Opinions - Heroin vs Morphine

[On The Nod]

Which drug, Diamorphine (Heroin) or Morphine is SWIY preferred drug to IV?

[chillinwill]

definitely gotta go with heroin as the rush is better between the two and heroin turns into morphine after its in the body after a couple of minutes if I remember correctly

[Oneiros]

They take you to the same place... you just gotta put more morphine into the syringe to get there.

[fiveleggedrat]

Heroin because it breaks down into morphine, so why put only morphine into the body when you can have diamorphine and morphine?

Rush is said to be better for heroin as well.

Reputation Comments on this post:

dont see why not

[Oneiros]

Diamorphine isn't active. So it doesn't really matter if you have both diamorphine and morphine in your body, only the latter is getting you high. The acetyl groups have to be stripped off by enzymes in order for the molecule to bind with your opioid receptors. The potency increase over morphine is a result of those acetyl groups: they get the molecule through the blood brain barrier more effectively. Once in the brain, the diamorphine is quickly metabolized into morphine.

Heroin is a more efficient way of delivering morphine to your brain, but the same effect can be had by just slaming the BBB with more morphine. What I'm saying is... the rush is identical between equivalent doses of heroin and morphine IMO.

But why argue? I love them both!

Reputation Comments on this post:

great explanation!

[fiveleggedrat]

Thank you for correcting me.

Excellent information.

[enquirewithin]

My horse says that the rush from heroin is more enjoyable than morphine if he remembers correctly. This may be the reason:

Once in the brain, heroin is rapidly metabolized to 6-acetylmorphine and morphine by removal of the acetyl groups and thus serves as a prodrug. Morphine is unable to cross the blood-brain barrier as quickly as heroin, which gives heroin a comparably shorter onset of action. In either case, morphine binds to opioid receptors to induce the opioid high.

Some users complain that the initial effects of morphine are not as pleasant as it gives a tingling sensation which heroin does not. (There is another thread discussing this.)

[fiveleggedrat]

That sounds about right good sir.

[frankz81]

i am allergic to morphine and i think the reason swim can safely use heroin is the fact it works on a wider range of receptors. if that wernt the case swim would be allergic to heroin too and that would be a shame and a half!!

[On The Nod]

The common thing SWIM hears, is that the initial 2 minute rush is better with Diamorphine, after that it evens out pretty well, some say morphine has more legs than heroin.

However when injecting, SWIM thinks that both heroin and morphine are both very intense, so possibly the rush evens out between the two.

SWIM thinks heroin nationally is so popular as it can be smoked

[nick23]

Street h is better than M and M is better than diamorphine.

Oh and diamorphine can be smoked.

[andro74]

personally from experience a nice hit of morphine sulphate ampoules is a very enjoyable hit, very hot warm sensation all over espesially your head

[dyingtomorrow]

SWIM never had IV morphine, but the wikipedia article on heroin cites a blind test where users couldn't tell the difference between equally powerful doses of heroin and morphine (although it takes like 1.5 X as much morphine to be equal to a heroin dose or some shit like that (just made that number up)).

[phatassone]

SWIM prefer morphine cause it is pure... purity of heroin (diacetylmorphine) is about 25% in swims area, allthough swim has got stronger stuff in the past...

[420Shark210SanAnto]

This may not be exactly what you're looking for, considering SWIM has never IV'ed a drug and probably never will, SWIM usually snorts any opiates he comes across that can be snorted. Keeping that in mind, SWIM would have to say that he definitely prefers H over morphine, morphine is great and all but H really does kick in a bit faster, giving more of a rush and a different "high" for SWIM. I think its mostly based on perception, and may even be a placebo effect. Who knows.
HOWEVER, Diluadid (Hydromorphone) is BY FAR SWIM's favorite. It gives a high unlike H or morphine, and lasts for most of the day. SWIM has tried O.C. and Fentanyl and plenty of other synthetic opioids but Hydromorphone takes the cake.

[olduncle]

FWIW, all of the 'metabolism turns H into M' answers are correct, but SWIY should be aware that there are lots of different flavors of both morphine and heroin. H (diacetylmorphine) is H, of course, but Mexican Mud and white dope indicate different levels of refinement / processing, and there's always some cut and SWIY can't always know exactly what's what.

Morphine comes in sulfates and hydrochlorides and in solid or liquid form, often with other stuff added for medical purposes or with anti-abuse mechanisms in place. It's not very water soluble, so they have to add salts or chlorides or similar to make injectable M. The point of all this is that it's hard to make comparisons that are very accurate, because of all the variables. At the end of the day, SWIYs body will indeed only be getting high off the M and the feeling should be identical, but exactly how much of exactly what type of which substance and whatever else is in it will be the determining factors.

If SWIM could get it in constant supply, ampules of hospital-grade designed-for-injection M would indeed be the way to go, because SWIM would know for sure exactly what SWIhe was getting. Fantasy worlds aside, the price of heroin and the availability of morphine in useful form and sufficient quantity makes heroin the much more attractive choice.