What Does Meth And Q
Hstuerke Q-Tips& meth Okay, after reading about the stuff hiding in the staircase I have to ask WTF are Q-Tips used for. I ask because I’ve been noticing my husband cleaning his ears A LOT and I’ve been finding them all over the place, clean ones. Out in the shed, in the kitchen, in our yard…so, what does meth and Q-Tips have in common? Man I love this board, it helps answer so many ongoing questions that I have. And I get the truth from you all and more lies from my husband cause he things I’m naive. Replies… Q-tips are used to clean out pipe’s and over zealous cleaning of their ears. Hstuerke Re: Q-Tips& meth Over zealous cleaning of the ears…is that normal for meth users or are you just being funny…haha? LoveMet Re: Q-Tips& meth Being funny and being honest…My fiancée and his sister could spend HOURS grooming themselves to the point of ugliness…Like her popping her zits until her whole face looked like one big Zit. chrisgonz
q-tips are also used for drawing the dope into a syringe, at least that’s what I used them for.
hdftboy If hubby would’ve bought bulbs…I’d have known sooner something was up! All part of the keeping it secret! Hstuerke Q-Tips& meth Man, this is getting so scary. I find cigarette filters, cut off from the cigs everywhere. Do they shoot up in places other than their arms? Light bulbs? How in the hell do you smoke out of those? Indiana
How Do Health Care Professionals Diagnose Drug Addiction
Similar to many mental health diagnoses, there is no one test that definitively determines that someone has a chemical use disorder. Therefore, health care professionals diagnose these conditions by thoroughly gathering medical, family, and mental health information. The practitioner will also either conduct a physical examination or ask that the person’s primary care doctor perform one. The medical assessment will usually include lab tests to evaluate the person’s general medical health and to explore whether or not the individual currently has drugs in their system or has a medical problem that might mimic symptoms of drug addiction.
In addition to providing treatment that is appropriate to the diagnosis, determining the history or presence of mental illnesses that may co-occur with substance abuse or dependence is important in promoting the best possible outcome for the person. As previously described, the dual diagnosis of substance abusing or addicted individuals dictates the need for treatment that addresses both issues in a coordinated way by professionals who are trained and experienced with helping this specific population.
How To Tell If Someone Is Using Heroin
In addition to keeping an eye out for heroin paraphernalia, there are several behavioral symptoms which indicate the presence of a heroin abuse disorder. Your loved one might be abusing heroin if:
- They spend more time alone, socially isolated.
- They seem to be neglecting personal responsibilities and activities which were previously enjoyed and held in high esteem.
- They exhibit regular changes to mood, they sleep strange hours and their eating patterns have changed significantly.
- They pay little attention to personal hygiene.
- They spend time with a new group of people who you have never been introduced to.
- They frequently visit the restroom.
- They seem excessively sleepy throughout the day, or seem to slip in and out of consciousness regularly .
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Psychological Symptoms Of Heroin Use
The psychological consequences of heroin use can include anxiety, depression, insomnia, and cravings for this narcotic. For some people, the cravings can last for years. There are, however, long-term heroin substitution therapies, such as methadone and Suboxone , that can stem or end cravings and prevent relapse.
The following are some additional known mental health effects associated with heroin abuse:
- Irrational decision-making
- Moodiness
- An inability to feel pleasure
Mental health symptoms emerge at different times, including immediately after use, during withdrawal, and possibly after recovery. To the untrained eye, it may be difficult to distinguish between the mental health symptoms associated with heroin use versus a mental health disorder. Individuals who are concerned that a loved one may be using heroin can take different courses of action. If the individual is amenable to speaking with an addiction specialist, thats typically the most effective thing to do. Otherwise, a concerned person may have a talk with the individual suspected of using heroin. If that is not effective, a formal intervention that includes an immediate treatment plan can be helpful, and interventions that are led by a professional are generally more successful.
How To Help A Drug Addict
This article was co-authored by Trudi Griffin, LPC, MS. Trudi Griffin is a Licensed Professional Counselor in Wisconsin specializing in Addictions and Mental Health. She provides therapy to people who struggle with addictions, mental health, and trauma in community health settings and private practice. She received her MS in Clinical Mental Health Counseling from Marquette University in 2011.There are 14 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page.wikiHow marks an article as reader-approved once it receives enough positive feedback. In this case, several readers have written to tell us that this article was helpful to them, earning it our reader-approved status. This article has been viewed 220,783 times.
What if you want to help someone who is addicted to drugs, but you dont know how? There are many misconceptions about how to help a person who has an addiction. You cannot make a person conquer an addiction, and you cant do the work for him. Your focus will be on offering support in various and creative ways. In order to help a person with an addiction one must understand that addiction is complex. You cannot fix the person and above all else a person with an addiction is a person first and not just a drug addict as the title of this article indicates. The persons battle with addiction will certainly be hard-fought, but your supportive action will positively contribute to the persons journey.
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Steel Brillo Metal Mesh Copper Mesh
Steel Brillo is used as a makeshift filter to put in a glass tube for smoking crack. Crack is like candle wax or butter, when its at room temperature its a very soft solid, but when you heat it up it melts. If someone tries to smoke crack out of a normal tobacco pipe it usually melts inside and gets stuck, or melts and drips into the users mouth causing burns. This is a waste to a drug user.
When its smoked out of a glass tube with a chunk of steel brillo or metal mesh, the brillo acts as a filter. The drug melts and the brillo or metal catches it, while the smoke passes through the brillo into the users mouth.
All these stores that sell the glass tubes with the roses also sell little chunks of steel brillo. They dont advertise this but if you ask they will grab a piece from behind the counter for you. Look for burned steel brillo laying around as a sign of crack cocaine use.
Aluminum Foil And Cans
Aluminum foil can be fashioned into makeshift pipes to smoke a variety of drugs including crack, heroin, marijuana or meth. If you see excessive amounts of used aluminum foil that appears to be burned, you may want to have a conversation with your loved one about their drug usage. Another common household item used by addicts are discarded soda or beer cans. Oftentimes drug users will take the discarded can, flatten it and poke a hole in the center and use that as a pipe of sorts to smoke drugs.
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When Should I Seek Urgent Help
If a person is having an unusual reaction to a drug or if youre worried about your own or others safety call triple zero immediately.
Drugs and alcohol can affect people in different and unpredictable ways. Signs of an unusual or dangerous reaction to a drug can include:
- blue fingernails or lips
- becoming pale or sweaty
Its important to seek immediate medical attention even if youre worried the person might get into trouble for taking illegal drugs. Emergency services will only notify police if there is a risk to them or the persons own safety, the safety of others or if someone dies.
A persons parent or guardian will only be notified if they are under 18.
If a person becomes aggressive or violent after consuming drugs or alcohol, dont stay with them if your own safety is at risk. You can still help the person by calling triple zero once youre in a safe place.
Idaho’s Good Samaritan Law
This law provides protections to people acting in good faith who seek medical assistance for either themselves or someone else because of a drug-related medical emergency. Under the law, that person shall not be charged with possession, possession of drug paraphernalia, or use of a controlled substance .
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What Happens To Your Brain When You Take Drugs
While the specific effects of drugs on the brain can vary somewhat depending on the drug that people abuse, virtually every drug that is abused has an effect on what professionals often call the executive functioning areas of the brain. The functions of those areas can be remembered by thinking about the tasks of the chief executive officer in any company: planning, organizing, prioritizing, acting when it is time to act, as well as delaying or preventing action when appropriate. The parts of the brain that tend to harbor the executive brain functions are the front-most parts of the brain, called the frontal lobes, including the frontal cortex and prefrontal cortex. When a person takes drugs, the inhibitory functions of the brain are particularly impaired, causing the person to have trouble stopping him or herself from acting on impulses that the brain would otherwise delay or prevent. This disinhibition can lead to the substance abuser engaging in aggressive, sexual, criminal, dangerous, or other activities that can have devastating consequences for the addicted person or those around him or her. Given that the brain of individuals below about the age of 25 years is in the process of actively and rapidly developing and is therefore not fully mature, drug use that takes place during the childhood or teenage years can have particularly negative effects on the younger person’s ability to perform all these essential executive functions.
Heroin Paraphernalia Can Be Dangerous
No matter how drugs are ingested, they can become addictive and cause serious health consequences like lung, brain, heart, and liver damage. However, drug use equipment can also lead to its own set of problems health issues, legal problems, and more.
Needle sharing is frequently associated with disease transmission, especially HIV/AIDS and viral hepatitis.5 Any blood-borne pathogen can be transmitted through shared needles, which has been a consistent problem among people struggling with heroin addiction who inject the drug. Abscesses in the skin, tuberculosis, and sexually transmitted infections are also caused by, or transmitted through, dirty or shared needles.
Heroin abuse is highly correlated with hepatitis C, a type of viral hepatitis. The disease can be transmitted through other paraphernalia besides needles, including pipes and straws, because the disease can be spread through mucous membrane secretions and blood exchange.6
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Shooting Up: How Far Would You Go For A Fix
IV drug users can quickly find themselves in desperate situations. They often lack clean needles, pure water and other supplies needed to shoot up, prompting many of them to improvise. And for a large segment of the population, improvising means using whatever is handy in order to get well. In that moment, the fear of withdrawal is so great that nothing else matters.
Even under the safest conditions, IV drug use is dangerous. When you throw DIY gear into the mix, however, the dangers only escalate often resulting in disease, infection or death.
How To Identify Drug Paraphernalia
A critical part of understanding teen drug use is awareness about drug paraphernaliathe items kids use to hide or consume drugs. You may find these items in your childs bedroom, car or backpack.
- Plastic baggies or small paper bags
- Cigarette packages
- Felt tip marker and lipstick dispensers
- Makeup bags
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Take No Object For Granted
Several seemingly ordinary objects can serve as camouflage safes to stash drugs or paraphernalia the trailer displays a variety of such safes, including one that looks like a Coke can, a hairbrush, even a Dasani water bottle, whose bottom screws off to reveal a hiding place.
Teens can also create their own version, shaving off the bottom of a deodorant stick to hide the tiny plastic bags in which drugs are stored. Battery compartments for objects as mundane as alarm clocks or video game controllers can also serve as hiding spots.
Any hollow or void space can be made into a stash, Padgett said.
Is There A Difference Between Meth And Crystal Meth
Crystal meth is the purest form of methamphetamine. Its known as ice and is a popular club drug. The high from shooting crystal meth is intense, and people have reported addiction after shooting up crystal meth one time.3
Because abusing crystal meth in this manner is so addictive, it is one of the hardest drugs to recover from. If you have been shooting up crystal meth, find medical help at a professional rehab facility.
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Recovery Requires Lifestyle Changes
If you think you can live the same lifestyle as you did before addiction treatment while simply abstaining from using drugs or alcohol you are on the fast track to relapse. Addiction recovery requires a lifestyle overhaul including the activities you participate in, the people you hang out with, and the way you think.
Spoons Or Bottle Caps
Spoons and bottle caps have been used as a container to mix drugs for a long time. An addict needs a small space to put the drugs in and then mix in a small amount of water. Pay special attention to the bottom of spoons or bottle caps. If they have burn marks or black ash this should be an immediate warning sign. Also, look for tiny used cotton balls left on the spoon.
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How To Spot A Heroin User
Trying to spot that someone is using heroin can be difficult, especially if you dont know exactly what you are looking for or how to pinpoint it. A heroin addiction tends to be a lot more sneaky than other types of addiction. I mean an addiction like alcohol is very visible. An addiction like cocaine can be obvious to someone half way decent at observation. However, when people are using heroin they tend to get extremely good at knowing exactly how to hide their addiction. They are known as the best liars, which brings me to a useful point. That being that heroin is one of the strongest drugs there is, and definitely in the top as far as addictiveness is concerned.
There is no doubt about it, this drug can hook its user so well that the person will do anything in order to keep using. And that means hiding the fact that they use from even the people they are closest with. Weve all heard the horror stories about a spouse being absolutely clueless to the fact that their loved one, the one whom they share a life with, is in fact using heroin behind everyones back. Obviously if the spouse even suspected it for a minute, and then went through the proper information in order to know how to spot their spouses problem, then they might have been able to avoid such a tragic situation of not finding out until years down the line, etc.
Needles And Small Spoons
Needles or syringes are a more obvious indication that an individual is injecting drugs. Many drugs can be dissolved in liquid and injected, including forms of cocaine, heroin, prescription painkillers, and meth.13 If the syringes themselves are not present, injection of drugs may be indicated by needle marks or track marks in the arm. Needles may be found with some type of object to constrict the upper arm in order to make veins more prominent before injecting, such as a belt.1
For people who inject drugs like heroin, crack, or meth, small spoons are often used to help in liquefying or dissolving the crystalized form of the drug.1 The spoon has a dual function, as it conveniently holds the drug so a needle tip can be placed in the liquid. A lighter is used to heat the spoon,14 so spoons used for this purpose may have scorch marks on the bottom.
Spoons may also be used for non-injection drug use, for example to bring cocaine up to the nose to snort.14
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What If The Person Doesnt Want Help For Drugs Or Alcohol
Ultimately, its the persons decision whether to seek professional help. Many people who misuse drugs or alcohol find it hard to ask for help at first, but may want to reach out later on. Be careful not to nag the person, since this might discourage them from opening up in the future.
In the meantime, encourage them to use safely to minimise the risk of harming themselves for example, through needle and syringe programs or opioid replacement programs.
To find a local needle and syringe program, use the healthdirect Service Finder. Select By name and type needle into the search bar.
Clearly state any behaviours you expect, or wont tolerate, from the person. You might not accept drug use in your home, for example.
Its important to know that you cant force the person to stop using drugs or alcohol. Only they can choose to change.
