Talk:Drug injection

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Contents

[edit] Substance List

The page lists frequently (illicitly) injected drugs. From experience, MDMA (the term ecstacy should be avoided) is rarely injected. The listing of heroin, amphetamine and methamphetamine is good but cocaine should certainly be added. I would list heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, amphetamine and various others less frequently. Benzodiazepines are not injected nearly as frequently as cocaine and heroin and most of these drugs/formulations available in the US are not even water soluble. This should be changed.

Ketamine is also one of the more common IM/IV recreational drugs. It gives a much bigger psychedelic kick than insufflation. Shamanchill (talk) 01:53, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Hep C, and HIV in intravenous use

Added the clarification about HIV and hepatitis C being prevalent with intravenous use due to equipment sharing. I don't condone the direct injection of any illicit substance, but, being an encyclopedia, it should contain the facts, and not half-facts.

[edit] Ethical issue

Is it ethical for the article to be written as almost a guide to using drugs: e.g. "While squatting, gently insert the syringe (without the needle) until it is just inside the anus then ease the plunger down. A bit of Vaseline or lubricant will help if there is any pain. The sphincter muscles should be strong enough to hold the mix inside while it is absorbed. It can pay to do a trial run with water first." It sounds like it's from a 'ways to do drugs' guidebook. I think that it is too much unnecessary information but if it was really necessary, it shouldn't be written in an instructional way. I'm not against educated adults doing drugs (it's their own lives) but I do worry about those under 18 reading it and trying it out themselves - causing themselves a great deal harm if done incorrectly. Not to mention the fact that it is not advisable for anyone to be doing drugs in the first place anyway. (Monsumo 16:55, 2 July 2007 (UTC))

Yes. - Xvall

Wait, what? You think that a minor is going to decide to inject drugs just because he found straightforward instructions on Wikipedia? Were YOU that dumb as a teenager? 'Cause I sure wasn't. If a teenager injects drugs as a result of this article, that only means he did it a few days before he would have decided to anyway.
Wikipedia is not a how-to manual, but nor is it kid proof or family safe.
--63.25.231.225 00:09, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
My beef with this article is the detailed information on how to extract the drugs to inject. That doesn't even BELONG here. 71.8.77.160 (talk) 04:37, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
While I respect your opinions on underage drug use/drug use in general (whether I agree with them or not, it doesn't matter), the ethical implications of this concept aren't really the problem here. WP is supposed to serve as an objective information source...that means that whether you are of the opinion that providing information on how to perform an injection encourages drug use or not, WP has a responsibility to provide information on the topic and to keep that information safe from your opinion or mine. Personally (being both a 20 something and a healthcare professional), I'm of the opinion that hiding things from people accomplishes 2 things: 1)Piques interest in the topic by making it taboo, and 2)prevents access to information that could greatly reduce the danger someone puts themselves in by making a certain choice. Since I interact with drug users both in a professional setting and a social one (several of my close friends use a variety of substances on a recreational basis, some of which are used intravenously), I see firsthand the damage that lack of or misinformation can do. The fact of the matter is, no one is ever going to stop people from using drugs. Period. I don't want to hear any whining about how we shouldn't have such a defeatist attutide, etc etc. Like Lewis Black (I think it was him) said, "If you took away all the drugs, ALL THE DRUGS, in the world...people would spin around on their front lawns until they fell down and saw God." I believe we as a society, and I know I as professional, have an ethical obligation to provide information that will allow people to be safe in their choices. I don't encourage drug use...I don't have much of a problem with it either, but I do think it can be an irresponsible thing to do, depending on the person. I know people who are accomplished doctors and other professions who used drugs in a responsible manner, just like prescription drugs are used (in reality, there's really no difference, its semantics), and I know people who are totally the opposite. The thing we have to do is provide a way to be responsibly irresponsible =D. My recommendation for the article is that the areas written in a "tutorial" tone be rewritten to a more formal and scientific tone, which describes a situation in a 3rd person manner (eg "After a tourniquet is appropriately tied in place, the injection area is swabbed with alcohol or iodine, and the needle inserted parallel to the vein at shallow angle so as not to penetrate both walls of the blood vessel." etc). I think this fulfills both the encyclopedia's requirement to provide information and its obligation to do so in a completely non-biased way. Or I could just be talking out my ass, who knows, its like 5 am and way too late for this! Peace Ohnoitsthefuzz (talk) 10:09, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree with both sides here. The content has every right to be here, however the tone of the article is a little too instructional. we should rewrite it in the style Ohnoitsthefuzz recommended. rakkar (talk) 01:59, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Merge and Rewrite

There's a banner stating that this article hs been proposed for a merge with the Intravenous Drug Use entry - I think that a rewrite could negate this, in that skin popping and intramuscular injection should be addressed here and aren't yet. It the scope of this article is going to be just IV drug injection, then I agree that it should be merged, but it could operate as a higher-level document. I also think that the instructional tone of this needs to be changed, and am willing to help out on that aspect. Is everyone cool with my broadening of the subject and cleaning up language and citations? I can do sections and propose them here, or just edit the main article. Regards Shamanchill (talk) 01:53, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

We shouldn't have 2 articles with redundant content though. Maybe we should merge the intravenous drug use article into this one, rather than vice versa (although that one's better written at the moment). But yeah, you have a good point. --Galaxiaad (talk) 02:45, 22 April 2008 (UTC)