Injecting vs smoking

I am a heroin addict, and I'm still currently using. From my personal experience with using and shooting up, you can go about it in the safest way possible. Some pharmacies will sell clean, unopened packs of needles to anyone. Not knowing the side effects of shooting? If you do use a new, clean needle, and do not miss your vein, then the only side would be getting high... Not to glamorize it at all, but that is the truth. I have reused needles over and over again, and have had abcesses before, which require you to get them drained by a doctor if they get infected.

I am very sorry to hear that. Like I said above, I am a heroin addict and I regularly inject it. Injecting is a lot more dangerous than smoking or snorting it if you don't know harm reduction and how to properly cook it, and shoot up. For me personally, I have done both and with smoking there was really no side effects (health wise) besides becoming addicted. When I switched from smoking/snorting it to shooting up there was a difference. Today, I barley have any veins that I can use anymore. They are either calcified, blown, or there is an abscess.

I know people who have been smoking Heroin for years, if not decades, now. There are definitely noticeable side effects, although many of them don't seem to even realize they are suffering with those side effects. They have become very slow and slurred in their speech, their voices sound feeble and weak, they have black bags under their eyes and they can very barely ever think straight and they look awful. The way they talk and the way they behave has also become very child-like, as though they have become age regressed. They also suffer with low self-esteem, lack of confidence, etc and that's just the basics.

Injecting generally carries more risk such as (sometimes lethal) vascular problems as well as risk of disease if you don't use new, sterile needles for every shot. The only downside to smoking as opposed to shooting that I can think of would be that it might be harder to measure the dose due to sometimes wasted smoke. This is assuming that one purifies their drugs, which most can't seem to be bothered to do.

I have read that there is a much smaller chance of recovery among users who inject, whether this is due to the physical effects or the mental I don't quite know. I would assume injecting is more pleasurable and less expensive than smoking.

That is shite man, I'm sorry to hear it. Welcome to the forum though, hopefully you can find some good people to talk to in here. Do you mind if I ask which area of the country you are from? I'm from Cincinnati originally, and that place is totally overrun with heroin.

About your question, I'm not sure if you mean which method is more damaging to someone with Hepatitis C. But injecting has a lot more risks in general. There is a higher probability of overdose for sure. And of course all of the diseases one can get from sharing a needle or even just reusing their own dirty one. Banging it was never my thing, but I've definitely seen so many people who are completely and permanently messed up because of it.

Everything that you stated comes with heroin use in general. Eventually, no matter the way in which you use heroin all of that will happen. Or at least in my experience it has.

Further, I don't think its possible to overdose from smoking it, right? You would just fall asleep first...

Yep. Injecting causes a more intense feeling as it is injected directly into the bloodstream. Many people like it injected rather than smoking.

@Christian I couldn't have said it any better!!! When I was only smoking heroin, my withdrawls were bad (or so I thought at the time). I would start getting dope sick after just shy of a day. I would get hot and cold sweats, my whole body would hurt, restless legs, anxious, all over just uncomfortable, and I would occasionally throw up. Now I have been shootinf up for the past 3 years and the withdrawls are absolutely dreadful. Now, i start getting dope sick after only a couple hours from when I last shot up, just because I use so frequently. I will still get the hot and cold sweats, body aches (to a whole other level then before), my restless legs even worse, extremely anxious, my gag reflex would freak out non-stop so I would be throwing up/dry heaving constantly (and I really do mean constantly, like any time I breathe, eat, drink anything), and I even have recently been getting seizures during the peak of my withdrawls.

I know for me, I told myself I would never ever shoot up, no matter what. The reason I gave in and tried it was because it didn't cost you as much money to get high since you don't need that much at all starting out. So that, and then the rush from IV'ing was just waaaaaaaaaaaay better. After I shot up for the first time, smoking or snorting it just seemed like a waste of dope. It really wish I would have never touched a needle ever, or for that matter, I wish I would have never touched heroin at all either... It is seriously the hardest thing I have ever dealt with in my life and unfortunately I am still in the active stage of my addiction.

Interesting, smoking it. I did not know that you could take heroin this way. I guess that is how it was slipped to me. Experimenting and not asking questions; not that anyone is going to tell you when they want to slip you something.

What do you mean? How did someone slip it to you?

Regardless of the level of addiction, whether it's injecting or smoking, it does not change the fact that heroin can ruin one's health. So if smoking is a lesser evil, does that mean we should condone the smoking of heroin? I don't think so. That drug should not be distributed for consumption because regardless of how it's done, once you're addicted, it's going to cost you a lot.

@Christian oh yeah. I have been to a handful of rehabs. Ranging from medical detox facilities, 30day treatment centers, inpatient, outpatient, sober homes, methadone maintance clinics, and most recently tr suboxone clinic. I know that I will only change if I am fully ready to. And honestly I don't know if I have fallen hard enough yet.

As far as I know, when you start using drugs through injections, then you've reached the final stage of drug addiction. There isn't any level higher than that. Injection users are the ones who reach the highest levels of satisfaction through drugs, and they are the ones in the waiting list to the other world.

Absolutely! The substance if injected intravenously will go straight into the blood stream and will cause a high immediately. However, addicts tend to use same needles among themselves. It compounds their problems and spreads new diseases.