I noticed just about every "mainstream" drug, and even a big handful of more obscure/exotic chemicals have their own "mega thread" (not as much here in OD as, say, in the psychedelic forum, where seemingly 95% percent of tryptamines/phenethylamines/any freakin' even remotely hallucinogenic chemical compound has its own dedicated official discussion topic, while here in OD, apart from heroin and maybe a couple others, we have no "megathreads."
So I figured, fuck it, if no one has bothered to do it, then I might as well take it into my own hands. So I present to you, the crack cocaine (unofficial (hopefully, only temporarily)) mega discussion/questions & answers thread, partly in the spirit of giving the few crack users who frequent OD
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(I don't particularly like stereotyping every single person who uses crack voluntarily as being a "crackhead" (meaning, those who use on a semi-regular/infrequent basis, ranging from the occasional once-a-month one-day binge smoker, all the way down to the everyday users who consider crack to be their primary drug of choice (the "baseheads," as some would describe them as), but those are unsurprisingly the ones who end up broke and homeless and who the term of "crackhead" usually refers to), mostly because of the vast amount of stigma attached to that term, and it annoys me to no end seeing non-users (even those who use other "hard" drugs like heroin and meth, yet won't touch crack all the while going about their day lying and stealing to support their $160/day IV heroin habit) call just about anyone who's ever smoked a rock a "crackhead."),
regardless how few they are, and how unpopular crack and its users may be around here
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(considering OD should really stand for "Opiate Discussion" instead, since 80% of all posts on here are about heroin & pharmaceutical opioids.
It's actually not such a bad idea having an opiate-only forum, since opiates seem to be the principal drugs of choice among OD posters, and creating a dedicated forum just for them would clear up a lot of space in the actual Other Drugs forum, making space for more posts about benzos, stimulants, etc., rather than being submerged, like they are now, by all the "1st time shooting dope - help!" and "Can't shit on methadone" sort of posts...again, *hint hint*),
this thread could be a haven for any and all questions related to crack, crack smoking and injecting techniques and methods, health issues related to crack cocaine use, crack "culture" (one I certainly don't want to take any part in, despite my regular (but carefully managed) use of the drug), purifying rocks, and much more, like miscellaneous Qs such as best type of filter/screen to use, or how to get the most resin out of your pipe, shit like that.
Anyways, I'll start with the first questions, and some advice about smoking, to go with it. The questions: Does size and width of the pipe used for smoking matter significantly? Obviously a 4 inch long pipe, 1/3 inch diameter stem is going to be much more efficiently (and won't set your fingers and lips on fire) than the broken 1 inch remains of a glass rose stem. Right now I'm using this 6 inch long metal tube I found in my garage (its original purpose being completely unknown to me, as I found it just sitting there on a shelf in my garage), and the hits are significantly less harsh than when I was using a regular 4 inch (I think that's about what they typically measure) glass stem (having given my broken, 1-2 inch Pyrex stem to a friend, and shattering the last glass stem I was using as a pipe (a cheapo 6 dollar opaque blue meth bulb, with the bulb broken off (stepped on it accidentally, but luckily it only broke at the bulb end, leaving me with a tube perfect for smoking, about the same length and width as a typical shitty, weak, easily broken 99 cents glass rose), after telling myself, and my girlfriend that I was done with crack for good, at the time being more determined than ever, but the cravings quickly set in and I succumbed once more to the allure of the white demon barely a week past that day (when an addict wants what he wants, he'll get it no matter what, even with no proper pipe to smoke out of).
So, how could I get better hits out of this unusually long metal stem (I put this in italics because metal does indeed make a difference...can't see the smoke building up, can't see the resin collecting inside, so you have no clue what's stuck to the inside walls of the tube).
Is there any method more effective than the straight-shooter to get bigger hits? I've tried the bottle method once, rather unsuccessfully...any tips to make it work? I heard that's what they do over in the U.K. and other parts of Europe, where glass stems aren't as easily found in shops.
Now, on to the advice. A few pointers on smoking technique: over the months, I've gradually come to perfect my smoking technique (assuming I'm smoking out of a regular size glass pipe (preferably Pyrex, like my previous straight-shooter...but even those progressively break, with enough heat applied to heat constantly...), and now I can get close to 20 fat bellringers out of a gram of rock (which isn't ridiculously expensive, and with my technique, a gram can last me up to 8 hours
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(it does take at least a little willpower (i.e. not doing back to back hits and loading up dime rocks for each blast), but most of the time, if you hit it right, all your hits will provide you with a long-lasting, satisfying, smooth & mellow high after the intense initial rush subsides, being so chill that you won't even think or crave smoking anymore for up to an hour or more afterwards, although it's usually more in the 30 to 45 minute range, progressively getting shorter as you smoke more and fiend more...),
without even taking into account all the resin-smoking afterwards.
So anyways, here are the three stages of proper crack-smoking, in my experience:
Stage 1:
The pre-melt phase. Hold the stem, with a decent sized chunk (I use between 1/2 to 1/4 of a dime rock if I have plenty left, taking smaller hits as my stash slowly erodes away...) sitting on the chore, ideally not leaning against the sides of the tube, so as to melt all of the rock into the screen, not onto the sides of the glass. While doing this, just put the lighter on and off the rock, while twirling the stem back and forth (grip the pipe in the most comfortable way for you to twirl it gently without spilling the rock; you may have to switch your grip once you get to the smoking part). Now, when the rock has turned to goo and is nearing total meltdown
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(you have a narrow time window to do this, but fortunately it's not a crucial part of the process, just an extra tip to closing in on the ultimate, "blast-you-to-the-moon" deafening rush of joy (12-second joy, but joy nonetheless, disregarding its extreme ephemerality and pathetically pitiful reward-to-effort ratio, yet any basehead will go to these lengths to achieve that very, very temporary yet cosmically blissful state of consciousness),
slowly tilt the pipe down so it's more or less level (parallel to the ground), which brings us to step 2 on the path to achieve that perfect, mouthwateringly delicious blast of smoke and vapor into your lungs.
Stage 2:
While the pipe is level, keep twirling it back and forth, but hold the lighter underneath the stem, leaving about half an inch of space between the top of the flame and the bottom of your cylindrical tube-shaped smoking utensil. Make sure to have the flame right under the exact spot that the screen is at (sometimes I'll have the flame a little too far back, messing things up a bit). If done right, you'll hear the trademark crackling sound of the cocaine vaporizing; it is at this point that you start inhaling (I usually have my lips already wrapped around the stem at the end of the first step, ready to inhale), slowly, very slowly.
As you do this, start slowly tilting your pipe down towards the ground, making the resin melt and flow down the inside walls of the stem. When the stem is nearly perpendicular to the ground (there's no need for it to be at a perfect 90 degree angle to the floor, although I know some people who do that religiously every time they take a puff), put the flame about half an inch from the end of the opening of the tube, not directly on the tip (and therefore on the screen and melted gooey cola goodness), just a little below, so the ambient heat from the top of the flame vaporizes the crack some more, and the crackling sound gets more intense and rapid. Now keep putting the flame close to the tip and pulling it away every other second, occasionally putting a direct flame to the screen for a second or two.
To finish off your hit, let's move on to the third and final step...
Stage 3:
When you feel your throat stinging and/or you're almost out of breath or feel like you're about to cough all that precious smoke out, quickly tilt the pipe directly upwards and inhale real strong to get all the remaining smoke out of the pipe. Now comes into play the most crucial part about getting the strongest hit possible: holding it in. We all know weed is almost fully absorbed within the first 5 seconds of reaching your lungs, and holding a weed hit in is usually rather pointless, giving nothing more than an unnoticeable slightly stronger high, but mostly just an oxygen deprivation high/rush (that dizzy feeling you get from holding your breath too long, which can kind of feel like a buzz, in the same sense that sniffing glue can give you a "buzz").
However, with crack, holding it in makes all the difference in the world. If you take two smokers, have one load about 3 dollars of crack into his pipe, and the other load a 10-dollar rock, but the 3-dollar guy holds his hit in at least 20 seconds or more, while the one-hit dime rock smoking dude holds his hit in less than 5 seconds, guess who's gonna get higher? The former, of course. Plus, he also benefits from not having wasted much product, if any at all, by loading an amount of cocaine his lungs can comfortably handle in one hit, while the 10-dollar guy exhales his hit while the pipe is still smoking from having loaded a huge-ass hit.
So yeah, hold your motherfucking hits in as long as possible (not to the point where you turn blue and hit the floor passed out, but, as a rule of thumb, I always aim for a minimum of 20 seconds, but 30 if possible. Holding it in more than 30 seconds produces no real noticeable difference, but holding it in less than 20 seconds significantly reduces the intensity of the highly prized & desired initial rush
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(I enjoy a fat hit so much that I find it much more enjoyable, economic, and intensely pleasurable than shooting it, which requires at least half a dime of at least very decent stuff to get a good ear-ringing shot (so you buy a 20, and get 4 satisfying shots out of it, most likely all done within the hour...or you get a 20, and get 8-10 satisfying blasts out of it, and it can last you 3-4 hours easily if you have a bit of willpower on hand; now which one would you pick?)),
like the difference between holding it in 10 seconds and holding it in 20 seconds is huge, it feels like each second that passes gets you twice as high as you were the second before.
This concludes my "proper" crack-smoking tutorial/technique repertoire, feel free to correct me or include even more useful advice, any kind of feedback is appreciated. It saddens me that so many people immediately dismiss smoking and opt for shooting only (especially those who are already used to shooting, like most heroin addicts, for example, since heroin smoking is nowhere near as intense or enjoyable or economic as shooting, many people assume the same is true of crack cocaine...but it's not; even I, who always opts for the IV route whenever possible with pretty much any drug, and having had a year-long addiction to IV cocaine and year-long addiction to IV heroin (and many times combining both for a delicious speedball...another thing that takes a while to master, getting the correct amounts and ratio of heroin to cocaine down, for the perfect shot, I could write a whole tutorial about that too, if anybody asked me too, haha), settled for smoking crack 90% of the time rather than shooting it. I only shoot it when I have at least a gram, I'll do one or two nice fat shots a few hours apart, all the while smoking the rest. Oftentimes, I'll even regret shooting it, when it's all gone, thinking what I did in one shot could have contributed to at least 2-3 fat blasts from the pipe.
Anyways, I'm done saying what I had to say, and if a mod could make this thread the "official" crack discussion thread here on OD, that'd be nice too.
P.S. This entire post, which took around 45-50 minutes to write, without any breaks at all (except once to take a hit), was the result of a single large hit smoked 5 minutes prior to even getting on the computer, followed by a smaller hit (smoking the remains stuck on the chore, not even throwing in a new rock) about 40 minutes later or so after having started to write, and I'm still on cloud 9, not fiending at all for another blast. My technique works, trust me!
I must say this is very well written. Very detailed, very well organized, and explained in such a way, it’s a very easy read. Your steps didn’t jump around like a meth head stuck in a gas station bathroom. I must say. My favorite part is I learned something new today from your post. Lighting the bottom of the glass with the tip of the flame/not even exactly touching it even. Then after a few moments allowing the flame to directly heat the contents… man does that work fucking awesome lmao. Huge blasts, and you can make a solid sized blast from not a monster piece even! Thanks Man, I hope you have a wonderful week!
Was hoping for posts like the one above me would be more prevalent in this thread but the last 6 pages were primarily spats between a few people.
i've done prettty much every drug out there and all types of ROAs. i never had patience to convert cocaine into freebase so would usually tend to IV. I've only tried smoking crack a few times and i believe my smoking technique wasn't the greatest. Most I experienced was a wave like rush that swept across my body, but i know i can get more out of it than that.
i found a plug with some serious high quality crack and want to give it a go again. Is a glass stem with metal mesh the best way to still get the most out of it?
I just recently experimented with crack. It's more of a process than I thought to get the best experience from it. Yes straight shooter pipe with mesh screen is your best equipment. Start with smaller chunks and don't roast your goods. The goal is to find than sweet spot where the flame is close enough to the front of the pipe where your goods vaporize but your not sucking in the flame.
Took me a few grams to figure this out. Slowly inhale and rotate the pipe and turn slightly down towards the end of the hit. Hold it in a little 10-15 seconds and there you go.
Super euphoric when hit right, but you'll hit short more than you do right. Hard to explain but you'll get it when you are packing the next hit a minute after your last.
Be careful. This drug is the most compulsive, monkey hitting a button drug I've ever done. More of a binge drug and not an everyday thing. I like IV too, but I'm very disciplined. I can always put the needle down. Crack is a different animal.
Any advice on how to smoke rock that catches & stays on fire as soon as it starts vaping? I’m wasting a lot & I can’t inhale smoke deeply enough or hold it in long enough. I’m using a glass weed pipe with a metal bowl, with steel wool that I put a pile of fine flakes on (they vape much faster than a solid rock). Plenty of experience with rock and ime the stuff that burns like this is just not properly smokeable if even very careful flame application doesn’t prevent burning. But maybe someone has some tips?
getting a gram of cocaine. I've attempted to procure crack from smaller amounts, but heard you need a least a g to get decent yields. hoping i can prevail this time and let bells ring.
