Beginner FAQ: storage, reconstitution and your first two weeks

Pinning this because the same six questions come up every week and the answers keep getting buried. I am not a doctor and nothing here is medical advice. If you have a health condition, are on other medication, or are pregnant, go talk to a clinician before you order anything. WHAT YOU NEED TO BUY FIRST Bacteriostatic water (not sterile water, not saline). Bac water has 0.9 percent benzyl alcohol in it, which is what stops bacteria growing once you have punctured the vial. Sterile water has no preservative, so a reconstituted vial in sterile water is a single-day item at best. Insulin syringes, 29G to 31G, 0.5 ml (50 unit) or 1 ml (100 unit) barrels. 8 mm needle length is plenty for subcutaneous. Alcohol swabs. One for the vial stopper, one for the skin. Yes, every single time. A sharps container. An old plastic bottle with a screw cap works if you cannot get a proper one. RECONSTITUTION MATHS This is where people get themselves into trouble, so slow down here. Your vial is labelled in milligrams. Your syringe is marked in units. Units are hundredths of a millilitre on a 100-unit syringe. So 100 units is 1 ml, 50 units is 0.5 ml, 10 units is 0.1 ml. Worked example. A 10 mg vial reconstituted with 2 ml of bac water gives you 5 mg per ml, which is 5000 mcg per ml. One unit (0.01 ml) is therefore 50 mcg. If you want 500 mcg, you draw 10 units. Second example, because BPC-157 usually ships as 5 mg. Put 2.5 ml into a 5 mg vial and you have 2 mg/ml, so 1 unit is 20 mcg and a 250 mcg dose is 12.5 units. If that half unit annoys you, put 2 ml in instead: 2.5 mg/ml, 1 unit is 25 mcg, and 250 mcg lands on exactly 10 units. Choose your dilution so your usual dose sits on a round number. It removes a whole category of mistake. The volume of water you add does not change the amount of peptide. It only changes the concentration. More water is not weaker medicine, it is a bigger number of units for the same dose. HOW TO MIX IT Swab both stoppers. Draw your bac water. Angle the needle so the water runs down the inside glass wall of the peptide vial rather than jetting straight onto the powder. Then leave it. Do not shake it. Swirl gently if anything is still sitting there after a minute or two. Lyophilised peptide is delicate and shaking it can shear the chains. STORAGE, AND THE LOAD-SHEDDING PROBLEM Unreconstituted vials are fine in the fridge, and the lyophilised powder is more forgiving than people assume. Once mixed, fridge at roughly 2 to 8 degrees and use within about 30 days for most of the common ones. If you are on stage 4 or worse, a closed fridge holds temperature for around four hours without power. Two 2 litre bottles of frozen water in the fridge body will stretch that considerably. Do not put vials in the freezer to compensate, freezing a reconstituted peptide and thawing it repeatedly is worse than a warm afternoon. FIRST TWO WEEKS Start at the low end of whatever range you have read. Change one thing at a time. Keep a note of dose, site and time on your phone. When you post here in week six asking why something is not working, that note is the difference between a useful answer and eight people guessing. One needle, one injection, then the sharps bin. There is no version of reusing a needle that is worth it.