"Chasing the dragon" (traditional Chinese: ??; simplified Chinese: ??; pinyin: zhu? lóng; Jyutping: zeoi1 lung4) is a slang phrase of Cantonese origin from Hong Kong referring to inhaling the vapor from a heated solution of morphine, heroin, oxycodone, opium, or ya ba (a pill containing caffeine and methamphetamine). The "chasing" occurs as the user gingerly keeps the liquid moving in order to keep it from overheating and burning up too quickly, on a heat conducting material such as aluminium foil. The moving smoke is chased after with a tube through which the user inhales. The process may be referred to as a "foily" in Australian English.
Video Chasing the dragon
Health
This method of intake decreases or eliminates certain risks of heroin use while increasing others, such as the transmission of HIV, hepatitis, and other diseases through needle sharing, the introduction of skin bacteria to the blood stream due to non-sterile injection, and the stress that injection puts on veins cannot occur. Additionally, a small puff can be inhaled as a method of gauging the strength of the heroin. This may be protective from the risk of overdose. Finally, the lungs can act to filter out adulterants that otherwise would pass directly into the bloodstream. One of the most common of these adulterants, talc, has an apparently greater potential to damage the lungs (as well as other organs, such as the kidneys) when present in the bloodstream, than when inhaled . However, in any case, it is always harmful to expose the lungs to any kind of smoke or heated vapor, and inhaling heroin itself is more likely to lead to toxic leukoencephalopathy than is injecting.
Maps Chasing the dragon
See also
- Chasing the dragon in popular culture
References
External links
- Heroin smoking by 'chasing the dragon': origins and history
- Chase The Dragon by Chris Walter: GFY Press: PunkBooks.com
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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