Booty Bumping / Hooping
Powdered drugs, or crushed up pills and crystal rocks can be dabbed or rubbed into the lining of your rectum with your finger. You also also mix with water, and dose into your ass by enema. Booty bumping has a faster come-on, and more intense high than when swallowing. Booty bumping irritates the lining of your rectum, and can create a surface that more easily transmits HIV and other sexually transmitted infections. Regular booty bumping can cause hemorrhoids, rectal pain and bleeding. Consider not bottoming when you are booty bumping.
GBL, a stronger form of GHB can seriously damaging the lining of your rectum. Always dilute a substance with warm water if you are going to booty bump. Always use your own enema, or needleless syringe, do not share.
Eating / Swallowing
Swallowing drugs in pill form, also known as “eating” is the safest way to ingest most drugs. Drugs, like crystal meth, which can be consumed in various forms, are safer when done by eating or swallowing in pill form. The digestive system, kidneys and liver eliminates toxins in drugs which can contribute to a crappy high or rougher crash. The downside to eating, is that the effects take longer to be felt, as they must be digested. Some drugs can be rough on your throat when swallowed, like GHB. Never swallow Poppers.
Due to the length of time it takes to get high, as well as the slower come-on and lower-intensity high, swallowing decreases the chance of becoming addicted to a substance: your brain does not make as instant an association than when it does when injecting, smoking or snorting a drug. For this reason, many guys find they have more control when using crystal meth when they swallow it in pill form.
Once you swallow, it’s harder to gauge how high you may become, since you won’t know until it hits you. You can get vegetable capsules from most health food stores to put powder into. You can also dissolve the drug in small amount of warm water, or wrap in small, un-dyed rolling paper and swallow as a “bomb.”
When swallowing, as with other methods, start low and go slow. Take a smaller amount, digest it and first see how you feel before taking more.
Injecting / Slamming
Also called slamming. This method of consumption is the more dangerous way of using drugs. It is much safer to smoke or snort than to inject. Injection risks include:
- Overdose, greater chance of
- HIV or Hep C transmission
- Abscesses and collapsed veins
- Addiction happens faster with injection than other methods of consumption, as the ritual of injecting in itself can become addictive, and because the high is instant and very intense.
Always inject with unused, unshared drug gear, including:
- Needles and syringes
- Spoons, cookers and water
- Filters, tourniquets and swabs
Prepare for injection on a clean surface. Use ascorbic acid to dissolve your drug for injection. You can get unused injection drug gear through any site associated with The Works through Toronto Public Health.
Different drugs need to be injected into different parts of the body.
- Steroids: muscle, into your buttcheeks
- Ketamine: into muscle
- Other drugs need to be injected into a vein
- Never inject into an artery
Injecting into the wrong place can be fatal. Click here to learn how to inject more safely.
Smoking
Different drugs require different devices to smoke with. Crack cocaine can be smoked in a stem-pipe with a filter, as crack smolders in a mostly solid form. Crystal meth needs to be smoked in a pipe with a bowl on it, as it liquefies when heated. Both crack and crystal need to be smoked in a tempered-glass, or Pyrex pipe. Untempered glass shatters when heated to the degree that both drugs need to be in order to smoke them.
Both drugs, as well as K can be smoked in a piece of tin foil that is heated. Be careful with dripping hot crystal.
Cannabis is smoked most safely in a vaporiser, or undyed paper-rolled joint. Smoking in a bong concentrates the smoke, and although it is cooler and feels nicer, is actually harder on your lungs than other methods of smoking.
Smoking produces an intense, fast high, and usually hits you faster than injection. Smoking any substance is hard on your lungs and, over the long-term is associated with cancer.
Herpes, syphilis and Hep C can be passed on by sharing smoking paraphernalia. Heated foil and pipes can burn the lips and create more entry points for virus or bacteria to pass. Always use your own smoking paraphernalia when smoking.
You can get a safer inhalation kit for crack at The Works through Toronto Public Health.
Snorting
Any drugs that comes in powder form can be snorted, or inhaled through the nostrils. You can either measure the powder into a thin line, or a small mound called a “bump.” Cocaine, powdered ketamine, crushed-up meth, mephedrone and MDMA can all be snorted. Drugs directly enter the bloodstream through the nose and go to the brain. Snorting provides a faster, more intense rush than when swallowing. Snorting provides a fairly quick high, and can be done more discreetly than smoking or injecting.
Snorting drugs scrapes up and damages the lining inside your nose. This can provide a route of entry for Hepatitis C. If you are snorting, always snort with your own snorting paraphernalia. Do not share straws, rolled-up bills and other utensils. You cannot transmit HIV by sharing snorting paraphernalia.
Avoid using rolled-up bills, or bumping off of keys, as they are covered in germs and you can get a sinus infection this way. Use clean paper straws, unused pipes, or else bump off your clean hand. To help reduce sinus infections, as well as clean out septum-damaging residue, rinse your nostrils by snorting warm water after you use. Alternating nostrils when you snort also helps.
With long-term use, snorting drugs like cocaine wears away your septum, the cartilage between nostrils and between the nose and the roof of your mouth.
To learn more about Safer Snorting, check out CATIE’s Safer Snorting page.