DOSE:			Pharms - Buprenorphine	(daily)
			Naloxone	(daily)
		insufflated	Heroin

BODY WEIGHT:

225 lb

Today is Tuesday. Well, actually early morning on Wednesday. I ran out of Suboxone last week Wednesday because I thought I could get my refill on Monday. Only they gave me bullshit about not being able to get it until 3 days before it’s due. Usually I get it a week early. I dunno why they’re giving me bullshit now, I’ve always gotten it seven days early. Okay, I was 9 days early this time, but whether it’s the pharmacy or whatever, they’re saying I can’t get it until next Monday.

Wouldn’t bug me so much, but my doctor specifically writes me 90 day prescriptions so I don’t have to mess around with refills. I usually get like 22 8mg strips and take 2mg per day, but last time about 6 of my 8mg strips were missing substantial chunks out of them, which I meticulously documented so my doctor could show them to the sales rep. I’m not the only one who’s had this problem, so I switched back to 2mg strips. I forgot that my insurance wouldn’t let me get all 90 of them at once, so the pharmacy I got them, very friendly people based out of the same clinic my doctor works in, told me to get my refill a week early so I wouldn’t have to worry about running out because numerous times the local ‘Greens seems to only have a few on hand with reliable frequency.

Anyway, that’s not really the point. Up to this point I had tried heroin three times, once by injection. This was tar the first two times, which I had been sold second hand by a guy who claimed it was opium. It tasted like gross cotton candy, which I loved. It wasn’t the flowers I was told opium tasted like, but at least it wasn’t repackaged incense! A few years went by and a neighbor I had liked to shoot heroin, and asked if I’d like to try it. I’d already been on Suboxone after a few years of poppy pod and pharmaceutical opioid use and abuse, so I abstained for a day and a half and it probably still blocked most of it. I got a decent rush, but no high to speak of afterwards.

Fast forward about five and a half years. I’ve been Suboxone for all but six months of this time, a doctor talked me into kicking it, so I did, stayed mostly clean for six months (kratom and very occasional benzos and weed was about it). Ended up getting a bunch of vicodin and oxys and relapsing. Not horrible, but I love my job and I was advancing very fast, so I decided to get back on Suboxone, I’ve been on it two years now. I only take 2mg per day, but I frequently take more to get a buzz out of it. After I stop it for a few days and go back I get a decent high off of it. Right now, though, I’ve ended up pretty fucked. My usual connections to get a little extra Suboxone are out for one reason or another, so I’m fucked. I’ve ended up buying heroin from a guy who works for me.

Now, I don’t like doing heroin or rather, I’d rather be on Suboxone right now. I know the troubles associated with heroin, and I want nothing to do with them. The impurities, the lack of precise dosing, the strong intoxication, they’re not what I want at this point in my life. However, I don’t want to deal with withdrawal either. I’ll do almost anything to avoid withdrawal. I’d probably do krokodil if that were my only option- and I don’t mean good cleaned up desomorphine, I’d probably snort cheap krokodil made by Russian addicts in a pinch. It’d never come to that, but you know what I mean.

So all day I was sitting around sick, this was six days after my last 3mg dose of Suboxone, after all. Yesterday I had .1g of heroin that got me straight until this afternoon, and with my guy cleaned out, I was waiting for him to get more. He promised me he’d remember me, but at 11pm I texted him to see if this was going to work out tonight. It had, and he told me to come over. He was properly fucked up, slurring his words and what not, pretty sure he did forget about me, but that was irrelevant. I was about to be well, and just knowing that brought about a state of euphoria. He was fronting me for a couple days, for which I was super happy, as I was broke and in need of a fix. I got 200mg (accurately measured on a scale in front of me), so I was set.
Once home I poured it out on some Pyrex and cut out a decent sized line, maybe 25-30mg. I sniffed it very softly. I hate the taste of quinine, and by avoiding it, it was where it needed to be, in my sinuses, not my stomach. I waited ten minutes. Relief, but only a little. I cut out another equal line, and repeated 10 minutes later. A light glow. Another after 30 minutes. Feeling goodish now, slightly warm. I waited another 30 minutes and took a half-sized line, maybe smaller. I repeated it again in an hour. Now I’m slightly itchy.

Honestly, I couldn’t tell heroin apart from oxy or morphine or any other opioid. I mean, not by snorting, anyway. If I had been shooting it, I’m sure there’d be a readily apparent difference. Snorting though? It feels just like pods used to back in the day- except that pods got me buzzed for twelve hours, and held me at least 36. It also had a great nod, I mean, I wouldn’t need to dose enough to put myself into a forced nod, but I could lay down and close my eyes in an attempt to sleep and instead experience the opiated dreams I loved so much. There are some times when I take my Suboxone that I’ll experience a fleeting version of those opiated dreams, but not so often anymore. Snorting heroin seems like any other opiate.

I’m exactly as high now as I’d aim for as back when I was using other opioids, but the intoxication isn’t any more euphoric or attractive than any other opioid. It might be different if I hadn’t been using other opiates for years and years and had been on a strong partial agonist like buprenorphine immediately prior to this experience. What scares me is that Methadone isn’t widely available, in my area I’d have to drive an hour and a half each way for a daily dose. Suboxone is available, but most doctors prescribing it are getting out of the business. Some new ones have come in, but there aren’t enough of them to take all of the patients who need access. I can think of at least six opiate addicts on my shift alone. We’re some of the best employees, actually, but only because most of us are either on prescribed painkillers, or are on Suboxone, those with continuous access to long acting opioids are among the highest performers here.

My generation- kids born after 1975 but before 1995- grew up at a time where strong opioids were widely available. I remember having a sore throat when I was fifteen. I got a bottle of Hydro 10’s. My back hurt one day, I was prescribed Percocet. All of us had parents who had similar and generally better prescriptions. Getting OxyContin in 2002 was easier than getting weed where I lived. I actually didn’t use anything until I was out of high school and in college, but when my buddy had his wisdom teeth pulled, he got OC40’s and perc 5’s for breakthrough pain. Only two weeks worth- hah! He felt better in two days, and used the rest recreationally. Well, we all did! OC’s weren’t a dollar a milligram back then, and he didn’t care, he just shared them with us all. It was great until the dumbass snorted a 40 and drank six shots and needed CPR and naloxone when the ambulance arrived.

There’s no wonder we’re seeing things like Krokodil appearing in the media now. Or that we’re seeing heroin appearing in small cities. The pharmaceutical companies created a need in hundreds of thousands of kids and young adults who were prescribed large doses of painkillers for longer periods of time than were needed. Those drugs are expensive with insurance, and without it, extremely difficult to continue long term if you can’t afford it, especially if you don’t have a real verifiable illness like slipped discs, etc. Not many of us are cancer sufferers getting Exalgo and the like.

Since we can’t get methadone and Suboxone, many of us are turning to heroin. It sucks, sure, people should be able to stay clean and maintain on one of these drugs if they want to. I’m an addict and I’ll always be an addict- and I’m always going to opt for a maintenance drug because I know the relapse rate is ridiculous without it. I didn’t expect that I’d be using heroin to make do without Suboxone, but that’s the price I had to pay because I stupidly used too much (and if I had known that they wouldn’t let me get it to exactly 30 days, I wouldn’t have used too much- or at least cut way down to stretch it to 30 days!).

It’s been 3 hours since I dosed, and I’m starting to come down now. The itching is still there, but I don’t have that same warm head glow. In another 24 hours or so I’ll be sick again and I’ll do this over again. I’ll be glad to get my script and be back to normal in 5 days or so. I just need to make it that far, but there are a lot of people who have a lot further to go, who are living this cycle continuously. I’ll go through this once, but I know plenty of people who are going to live this cycle until they die. I’ve maintained on subs for the better part of a decade now, and not made this mistake. I don’t plan on making it again. Addiction is no fun, and if I can maintain on Suboxone, life is much better.

Exp Year: 2013	ExpID: 101741
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 28
Published: Jun 3, 2019	Views: 2,151
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Pharms - Buprenorphine (265), Heroin (27) : Retrospective / Summary (11), Addiction & Habituation (10), Not Applicable (38)