In movies and TV you see heroin users insert a needle, pull blood out, and then inject. 1. Is that how people really do it, and 2 why do they mix blood first?
In: Biology
I was a medic for 2 years.
To make sure the needle is inside the vein.
If the needle was inside muscle or fat, there would not be enough blood to come out.
If you tried to put a lot of stuff there, you could get hurt, it’s going to be painful, and the stuff will take a long time to affect you as all the stuff is stuck in that place and not flowing around the body.
Many (most?) needles have a tiny chamber built in that fills with blood if you hit the vein. So you don’t even need to pull on the syringe.
The pressure of the vein is usually enough, often they tie a rubber band on the arm to make it pop up and increase the pressure further.
This also happens for both the thing you plug in a vacuum tube for taking blood samples, and the thing they use to put in large amounts of fluids.
So medically, “mixing the blood” has little to do with it.
Latest Answers