Route of administration
Route of administration (commonly abbreviated to ROA) refers to how you get a drug into your body. Each drug has a different bioavailability (short form: BA) for each route. You should research your drug and how it works with each route, measuring not only the BA of each, but also corresponding health risks, to determine which ROA to use. Many are far safer than others. For example, oral is the safest, rectal is almost as safe, snorting can damage the nose but is fairly safe, smoking some things can cause health problems and increase bad effects, and IV use (particularly without a wheel filter) is generally not good for your health, particularly in the long term.
[edit] List of ROAS
- Ingestion (generally longer-acting and less intense than most ROAs)
- Insufflation (intranasal/snorting)
- Hot rail (intranasal/smoking)
- Smoking (generally shorter-acting than other ROAs, but usually has short Come up time)
- Vaporizing (same as smoking; some drugs can not be smoked and MUST be vaporized, such as opium, heroin, methamphetamine and to a lesser extent freebase cocaine)
- Intravenous (great rush; makes you instantly hardcore)
- Intramuscular (see above, but without rush)
- Rectal (not gay unless balls are touching; provides some rush and excellent BA)
- Sublingual (beneath tongue; think LSD)
- Buccal (through the cheeks; fentanyl lollipop)
- Transdermal (fentanyl patch)
The best ROA for each drug is a subject of much discussion on /opi/ and to a lesser extent, /stim/. For example, some people say you can't be a real man unless you're willing to try rectal, whereas others draw the line at sticking a spike in your vein, and you know things aren't quite the same, when I'm rushing on my run, and I feel just like Jesus' son.
[edit] Attitudes to various ROAs
Interestingly, many groupies of /weed/ believe that anyone who uses an ROA aside from smoking or oral is about to sell their mother for a dimebag of the drugs, whereas weed is not a drug.
