Extremely Old Painkillers(80-100yrs) Still Potent?

[Avon Barksdale]

I've succesfully used pills from my own cabinet that are a good 10 or 15 years past the expiration.

But there's a lady at a local flea market selling an unopened, corked bottle of opium pills that look to be about 80-100 years old. bottle says "tinct. opium camph. (paregoric) 5 minims"

If it was cheap I'd buy it just to have the bottle itself, but she wants $100. Think there's any potency left in these pills?

[WarmCyanide]

welcome to the site. now THAT would be an antiques roadshow episode i'd TIVO (if i had TIVO)

man, a hundred years? sounds like a collectors item. how many pills?

[Avon Barksdale]

looks to be about 150-200 pills.

anyone know about potency?

[GoddessofRATs]

Well I've taken pills that were 30 years old and they worked fine, in fact they worked great! Now 100 years i just don't know. I'm sure you'll get some answers from other people though.

I don't think they'll hurt you. Hummm, if it was me and i found 100 year old pills and they were the good stuff I'd probably partake LOL

GOR

[betmylife]

paregoric isnt gonna get you very high.....its opium with camphor oil......the bottle would be cool, but unless you have no habit, those are some weak ass opium pills.....

[Avon Barksdale]

yeah I was assuming they were pretty weak. But still 200 opium pills for 100 bucks? with a great antique bottle?

What does 5 minims mean by the way? wtf is a minim? I don't have much tolerance at the moment, I came off a 4 bag a day nasal habit after a year of use. Currently use maybe 5 or 6 times a month only like 40 mg. oxy or a bag or 2. Hope that gives you some idea of tolerance.

[betmylife]

Im not sure what the old units of measure mean, they used to measure morphine and such in grains......Im just saying, for a keepsake uy it....but dont expect to get high, if anything you will get sick off the camphor oil if you take to many of the pills....they are prolly old headache pills.....its not gonna equal out 100 bucks worth of oxy......plus Omar might rip you off.

[ein0606]

avon you out of prison? how do you feel about marlo? you just hooked him up with the greek or is that just some plan for payback?

[SeVeN]

Anyone remember paregoric from being a child? lol My mom used to give me that stuff whenever I had some slight illness or pain Lol. She taught me young. (it is paregoric that I'm thinking about right?)

[Woody Bear]

If the opium has been properly dried, it can be stored indefinitely. Excessive moisture and heat can cause the opium to deteriorate slightly but, once dried, opium is relatively stable. In fact, as opium dries and becomes less pliable, its value increases, due to the decrease in water weight per kilogram.From the article: "Opium Poppy Cultivation and Heroin Processing in Southeast Asia"

I think they'd be good, and it's such a valuable piece of history. Personally I'd want to keep them corked, but I'd still be curious about how they feel. If you use up all the pills, the bottle itself would still be very valuable.

[Avon Barksdale]

oh yeah the bottle also says "each triturate contains 1-50 grain of opium" i'm assuming they mean "1.5 grains" not "i dunno anywhere between 1 and 50 grains." anyway i don't know wtf a grain is either. someone help me out.

I ain't afraid of omar neither. and marlo's a bitch.

[devilsdrug]

i may be wrong but paragoric is liquid

[SurfRat]

I ain't afraid of omar neither. and marlo's a bitch.

Maybe so but somethin's up, you goin' out to the flea market an scratchin' your head over an old bottle of pills... That's some hard times...:rolleyes:

[ein0606]

I ain't afraid of omar neither. and marlo's a bitch.

i think omar is fuckin badass..sorry to hijack.

[EleusisII]

I think we might want to add the OPs post to the "You know you're a junkie when...." thread ;)

[Avon Barksdale]

Anyone think the it's worth the $100 for the pills themselves, without taking into consideration its value as a conversation piece / collectible?

[ein0606]

id probably give it a shot.

[WarmCyanide]

dont eat pill you dont know what they are. a minim is a measure of liquid. there was some opium tincture at some time but she probably threw some cat worm pills in there. this is weird

i think that lady is scamming you

[eveline]

i may be wrong but paragoric is liquid

That's what I was thinking... I've never heard of paregoric pills. The other thing is a tincture is definitely a liquid, and minim is a unit of volume. Are you sure what's in the bottle is the original contents?"

Edit: WC beat me to it

[Avon Barksdale]

yeah i know i thought paregoric referred to liquid too, and I think it does. but i'm almost positive the pills are legit, the bottle is corked, sealed, and embossed with the company name. i'll post a pic when i figure out how to embed shit.

edit: it says triturate, "each triturate contains..." how can you have "each" of a liquid?

[WarmCyanide]

how can you have "each" of a liquid?


each mL contains ___mg of _____

and triturate means something ground into a powder. post a picture. the less sherlock holmsing the better

[Thebane]

edit: it says triturate, "each triturate contains..." how can you have "each" of a liquid?

Each ml contains... Seems like it could be legit, but that doesn't rule out that was originally pills. I'd try googling the ingredients and what it says on the bottle in different combinations if you haven't already, maybe look at ebay/collectible shops for the same item. I imagine it's on the web somewhere what the old preparations of opium were.

[Avon Barksdale]

do these help?

[Thebane]

I can't really tell from the photo, but is the seal just that piece of string that's been waxed down? In that case it would be extremely easy to reseal. Unless opening it destroys the wax on top of the cork, but it doesn't look like it from the photo.

And dictionary.com says triturate is powder, NOT pills, and minim., as WC said, is a unit of liquid, thats 0/2 as far as pills go... And everywhere I've looked in the past few minutes says paregoric is a tincture, of course a liquid, never seen any other form mentioned.

[Pandora]

That bottle is badass, but I'm gonna have to go with eve and WC on this - it doesn't make sense that there a pills inside something which has units of volume on it rather than weight.

[edhorfin]

I thought all paregoric and all tinctures were liquid as well, then I came across this picture. Look at the second bottle from the left. It says 100 tablets opium, camphorated ticture 100 minims. learn sumthin every day.
file:///C:/Users/Owner/AppData/Local/Temp/moz-screenshot.jpghttp://forum.opiophile.org/http://forum.opiophile.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=2550&stc=1&d=1201564690

[Avon Barksdale]

by looking at the pic now, you think it means each pill is 1.5 grains of O? whats a standard recreational dose?

[Avon Barksdale]

thanks WC, yr the best :cool:

[WarmCyanide]

no prob, dude. good luck

[jwalm]

msg edited....trying to protect barksdale's privacy.........WC

[irish]

It says that they are moulded on the bottle so they are supposed to be pils. I bought an antique bottle of morphine powder at an antique store about 10yrs ago and it was still good. You could spend the money on modern opiates and get much more out of them than you will ever get from paregoric.

[Woody Bear]

oh yeah the bottle also says "each triturate contains 1-50 grain of opium" i'm assuming they mean "1.5 grains" not "i dunno anywhere between 1 and 50 grains." anyway i don't know wtf a grain is either. someone help me out.According to http://www.convertunits.com/from/grain/to/milligram , 1.5 grains is 97.2 mg. Now opium averages at 10% morphine, so that's around 9.7 mg of morphine per pill.

[jwalm]

did you win the auction?

damn it went for $172.50

[pharmboy]

I use to dip cigs in peragoric and smoke them when I was a kid.

Got me off when I was 15.:cool:

[mollywopped]

All I can add here is a grain is 64.7 mgs and a minim is .06 milliliters.

Oh, and that I really wouldn't risk taking 100 year old pills. Even if they were still their original strength, for $100 you could get a better buzz for cheaper with heroin. But I guess that doesn't have the novelty factor.

[limitless_euphoria]

Well I've taken pills that were 30 years old and they worked fine, in fact they worked great! Now 100 years i just don't know. I'm sure you'll get some answers from other people though.

I don't think they'll hurt you. Hummm, if it was me and i found 100 year old pills and they were the good stuff I'd probably partake LOL

GOR

Just out of curiosity GoR, what pills exactly did you take that were 30+ years old?

[Uncle Wiggly]

I don't think I'd take the pills but from a historic perspective the bottle, which seems to be in good shape, may be of value. John Wyeth was the founder of American Home products and later Wyeth Pharmaceuticals. This is a snip from Wikipedia. The guy died in 1908 I think.


Wyeth formerly known as American Home Products (AHP), is one of the largest Phramaceutical companies in the world. The company is based in Madison, New Jersey. They are known for manufacturing the OTC drugs Robitussin and the analgesic Advil as well as the prescription drugs Premarin and Effexor.

That bottle could be worth more than 172 bucks down the line. I wonder if the pills were meant to be mixed with water. One pill to X amount of liquid?

pharmboy "I use to dip cigs in peragoric and smoke them when I was a kid."

I used to do the same thing. My dad had a bottle of it in the medicine cabinet. Made the smokes taste like shit but my friend and I used to get high from it. Ah - The good old days. :D

PAX

[Avon Barksdale]

Ok, so I lost the auction. Sorry to lie to you guys in my first posting here (about where the bottle was being sold) but I didn't exactly need more competion for the bidding. Now I'm pissed because I wish at least someone here had bought em so we could've heard some feedback. At least I made the winning bidder spend alot more then he planned on.

I'd just as soon spend the $ on H, but I've been living in a shitty town in Virginia named Charlottesville for the past few months, and have only run into percs and vics at shitty jacked up prices, which means I usually take a monthly commute to Baltimore or Richmond. Anyone else here live in C-ville?

[havok]

You are probably lucky that you didnt buy them. I'm not sure about opium, but I know that heroin degrades pretty significantly after 10-15 years. It will still get you high, it just wont be nearly as potent as it originally was. I also think $100 is way to expensive for that. You are alot better off just getting some dope with the money.

[resorcinol]

I think it may be legit. The pills may be meant to be reconstituted in strong liquor to make the tincture paregoric, the minims being the amount of liquor to use per pill.

And "each triturate" could mean each pill. A pill is compressed powder.

[reddragon3668]

I would have loved to have seen that bottle and pills. Hell, I wish I could get my hands on some paregoric. Not to get high. But, its damn good for a belly ache. My grandmother believed in that shit... she'd give it to me as a kid for just about anything. It taste worse than anything I've ever tasted. Might as well drink a gallon of kerosene. But, it sure worked good, and back then, I'd get high as a kite!

[northernstar]

SWim bought a bottle of water soluable morphine and atropine pills from 1898. the cork was sealed. i forget what the grains were but a doctor told me it was a strong dose. SWIM shot 2 and had weird tingly hands a felt a lil something. SWIM shot about 5 more and noticed nothing. SWIM put em back on ebay resealed and got 50.00 more then he paid for em.

The only things ive heard that for sure will work is real sealed syretts (from ww2 or 'nam) -its like a metal toothpaste tube with a attatched syringe. its a horse-needle u poke a hole in the metal inside to re-seal. There rarer then rare and get pulled instantly from ebay-but ol william s. burroghs liked em.

[bluesubaru]

thats a kick ass looking bottle, i would have bought it as an 'antique'

but i know it wouldn't stay sealed more than a few months before curiosity hit