Silk Road forums

Discussion => Drug safety => Topic started by: Philbin on July 04, 2012, 12:00 am

Title: Heroin quality: The past 35 years
Post by: Philbin on July 04, 2012, 12:00 am
Hi guys, Im new here.

  I have question for someone who might have more info than I have.

I was hardcore dope user for 30 years. When I first started, heroin (the true white variety, not what called "white" nowadays which is actually beige) had a very medicinal smell and flavor. it was very "clean" to use. Dissolved almost instantly and was plenty potent with a strong rush.

For the past 15+ years, it has been almost exclusively light brown/beige in color, had various tastes similar to chewing a vitamin or a salty-ish sensation or just plain nasty. While there is a distinct rush and a high, it seems like a very crude and lower quality product. (and, no, this isnt some old hippie swearing everything "back in the day was better"). I hear rumors that the US cut off ether and other processing chemicals to south america and other foreign nations that used said chems in the making of coke/heroin, etc. so the producers had to fall back on cheap, more toxic stuff to keep manufacturing.

Oh, and Ive also noticed a similar trend with cocaine as well.

Is there any truth to that or is there other reasons?

Just something Ive wondered about for years.

Be well,

Phil
Title: Re: Heroin quality: The past 35 years
Post by: Ben on July 04, 2012, 12:44 am
There may be truth to that. The scale of production has increased over the decades, and the conditions for chemical work done to make poppy juice into heroin is often very very crude. In a laboratory environment/scale you would use pure solvents and analytical grade reagents. In the 'wild' they use petrol as a solvent and cement mix as a reagent, leaving the product with plenty of impurities.

If you want to go hippie about it, i suggest doing it yourself. In personal use quantities its quite possible to grow opium poppies and convert their milk to heroin with simple chemistry you could do in your kitchen.

Also, its possible to stop at morphine, which may be a more pleasant drug.
Title: Re: Heroin quality: The past 35 years
Post by: Philbin on July 04, 2012, 12:56 am
I do remember a point in the mid 90's when the coke I purchased (powder) had a very strong smell of airplane glue or petroleum distillates . Many times it also had an oily mushy consistency. It was nearly impossible to snort so it was shot. It worked but it made one feel a bit nauseous.

Hardly the clean, white shiny crystals of years previous.
Title: Re: Heroin quality: The past 35 years
Post by: dkmonk on July 04, 2012, 12:58 am
It really just depends on where you are and your supplier, but overall heroin is more pure now.
Title: Re: Heroin quality: The past 35 years
Post by: RomanTotaleXVII on July 04, 2012, 01:04 am
I wonder too. My original heroin experiences were in the early 1980s when I was visiting Pakistan from time to time because of my work. It was hard to avoid the stuff with offers as soon as you left the airport. You could get a gram of the highest quality stuff for $10-$20, both smokeable brown #3 or a pale grey stuff (#4 I suppose) for snorting or injecting. It was beautiful stuff and so strong one wrap would last forever.

Now, it's the nature of experience that nothing's as good as your first time, or rather nothing's as good as your early experiences when it's all brand new and sparkly, and so it seems with heroin. I continued taking it from time to time, but I wasn't in touch with UK dealers and supply was erratic. I could get decent stuff back then, maybe half as good as the stuff available from any taxi driver in Karachi.

So that was the Eighties. I wasn't sure I would ever have any H again until SR appeared, and I was really happy to try it again, but it's just not the same.

UK vendors mostly sell weak adulterated crap, but I've had some stuff from overseas vendors that hint at the heroin I knew and loved. I still live in hope of finding the good stuff again, but maybe I never will and "the good stuff" is an idealised memory of something I'll never experience again.

I need to try some Pebbles!

Title: Re: Heroin quality: The past 35 years
Post by: Philbin on July 04, 2012, 02:09 am
Yeah, I kinda addressed that "idealization" in my first post.  I guess the one thing I am most certain of was that after 1985 I never saw true "pure white" heroin again. Perhaps it was Asia falling by the wayside as the defacto US supplier with the middle-east taking it over and their methods of production differed.

Ah well, I was just curious anyhow. Thanks for the replies fellas v ;)
Title: Re: Heroin quality: The past 35 years
Post by: Ben on July 05, 2012, 01:32 am
Opium dens still operate in that part of asia, but law has cracked down on them there too to some degree. I suppose the experience of smoking some opium back in the day has been replaced by the image of junkies on the streets in the last decades.

Down in asia the production obviously shifted from a product smoked socially to chemically processed substances like heroin solely intended for the export market. I suppose its a cultural loss, but somehow inevitable with the war on drugs in full progress over these years. 
Title: Re: Heroin quality: The past 35 years
Post by: smokeweed420 on July 16, 2012, 07:39 am
i think that the quality hasnt changed much but the availability of high quality has. dealers are getting more and more greedy and cutting their stuff. and people are used to it so they dont complain. its a viscous cycle.
Title: Re: Heroin quality: The past 35 years
Post by: Imaginarytailus13 on July 16, 2012, 10:35 am
i think that the quality hasnt changed much but the availability of high quality has. dealers are getting more and more greedy and cutting their stuff. and people are used to it so they dont complain. its a viscous cycle.

+1.