Injecting blood to get high

wow what would the addicts think of next, few years back it was meth on the go in a small bottle.


A new report chronicles a disturbing trend in African cities called 'flashblood' - addicts injecting another's blood into their own veins to feed off their heroin high.

In a continent already plagued with AIDS and hepatitis, this technique poses the highest possible risk for contracting both.

A new study follows 169 heroin using women in Tanzania, and shows that those most likely to practice flashblood are vulnerable women who are heavy heroine users who live in short-term housing. Often, they are sex workers.

A high user will volunteer a syringe full of her own blood to others who going without drugs. Researchers said that more successful sex workers are more apt to do this for older sex workers who can't get work.They believe four centimetres - about a teaspoon - of blood will help them escape the pains of withdrawal.

Sheryl A. McCurdy, the University of Texas researchers who headed up the study, published in the journal Addiction, said there's no data showing how prevalent flashblood is, but said it's most common in East African countries, where it originated in 2005.

It's been reported in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, on the island of Zanzibar and in Mombasa, Kenya, according to the New York Times.

In most East African countries, only 3% to 5% of adults are infected with the AIDS virus. That's small compared to South Africa, where between 15% and 25% have the disease.

But infection rates are highest among heroin users, the NYT reports. In Tanzania, about 42% are infected and 64% of female addicts have AIDS, likely due to the prevalence of needle-using female sex workers.

While mostly women practice flashblood in Tanzania, a 2006 report in the African Journal of Drug and Alcohol Studies shows that mostly men do it in Zanzibar, where 9% of all needle-drug users reported having used the technique at some point.

McCurdy said she's not sure if people can actually get high off a teaspoon of someone else's blood.

“They say they do,” she said. “They pass out as if they just got a high. But I’ve talked to doctors who say that could be entirely the placebo effect.”

She added it's possible some heroin remains in the syringe when it's passed around.

Heroin in Africa is particularly strong, as it comes from relatively pure shipments on their way to Europe from Afghanistan and Asia.

However, a teaspoon of blood is more than enough to pass along the AIDS virus.

http://www.torontosun.com/news/world/2010/07/12/14690671.html