Another overdose, family member, trying to figure out how...benzomorphan?

[thefed]

A young, 28 yr old mother was found dead yesterday. Coroner called and stated it was due to high levels of benzomorphan in blood, no autopsy.

Her husband is a wreck, and we're trying to piece it together. I've suspected she's an opiate abuser for a while as I've seen it first hand. Her father-in-law, snooping, found a script for oxycodone (couldve been oxycontin, percocet etc) but that's a different class of drugs

she acted very suspicious, secretive, was spending tons of $$, hanging around with wrong crowd etc...and we were trying to intervene.

whats the most likely benzomorphan related compound she could have been getting her hands on? she did have a major accident 10 yrs ago and likely still got scripts for that.

her husband might be holding back other compounds, but this is all we know for sure.

any ideas?

[Leonidas]

Condolences for your family's loss.

My best recollection (coupled with some Googling) says that Benzomorphan class drugs include the once infamously abused "T's and Blues". Two drugs - Pentazocine and Pyribenzamine - sold in pairs to heroin users as a substitute fix during times when they couldn't find real dope. They were known as T's and Blues because pentazocine was sold under the brand name Talwin, (T) and Pyribenzamine was a blue tab. Also called Tops and Bottoms, Teddies and Betties, Tricycles and Bicycles, etc.

All that was back in the late 70's and early 80's. Users crushed the two pills until they got a powder and then liquified it to make it injectible. As I recall, the Talwin was supposed to be a synthetic, non-addictive morphine like drug, but when mixed with Pyribenzamine it intensified the high. It was a decent substitute for Heroin in times of no Heroin. Almost every user was someone who was already addicted to Heroin and just used T's and Blues when the drug of choice wasn't available.

There were some who came to prefer the mixture to Heroin, but they were pretty rare.

The manufacturer added a compound to Talwin to ruin the high if it was injected.

Drugs like Oxycodone and the Benzomorphans are all opioid analgesics, and are all subject to abuse.

[thefed]

yeah that's the thing...doesnt seem talwins are very commonly prescribed, or abused, any longer as they added the compound making it not euphoric when injected.

i guess it's possible to o-d if you take enough of anything

wierd thing....the family is out today making arrangements, im at the home watching baby with help.

i go outside, and get in car on street to move closer to house. 2000-ish bmw pulls onto street, stops behind me....reading a map or something. i pull up to house and park, bmw creeps up. i wait, he stops. i get out, he continues on slowly past house with passenger window down taking pictures as he goes. manilla folder and computer paper on his lap. got back in truck to follow him, out of curiosity, and he hi-tailed it down an alley

wtf? detective? reporter? banker? medical examiner's office?

i got the plate and did a reverse search in a known reliable database and got nothing

[Leonidas]

Quote:

Originally Posted by thefed yeah that's the thing...doesnt seem talwins are very commonly prescribed, or abused, any longer as they added the compound making it not euphoric when injected.

If you ever spend any time with these folks you will be astounded by the amount of work that goes into being an addict. The applied pharmacology used to get through the day is Rube Goldberg like (Rube Goldberg machine - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

A typical day might involve four or more different drugs, taken at different times, in a ballet of sorts so they can maintain a high, not suffer withdrawal symptoms, not be too high to go out to earn money to feed the high, and then fight off all the side effects that go along with all the drugs.

At one point I oversaw what we called "The Doctor Squad", that investigated diversion of legitimate pharmaceuticals to illegal use. Much of that work ran in waves of certain drugs being widely abused, but there were always seldom-seen-abused drugs that were cropping up from time to time in arrests. It was because an abuser will take what they can get when they get it and where they can get it. And in the case of diverted legitimate drugs, sometimes that means they go far afield from their preferred drugs just so they can make it through the day. In some cases those stopgap measures become the drug of choice.

Quote:

Originally Posted by thefed 2000-ish bmw pulls onto street, stops behind me....reading a map or something. i pull up to house and park, bmw creeps up. i wait, he stops. i get out, he continues on slowly past house with passenger window down taking pictures as he goes. manilla folder and computer paper on his lap. got back in truck to follow him, out of curiosity, and he hi-tailed it down an alley wtf? detective? reporter? banker? medical examiner's office? i got the plate and did a reverse search in a known reliable database and got nothing

Dope, dope fiends and tons of drama all go hand-in-hand.