[thallium chick]

what are the negative and positive attributes of Codiene?

is it comparable to any narcotic???

[Limpet Chicken]

Codeine is an analgesic of the opioid family, a pain reliever for mild to moderate pain, I believe most passes the blood-brain barrier, although some of the amount ingested is demethylated to morphine in the liver before being absorbed.

WWW.the-hive.ws for more information on codeine, and its extraction and demethylation in the lab for further reading

[jdurg]

Codeine, by definition, is a narcotic.  It is a naturally occuring compound found in the resinous 'goo' of the Poppy Plant.  The 'goo', formally known as Opium, consists of Codeine, Morphine, and various other organic compounds.  The "opiates" (which is the name for all narcotic compounds derived from raw opium) are VERY powerful analgesics and cough suppressants.  Their benefits are that they can severely reduce the amount of pain somebody is feeling, and give them an "ethereal" feeling.  It can also control severe coughing and sedate the user as well.  The drawbacks are that the opiates form very strong bonds in the brain which leads to immense addictions.  These addictions are so severe that someone who routinely uses the opiates can literally die if they suddenly quit taking them.  They will go into major convulsions and severe damage can result from those convulsions.  Also, the opiates cause major reactions with the digestive tract of most people.  While they can relieve your pain, they can also give you severe diarrhea and nausea.  (When I was given codeine for my broken leg many years ago, it made me feel really good, but gave me horrible diarrhea.  There's nothing worse than being on crutches; being in la-la land; and having the runs).  

The benefits and drawbacks of the opium compounds are pretty much even.  Thankfully, due to modern chemistry scientists have been able to develop stronger pain relievers which don't really have as many drawbacks as the raw opiates do.  (Though one of these "modern marvels" turned into the worst chemical mankind has even known.  In the late 1800's, doctors were concerned that their patients were all becoming addicted to morphine.  Back then, morphine was a common treatment for people with a bad cough or flu-like symptoms.  So chemists at the time tried to devise a form of morphine that would supress the cough, but not have all the bad side effects.  They thought they succeeded when they created diacetylmorphine.  Diacetylmorphine is the best cough supressant known to man, and was easy to make from raw morphine.  Because of this, they called their new compound 'Heroin' since it was a hero to mankind.  Sadly, there was no FDA back then so the MASSIVE addictive properties of the drug weren't discovered until it was too late.  Now heroin is one of the worst things to ever grace mankind).

[thallium chick]

thanks alot both of you for replying.

[Nuke]

People dont die from opiate withdrawl unless they have another serious medical condition that could become problematic with the cessation of opiates.  Allthough it can be a living hell ie. puking all over the place shitting and pissing yourself,etc opiate withdrawl alone isnt life threatening.  Alcohol and barbituate withdrawl is though.  codeine will only give you the runs if you stop using it,  codeine use causes constipation (not nearly as much as say heroin), cessation will cause diarhea.

[limpet chicken]

Codeine also causes histamine release I have read, I get quite a lot of itching off say, 300mg of codeine, but not nearly as much off an equipotent dose of opium or other opiates, although I am not too much of an opiate person myself and rarely use opiates of any sort, and have absolutely zero tolerance.

I think codeine is one of the worst for itching, I get very little of an itch off a nice smoke of homegrown opium, presumably as the codeine present is not active via smoking.

Just a little, hopefully helpful anecdote, I don't encourage opiate use in any way.