Strong batch of heroin may be to blame for hospital admissions

[apothecary]

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200605/s1638448.htm

Doctors are concerned about the high number of people taken to Sydney hospitals over the weekend after using heroin.

The director of Emergency Services at St Vincent's Hospital, Dr Gordian Fulde, says the patients included a 13-year-old boy who collapsed after taking the drug.

Dr Fulde says it is believed that an especially strong batch of heroin may have reached the city's streets.

"The thing is, we haven't seen a group of heroin patients come in to our department like this for years," he said.

"I just hope it isn't the beginning of something horrible."

[prier]

When the government finds out about a high purity batch of heroin don't they tell heroin using community about it? I've wondered about this, how would they go about it?

Edited May 15, 2006 by prier

[PD.]

When the government finds out about a high purity batch of heroin don't they tell heroin using community about it? I've wondered about this, how would they go about it?

The word gets around fairly quickly without help from the government.

[mr toodly]

Authorities in Chicago are currently dealing with the sales of a fentanyl laced heroin called 'drop dead.' The mixture has resulted in many emergency room admissions.

One of the co-authors at my blog posted about this before the story went national:

http://hobart.yeepx.com/archives/127

[devance]

Fent is scary to me not because of a possible overdose

but because if its not made right can cause brain damage

even once.

Rather be died from a overdose than that type of brain damage, look it up if interested, horrible to 1st degree.

[themagicmushroom]

not fentanyl (although all opiates suck imo, great painkillers I guess)... A while back someone messed up a synth for MPPP (a pethidine analog) and made MPTP (a potent neurotoxin causing parkinsons)

from http://www.erowid.org/chemicals/mptp/mptp_chemistry1.shtml

"Recently the danger of this was well illustrated by the discovery that

the sloppy laboratory practices of a man attempting to synthesize analogs

of the narcotic meperidine for street sale in nothern California resulted

in the chemical l-methyl-4-phenyl-1,2,5,6-tetrahydropyridine (MPTP)

(Lewin, 1984). The substance has been found to metabolize in the brain

into a compound that kills midbrain dopaminergic cells whose axons project

to neurons in the basal ganglia. This produces clinical symptoms

essentially identical to those of parkinson's disease. The phenomenon was

first described in 1979 in the case of a 23-year-old graduate student who

had developed parkinsonian-like condition after using a meperidine-like

drug that he synthesized in his own laboratory. ... Unfortunatly, the

student was not the only one who used the adulterated substance, and

several dozen young users of this synthetic heroin [sic]have now

succumbed to a similar fate- a lifetime (which could be quite short) of

tremors, partial or complete paralysis, and abnormal posture."

oops.

Edited June 24, 2006 by themagicmushroom

[devance]

not fentanyl (although all opiates suck imo, great painkillers I guess)... A while back someone messed up a synth for MPPP (a pethidine analog) and made MPTP (a potent neurotoxin causing parkinsons)

from http://www.erowid.org/chemicals/mptp/mptp_chemistry1.shtml

oops.

-----------------------------------------------------------

My mistake, I did run into a heroin addict though about ten years ago that cursed another dude for giving him something that burned in his veins as he described it.

He was definitely showing signs of MTPT as I saw a sixty minutes program about it.

Needless to say he wasn't feeling good and even in the early stage was starting reflexively gyrate.

[Pala]

Oh! just, subtle, and mighty opium!

Or, (apparently too often), not.

Edited June 25, 2006 by Pala

[devance]

I got a soft spot /outlook for intravenous drug user.

But the guy was in the U.S. is called a drugstore cowboy so that only a frail guy he would get fresh exons for muscle for robberys.

Shoot up anything and the wrong one, one day.

In jail for a convinece store robbery.

He thought it what called a hot shot and was wondering what type.

Best thing I told was maybe rattlesnake venom.

Figured it afterwards.