short story about old morphine

[jacky]

I have a freind that is writing a short story...he also is working on some screen plays......

and thought some chemistry heads might know...

its regarding the old morphine sulfate hypodermatic tablets that Burroughs used to write about shooting up, apparently pure enough you could just slip one into the barrel of the syringe, replace the plunger, and suck up some water and shake and the pill would dissolve....

I think the dosage was generally 15-30 milligrams per pill.

in the story some people are stuck dealing with a cataclysmic event....oh, and the character and his freind are junkies.
they get by on hitting up their dead dealers stash for the road....but end up north in alaska as temperatures are out of control.
they end up in an old cabin that had land that was also used by the military during the cold war and WWII....
they find an old military bunker that is stocked with old rations....irradiated bomb shelter foods good for 50 years....etc.
but its not the beans they are worried about.
the bunker also had medicines....mostly outdated pharmaceuticals of little value.....
but they do find a few hundred thousand bottled morphine sulfate pills.
this is set a few years in the future...and the morphine stock is going to be at least 60 years old.
my thought is the morphine sulfate would be very stable....especially dry, in mostly sealed bottles that have been hanging in a prime environement.

but a buddy who was around when my freind ran the story by me, claims that morphine sulfate would degrade within a few decades to a mix of psuedomorphine, morphine n oxide, and even apomorphine...
I thought that psuedomorphine was pretty much inactive....
and apomorphine depending on percentage might create antagonist, or at least contraindicatory effects....
I have a bit of an idea about morphine n oxide...from the internet I take that its a good deal less potent than morphine as an analgesic...

what would the likely hood that 60 year old morphine sulfate would be something that the characters in the book, who are opiate dependent. would be something that would allow them to get well, but not only that, kick ass and be able to rebound from little sleep, lack of sufficient food, and to help recover from the stress's of what is basically the end of the world.

is old morphine sulfate going to be sufficient?
or is it something that would have emetic, stimulant, opiate depleting effects that would actually be a death sentence for an opiate addict who's life depends on them staying well, and actually high enough to conquer the world?

I was suggesting that he work with some army fentanyl products....some of which are cold war weapons...ha ha...

????????????

I dont know about this stuff..
about 15 years ago some freinds and I had some morphine sulfate that was at least 30 years old.....it was a bit discolored...but seemed OK, at least it worked OK split between 5 greedy feinds...but we didnt have that much....and some of us were combining other pills alongside....

maybe a solution of morphine, like in ampules would be the way to go....

my freind doesnt know how he is going to finish the story, until he knows the likely hood of what such a product would hold for his characters.
my guess that the pills might just be less potent...with some trace amounts of compounds that might not feel so good when taken in larger doses.
but someone taking just a few hundred milligrams instead of grams a day might get away with

any opinions or past experiences?
any antique opiate afficionados?

[Paregoric Kid]

wow that sounds like an awesome story. keep us updated!
perhaps maybe stumbling onto some carfentanyl knockout gas or amphetamines for alertness, fatigue, etc, and maybe MK Ultra type stuff like LSD, babiturate truth serums, or those crazy synthetic atropine analogs deleriants like BZP would be an interesting element.
by the way, the military did studies on how drugs degrade and determined that many drugs could last decades, perhaps indefinitely, past their expiration dates if stored properly. I know for a fact that people have taken drugs from the late 1800s and early 1900s and still felt definite effects. antique laudanum and cocaine bottles are still sold sometimes as antiques and people find old bottles of medicine and a lot of it may still be quite active, you'd be surprised.

[nick]

I'd have thought,if conditions were good,it would be usable.I don't know about the other derivatives,but for apomorphine,I think you have to boil M with an acid(HCL).So,I doubt M would naturally break down to apomorphine.

[OverDriven]

Morphine and most of it's common salts are extremely stable. They won't break down into anything. If it was pure and dry, the morphine would be good 100 years later. As nick mentioned, apomorphine is formed when morphine is FORCED to decompose by boiling it with acid. The molecule is ripped apart and becomes a completely different chemical with no opioid properties. The morphine you speak about in your story could NOT naturally turn into this. Pseudomorphine is created when two morphine molecules join together. It is formed by the oxidation of a solution of alkaline morphinate. Again, this will NOT naturally happen to the pills in the story. Morphine-n-oxide is also known as genomorphine. It actually IS active, though it is about 10x weaker than morphine. I know that it CAN form from the decomposition of morphine, but again, the morphine you mentioned has no reason to decompose.


BTW...that sounds like an INCREDIBLE story. The kind that all junkies dream about writing.

Be safe on the set if you are one of the actors, and always try a bit of the script first to see if the part works for you.

[jacky]

well thanks overdriven...I will take your opinions as a good direction for the story to follow.

perhaps he can work some other problem, like confusing atropine or something for morphine, into the story.

the old dope scenario reminds me of a time around 15 years ago when I was screwed over and given a batch of dope that apparently had been buried in the ground for nearly 10 years while some guy was in prison. apparently he kept his mouth shut while he was in there....because the crappy sugar cut dope was still waiting to be dug up when he got out.
the stuff pretty much sucked. in 10 years the dope scene where I was living exploded....and the quality was obviously a hell of alot better in the 90's than in the 80's.
I wasnt a big player in the heroin scene...but I did travel and buy dope in enough big cities on the west coast to realize that small town dope can stay a hell of alot more potent than in areas where demand is large and the stuff gets cut more.
that old dope was pathetic.

I also know a guy that drank a bottle of old laudanum cough syrup he bought at an antique store when he was relapsing out of a fancy treatment center in portland. he was in a treatment center for Dr's because his knowledge of drugs was generally more than the people treating him....and a rich Dr gave him his 500$ watch to relapse and escape the joint.
he said he got very nice and high, almost dead from that old cough syrup relapse. and the dumbass didnt even save the bottle.

old laudanum suppositorys....old opium containing patent medicines, atropine and morphine combination scripts.....there is alot of old dope floating around out there....
one of these days they are going to legalize...and the shooting galleries and secret dope stash's are going to be abandoned just like the old stills, and secret drinking closets/speak easys were after prohibition.