There’s no drug I can think of that is present in the blood in such great concentrations that a transfusion would communicate the high, certainly not without killing the donator or the donatee. Nor does receiving mismatched blood result in anything resembling a high. I concede that the placebo effect can do many remarkable things.

However, given that NYT’s citations are decidedly hazy, I’m more inclined to believe this is a rumor that got too big for its britches. Maybe a pharmacist out there can convince me otherwise?

Yes, this makes sense. People are not actually getting high from this, so I doubt that very many people are trying to get high from injecting other people's blood directly.

> Unusual injection practices in Pakistan include selling half-used, blood-infused heroin syringes. (link to https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19558668/)

This is the headline, I think. Street vendors sell hits of a syringe that may have already been stuck in someone else. Every time the needle enters a blood vessel, some of the blood goes back into the needle. It's not that users are asking for "blood-infused" syringes, it's that the vendors are sticking multiple people with a single syringe and now 50% of intravenous drug users in Sargodha have HIV.

> During 2005, a new blood-sharing practice, “flashblood,” emerged among female IDUs in Dar es Salaam. Flashblood is a syringe full of blood drawn back immediately after initial injection that is passed to a companion to inject. Those practicing flashblood believe that the syringe full of about 4cm3 of such blood contains enough heroin to avoid the pains of withdrawal.

I guess it is really about the same as "tranq" (xylazine), in the US. That stuff is pretty horrifying.

Back before I quit, PCP was the drug boogeyman. That's almost quaint, now.