I wrote this article about 13 years ago. It was shortly after my second attempt to kick the Nubain habit. It took one more fall off the wagon for me to finally stop it once and for all; and I haven't touched it since. Last night, on the "Off Topic" radio show, I was asked about my prior Nubain habit and it brought back some horrible memories. Since then, I started a thread on the MUSCLE CENTRAL forum that reached out to fellow addicts. It was so positively received that I thought you might find this oldie but goodie interesting.....
"This thing upon me, crawling like a snake,
It's not death, but dying will solve its power.
In some cheap room, they will find me there,
And never know my name, my meaning,
Nor the pleasure of my escape."
- Charles Bukowski
It's a beautiful summer afternoon in Malibu, but I'm lying in bed. The TV is on, my eyes are shut, my head is splitting and I swear my skin is crawling off my body. That trite frying egg public service announcement of your brain on drugs is audible from the tube, the image is so vivid in my mind I needn't bother open my eyes. I provide the pictures as the ad drones on....
Such irony. I can vividly remember the anti-drug films I watched in horror as a kid; showing those sawed off eyedroppers the junkies used to boot up. Cooking up their fix in a spoon over a candle and then wrapping a belt around their arm to get a vein to pop out so they could hit it. I grimaced when they did. Aghhhhh!! How could anyone do that?
I never needed a belt. No-sir-ee, the veins were a dime a dozen, and I used brand spankin' new insulin needles of a far finer gauge than that ludicrous eyedropper. I was also pulling my fix out of a multi-use pharmaceutical bottle; no grungy teaspoon swirling over a candle. Heroin was far more diabolical. Yet here I am willing to tie my wrists to the bedposts. I seem to remember that scene too; the guy in his underwear, restrained at all four corners, writhing in his sweat soaked sheets. It's ridiculous. I know how he feels.
A lot of you guys do too. We call it "no-bain." When the Nubain runs out and your guy doesn't have more, or if you're kicking it for good, or for a while.....
My skin inches further. I'm so absorbed in the ebb and flow of a string of sensations I could never have believed existed - I barely noticed when Shelley [Beattie] walked into the room. Now I had to keep it together. She can't find out now; I'm almost done. Just two more days and I'll be free. She hops up on the bed and runs her hand up my arm-- my skin bolts, the hairs on my neck stand up. I'm biting the inside of my cheeks.
"What's wrong?" She asks.
I tried to be creative - she saw right through me - it wasn't pretty.....
Take away the delivery method and the drug is the least lurid of vices, really. Unfortunately it is physically addictive. But so is alcohol. At least Nubain warns you on the package insert:
Abrupt discontinuation of Nalbuphine HCL following prolonged use has been followed by symptoms of narcotic withdrawal, ie., abdominal cramps, nausea and vomiting, rhinorrhea, lacrimation, restlessness, anxiety, elevated temperature, and piloerection.
A bottle of tequila doesn't warn you about the dry heaves and the shakes you'll have when you go cold turkey after a few years of continuous use. You can't OD on Nubain either, (nalbuphine hydrochloride is an agonist-antagonist analgesic making it kind of self-leveling). You can't say that about alcohol. You could drink yourself to death tonight.
The sad thing is that however sterile the environment or how health conscious the user is; they're still a junkie. Four or five hours after your last shot you start jonesing. In true junkie fashion, you must go to your bottle for a fix. Your bathroom becomes a shooting gallery.
The junkie image is so hard for us to accept because Nubain users don't look like the scrawny strung out heroin addicts depicted in our sixth grade propaganda films. They are big strapping people that work out every day, take their vitamins and eat lots of clean healthy food. But, several hours overdue for a shot and the differences mean little. At that point, the junkie is a person with just one thing on his mind.
For those who don't know, Nubain, chemically known as nalbuphine, is a potent analgesic (its potency is equivalent to morphine on a milligram basis), used for the relief of moderate to severe pain-- the very same pain a bodybuilder experiences if he's training as hard as he should be. A quarter of a milliliter, taken intravenously, before you hit the gym will enable you to train so far into your quitting zone that you just have to grow. In addition to its pain killing effect, Nubain is also thought to be highly thermogenic as well as anti-catabolic. It's a bodybuilder's dream drug.
The funny thing is though, you'll never hear of a bodybuilder sitting in front of the TV, wishing he had a shot of Deca. In addition to its ergogenic effect on your training, Nubain also gets you high; invitingly high. Doing whatever it takes to win rarely feels good. Nubain is exceptional in that regard.
In reality though, one can't enjoy the virtues of the drug without delivering it. In this case that involves some pretty sinister tackle. It's not much of a deterrent though. Once you realize the reward outweighs the apprehension, you won't be stopping for a while! Feeling rotten if you don't shoot up is a powerful motivator. One far greater than any image I grew up with.
Some athletes stay oiled year round; some don't. Unfortunately, the men and women who use "bain" to train gradually use bain to maintain. Four, five, six times a day is a reality many of us end up living. Track marks are an added disgrace. No matter how many veins you have sticking out; you always manage to hit the same few spots. Make up works to some degree, but mid length sleeves are more innocuous. Just ask a junkie.
So why take it? Why does a chicken cross the road? So many bodybuilders do. I was introduced to Nubain by Dan Duchaine thinking it was just his little discovery. As time went by, I found myself on the ever-expanding common ground of many of my fellow gym members. I can't believe how thoroughly this drug has permeated our culture. Everyone's heard of it. Most steroid dealers stock Nubain right along with GH, IGF, and steroids. A dealer knows that most guys buying contest stacks are also looking for Nubain.
Ever wonder how drug dealers obtain huge amounts of U.S. made pharmaceutical drugs such as, among other things, Nubain? The Latin American stuff is pretty easy to understand. The drug laws in Mexico, Central, and South America regarding steroids are much slacker than here in the U.S. It all comes down to effective smuggling. But, authentic U.S. made drugs must be falling off a truck somewhere. Nubain is not scheduled as is its morphine cousin and, although it's illegal to possess without a prescription, doing so is not a felony like the schedule-III drugs are. So are we to then assume that all the black-market American-made drugs out there are stolen?
Large pharmaceutical companies such as Astra and Dupont sell billions of dollars worth of product worldwide; losing track of a few thousand dollars worth of Nubain is a problem they're not likely to solve any time soon. Nubain is here to stay much to the delight of the dealers because each new customer is a long-term annuity.
The two most common manufacturers of Nubain are the aforementioned Dupont and Astra Pharmaceuticals. I called both to try to find someone who could answer a simple question such as, "How can so much of this stuff disappear out your back door?" I was shuffled between departments and told I would get return calls by someone in public relations. Dupont was basically non-compliant, while a representative from Astra did return my call. The media rep had no comment as to how so much of their product could end up in the wrong hands. She explained there were policies in effect in their shipping department to control product disbursements and basically passed the responsibility off to the company's numerous distributors. Any further comment would be handled by the company's parent office in Sweden, for which they only had only a fax number. I used it, and as of yet, I've gotten no reply.
Here's the bottom line on Nubain. I hate to say it, but anyone spending tens of thousands of dollars every season competing at the upper echelon wouldn't hesitate for a moment including Nubain in their enormous contest stack. He who does choose to step up to the plate will decidedly have an advantage. However, he also avails himself to the very real probability that its use can easily be perverted into something dreadful.
Those who use Nubain for recreation are not immune to drug dependence either. Most long-term users manage to stretch a 10 cc bottle out for about 10 days. Four shots a day for 10 days costs about a hundred bucks. That's an extra $300.00 a month to add to your nut. Not to mention, you must also be willing to accept the fact that if you miss your shot you're going to get sleepy, sneezy, headachy, nauseous and, in general, feel like crap, Jonesing for more. If you can handle the jones for three or four days you'll be free. But can you really ever stop? It ain't easy.
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