest the fit upright for a couple minutes to see how much binders drop to the bottom! wouldnt take long to chalk the veins up and collapse them..

 

[djsim]

^ Exactly. The wheel filters may filter out small particles, but never all of them. So lets say there's a small amount of insoluble binder particles dissolved in the water small enough to make it thru the filter (say >0.7um). Multiply that by hundreds of shots and that's A LOT of particles in your body that can't dissolve in the blood... so they gotta end up somewhere, since there's no drainage of the blood (ie particles are stuck in the circulatory system). Where will they end up? Easy: the eyes, lungs, brain, capillaries, etc etc
Just because you cant see something doesnt mean its not there

 

[nabollocks]

Do many pills contain sugar?

 

[ayjay]

re: injectable pharmacotherapy. I used to shoot alot of meth years back. I got clean by cutting off contacts and picking up daily doses of Dexamphet from a pharmacy. How would injectable dexedrine have helped me get clean from being dependent on injecting amphetamine? I'm just trying to understand how shooting bupe would tie in with more success with staying off IVing opiates

^It wouldn't - but that's not the only reason people access pharmacotherapy. IV bupe would be for people who want to keep injecting (for now, at least), but are sick of the cost ($ and otherwise) of scoring every day. I'm not suggesting such a pharmacotherapy should replace other forms - just be an added option.

The study I mentioned was done by Burnet Institute - I've seen a hard copy but couldn't cite the exact title... sorry

And I think you are overstating the risks of injecting pills filtered with wheel filters. Really there is going to be fuck all getting through those suckers - when you crush a tablet, the majority of the particles will be 5um or larger - there's not going to be much sub 1um. As far as other stuff in tablets - when you take them orally they still end up in you - they aren't significantly dangerous.