…like in a spoon, does that automatically mean it is injected? Or could it be inhaled or something?
Not necessarily. Without going into specifics, impure (cut) cocaine can be cooked with a few other ingredients to extract the pure cocaine. It is then smokable, no needles involved.
Thank you for replying to my thread.
As mentioned above, this is how cocaine powder is reduced down into crack or freebase, which is generally smoked. My high school chemistry knowledge tells me that the introduction of a base (baking powder) in the cooking neutralizes the acid (hydrochloride) in the original powder, but I am no chemist.
thank you bobot, I didn’t know that.
Yes, in that case, cocaine hydrochloride is neutralized with baking soda (sodium bicarbonate, a base), to leave pure cocaine base, a term meaning its not attached to an acid, like many other drugs are. For example, Benadryl is diphenhydramine hydrochloride - this helps the drug to have a positive and a negative component, which makes it more soluble, stable, and has other benefits.
So with cocaine that has been “freebased,” as they say, it leaves you with a non-water soluble version of cocaine, or more importantly, one that will burn/smoke at the proper temperature (you can smoke cocaine HCl, its just wildly inefficient).
And to answer the main question, not including the cocaine -> crack conversion, probably 99% of the time a drug is cooked up in a spoon (of which, 99% of the time, the drug will be heroin), it is for injection, though people also use this method when they have heroin that’s not a powder, but in tar form (which is what you commonly find in the west/southwest). People will “cook” it with some water, make it a liquid, then “snort” that liquid. Its mainly needlephobes that do this, and I tell you, it tastes and feels* disgusting*, and has a disgusting drip/aftertaste. So I’ve heard.