Strange Routes of Administration for Substances of Abuse

Patterns of Routes of Administration and Drug Tampering for Nonmedical Opioid Consumption: Data Mining and Content Analysis of Reddit Discussions

“…We applied the methodology described in the “Vocabulary Expansion” section to extract and expand domain-specific vocabularies and to characterize the temporal unfolding of interest in different opioid substances, routes of administration, and drug-tampering methodologies. We started from a review of the relevant medical research, collecting an initial set of terms referring to the most common opioid substances, ROA [ 6 , 10 , 31 , 34 , 38 , 39 , 41 , 63 , 64 ], and drug-tampering methods [ 41 , 63 ]. We expanded the original set with neighboring terms in a low-dimensional embedding space, and the outputs were reviewed and organized by a domain expert.…”

“…ROA vocabulary included and categorized both medical terms, adding terms scarcely considered in previous studies, like “vaping,” and nonmedical or unconventional administration terms, such as “chewing,” “snorting,” “smoking,” and “boofing” [ 39 ]. Our taxonomy also enabled us to disambiguate common primary ROA, such as injection and ingestion, into specific secondary ones, like subcutaneous [ 39 ] and sublingual administrations.…”

“…Finally, our study shows that rectal administration is a viable and unforeseen option for the nonmedical use of some opioids, resulting in higher recreational effects, especially with hydromorphone (OR 5.2, 95% CI 4.6-6.0), morphine, and oxymorphone. Rectal administration showed high correlations with the dissolving, grinding, and soaking drug-tampering methods, possible indicators of an unconventional route of administration, largely overlooked, which involves dissolving the substances in liquid water or alcohol (ie, “butt-chugging”) [ 39 , 75 ]. Subcutaneous administration was only weakly associated with morphine, suggesting that the practice of “skin popping” [ 38 ], which consists of injecting the substance in the tissues under the skin, is potentially not widespread.…”

“…Pharmacology research is interested in understanding the consequences of various routes of administration (ROA), that is, the paths by which a substance is taken into the body [ 6 , 31 , 32 ], due to the different effects and potential health-related risks tied to them [ 10 , 33 , 34 ]. Researchers have estimated the prevalence of routes of administration for nonmedical prescription opioids [ 9 , 31 , 32 , 35 ] and opiates [ 36 , 37 ]; however, they rarely consider less common ROA, such as rectal, transdermal, or subcutaneous administration [ 32 , 38 ], leaving the mapping of nonmedical and nonconventional administration behaviors greatly unexplored [ 39 , 40 ]. Many of these studies [ 31 , 32 , 35 ] acknowledge that drug tampering, that is, the intentional chemical or physical alteration of medications [ 41 ], is an important constituent of drug abuse.…”

Patterns of Routes of Administration and Drug Tampering for Nonmedical Opioid Consumption: Data Mining and Content Analysis of Reddit Discussions (Preprint)

“…Pharmacology research is interested in understanding the consequences of various routes of administration (ROA), that is, the paths by which a substance is taken into the body [6,31,32], due to the different effects and potential health-related risks tied to them [10,33,34]. Researchers have estimated the prevalence of routes of administration for nonmedical prescription opioids [9,31,32,35] and opiates [36,37]; however, they rarely consider less common ROA, such as rectal, transdermal, or subcutaneous administration [32,38], leaving the mapping of nonmedical and nonconventional administration behaviors greatly unexplored [39,40]. Many of these studies [31,32,35] acknowledge that drug tampering, that is, the intentional chemical or physical alteration of medications [41], is an important constituent of drug abuse.…”