Reasons for first IV shot

[DarthStoner]

Hey everyone - Swim has never injected any sort of drug, and neither have any of his friends. The reasoning behind this (at least for swim - he cannot speak for his friends) is that this would cause additional problems that swim probably doesn't need in his life. Swim has just always believed that to be a functional addict, it is probably in one's best interests to stay away from the needle. This post is just wondering about those that have IVed drugs - regardless of which substance - and what caused them to start doing this? Did you have a predispotion against IVing at first but eventually did it, or was it just something that you were willing to try early in your opiate (or other injectable drug) careers? Also, now that you IV, do you still enjoy taking drugs through other ROA, or do you mostly just slam em? Hope this isn't too intrusive a question, swim is just curious about what it's like since he will probably never do this outside of a dr's office/hospital room. Thanks :)

[simfromstoke]

**WOOPS!!** after postin my reply i saw that this thread is in the oxycodone section.
soz! i assumed that the question was about smack. doh! my bad

i smoked gear for the first 6yrs of my ongoing 13yr addiction but every once in a while (maybe once every 2 to 3 months or so) i would get someone to crank(inject) me just because i wanted to get REALLY smashed.

all the people i hang around with have been injecting for like 20yrs and i trust them implicitly when it comes to injecting drugs

so it would normally go along the lines of-
id go round my neighbours house to score and there would be a few people round there, hangin out. id start to have a toot(smoke) round there and if i didnt have work in the morning or wasnt seeing my mrs and i fancied getting totally battered id just ask jen if she had any clean pins and would she crank me

at the time i had amazing viens through physical work and i could easily have injected myself but i always prefered to just have an expert do it for me

after about 8yrs my habit was starting to skyrocket. i was smoking a teenth a day (17 bags).

one night one of my mates asked me how much gear i was smokin a day and when i told him he suggested i just start crankin it all the time as it would save me so much money by halving my habit

so from that night on i started injecting all the time.
it was great for the first week or so..

until i found that i could stick 2/3/4 bags on the spoon and get really smashed 4 or 5 times a day.
within 2weeks i was injecting a teenth a day and sometimes more

but just to answer your original question
after being turned on to the needle full-time there's no-way now that i could go back to smoking again now. i just see it as a pure waste of good drugs.

every now and again if im at somebodies house and ive got plenty of gear on me and everyone else is tooting, i will have a smoke but a lot of the time
i will end-up peeling the beetle off the foil and breaking it up in a spoon and injecting it

i do kinda miss the social aspect of smoking gear but the rush and strength of the gear when injected far out-weighs wanting to sit there being sociable round somebodies house


-sim

[lib.sOCialist]

i liked the "functional addict" tidbit :)

i first picked up the needle for reasons akin to why i first picked up a habit

desperation
intrigue
and lack of self-respect

[Duckfeet]

Came out of a bar with a girl and another guy down in Gainesville, Florida. I was living with the girl. She was a very cool and deadly girl. They broke out some coke, and a syringe and a spoon at my house, gave me a taste. I never remember having any fear or "determination not to I.V" or any of that. I'd already done plenty heroin in Vietnam, and the couple of guys I knew who fixed it, wouldn't let me. I saw it more as "just another experience," kind of thing...with youthful lack of clarity and foresight. IV opiate use--heroin/dilaudids, specifically--has outlasted everything else in my life. Not proud of that...it just "is."

[DarthStoner]

THanks for the replies. Swims usual roa (using oxy/morph) consists of both eating 2 30mg roxis along with 100-200mg morph, and sniffing 2 30mg roxies. THis is usually for swims first dose of the day, as well as his first dose after work, and usually gets him pretty high - not like how half or even a quarter of that amount did a year or two ago, but still he feels good.

The problem that starts to occur for swim is that the more he uses throughout the day, the less he feels it... Yesterday, for example, swim chewed on the 2 empty fent patches he had from a couple days ago, and did his normal morning dose. This worked very well.

However being that he didn't have to work, he continued to dose on at least 2 30s of roxie (sniffed) every hour or two, while eating 1-2 30s and 100 mg morph approx every other snorted dose. By the time evening rolled around, swim couldn't help but wonder why he was even doing this much (since the highness between 1 and 2 30s isn't very noticible after continued same day doses), though he did keep dosing until 5 or 6 am with somewhat disappointing, highly tolerated, results.

What swim is getting at is that through his 2 current roa, there is an almost ceiling effect over time, where normal doses, and even higher ones, do not get swim the desired or expected results. Is this the same when fixing? I know you said that IVing caused your tolerance to go through the roof, but were you still getting really high each time and just wanted to get higher, or was there a point of diminishing returns, where say you're shooting and basically staying the same?

Additionally, if you are continuing to get high, do you think it's more because of the roa, or because of your choice of drug? You mentioned smoking your stuff earlier in your dope career, did you notice diminishing effects the more you smoked, or was it pretty close regardless of 3rd smoke of day vs the 10th smoke?
Duckfeet, do you mentioned a "lack of foresight," being that hindsight is always 20/20, if you could redo it, and knowing what you know now, would you still have taken that route? Is it that much better than other roa - I've tried both dillies and H (tar only though) and was not all that impressed by either - so perhaps I'm answering my own question.

But given both the pros and cons of IV use, with the knowledge you now possess, is it all worth it to you? Or do you wish that you'd never taken that step, cause sometimes once you open Pandora's Box you can't close the fucking thing.

I'd like to thank you all for sharing your experiences so honestly, and want you to know that I am not/will not pass any judgement based on your respective answers, just trying to understand how IVers feel about it now that the deed has already been done.

[30_Units]

With opioids, you need to think about the receptors. When you do some dope (whatever kind) the first of the day, your receptors are mostly clear, so doing that first bit comes on really hard. Well, it takes longer than you're waiting for the receptors to clear, so throwing more dope into your body, it doesn't have as many of the receptors to connect to as it did in the first shot of the day, so you don't feel as big a rush or as high afterward, it will last a bit longer, but you're not going to notice it accept in that you may not get sick as fast.

Wait longer between doses to get some of the niceness of the first dose of the day back.

[simfromstoke]

when i started to get a big habit smoking gear i would definately reach a plateau where i couldnt get any higher, thats why every now and again i would ask one of my friends to inject me(so that i could get totally smashed)
with smokin it you physically couldnt get the gear into your system fast enough to get any higher.(sure id be smashed thru smoking it but sometimes i just wanted to be in a drooling mess)

and yeah i still get as high as a kite everytime i inject. when i do have a smoke now i can still feel it but i just enjoy that rush from injecting it so much more that now i view smoking it as a waste when by injecting it i get so much more off it

i know people will see this as bad advice but this is my opinion -i dont regret injecting drugs at all and my only downside from MY point of view is that i now have a bit of needle fixation


-sim

[God_Albino]

i dug the velvets and burroughs and shit growing up, never thought there was anything hip or romantic about the needle or addiction in general though; i just eventually had a big script for dillies, a lot of pain, and dumb curiosity. who knows, maybe all the junkie musicians i dug had some influence. high tolerance, bad guts, all of the above probably.

i didnt even like that ROA of any opiates till maybe the 30th shot, i dunno. one day it was just something to do, the next i get a fuckin boner seeing a jet of blood.

[DarthStoner]

30 - The receptor site clearing thing makes sense, swim was just wondering if the IV roa worked better for getting past such hurdles. As Sim said, he still gets "high as a kite everytime" he injects. Conversely, if swim doses repeatedly using both insufflation and oral roa, there is def a diminishing return. He does try to wait as long as possible (which isn't very long) to let the drugs exit/clear from the receptors, which is why he saves his 2 biggest doses of the day for the 1st dose and the after work dose, and there is def a big difference. Thanks for your responses everyone, you're all helping swim scratch the curiosity itch in his brain w/o having to go so far as to experiment with needles. Hopefully it's enough... just kidding, unless of course swim comes across a professional setting that is willing to do it for him, and swim's in a particualrly reckless mood. Otherwise, no way, there is nobody swim trusts w/ that kind of experience (injecting), and none of his close friends do such stuff - in fact they'd prob bust swim's balls for even thinking about it. Well, swim's off to work now, can't wait for that after work dose:).
Albino, I understand, Kurt/Nirvana and Layne/Alice were my heroes growing up, and while I can't say for certain that this helped eventually pave the way for my opiate use, I also can't say it didn't. I certainly don't blame them in any way, rather I feel like they saved me when I needed it most... as an awkward, insecure, kid who could no longer get by as a Momma's boy - ok so I'm still a bit of a Momma's boy, but at least there was other stuff to draw attention away from that fact :). See you all later.

[SeVeN]

. I saw it more as "just another experience,"

Thats exactly how I felt. Hell I did all the other things that were "bad" or wrong" or whatever. Had a pretty good time doing them. I decided I would try H and started by smoking and snorting it. H didn't seem like some kind of drug that would really bring ME down

So the next progression was shooting.

[Duckfeet]

Ohhh, probably not. It took too much. I know sometimes I say that, since I'm reasonably happy now, not in jail, not all fucked up, that I've no regrets, and I don't, I guess...but I can't help but wonder what I might have done, if that monkey hadn't been on my back. It just seems like once you IV opiates a while, that normal life is never quite as good, and the pleasures others enjoy are forever gone to us. Way too hard a lesson to learn, way too young. It was so damned irrevocable: I spent about twenty years after that, never quite happy unless I had dope in me, and I was in strange lifestyles to be so addicted: I was a biker, then an offshore commercial diver, had love, marriage...all that, but this one thing, trumped them all...weird...sad too, I guess...

So yeah: it's better to avoid...it's about the one thing most of us agree on, on this site, that if you haven't done intervenous drugs, and are considering it, you really shouldn't. Not that it usually keeps someone from going there, but once they do, the door out is hard to find...we try to be kind and compassionate to those trying to escape, and stay cheerful when we can't...but what a road...best avoided...

<snip>
Duckfeet, do you mentioned a "lack of foresight," being that hindsight is always 20/20, if you could redo it, and knowing what you know now, would you still have taken that route? Is it that much better than other roa - I've tried both dillies and H (tar only though) and was not all that impressed by either - so perhaps I'm answering my own question. But given both the pros and cons of IV use, with the knowledge you now possess, is it all worth it to you? Or do you wish that you'd never taken that step, cause sometimes once you open Pandora's Box you can't close the fucking thing.
I'd like to thank you all for sharing your experiences so honestly, and want you to know that I am not/will not pass any judgement based on your respective answers, just trying to understand how IVers feel about it now that the deed has already been done.

[bodytec]

man this is a very good thread.good question,strikes up a chord in every iv user,i'm sure.
i was sniffing oxy daily with a person who i now admit might have been Satan himself.
eithr way,he was the best ex-con/con artist i have ever known.
my wife told me from the start that he was bad news.
it took a lot for me to see this,as i was very trusting when it came to people doing things that i was curious about.
we were in a rural trailer park,scoring for the day as usual.
he always fixed up there and i always crushed mine up later when we got home.
one day i was in the trailer bathroom with him,after we bought from the lady whose trailer it was.
i inquired about how it "felt" to him to bang them and he was like,"Just do it,bro,no worries!"
i hesitated as he got his ready.
then i realized from the look in his eyes,that this was MY dose now.
i resisted his attempts to coax me into it.
then,just like in a movie or something,he grabbed my arm!
"Man,come on!," i said,"not now,not here!"
"yes,now,here!" he said.
and i looked the other direction and gave in to the evil calling of the needle.
"....is where i drew some blood...forgot about my love...i gave my life away"
it was a rush,intense euphoria,like nothing i had ever experienced.
the floor of this bathroom was caving in,the place stunk,and it was just trash altogether.
as i was in total bliss,he said,"yea,man,sorry your first time had to be in this shithole,
you always feel worse about yourself when you slam shit in a dumpy trailer park!"

then we went back to his $750,000 home on the mountain and di i.v.oxy for the rest of the day.
and that was that.i never looked back.

[DarthStoner]

Not "under the bridge downtown," but more like "in a trailer park that smells," wow, that's a pretty intense story. Personally, swim thinks (and he really hopes this is true) that if any of the people he knows offers him a shot, he'd have the strength to say no. Of course, swim does not have any close friends who do this, and he imagines that if it was someone whom he trusts and respects that offered to fix him, it would be a whole lot harder. As it is, all the people swim knows that are into that stuff are by and large pieces of shit... this is in no way meant to say that everyone that IVs is like that, just the few that swim knows. You all seem like intelligent, caring, and obviously helpful people, thus instilling in swim the idea that there are both good people and bad who IV drugs - just like there are good and bad people that use/get addicted to drugs.

[Chipper]

Almost pure curiosity

[More Feen]

Believe it or not, at a young age (in my early 20's) my doctor actually Rx me a medicine that had to be taken by needle (not insulin, by the way). So I was ~comfortable taking pure pharaceuticals by clean needle Intra-Muscularly.

The stuff I was injecting was a migraine medication based on Ergot (no good opiates yet). For those of you who had ever dealt with "Cafergot" and "Ergotamine" etc..., those medicines simply SUCKED!!

Thank GOD for Imetrex, Zomig and the other migraine meds they make now-a-days!

Anyway, when suitable opiates came my way, they were pharm-pure and I also had access to a wide variety of needles & syringes. Even though many of the opiates were designed to be injected (intramuscularly, intravenously or subcutaneously), I avoided using them with a needle, often eating them, sniffing them etc....

Then one day, I decided to try some of the opiates with an IM injection. I really, really liked this route--and still do. I didn't really have any fear of needles--as long as they were clean. And these meds were actually MEANT to be injected, so there was no bother in crushing pills, filtering etc....

IM-ing meds was (is) great. In ~ 5 minutes, you'd start to feel the drug's effects, those effects would increase and plateau by minute 15. Then you could do more, or go on about your day.

Once in a while, while giving an injection IM, the morphine would unintentionally hit a vein, and the drug would hit me in seconds, not in minutes. It was kind of scary, because I wasn't used to this ROA. But once I saw that I wasn't going to die, I could kind of enjoy it, after the fact.

As many people know, morphine tends to release histamine, so its euphoria is concurrent, or ~masked by the pins & needles of the histamine release.

These days, going IV is usually done when swim hasn't taken drugs in a few days. Even though the pins & needles are still there, one can still feel the euphoria. Doses taken afterwards are usually IM.

SO a shorter answer to your question, for me it was a slow progression. I'm not interested in killing myself, so I tried/try to be as careful as possible, and try not to do anything too wild or too crazy to get a buzz. I avoid street drug, used needles, used syringes whenever possible. Cleaning the injection site with alcohol, even vodka, is still a part of the injection ritual.

M F

[Iggy]

Years back I bought some Dilaudid and the kid told me they had to be done IV. I didn't tell anyone what I was doing. I took them home and tried to figure out how to shoot up, I had no clue what I was doing and I was alone. I quickly figured it out. I do not regret using a needle. I regret getting addicted to opiates in general.

[Groggy]

My 1st iv shot was lsd it used to be my DOC. I thought I would probably have it hit right away or

least quickly. after soaking a 1/4 sheet freshly laid up less than a week prior(no amber,only the fluff)

in a cooking spoon(no heat) for 10 minutes my friend drew it up and pushed me off. It still took about

20 min to hit. Took a couple hydros. Watched Speed w/ Dennis Hopper. Other than the ROA not much

different than oral. Now raw crys w/ chiva is a bit quicker like 5 min but all that was much later into my

iv career. Now it's all about my roxis. Don't enjoy psychedelics anymore. Way too much of a good thing

I guess:rolleyes:

[SHELLEY]

i thought shooting up would be fun
my first shot was crystal meth and i had never done it any other way
someone showed me how, and i fell head over heels in love
every new drug i tried after that went straight into my arms

[nodrover]

I was really sick one day (about 3 months into my dope sniffing career), and the people I was currently 'hanging out' with had a lady in the apartment next door whose usual ROA was IV. I only had enough money to buy 2 bags, and I knew that those 2 bags would not even keep the sickness away. They went and got the lady for me, and I persuaded her to inject me, seeing as I had procured the necessary equipment beforehand. And that my freinds; was the last day I ever sniffed dope.

[DarthStoner]

Swim totally gets the slow progression that eventually leads people to start IVing. Opiates certainly have a way of getting tolerated by one's body way too quickly - of course, any sort of tolerance is too much. What swim would give to be able to feel that first high again... sadly, this is probably not possible w/o enduring the horrible pain of wds. Oh well, I guess it is what it is. Gotta take the good with the bad.

[oxy kid]

I remember one time sitting in the bathroom with a spoon full of some abg 30's....decided SWIM was going to try and get the most of those, drew it up in the pin, went to try an IV for the first time, then backed out....

Part of me is curious to what it would have been like and part of me is really glad I didn't go through with it. I'm sure my addiction would have gotten wildly out of control with the help of needles.

[OverDriven]

I've never banged anything...at least not by myself. I've had morphine, demerol, dilaudid, fentanyl and midazolam (Versed) via IV in the hospital on many occasions. It was nice, but the only one of those I ever got a HUGE dose of was midazolam. They give it to you before surgery to calm you down...before they put you under anesthesia. One time the doc SLAMMED that plunger down and OMG it was a fucking rush. That left an impression. All the rest were in normal pain killing doses and were injected slowly, so I didn't really get off from it.

Anyways...lately I've been thinking about injecting morphine. A year ago, I swear I KNEW I would never touch a needle. Now, here I am considering it. When I get an idea in my head, I usually end up trying it. I know I shouldn't...I mean all I have to do is read this thread to realize that, but it really fascinates me somehow. Is it really impossible to go back to snorting and oral use of opiates after slamming something? Is it really THAT much better? And is it a better feeling, or just better because it conserves drugs?

[God_Albino]

the thing is, even if it's not the best ROA for certain drugs, once you got the needle bug, chances are you're going to inject everything anyway.

it's almost impossible to go back to taking my methadone tablets orally, despite they only last a fraction of the time (but there IS a rush). put it this way, if i was covered in good, uncollapsable veins, i'd never take a non-iv'able pill again.

the excitement of seeing the flag, hitting a vein on the first try, the whole ritual is a mini high in and of itself and i'd avoid it man.

[Duckfeet]

Yeah, you can go back, but most don't or they "loose their fear" of IVing, and do it more and more as the years go by: you eventually get in a situation where the opiates are limited, and you want the most 'bang for your buck,' etc. And no, it's not that much better, in spite of what the periodic fiction writers say...a lot depends on whether or not you are sick or not...I've had moments where 4 percodan or even a few vicodin gave me a much better buzz, and 'glow' than shots of heroin did...but if I'm really strungout, and IVing drugs will do that for you, then nothing else works all that good.

I'd read some of the endless threads about people desperately trying to get off of IVing drugs before I'd jump in there, because once you jump...there's really no going back: not really. And you may find, as me and others have, that this little experiment takes over and runs your life way past the point you think it will...newer addicts often rave about IVing drugs...but again, read some of their posts later, when they fail and fail at getting off the shit.

When I'm strungout, I'm not "happy" to get a fix...I'm just desperate, the same way I get when I'm held underwater by a wave too long...I'm more resigned and sad this thing doesn't usually let us go...Here's what our junky Uncle Bill said:

Look down LOOK DOWN along that junk road before you travel there.
--William S. Burroughs, 1960



A shot of heroin, at the right time: one of the best feelings in the world....where heroin took me, and what it did to me is a whole other ballgame.

I've never banged anything...at least not by myself. I've had morphine, demerol, dilaudid, fentanyl and midazolam (Versed) via IV in the hospital on many occasions. It was nice, but the only one of those I ever got a HUGE dose of was midazolam. They give it to you before surgery to calm you down...before they put you under anesthesia. One time the doc SLAMMED that plunger down and OMG it was a fucking rush. That left an impression. All the rest were in normal pain killing doses and were injected slowly, so I didn't really get off from it.

Anyways...lately I've been thinking about injecting morphine. A year ago, I swear I KNEW I would never touch a needle. Now, here I am considering it. When I get an idea in my head, I usually end up trying it. I know I shouldn't...I mean all I have to do is read this thread to realize that, but it really fascinates me somehow. Is it really impossible to go back to snorting and oral use of opiates after slamming something? Is it really THAT much better? And is it a better feeling, or just better because it conserves drugs?

[DarthStoner]

I've never banged anything...at least not by myself. I've had morphine, demerol, dilaudid, fentanyl and midazolam (Versed) via IV in the hospital on many occasions. It was nice, but the only one of those I ever got a HUGE dose of was midazolam. They give it to you before surgery to calm you down...before they put you under anesthesia. One time the doc SLAMMED that plunger down and OMG it was a fucking rush. That left an impression. All the rest were in normal pain killing doses and were injected slowly, so I didn't really get off from it.

Anyways...lately I've been thinking about injecting morphine. A year ago, I swear I KNEW I would never touch a needle. Now, here I am considering it. When I get an idea in my head, I usually end up trying it. I know I shouldn't...I mean all I have to do is read this thread to realize that, but it really fascinates me somehow. Is it really impossible to go back to snorting and oral use of opiates after slamming something? Is it really THAT much better? And is it a better feeling, or just better because it conserves drugs?

Totally get what you're saying - in fact, that's why I wanted to start this thread... curiosity factor.

When I was 16 and first started using "drugs" - it was bud, which is why I put quotations - I pretty much jumped in head first. I figured that if all the anti-drug warnings about pot were false, the others about acid, coke, etc were probably overblown as well. And to a degree I suppose they were/are.

However, although I tried almost every substance I could find from that point on, the one thing I swore I'd never do is shoot up. To this day I remain adamant about refraining from this roa, though I must admit I often wonder how much better a feeling it provides - especially now that oxy/morph don't affect me nearly as much as they once did... morphine in particular.

But as much as I'd like to experience the "rush" that everyone talks about, whether it's H, morph, dilaudid, or even coke, I just can't shake the feeling that if I give in to temptation, my life would only change for the worse... the much, much worse.

As things are now, I still get reasonably high from snorting/eating oxy and morphine, and I am still able to function socially - got a girl, a job, a home, in college (though grad is taking a while - I'm on the 8-10 year plan:D). In other words, things could be a lot worse for me, and I've got a sinking feeling that if I let the needle enter my life, I'd be exchanging all these things that I love and cherish for a drug high that would probably diminish greatly over time... just like the high from eating oxys did, causing me to begin snorting them.

In any case, I must live vicariously through the experiences of fellow opies when it comes to shooting As tempting as it is to feel a high that is 1000x better than the best orgasm I've ever had, I just know I don't have the strength or willpower to do such a thing just once, or even on an occasional basis. So thank you for sharing all of your experiences, they really do help me to understand (as much as one possibly could w/o experiencing it for oneself) what that shit is all about. Sorry for such a long post.

[OverDriven]

God_Albino, Duckfeet and DarthStoner, thank you for the info. I know I shouldn't trust myself with stuff like this. My mind is telling me it will be ok to try, but I know better. The hardest part is listening to my own common sense...at least for me. The thought of a better euphoria has a strong draw for me, and unfortunately will power has never been one of my stronger traits. It's good to hear that the actual high isn't really that much better though...that helps me a lot.

[tina]

Well the first time swim did a bump was a blur..... just remembered the feeling after. Took along time to stop doing it that way and so thankful it did stop.

[Spork]

I was feeling disinhibited on benzos about a week ago, only had about 30mg of "stuff' left so I thought I'd try shooting it.

It was so little that the rush was very small and the high was very weak, I'm glad I did so little, and I probably won't be doing it again for a long time, or ever again. I know it's way too easy to fall victim to the needle, so I am sticking to the sniffin.

[Jega001]

I was feeling disinhibited on benzos about a week ago, only had about 30mg of "stuff' left so I thought I'd try shooting it.

It was so little that the rush was very small and the high was very weak, I'm glad I did so little, and I probably won't be doing it again for a long time, or ever again. I know it's way too easy to fall victim to the needle, so I am sticking to the sniffin.

Don’t IV Benzos. Benzodiazepines are not water-soluble and unless your willing to do an alcohol extraction (don't, not worth it) you get a nice shot of fillers. Unless you get your hands on some Midazolam (Midazolam being the only water soluble benzodiazepine that I can think of at this moment) from Europe, which I’ve done and it still isn’t worth it, you’re not going to get anything from IVing benzos. Opiates on the other hand... haha

[Spork]

Haha, no I didn't IV benzos, I ate the benzos, IV'd sometHing else...

[Jega001]

Well in that case you had a good night! :)