'Home-brewed morphine' made possible

[untermensche]

First you ask for death statistics, then you proceed to totally ignore them. If you looked you would have seen the most dangerous drug is cocaine. But that doesn't make morphine safe.

And most accidental morphine deaths, and there are thousands every year, just in the US, are from prescription morphine.

And as I said, most heroin deaths are really morphine deaths.

I agree, if we totally ignore all the deaths from morphine we can pretend it is not an extremely dangerous drug.

i'm explaining the therapeutic index, which tell you that a lethal dose of morphine is 400x a useful dose....

Let me explain it to you.

That so called "useful" dose is the dose given to people who have never taken morphine. If you want to understand morphine you need to understand tolerance.

People addicted to morphine need to take more and more to get their desired effect because morphine is a drug that the body becomes tolerant to.

And as these addicts take more and more they slowly get closer to the lethal threshold. And thousands of people kill themselves by accident every year as a result.

And again, this is just morphine. Deaths from heroin are really deaths from morphine overdose. Heroin is just morphine that gets into the brain quicker. Once in the brain it is metabolized to morphine to achieve it's effect.

If people take morphine AS PRESCRIBED, it is a relatively safe drug.

But morphine addicts do not take it as prescribed. They kill themselves with it everyday. When people take it as they choose it is an extremely dangerous drug.

 

[NobleSavage]

^^Can you get Khat in the US? You chew it right? I'd like to try it. What falls under "Solvents"? Where is PCP? Caffeine? DMT? I'm glad they pointed out the relative safety of Anabolic Steroids. Another drug that should be legal (most of the bad stories come from weightlifters taking 20x a normal dose and mixing 10 different kinds + HgH + more fucked up shit like T3). From what I've heard if heroin is clean you can live a relatively healthy life -- as long as you can get your supply -- which, is basically what you said. I always have a bottle of Benzo's around. (less calories for those days when I need a good drink)... I've never noticed any dependance. Now if I don't get my coffee in the AM, I'm a real miserable bitch.

 

[tantric]

i shot morphine in my arm 3x a day for a good while, then went to methadone. morphine fucked with me cause i'm diabetic and my body does NOT like shooting shit in my veins. i had all the info in the world, used prescription pills, etc....and when i got ready to quit, i dosed myself on an NMDA antagonist, had a vision and it was done. no urge to relapse at all...and now, i can take opiates for pain and not binge. all because i know what i'm doing.

lala, heroin has acetyl groups that make it more fat soluble, so it crosses the BBB faster and produces a better rush.

you can't tell how much of the damage is from the illegality of it. yes, people would still OD...but if they had naloxone on had, which almost instantly negates the effects of opiates and stops OD's, how would that change things?

you can get khat seeds, as i understand it. if you're cool like dat, and have a contact, you can order analogs of most drugs, including fentanyl (1000x morphine) from factories in china and have it sent to you. it's big business. now fentanyl kills the piss out of junkies, because it isn't cut right. 2mg of fentanyl will kill most people, but it has to be sold in 250mg quantities...meaning if you get a lump, you die.

 

[untermensche]

...From what I've heard if heroin is clean you can live a relatively healthy life -- as long as you can get your supply....

Where did you hear this fairytale?

I'm all for allowing people to kill themselves however they want to.

But heroin and morphine and oxycodone addicts do more than kill themselves. They waste an enormous amount of limited medical resources by constantly ending up in hospital emergency rooms.

 

[NobleSavage]

...From what I've heard if heroin is clean you can live a relatively healthy life -- as long as you can get your supply....

Where did you hear this fairytale?

It was on some NPR program, maybe Radio Lab?. They interview several successful people who had been on it for like 20 years. One guy got through grad school at Harvard.

I'm all for allowing people to kill themselves however they want to.

But heroin and morphine and oxycodone addicts do more than kill themselves. They waste an enormous amount of limited medical resources by constantly ending up in hospital emergency rooms.

And how many of those ER visits would be limited if it were legal? Seems like one big problem with heroin is that you can't be sure how pure it is. Another is getting clean needles. I've know a few functional Oxy addicts. They got their supply from a doc for some BS reason. I'm not claiming to be correct here...

I was on morphine for 3 days while in the hospital. From that experience I'll never mess with it, because when the nurse cut me off I was very unhappy and I don't think I could have done it by myself.

 

[untermensche]

Where did you hear this fairytale?

It was on some NPR program, maybe Radio Lab?. They interview several successful people who had been on it for like 20 years. One guy got through grad school at Harvard.

An anecdote. And I believe it, but what does it say about how most people deal with heroin?

I'm all for allowing people to kill themselves however they want to.

But heroin and morphine and oxycodone addicts do more than kill themselves. They waste an enormous amount of limited medical resources by constantly ending up in hospital emergency rooms.

And how many of those ER visits would be limited if it were legal?

If it were more accessible there would be more ER visits.

These are drugs that alters your ability to make judgements and are extremely dangerous.

I was on morphine for 3 days while in the hospital. From that experience I'll never mess with it, because when the nurse cut me off I was very unhappy and I don't think I could have done it by myself.

3 days is not long enough to suffer much withdrawal. That is another problem with these drugs and they are all basically the same thing, heroin, morphine and oxycodone, when used for long periods of time the withdrawal is extremely difficult.

 

[NobleSavage]

3 days is not long enough to suffer much withdrawal. That is another problem with these drugs and they are all basically the same thing, heroin, morphine and oxycodone, when used for long periods of time the withdrawal is extremely difficult.

Yes, I'm aware of that which is why I want nothing to do with opiates.

 

[tantric]

These are drugs that alters your ability to make judgements and are extremely dangerous.

you learn to handle your shit. it ain't easy - but if you want to live in my world, and i'm not sure you would, you have to be able to take a hit off a stem when it's passed, then wake up the next day and not become a crack head. it can be done.

the problem is focus - most people spend their lives chasing mindless pleasure, be it a new car or today's fix. once they get it, it's great for a minute then you feel empty and need more. we are all taught that this is all there is: he who dies with the most toys wins. but it's a lie - there's more to life. joy isn't like pleasure, it comes from being a good person and self-awareness. it lasts and when its gone, you just remember it and feel it again, totally unlike pleasure, where you just crave. i *know* that joy is possible, that's how i live my life. i can beat that shit because i've experienced a meaningful and fulfilling life and i know drugs actually block that (well, addictive drugs). see, AA is right in that addiction is a spiritual disease, its just that their cure sucks. they just get you hooked on god, who dangles the bait a bit higher. my way, using NMDA antagonists like ibogaine, when taken during withdrawal, initiates a religious experience and chemically resets your tolerance. it can be fuckin terrifying, but it's better than puking and shitting yourself by a mile. plus, afterwards, you get a second chance - you are actually free, not just transferring your addiction to food, cigs, religion, whatever.

so, how would things be if instead of methadone clinics, we had ibogaine clinics? want to know a secret about methadone? it's a racemic mix of R- and S- isomers. R-methadone is an opiate, S-methadone is an NMDA antagonist. though i can't find the refs, its likely that if the clinics just gave S-methadone, it would cure the junkies in one go, but there's no money in that. methadone clinics are slavers, pure and simple. the up your dose as you go along, to get you more addicted.

 

[NobleSavage]

My #1 drug of choice is a natural endorphin rush. If someone would pay me to workout 6hrs a day I'd LOVE it.

 

[untermensche]

These are drugs that alters your ability to make judgements and are extremely dangerous.

you learn to handle your shit. it ain't easy - but if you want to live in my world, and i'm not sure you would, you have to be able to take a hit off a stem when it's passed, then wake up the next day and not become a crack head. it can be done.

Who do you think you're talking too? You have no more knowledge of this world than I do.

This is the crap people say when they have no rational arguments.

Just because morphine is extremely dangerous that doesn't mean that some people aren't able to use it for a while without killing themselves.

All it means is that it is very easy to kill yourself, by accident, with the drug, and smart guys like you do it every day.

 

[tantric]

seriously? i ran an MDA lab, i deliberately got addicted to morphine to further my career as a writer, i learned how to cure addictions by reading JSTOR, i spent serious time in a maximum security prison. in between i was a database architect and an phd candidate in ecology/epidemiology. my IQ is 165 . . . and i'm a stone cold criminal - that's my mf VOCATION. i've actually lost count of how many times i've been arrested, but more than 5. if i wanted to, i could have 5g of fentanyl delivered to my house from china, that's thousands of doses, for very little money, but i don't. i'm diabetic and i buy needles for my old junkie buddies. fuck, i have a gd Naked Lunch t-shirt. i supported my point with refs, logic and anecdotes. you don't listen because you've already made up your mind. i KNOW people die from opiates, but most of the damage comes from them being illegal.

you can kill yourself by accident driving to the store. so what? my life has been full of wonder and terror, but it has never been boring and i wouldn't change a bit, except the part about my mom and cancer. but really, if you want to challenge my street cred, bring it on.

 

[NobleSavage]

seriously? i ran an MDA lab, i deliberately got addicted to morphine to further my career as a writer, i learned how to cure addictions by reading JSTOR, i spent serious time in a maximum security prison. in between i was a database architect and an phd candidate in ecology/epidemiology. my IQ is 165 . . . and i'm a stone cold criminal - that's my mf VOCATION. i've actually lost count of how many times i've been arrested, but more than 5. if i wanted to, i could have 5g of fentanyl delivered to my house from china, that's thousands of doses, for very little money, but i don't. i'm diabetic and i buy needles for my old junkie buddies. fuck, i have a gd Naked Lunch t-shirt. i supported my point with refs, logic and anecdotes. you don't listen because you've already made up your mind. i KNOW people die from opiates, but most of the damage comes from them being illegal.

you can kill yourself by accident driving to the store. so what? my life has been full of wonder and terror, but it has never been boring and i wouldn't change a bit, except the part about my mom and cancer. but really, if you want to challenge my street cred, bring it on.

Getting drugs mailed from foreign countries is easy. Getting them through customs is a different matter. Sometimes they just send you a letter saying they found xyz and you can't have it. Other times they set up a controlled delivery and you go off to jail. Safest way is probably to log on to the Dark Web and order from a domestic supplier who has already taken the risk of getting it into the country. As long as you are enjoying your life, more power to you. Spending time in maximum security can't be any fun? Needles are easy, order them for Canada real cheap. They will come UPS and no one gives a shit. http://www.canadianmedsupplies.com/category.sc?categoryId=22

 

[tantric]

oh, yes, i know. it doesn't go through customs, it's a letter, and i've had a nasty letter about romanian cat tranquillizer and beyond that, i don't do stupid shit like that any more. i got modafinil, which is fantastic and mostly harmless, all that crap back in the day. i took mf piracetam. the mda lab bit is public record, i got off on an invalid search warrant, but i went to prison for a failed suicide attempt - see, i got away with standing the fuck up, i got tortured when i gave up and quit fighting. but i ain't studyin goin back to prison, dammit, while being tantric means i can meditate and eat like a monk and be okay, i HATE the mf cops. injustice pisses me off and prison isn't a good place for me.

re: needles. here only diabetics can buy insulin syringes/needles. there's no exchange at all, people use needles til they're nails. i freely buy a bag of 20 for $1 .... and it keeps people from getting AIDS and Hep C. so fuck yeah, i buy needles for people, sometimes trade for stuff i need, parts, shit.

 

[rjh01]

Do you have any evidence that "people kill themselves by accident all the time with it [morphine]"? I am not talking about illegally obtained drugs, but prescribed drugs.

The main problem with illegal drugs is the fact that they are illegal. The quality control with these drugs is poor. If people could obtain legal sources with good quality control then most of the dangers would not be there.

Here's just 2 years of deaths in Virginia. This was 2004 to 2006.

In Virginia alone there were 129 deaths from Morphine in this time period, and the problem is worse now. Morphine is an extremely dangerous drug. To deny this is to not know much about drugs.

http://www.vdh.state.va.us/medExam/documents/2009/pdfs/IllegalDrugs.pdf

And death by heroin is really death by morphine since the effect of heroin is because it is metabolized to morphine in the brain.

As others have said most of these deaths would be caused by the fact that they are illegal. I have seen nothing in this thread or elsewhere that suggests that deaths would be common if drugs such as heroin were legal, like cigarettes are now. In fact there are benefits to making them legal, like DECREASED usage.

 

[ronburgundy]

In general, I agree with the idea that illegality causes more harm and deaths than legality would.

However, the one type of death I could imagine increasing with legality is from young, ignorant, initiates overdosing. Currently few teens and younger people that smoke pot do opiates because they are much harder to get and you need to deal with seemingly scarier people to get them. Being able to cook it up in your kitchen without any fear of reprisal would certainly cause a massive many fold increase in the number of people who at least try some.

I was a pot head in high school, in southern Cal in the mid-80's and switched by neighboring schools at one point (they were 10 miles apart). The student body was identical in most ways, and in both schools I hung with the Heavy Metal pot heads. The one difference was that at one school the pot dealer most people used had access to Meth. At that school, a majority of the pot heads had tried Meth by the senior year with many dropping out before that due to meth addiction and a couple dying of overdose. I am confident that the sole reason was the mere availability of Meth and that most pot heads at the other school would have gotten into meth too if as easy to get as pot. The same will happen with legal opiates, especially if easily "home-brewed". A huge % of people that otherwise wouldn't go past pot will at least try heroin and opiates. Some of those will get addicted and some will overdose. I am guessing that overdoses are far more common among newbies than seasoned users. So imagine large groups of newbies that no longer need to go to seasoned communities of users to get it.

2-10 fold increases in first time users and even more than that in first time using over-doses (due to lack of oversight by seasoned users) are easy to imagine.

I realize there are positive over-dose reducing factors that legalization could bring too. But it would be rather stunning if these negative factors weren't at play given that they only require the highly valid assumption that teens and casual drug users try the drugs that are readily available.

 

[NobleSavage]

oh, yes, i know. it doesn't go through customs, it's a letter, and i've had a nasty letter about romanian cat tranquillizer and beyond that, i don't do stupid shit like that any more. i got modafinil, which is fantastic and mostly harmless, all that crap back in the day. i took mf piracetam. the mda lab bit is public record, i got off on an invalid search warrant, but i went to prison for a failed suicide attempt - see, i got away with standing the fuck up, i got tortured when i gave up and quit fighting. but i ain't studyin goin back to prison, dammit, while being tantric means i can meditate and eat like a monk and be okay, i HATE the mf cops. injustice pisses me off and prison isn't a good place for me.

re: needles. here only diabetics can buy insulin syringes/needles. there's no exchange at all, people use needles til they're nails. i freely buy a bag of 20 for $1 .... and it keeps people from getting AIDS and Hep C. so fuck yeah, i buy needles for people, sometimes trade for stuff i need, parts, shit.

You seem smart enough not to fuck up a suicide attempt... They put people in prison for that in GA?

 

[tantric]

oh, yes, i know. it doesn't go through customs, it's a letter, and i've had a nasty letter about romanian cat tranquillizer and beyond that, i don't do stupid shit like that any more. i got modafinil, which is fantastic and mostly harmless, all that crap back in the day. i took mf piracetam. the mda lab bit is public record, i got off on an invalid search warrant, but i went to prison for a failed suicide attempt - see, i got away with standing the fuck up, i got tortured when i gave up and quit fighting. but i ain't studyin goin back to prison, dammit, while being tantric means i can meditate and eat like a monk and be okay, i HATE the mf cops. injustice pisses me off and prison isn't a good place for me.

re: needles. here only diabetics can buy insulin syringes/needles. there's no exchange at all, people use needles til they're nails. i freely buy a bag of 20 for $1 .... and it keeps people from getting AIDS and Hep C. so fuck yeah, i buy needles for people, sometimes trade for stuff i need, parts, shit.

You seem smart enough not to fuck up a suicide attempt... They put people in prison for that in GA?

i took two vials of insulin and a bottle of ativan then tried to shoot myself with a rifle. thing is, you can't - unless you pull the trigger with your toes. by then my blood sugar was less than 40 and i was utterly nuts. i tried to do the toe thing, it shot up into the air. i looked up and saw this figure, so i handed the gun to him and asked him to reload it for me. then two of his buddies tazed me. they kept me in a 5x5 cell with only a hole in the floor to piss in for 5 days, where i had to beg to be let out to shit, and then they laughed at me. no phone - are you kidding? eventually i got to genpop and learned i'd been charged with four counts of felony assault on a peace officer. the judge and DA saw fit to deny me bail for 1.25 yrs, during which time i couldn't even talk directly to my lawyer, who wouldn't accept collect calls or answer my letters. i was never allowed to see the evidence against me, the police reports, etc. after that 1.25 years the DA offered me a deal: take 8 more months in prison, go home a felon or wait in jail for three years without bail to get a jury trial. i took that shit. i think they meant for me to die in prison, but i didn't. that's how shit works here - i even had a psych eval that said i was completely out of my mind at the time, it made no difference.

 

[NobleSavage]

You seem smart enough not to fuck up a suicide attempt... They put people in prison for that in GA?

i took two vials of insulin and a bottle of ativan then tried to shoot myself with a rifle. thing is, you can't - unless you pull the trigger with your toes. by then my blood sugar was less than 40 and i was utterly nuts. i tried to do the toe thing, it shot up into the air. i looked up and saw this figure, so i handed the gun to him and asked him to reload it for me. then two of his buddies tazed me. they kept me in a 5x5 cell with only a hole in the floor to piss in for 5 days, where i had to beg to be let out to shit, and then they laughed at me. no phone - are you kidding? eventually i got to genpop and learned i'd been charged with four counts of felony assault on a peace officer. the judge and DA saw fit to deny me bail for 1.25 yrs, during which time i couldn't even talk directly to my lawyer, who wouldn't accept collect calls or answer my letters. i was never allowed to see the evidence against me, the police reports, etc. after that 1.25 years the DA offered me a deal: take 8 more months in prison, go home a felon or wait in jail for three years without bail to get a jury trial. i took that shit. i think they meant for me to die in prison, but i didn't. that's how shit works here - i even had a psych eval that said i was completely out of my mind at the time, it made no difference.

Jesus, that is fucked up.

 

[tantric]

Jesus, that is fucked up.

word. what are you supposed to do after that? i was political before. the fact that i'm not currently wanted for domestic terrorism is a testament to the power of ahimsa/nonviolence, but i can't just let that shit ride. that was *personal*. and now they say the bill of rights doesn't apply to me? wtf is that? man, i have anger issues that segue into ptsd.

but prison made me a better man. i understand loyalty, integrity and respect as fundamentals. i know that the Man can break anyone, because there's no level they won't stoop to, but i also know that short of that, i don't crack. given all that, i'm having difficulty 'reintegrating into mainstream society' because most people are punk ass bitches and i ain't got time for that shit.

still, thanks for the respect - you see now why i got a mite agitated when dude up there questioned my experience?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

In general, I agree with the idea that illegality causes more harm and deaths than legality would.

However, the one type of death I could imagine increasing with legality is from young, ignorant, initiates overdosing. Currently few teens and younger people that smoke pot do opiates because they are much harder to get and you need to deal with seemingly scarier people to get them. Being able to cook it up in your kitchen without any fear of reprisal would certainly cause a massive many fold increase in the number of people who at least try some.

Which is why I think things like morphine should be prescription only but addiction is a valid reason for a prescription.