Talk:Heroin

Harm Reduction

There are no references in this section. This is advice from one heroin addict to others or is this verifiable? <tommy> (talk)

Atomic formula

(5α,6α)-7,8-didehydro- 4,5-epoxy- 17-methylmorphinan- 3,6-diol diacetate Any salt or ester having two acetate groups,

ester needs to be added comparison to diacetyl atomic molecular structure C4H6O2

i noticed way too many complicated formulas on wikipedia are either partial true or not full or way too much info, too many editors want to show off how smart they r, but that doesnt help!

prefix di, from greek means double, noticed its already here then another word for it is next to it, who needs such ambiguity?lol!

Possible Title Change

I would just like to point out that other articles involving drugs on Wikipedia are generally named after the chemical name of the drug, such as MDMA, which 'ecstasy' redirects to. Has anyone considered the idea of renaming this article to 'diamorphine' or 'diacetylmorphine' and having heroin as a subcategory? Since diamorphine is regularaly used as a strong painkiller in the UK without being referred to as heroin - heroin, despite being the original Bayer patent name for the drug no longer really refers to the pure chemical itself, but only to the drug as sold on the street with all contaminants and associated risks. A large number of people have complained, stating this article is biased as it lists many harmful effects of the drug that would not occur if it was in its pure form - therefore, if this article was renamed it would be possible to have a seperate section relating to adulterated 'street' heroin and the associated risks caused by adulterants and unsafe injection techniques could then be treated seperately from pure diamorphine, which is considerably safer. I feel there is a great deal of ignorance surrounding this drug - many people, particularly journalists (who may well use Wikipedia as a reference for their articles) seem to have the belief that heroin itself is somehow chemically different and more dangerous than other opiate painkillers, when in fact its effects are essentially identical (To quote an example, a fairly recent Daily Mail artcle stated that poppies can either be used to produce life-saving morphine or if used in the 'wrong way' by criminals can produce the 'deadly drug' heroin! - this is potentially dangerous misinformation and it also implies that morphine is perfectly safe, when it is essentially the same chemical as heroin...) What would other editors think about renaming this article? D. Dinneen 04:26, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

On a typical day, between 50 and 100 people access this article as "diamorphine", and another 50 to 100 as "diacetylmorphine", but over 5000 access it as "heroin". Thus around 98% of people who come to this article are looking for information about "heroin", and we can best serve our readers by using that as the article title. Regarding the other points, I think your facts are partly incorrect, but if you can show reputable published sources to back them up, please do so. Looie496 (talk) 15:36, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Firstly, the fact so many look up the chemical under a certain name is redundant, espescially considering it redirects to the article anyway. Thousands more users probably search for the word 'Shit' to view the 'Faeces' article but that certainly does not mean we should name it to this. This article is specifically about the chemical (& drug) diamorphine and heroin, as I understand it, refers not to this but to an impure street drug containing anything from 0 to 100% diamorphine and a whole host of other contaminants.

Secondly, which facts do you specifically disagree with? It is unfortunately the case that there will always be a fair degree of political bias within a given article, particularly on a site such as Wikipedia and this is certainly the case with the heroin article as it exists at present. Anecdotal reports stemming from over 100 years suggest, that despite being extremely physically addictive diacetlymorphine is relatively benign in all other areas - I can easily find a host of anecdotal reports backing this up. For one, my grandfather was both a GP and an opiate addict using large amounts of pharmaceutical diamorphine daily for over 50 years, eventually passing away in 2006 aged 96 from old age. He had few health complaints and was a mentally stable, socially functioning individual. (Compare this with a street heroin user or long term alcoholic and the outcome would, in the majority of cases, be quite a different one). I certainly agree that anecdotal evidence is far from ideal, however your request for statistical evidencce to back this up is to a large extent redundant - scientists are, at present, forced to bow to the current political climate to a fairly major extent, no matter how much we would wish to avoid it - those who carry out research into the positive effects of illegal drugs soon tend to find themselves shunned by their peers and written off as academics and denied funding (particularly if the government funds their research, as is often the case!) - the result is that few of these reports exist on this side of drug use, even if a great deal of anecdotal evidence exists to suggest the expected findings to be correct. Any scientist knows that politics should have no bearing on findings but even in a democracy this is hard to acheive, particularly with the current hysteria and media hype surrounding drug use. Please take these factors into account before you consider whether or not this article is biased. D Dinneen (talk) 11:51, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

It's true, according to the literature, that people given free access to heroin will eventually stabilize at some dosage level and can maintain it indefinitely with limited side-effects (although there are some, such as constipation). It's still a dangerous drug though in the sense that the level causing a fatal overdose is not a great deal higher than the effective level. Also such a person is living on the threshold of the abyss, with dreadful consequences if there is any interruption of the supply. In any case, the main statement that I disagree with is that pure heroin is safe -- with uncut heroin it is very easy to accidentally produce an overdose. But above all I believe that this article must not give the impression that heroin is something a person can safely experiment with: it has a high tendency to produce addiction, and a person addicted to it who does not have a reliable uninterrupted supply is going to live a miserable life. Looie496 (talk) 23:14, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Regarding the issue of politics and sources--Wikipedia does not and will never consider factors like that when considering what to include in an article. We will never replace reliable sources, especially in a medical article, with anecdotal reports. If the vast majority of scientists say something in published scientific literature, then we are not going to say the opposite just because of some unpublished (or not reliably published) claims to the contrary along with vague hand-waving about political bias. If we took that kind of tactic, we'd never be able to decide what to write in Wikipedia, because anyone could claim that the "official story" is nothing other than politics and their own pet/conspiracy theory was obviously the truth based on anecdotal/personal evidence. Qwyrxian (talk) 23:30, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

"Where a compound has a WHO International Nonproprietary Name (INN), this should be used as the article title. Exceptions would be where the pharmaceutical use of a certain compound is secondary to other applications (commodity chemical, synthetic intermediate, etc., agriculture or industry)." There you go. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.184.106.235 (talk) 20:21, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

See WP:COMMONNAME.--Peter cohen (talk) 02:01, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

water solubility

Apparently, the water solubility of heroin freebase is 1+1700. The drugbox template requires it to be in mg/ml though. It should also have the HCl. Nagelfar (talk) 00:14, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

Removing Content without Discussion

I have twice added the songs "Sister Morphine" by The Rolling Stones, "Happiness is a Warm Gun" by the Beatles, "The Scorpion" and/or "Poison was the Cure" by Megadeth, and most prominently, "Hand of Doom" by Black Sabbath, but someone keeps deleting them. I understand that art is always up for interpretation, but please, if you disagree with their meaning, consult the discussion page and state your reasons before you just impulsively delete them. Personally, I don't think "Master of Puppets" should be mentioned, since it is so vague, but I will leave it. However, a few of the songs I mentioned are much more direct. I am definitely going to re-add "Hand of Doom", but I will leave the other songs up for discussion. --EarthboundEngineer (talk) 20:21, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

You can see why it was removed in this case by consulting the edit summaries in the page history. The problem is this: Wikipedia doesn't work by a bunch of editors deciding on the talk page whether or not songs have this meaning. Instead, it works by verifiability - in effect, a reliable source must have stated that the song has that meaning. You are welcome to re add them after finding such a source; I will not personally remove it as it seems plausible and does little harm if it is incorrect but I expect it will be removed by the editor who removed it last time. I hope this helps. Also, I have moved this discussion to the bottom of the talk page for you where it is conventionally kept. Egg Centric 21:36, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Egg centric is correct. Unless the song in question explicitly uses a phrase like "I injected myself with heroin", it can't be in the article. Happiness is a Warm Gun is, in fact, a great example of why this is the case, since John Lennon has explicitly stated that, in his opinion as the author of the song, the lyrics have absolutely nothing to do with heroin whatsoever. Now, I don't know "Hand of Doom", but I just looked up the lyrics, and they absolutely do not refer to heroin. They refer to some sort of injected drug, but there's lots of those...or the phrase "push the needle in" could even be metaphorical. The whole point is that, per WP's rules, neither you nor I are qualified to interpret the meaning of those lyrics. Qwyrxian (talk) 08:32, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Okay, I understand. Thank you for the explanation. --67.186.104.90 (talk) 04:35, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Edit request on 12 February 2012

Footnote no 21 is false. "Retreatism" in terms of "anomy theory" has not been "first described" by Howard Abadinsky in 2007, but by Robert King Merton in 1938!!! Abadinsky simply refers to Mertons anomy theory!

90.3.20.221 (talk) 12:30, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Not done: Please express the change you would like in a 'please change X to Y' degree of detail. If the sentence is incorrect, how should the sentence read? The facts in the sentence need to be supported by a reliable source, if they are not already supported by reference 21. Thanks, Celestra (talk) 17:11, 12 February 2012 (UTC)