By Steve Otto
Chapter Sixteen The whole drug manufacture's chapter
Morphine…….
One thing I learned from reading the 11th addition of The Encyclopedia Britannica was how people smoked opium in the 1800s. It described the equipment and the process in detail. I figured how to get the most for my money from smoking opium, but my new recipe offered something quite different.
"We should buy some," I said. "I have this recipe that will allow us to convert that into morphine or heroin that we can shoot."
"It's worth a try," George said.
I was able to get the ingredients for making morphine, but not the harder chemical needed for converting it to heroin. Basically the recipe simply allowed us to turn the free-base morphine of the opium into a hydrochloride salt. George bought the opium and we started to work in his kitchen. It had to be soaked overnight in a solution, so I came back the next day. We drained a liquid off of the dregs at the bottom of a small glass tumbler, added some muriatic acid, and then heated the mixture on the stove until we had a dark black powder.
"I'm ready to give this a try," I said.
George got out some spoons and we each mixed hot water over just a pinch of the black powder. We used 1cc rigs. It only took about a half cc of water. I shot the stuff and when I pulled out the needle I got an instant rush. It almost knocked me over.
"This stuff is fantastic," I said. "This is actual morphine. It 's not completely pure, but it beats the hell out of trying to smoke that stuff for a high you barely feel."
"No kidding," George added. "As soon as we run out of this stuff, I'm going to buy up all the opium that guy has. I can't believe we can get a high this good off of something we made."
The rush was not as nice as heroin, but the high lasted over six hours. Nothing pharmaceutical could last that long.
Coke………..
One thing we could never learn to make, but always buy, was cocaine. It was plentiful during the 1970s and when we couldn't get narcotics, there was always coke. We could mix it with our Talwin to get the speedball effect. If we were big-time junkies, living in a big city, we would have speedballed it with heroin. But in Lawrence, all we had were synthetic narcotics and codeine.
On one occasion I bought a quarter gram of coke from one of Rusty's friends after running into him at the Harbor Lighthouse. It was early in the afternoon, so I took it to my apartment and put just a pinch in a spoon. I shot it and the rush was so intense that it made my ears ring. It was similar to the ringing a person gets from shooting a gun too close to his or her head. It was the most powerful batch I ever bought. Vic had told me of cocaine that was so pure it made a user's ears ring when it was shot. My ears rang just as Vic described. That was the first and only time that had happened. It sounded like some kind of Christmas chime going off in my eardrum. The intensity of the rush was unbelievable.
A few days later I went over to Frieda's house. George was there. I had just enough coke for each of us to take a hit. Usually Frieda didn't like me using needles at all.
"This coke is extra good," I said. "It's the best I ever had."
"You know, I might try shooting coke just this one time," Frieda said.
"Really?"
"Sure. You can set it up for me can't you?"
"Oh, Sure."
I fixed her a real small hit in one of my 1cc rigs. George held her arm using a belt as a tourniquet while I searched for a good vein. I finally found one. The needle went in, George released the belt and I pushed in the liquid.
"I don't feel anything," Frieda said as I pulled out the needle.
"Oh wait!...," she said a few seconds later.
"Is it OK if I throw up?"
"Yes," I said.
She ran to the bathroom and threw up in the toilet. She was not used to such an intense rush and was not the least bit upset about throwing up. She went to her couch and sat down. She held her head back as the coke rushed through here.
"Are we still going to Doc's to get some Talwin?" George asked.
"Sure," I answered. "Is that OK with you, Frieda?"
"Go ahead. I'm doing fine."
She was still enjoying the high as we left. That was the only time I ever got her high using a needle. I don't think she ever shot up again.
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