It’s cheap and easily available. You don’t need a prescription, and the bottle you get at the drugstore is almost certainly pure and unadulterated. Yeah, you have to be really careful about the dosage, but it still seems safer than street drugs. It does produce an interesting mental effect, which a person might be able to learn to like. No worse than your first martini, which certainly didn’t taste good.
Don’t you need a prescription for the syringes? If you’re willing to deal with shady characters to get illegal syringes, then you’re already breaking the law so you might as well go the whole way and get something stronger than insulin.
Assuming this isn’t a joke, it’s because “druggies” (which either means human beings or inquisitive people, if one wants to pick a meaningful yet not contradictory definition) probably don’t want to be hypoglycemic, at least more than once - I can understand someone wanting to try it once just to see what it is like, I’d be up for that if I knew how to do it safely, but I don’t.
Compared to other altered states what’s the attraction? And furthermore, where’s the “feel good” stuff?
p.s. I read somewhere that insulin was a practically undectable poison. I love the way that that is apparently “safer” than street drugs. I’d be interested in hearing how you can kill yourself with, say, ecstasy, if you’re not an idiot and you don’t have an alergic reaction.
Bolding mine because I had no idea that you don’t need a script for it. I’m amazed.
As to syringes, I have no idea why people share them because I can get them for very cheap at the feed store. People probably won’t want to use horse syringes in their arms, but the ones I use have tiny sharp needles and cost about 10 cents each when I buy a hundred pack.
You don’t need a prescription for insulin or the syringes. The hypoglycemic feeling isn’t blissful, but it is edgy. By druggies, I thought it was obvious that I meant people who use drugs for recreation, out of curiosity, who seek altered mental/physical states, and/or are trying to hurt themselves without immediately killing themselves, i.e., people who are not seeking to treat a medical condition. No, this is not a joke question; it’s something I’ve wondered for years. Insulin syringes are calibrated in really tiny increments, so a person could fine tune the experience. If you felt like you had gotten too close to the edge, some glucose tablets, orange juice, or a glucagon injection would bring you right back. Like I said, this doesn’t seem any more dangerous than ingesting or injecting something that someone cooked up in their garage. And insulin is legal, for Pete’s sake.
From experience, I can tell you the hypoglycemic experience is not a pleasant one.
My body goes into panic mode. Acute anxiety, racing pulse, blurred vision, increased respiration, mental acuity fades. And once I ingest some glucose the recovery period lasts for about 20 minutes and includes profuse sweating, extreme hunger, fatigue and physical weakness.
Injecting the correct dosage of insulin has no noticeable side effects.
Sweet!! I can totally relate to the OP’s wonder at why ‘druggies’ wouldn’t want all these things! I mean, hello; par-tay! 
I’d love to know where you find “cheap” insulin. When I am in my Medicare coverage gap, I find insulin to be horrendously expensive. It can be at least $200 for a month’s supply for me.
Is this a serious question? 
Ooook well you see people use recreational drugs for the effects they produce, but not every drug that is psychedelic produces effects anyone would find pleasurable. They are many blood pressure medications which will alter your mood and energy level, but not in a way anyone finds pleasurable.
Nobody finds hypoglycemia pleasurable, which is why no one uses insulin recreationally. Also it is very dangerous, you can die from an overdose of insulin.
You don’t need a prescription for syringes? Seriously? I use insulin syringes (for a medication other than insulin) and they’re prescribed. I also use bigger syringes for B12, and those are also prescribed. I’d be surprised if I could walk into a drugstore and just ask for syringes.
If they’re available over the counter, then why do junkies share syringes and why do we always hear about legal battles over supplying free syringes to addicts? I can get a box of 100 of the B12 syringes (by prescription) for I think $10 or $20 (my insurance won’t cover them).
Maybe it depends on the state?
I’ll add that, because of this thread I just looked at the box and realized that I’ve been using expired syringes for the last 6 months. :smack:
I know you don’t need a prescription for the syringes. They do cost money, though, and can sometimes be hard to get- some pharmacists won’t sell them to you without quizzing you about the details of whatever condition requires said syringes.
But you don’t need a prescription for insulin? Do you just go up to the pharmacy window and go, “Insulin, please!” and they’ll sell it to you?
I hate having a low blood sugar episode. There is not one single pleasurable experience in the whole package, if you ask me. I don’t even enjoy eating the sugar to bring my blood sugar back up, because I can’t take the time to enjoy it, it’s just scarf the glucose down as quickly as possible.
I think this would be the case. FWIW, in my jurisdiction, insulin is available only by prescription, but syringes are not.
In every state besides Alaska*, regular animal derived insulin is a “behind the counter” drug - technically OTC/nonprescription, but it’s not generally over the counter like Tylenol, out in the open for you to pick up and take to the cashier. It’s behind the pharmacy counter able to be given out at the pharmacists’ discretion. (Synthetic insulins are rx only.) This is, as far as I know, unofficial at this point in time, as regular animal derived insulin is technically just OTC. But the FDA is considering making a whole new class of drugs like this, and scuttlebutt is that even more diabetes medications would be included under a new paradigm: things that don’t need a doctor’s prescription, but a pharmacist’s input and a knowledgeable consumer:Diabetes Blog: Diabetes Information, News & Resources
Regulations.gov
But I think the real answer to the OP’s question is: because people don’t like being hypoglycemic. It isn’t fun in either an “upper” or “downer” sense of the drug seeking rush. It’s not going to make you hallucinate fun stuff. It’s going to make you feel like utter crap until you fix it.
There are lots of legal plants that could be abused by druggies but aren’t, too. 'Cause not every mind altering experience is a fun one.
*Apparently; I didn’t know this until this thread led me to do some googling, and I’m rather shocked myself.
I don’t understand why people keep asking if this is a serious question.
In a diabetic, especially an insulin-dependent diabetic, acute hypoglycemia caused by too much insulin in the system, is extremely unpleasant, for one thing, because it is a life threatening situation. In that person, a correct dose of insulin will have no effect.
In a non-diabetic, it seems to me that a slight dose of insulin would produce the feeling a normal, non-diabetic person gets at the beginning of a dip in blood sugar. This is not a life threatening situation, as a non-diabetic’s liver will dump glycogen into the bloodstream to prevent a crash. Hypoglycemia in a non-diabetic is something of a heightened state. As I said earlier, it’s not bliss, but geez, don’t people experiment with all kinds of substances and get to a place where they seek the experience a drug produces, even if it wasn’t initially pleasant?
Of course, an overdose can kill you. But isn’t that true of street drugs of unknown provenance times ten?
Where I live you can buy insulin and syringes without a prescription. Yes, you can walk up to the pharmacy window and ask for insulin (there are different kinds that act in the body in different ways). My late H was insulin-despendent. We would get a prescription so insurance would pay for it, but you did not need a prescription. IIRC years ago, you did need a prescription, but that changed about 15-20 years ago.
When I said it was cheap, I meant relatively cheap compared to recreational drugs, not cheap compared to a candy bar.
ETA: Being acutely hypoglycemic is not pleasant, but being a little bit hypoglycemic is an edgy, heightened state.
Because people who want to get high, want to get fuckin’ high, man. The kind of high that feeling bad afterwards was still worth the high. The kind of people who want some “edgy” state will just take some shrooms, or some E, 'cause those won’t try to kill you and you don’t have to inject them. People don’t want to stick themselves with needles unless they have to. Junkies doing injections didn’t start out doing injections, they’ve resorted to injections after swallowing, snorting, and smoking have all stopped working. That’s why people keep asking if you’re serious, because the thought of someone deliberately sticking themselves with insulin injections just for some weird feeling that might be “edgy” but will more likely make them just feel like shit for not much of a payoff is just not how anyone gets to the point of stabbing themselves with needles. I don’t know how else to explain it to you.
No, recreational drug users as a rule are not just seeking an altered state but one that is subjectively enjoyable. They are simply not going to keep using a substance just because it feels strange, as you said insulin is OTC and is not abused which should tell you something. I’d imagine people have experimented with insulin, none who did so enjoyed it enough to spread the word so it isn’t widely used.
Its a bit like asking how people that enjoy using dildos as sex toys don’t try using forks more often.
EDIT:Drug users are not using drugs to feel strange but for euphoria, a substance with no euphoric qualities is not going to be a hit.
Druggies, huh? Heh.
I can’t answer for Thelma Lou, but I dare say, the way you explained it seems perfect. Right up until that last sentence where your post revealed the same kind of passive agressive eyeroll vibe as a lot of the “is this a serious question?!??” posts.