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Heroin water/heat effecting potency of a shot

ech0s85

Bluelighter
Joined
Sep 30, 2009
Messages
784
so i only smoke tar but my friend that i live with shoots it. weve been getting high together everyday for almost two years and just recently hes started claiming that if he puts water on the dope and doesnt cook it right away it "ruins it". Im talking like 5-10 seconds. I personally dont believe it and think its one of two things. the first is he ALWAYS loses his lighters or is just too lazy to get it from his pocket so hell ask for mine, so i always take a hit to hold in while hes cooking his shit and i think he just fiends so hard he hates waiting the few seconds i takes for me to get a hit so hes started saying this bullshit. or maybe the heroin dissolves that quickly into the water and so the heat destroys it easier after. or it could just be some weird neurotic thing hes a weird guy. anyway ive been calling him out on this for months and hes sticking to it so i was curious what you all think
 
Gotta love drug politics.

Sounds like you could both do with a break. See the wood from the trees.
Other than that I can't answer your question.
 
Yeah that's complete bullshit. You shouldn't really heat a shot of heroin...though some people insist on doing so, especially with tar. Unless he's keeping it in water long enough for it to start converting to morphine, he'll be fine. He's probably just impatient.
 
do not heat the shot!!! again, i repeat, DONT FUCKING HEAT YOUR SHOTS!!! heating the shot will cause all the bacteria and cuts to dissolve into your shot, which is counterproductive. putting water on the dope separates the heroin from the cuts, so by heating the shot you are doing the exact opposite of what you are trying to obtain by ptting the liquid on the dope in the first place....

dont heat shots, dont heat shots, dont heat shots!
 
do not heat the shot!!! again, i repeat, DONT FUCKING HEAT YOUR SHOTS!!! heating the shot will cause all the bacteria and cuts to dissolve into your shot, which is counterproductive. putting water on the dope separates the heroin from the cuts, so by heating the shot you are doing the exact opposite of what you are trying to obtain by ptting the liquid on the dope in the first place....

dont heat shots, dont heat shots, dont heat shots!

wow really? I've never used a needle but it seems like 99% of needle users missed that lesson in health class.
 
Yea I thought with tar you're supposed to heat it. It's kind of hard to dissolve otherwise. I thought the warning to not heat was for pills because of the binders and crap in them.
 
It won't "make the bacteria dissolve" into your shot, they'll get in there heat or no heat. It might well dissolve other stuff that isn't heroin but i guess at the end of the day you are shooting up badly made chemicals that are completely un-sterile anyway. Probably best to heat as little as possible to make it dissolve but your mate is definitely talking shite. Buy him a lighter and save yourself the bullshit.
 
Your friend's theory is ridiculous... That has absolutely nothing to do with the potency of your shot..

And heroin is freely soluble in water.. even BTH will break down by itself in water (though it takes longer than powder) without any heat added. All you are doing by heating your dope is allowing the cuts/crap you don't want to break down into your shot. "Cooking" your shots is something from movies and TV.. it's more harmful than not doing it. You're not killing any bacteria, which by the way, thrives in warm/wet conditions..
 
Research citric acid or ascorbic acid to break down the tar so it is more manageable. Having never done Tar I can only comment on my knowledge of the chemical itself, diacetylmorphine. As Mr.Scagnattie said, all opiates (as far as I know) are ~100% in cold water, so not only does heating it dissolve the insoluble cuts and bi-products, but it also destroys the heroin molecules. And to comment on what thesameoldfears said, Heroin will not convert into morphine sitting in water, there is no chemical reaction taking place to cause this. Heroin is converted to morphine by a process called deacetylation after crossing the Blood Brain Barrier which occurs after the molecule has already entered the brain.
 
I'm not very versed with tar - since I'm from the east coast, all we have is powder - but I know a ton of people that live in tar-country and I've never heard this before. I know that you DO have to cook it to actually get a shot (over here, I never cook my stuff, though some people prefer to, it is perfectly okay to do a 'cold shot'), but I wouldn't say that not cooking it right away would 'ruin it.'
 
yeah thats about what i was expecting to hear. Ive told him a million times cooking it just makes it worse for you but for some reason he relates the potency of the shot to the darkness of its color, even though cooked shots are just dark from dissolved cut.
 
yeah thats about what i was expecting to hear. Ive told him a million times cooking it just makes it worse for you but for some reason he relates the potency of the shot to the darkness of its color, even though cooked shots are just dark from dissolved cut.

The color/darkness of the dope also has zero to do with purity.. not when it is in solid form, not when it is in solution, nothing.

It is irrelevant.
 
Research citric acid or ascorbic acid to break down the tar so it is more manageable. Having never done Tar I can only comment on my knowledge of the chemical itself, diacetylmorphine. As Mr.Scagnattie said, all opiates (as far as I know) are ~100% in cold water, so not only does heating it dissolve the insoluble cuts and bi-products, but it also destroys the heroin molecules. And to comment on what thesameoldfears said, Heroin will not convert into morphine sitting in water, there is no chemical reaction taking place to cause this. Heroin is converted to morphine by a process called deacetylation after crossing the Blood Brain Barrier which occurs after the molecule has already entered the brain.

Will an acid be helpful with tar? I only get powder here but I thought acids were just for heroin base.

And I've read on here that letting your shots sit for awhile (like a day or so) will cause them to convert to morphine, mostl when people were asking if they could prep their shots ahead of time and bring them on vacation or something. Very interesting if that's not true.
 
It seems like a lot of people commenting don't have any experience with tar, I do.

You don't need to heat tar when dissolving in aqueous solution. If you do add heat it will speed up the process, but it will damage the gear. If you have some gear that will not dissolve and requires heat to break down, throw that shit away. It's bunk and will probably make you sick.

I don't know where the lighter under the spoon originated from, I've seen people do it and I started off with that technique. It is however, as has been previously stated, counterproductive. Maybe people think that they're killing bacteria, or possibly trying to super saturate a solution. The later is stupid, and if you're concerned about the cleanliness of your shot, as everyone should be, use sterile(or at least distilled) water, and clean your spoon with alcohol. Then of course, clean works and clean the site before injection.

It sounds like your friend isn't fully aware of the best way to shoot dope. Be a buddy and educate him on how to properly shoot dope.
 
It sounds like your friend isn't fully aware of the best way to shoot dope. Be a buddy and educate him on how to properly shoot dope.

Unfortunately a lot of IV H users have no real clue how to properly inject and do it safely.. It's amazing how many people I see who swear by certain techniques that are 100% just wrong, but.. they have it in their head that it's the only way. Movies, TV, bad word of mouth, all contribute to a serious lack of knowledge when it comes to IV drug use and it's a real problem because it is so dangerous.

You would hope that when it comes to something as serious as injecting drugs that people would go out of their way to learn the proper technique and debunk the myths associated with shooting up, but that's just not the case. I did some dumb ass shit when I first started too but learned better as time went on.
 
i was under assumption that heat destroys some opiates and i never heat mine and works fine :)...so id say ur right he just has no patience
 
Search Engine Found this in milliseconds: http://www.bluelight.ru/vb/threads/...armaceutical-opioids-or-North-American-heroin


tricomb said:
This has been an issue for a long time now and it's about time we consolidated all of our information into one thread. As I find them (there are many), I'll add links to other relevant threads on this topic, and if you feel you have something to add, please do so we can put something together and save some people from themselves! =D

I'm copying and pasting what I wrote in the beginners guide to heroin. This is written for BTH but applies to all pharmaceutical opiates, however the "cut" is referring to the inactive ingredients added to commonly abused prescription opioids such as oxycodone (OxyContin, Roxicodone, OxyNorm, Oxy IR, etc), hydromorphone (Dilaudid, Exalgo, HydromorphContin), oxymorphone (Opana, Numorphan, Numorphone), Methadone (Methadose), Morphine (Morphine, MSContin, Roxanol, MS IR, Kadian, Avinza) and various others.

NONE OF THESE SHOULD BE HEATED WHEN PREPARING FOR PARENTERAL INJECTION.

Black Tar Heroin:

  • Black Tar Heroin is prevalent on the West Coast of the United States
HR note to all as the issue of applying heat to opiates has been a very hot topic (no pun intended) as of late.

According to the experience of many, and the science that back's it up, under most circumstances in the USA you do not heat heroin. Especially not powder heroin, but not tar either.

The reason you don't ever apply heat is, when you do apply heat tar, you introduce all the contaminates, cuts, and probably degrade the active ingredient a little bit while allowing all the precipitate matter to join the solution. YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO BE LEFT WITH VISIBLE "TAR" IN YOUR SPOON, ALL THE HEROIN HAS GONE INTO THE WATER. THE VISIBLE "TAR" IS INACTIVE INGREDIENT, LIKELY THE SUBSTANCE THAT YOUR HEROIN HAS BEEN CUT WITH. This is only difference between a hot shot and cold shot of heroin, hot shots DO NOT get you higher.

Don't be fooled by what you see, your eyes cannot see milligrams, but all the heroin has all gone into the cold water. Many people's eyes play tricks on them when they heat the solution and no longer cannot see the particulate matter, but it's is still there, but melted in with solution.

When you run a solution that was heated/cooked and not allowed to completely cool down in time, when you run it through the filter, the adulterants/contaminates/inactive ingredients slip right through the filter and into your syringe. Even though it may look clear to you, it is almost as dangerous as IVing without a filter, since the filter couldn't effectively filter out the particulate matter from the cooked/hot solution of heroin/water/melted cut.


Another common myth is that cooking your shots kills all bacteria eliminating risk of bacterial infection. This is false because bacteria thrive in wet, warm/hot environments, and if you actually applied enough heat to kill all bacteria, you would have degraded the active ingredient, heroin, significantly. So another reason to do cold shots: No added degradation of heroin. To minimize risk of bacterial infection, practice proper injection technique, absolutely EVERYTHING that comes in contact with the drug, your solution, your rigs, etc, must be sterile. When mashing the heroin with a plunger in cold water in your cooker or spoon, be EXTRA sure that you've sterilized the plunger, and have washed your hands with isopropyl alcohol, or even better use non-latex gloves. There are more germs on your fingers than most other parts of your body so it is VITAL that you maintain a sterile environment every step of the preparation and injection procedure.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

With pharmaceuticals it's important to remember that when you're prepping a shot of, for example, oxymorphone IR, there is up to 10mg of active ingredient hidden amongst hundreds to thousands of milligrams of inactive ingredients, and it's important to filter out as much of this as you can, using clean water.

See the inactive ingredients in medications and Pill-Mass Ratios (take note that it's from 2010 and new formulation pills may not be accurate, so if you have the means to contribute to this thread please do)

Why?? Read the Case Studies

Tommyboy brought this to my attention and since it's highly relevant I'm just going to copy and paste it here with a link to the original thread:

Written for opiophile, but decided I'd post it here as well :)
Introduction & Context
I recently attended a pill injection workshop in Australia, among the people at this workshop, there was a man called Dr. Bruno Raimondo, him and his team are running research into opioid pills such as OxyContin, MSContin and Subutex and the effectiveness of filtering. In the morphine forum I already summarized a document he did, I managed to obtain a copy of the slides he used at the presentation, although he has not released the formal version (which I will link to when he has) of the research, the slides he has emailed me are sufficient for the information people need to know.
Too long didn't read:
Don't heat pills, 2-3ml of water soaking your finely powdered pill, with a 1ml rinse through your filter (SHOULD be using a wheel filter) will give you the best results. Wheel filters are necessity they don't retain any drug (95-99% is let through, cotton filters let through less). Expect health problems down the road if you shoot cotton filtered pills.
Harms of pill injection
Injecting pills (or anything) can result in contaminants entering your body such as insoluble particles or bacteria and fungi. These things can irritate and inflame tissue and veins, cause infections in skin/muscle (granuloma, abscess). They can also result in local and systemic infection from the bacteria/fungi.

Insoluble and undissolved particles can cause microcirculation capillaries (5-10um) to become blocked, they clog up in the heart and lungs. Granulomas in the lungs are caused by inflammation which leads to scar tissue (fibrosis). Congmomerate masses lead to restrictive lung disease and pulmonary hypertension. The particles also reach other organs (liver, kidney etc).

Key particles in pills (OxyContin, MSContin, Subutex)
iMr8h.png

Other insoluble particles included are:
Magnesium stearate (5-30um)
Titanium dioxide (100um clumps) (ms, oxy)
Other particles that change form in heat are:
Stearyl alcohol MP is 59*C (ms, oxy)
Eudragit RS 30D clumps at >30*C (oxy)

All these particles cause problems in your heart, lungs and other organs, the chemicals that change form in heart are the reasons why pills should NOT be heated, and you will soon find out there is no advantage to heating.

Why pills shouldn't be heated
hvsyT.png

As you can see, of these images under a microscope, heating pill solutions cause enourmous particles to dissolve in the mix. These particles will pass through the filter (wheel or cotton) and recongeal, precipitating out in your filtered mix or veins.

Ok so I shouldn't heat, what about Rollie cigarette filter filtering (or cotton).
nSWUr.png

For comparison: MSContin rollies reduce particles >5um by 60%.

What about the drug retained?
yojge.png

For subutex 97% of the drug is returned in this process.
Drug is not retained in the filter after this, even if the filter is wet.
.
Wheel filters (and why they rock!)
Here is the solution of two pills under a microscope before and after wheel filtering
DDFwZ.png

But how many particles are removed by the wheel filters?
XMv7e.png

But what about drug recovery
MLOuC.png

For subutex drug recovery is 99%
*Note: One of the researches reminded me to say that when they first did these tests, their technique with wheel filters was poor, and that morphine recovery is more like 95-99%

So as you can see, using wheel filters removes all the particles that cause harm (basically), with a rinse of water after first filter, you can retain 95-99% of the drug (better then a cotton/rollie filter) while removing 99% of the particles that cause harm, and heating is generally a bad idea that does NOT help at all, and does more harm then good.
Note: Hand rolled cigarette filters filter to about 50um.

Another document for the national drug safety council, which focused mainly on morphine and wheel filters, also contains a lot of information. It is located here.

I also posted this in Australian drug discussion but was told to also post it here.


(source)

STAY SAFE!
 
just here to add a little something to the "heat vs no heat" conversation. i've only ever used tar, and these days i'm getting very high quality stuff (or at least the best i've ever gotten in the last 7 years). i let it dissolve completely in cold water, which takes about 15-20 minutes. BUT, i've found that just a teeny tiny touch of heat to the liquid solution can be beneficial, not even enough to blacken the bottom of the cooker. it separates some of the cut, which disperses into black charcoal-y flakes, and more importantly, thins the solution out enough for me to draw it up through the cotton. in fact, i've found that if i don't use this minuscule "heat/cut dispersal method", the solution is too thick to even draw up into my 27 gauge needle. after i heat it (teeny bit ;) ) i can draw it up no problems, and that flaky stuff gets left behind in the cooker. for the record, i'm preparing anywhere between .2 and .35 at a time, and, sorry, but you can't convince me that it's safer for me to not use heat and put that cut into my body when i have a chance to disperse it.

i'd like to hear what some other experienced users think of all this. i spent a long time trying to get around heating my hits after having read every FAQ under the sun, but after much trial and error, this method is simply the most effective i've come across for the product i use. looking forward to some dialogue...
 
swim never heats up his shot anymore. just adds water and filter. the dormin that its cut with here in chicago will not dissolve without the heat and i tend to perfer to take a benadryl before orally than mainlining it. plus who knows what else is being dissolved in with the heat. I like the fact that swim can see how cut the shit swims getting by the left overs...
 
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