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Drugs you’ve tried
Who are you?
Most of you are aged between 18 and 27. 65% of you are male 35% of you female 26% of you live with friends 25% of you with a partner 31% of you live with your parents 12% live alone 89% of you are heterosexual 7% of you are bisexual 4% of you are gay 74% of you have A levels, or higher qualifications 81% of you are working 44 february 2010
Cannabis
93%
Ecstasy
91%
Cocaine
86.7%
MDMA powder
80.7
Amphetamine (speed)
72%
Poppers
68.7%
Ketamine
67.8%
Mushrooms
54.3%
Amphetamine (base)
41.7%
LSD
42.4%
Mephedrone
41.7%
Salvia
29.2%
Viagra
23%
2CB
18%
GHB
15.2%
Crack
13.8%
Spice/Magic
12.7%
2CI
11.4%
Methylone
10.8%
Heroin
6.7%
GBL
5.8%
Methamphetamine (crystal meth)
5.6%
Steroids
3.5%
Drugs you’ve used in the last month Cannabis
54.4%
Ecstasy
48.4%
Cocaine
47.4%
Mephedrone
33.6%
Ketamine
32.4%
MDMA powder
28.2%
Poppers
15.1%
Amphetamine (speed)
14.7%
Amphetamine (base)
11%
Mushrooms
9.5%
Methylone
7.5%
LSD
5%
2CB
3.7%
Viagra
3.6%
Salvia
3.2%
Spice/Magic
22% of you have been caught in possession of cannabis by the police - ¼ oz or less in 86% of cases. Here’s what happened the most recent times you got caught:
n Let off with a telling off: 47% n Given a caution: 38.7% n Went to court and got off: 1.9% n Went to court and given a fine: 7.9% n Went to court, got a fine and community service: 3.3% n Went to prison: 1.1% 6.5% of you have been caught in possession of ecstasy - one or two pills in a third of cases, three to five pills in 60% of cases. Here’s what happened in the most recent cases:
2%
GHB
1.7%
GBL
1.6%
2CI
1.3%
Crack
1.1%
Steroids
Breaking Cannabis Alcohol the law and the 97% of you have law drunk alcohol
1%
Heroin
0.4%
Methamphetamine (crystal meth)
0.3%
n Got let off with a telling off: 24% n Given a caution: 44.5% n Went to court and got off: 4.8% n Went to court and given a fine: 12.3% n Went to court, got a fine and community service: 6.2% n Went to prison:8.2%
In January 2009 cannabis was reclassified from a Class C to a Class B drug
89.8% score 4 and above on the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT C test), which means you 89.6% of you said it hadn’t are drinking more than the changed the recommended amount of amount cannabis you smoked 91.1% reported no change in the amount of cannabis you bought
But 10.1% of you said you would smoke cannabis less publicly since the change in law
Tobacco
44% of you have smoked on 25 or more days in the last month 37.8% of you are daily smokers - much higher than the national average of about 22% Only 27% of you have not smoked any cigarettes in the last month
Based on the preliminary findings for UK-based respondents to the Mixmag Drug Survey 2009. Research and analysis by Dr Adam R Winstock and Dr Luke Mitcheson. Many thanks to Stuart Newman for design and development, Fraser Lewry for IT skills and, most importantly, the thousands of Mixmag readers and Don’t Stay In members who took part. Questions and enquiries to adam.winstock@kcl.ac.uk
Dr Winstock says:
Almost half of you (and remember that includes 1/3 who were women and are more sensitive to alcohol) were scoring more than 8/12 on the Audit C score, a simple way of identifying if you are risk of alcohol-related harm - which means that you are definitely drinking way above safe levels. Continued drinking at that level will place you at increased risk of gut problems, heart problems and liver problems, and reduce your fertility and sex drive. In addition there is evidence that suggests that ongoing drinking at that level can affect your mood and memory. Remember it can be easy to drink more than you think when you take stimulant drugs such as cocaine and MDMA, as they offset the alcohol-related sedation. If you are worried about drinking, go see your GP and get your liver checked out. Give yourself two weeks off to see how you feel - probably brighter, lighter and richer! february 2010 45
Mephedrone: Meet the UK’s favourite new drug The big drug story of 2009 was the unstoppable rise of mephedrone, the ‘ecstasy alternative’ which has risen from nowhere to become the fourth most popular drug in the survey for recent use. 41.7% of you have tried it, 33.6% of you in the last month. Easily available over the internet, sold as ‘plant food - not for human consumption’, most users describe
mephedrone’s effects as a cross between ecstasy and cocaine. Most users (44%) took mephedrone not more than once every three months, but 14.5% were on it at least weekly. The most common amount used at a time was between ½ and 1 gram. 70% of users snorted it, 30% took it orally. 60% of users have noticed an increased sex drive while on mephedrone
Mephedrone sideeffects There’s been little or no research done on mephedrone. We asked users if they’d experienced any side effects after using it:
46 february 2010
67%
51%
43%
27%
15%
Excessive sweating
Headaches
Palpitations
Nausea
Cold or blue fingers
Who’s your invisible friend?
Reports are coming in from around the country of mephedrone’s dark side: attacks of paranoia, hallucinations and disturbing experiences. As LCD Soundsystem put it: ‘If you do it again, I’m gonna freak out…’ Mark, 25, Manchester: “My girlfriend had to go and stay with her sister for the night. She was so scared of the state I was in, she couldn’t be around me; I was freaking right out, couldn’t focus on anything, was getting tracers from everything that moved and felt ill. Something wasn’t right.” The mephedrone that Mark had been snorting all day was that something. “Me, my girlfriend and some mates had been at a club in Manchester partying. I’d done a pill and some ket and felt fine, good actually” says Mark. “We left about 5am and my mate said he had some mephedrone back at his and to go back for a crack-on. My girlfriend went home but I went and we were snorting for hours. It was OK at first, then at about lunch time I started feeling agitated, paranoid and a little bit sick.” He got home in a taxi – which is when things got worse. “My girlfriend was just getting up as I arrived home, but I couldn’t face her and went straight into our bedroom. She came in and knew straight away that something was up. I told her what we’d been doing, and that I was feeling really sketchy. She was obviously concerned and trying to help, but I ended up snapping and shouting at her,”
he says. “She left and I just sat there for the rest of the day and night, tripping, hallucinating, my mind racing. My breathing also didn’t feel right. Eventually, the following morning, I got a few hours sleep and started to feel a bit better.” Simon, 33, London: “My mate Paul came down for the weekend and brought a massive bag of it, about 15 grams. We ended up snorting it all weekend at my flat, then on the Sunday we went to this daytime party but suddenly Paul started to freak out. He was getting paranoid, saying he didn’t feel well,” explains Simon. “In the end he didn’t sleep for days. He was pacing around my house, and then he even got it into his head that he had been spiked. Several people tried to explain to him it was the mephedrone, but he wasn’t happy and was adamant that he’d been spiked.” Sleep deprivation may be an important factor - experts say that if you’ve been up for more than three days you may start to experience paranoia and delusions, and the moreish nature of mephedrone combined with its stimulant qualities makes this more than likely. However, some users have reported sideeffects even without a marathon session...
Debbie, 28, Nottingham: “I was out clubbing with my boyfriend and some friends in town. We had been snorting mephedrone all night before we went out. We just stupidly kept doing more and more, and I didn’t know my boundaries as I’d only done it once before,” she says. “When we got to the club I just completely lost it, I thought people were going to beat up my boyfriend but it was all in my head. He took me home and I felt really sickly, weak and worried, I was also struggling to breathe at times. It was really freaky.” Dr Paolo Deluca is a psychologist who has been researching drug addiction for the past 10 years. Recently mephedrone has popped up on his team’s radar. “There is little known about this new phenomenon and so we are trying to understand it,” he says. “It’s a difficult one. But hopefully this way we don’t have to wait for somebody to die on it. There’s obviously a dosage link, as people keep topping up and doing more and then we see the bad side effects,” Dr Deluca continues. “I’d say don’t do it at all, but if you have to the best advice would be to be aware of the consequences and regulate your dose.”
Log in, download, drop out
92% of you buy your legal highs online. The internet is playing an ever-expanding role in drug use. Welcome to the future of drug taking just point and click
Right now, British high streets are as full of gaps as a tramp’s smile shuttered up shops and blank windows. It’s not just the recession; the way we shop has changed. At Christmas, more people bought their presents online than ever before. Amazon took more than 16 orders a second and Argos reported a jump in online sales of 40%. What’s this got to do with drugs? Consider this year’s big drugs story, mephedrone. Easily available online, usually sold as plant food, it costs around £10 a gram (substantially cheaper than cocaine or MDMA powder) and if ordered in bulk can be acquired for as little as £3-£4 a gram, about the price of an ecstasy pill. But it’s clearly not just the price that appeals, it’s the way it’s purchased - you told us that the fact that legal party pills could be bought online was a major factor in why you took them. Mephedrone and other legal highs, purchased through online head shops and ‘research’ websites, are a sign of the times: a downloadable drug experience for 2010. The first online illegal drugs network to be detected in the UK was busted back in 2003 - a “£500,000 cannabis ring” that used passwords to enable people to order weed from a secret website. Just as the net has changed how we consume music, it’s now changed the way we get high.
Charlie says n Most people are aware of the global misery trail caused by cocaine. Harvested by slaves in South America, it corrupts governments and people like a cancer everywhere along the supply line, from murderous Mexican border towns to Caribbean paradise islandsturned-crime-ridden slums to West African ‘narco states’, their economies stalled and development halted by the white gold. Arguably, this shitrain is caused by prohibition, but cocaine sure has an ugly aspect. Not that it has stopped it becoming part of a normal Saturday night in the clubs and pubs of the UK. Drinks companies, so quick to get behind antiecstasy campaigns (it was the drinks industry that paid for those Leah Betts ‘Sorted’ posters back in the day, conspiracy fans) have not been so desperate to line up against the infiltration of the nation’s licensed premises by coke. Maybe because, unlike ecstasy, cocaine is not a competitor to alcopops and lager - in fact, it’s a goldmine. 61% of you always drink alcohol when you snort cocaine, and of the remainder, 16.8% drink alcohol with cocaine three quarters of the time. Yet, when cocaine and alcohol are broken down in the body, a separate drug called cocaethylene is formed. It’s more liver toxic and puts more strain on the heart than either alcohol or cocaine on their own. Introducing cocaine into the traditionally blood-soaked pavement culture of the UK’s boozers has another consequence. Cocaine has lots of different effects, from euphoria and chattiness to over-confidence, paranoia and irritability. It allows you to drink more and stay awake longer. Guess what? Police forces in Greater Manchester and Merseyside recently told research magazine 50 february 2010
83.1% of you have taken cocaine in the last year. It’s the third most popular illegal drug in the UK. But isn’t it a bit shit?
The price of a gram of cocaine ranges from £10-£80. The average price is £40. Normally you buy one gram at a time Druglink that between a quarter and a third of people arrested for violence snorted cocaine before fighting. So, coke and alcohol is not only fucking up the lives of poor people in developing countries, it’s damaging your heart and helping violent beer-boys fight longer and harder. To be perfectly honest, though, none of this is why we’re declaring cocaine over. The spread of ‘economy cocaine’, often as low as 7% pure, the industrial levels of saturation that mean that you can’t look in the cubicle of even the most pathetic wine bar without seeing a few traces of residue on the cistern, the number of people deciding to stay in and talk shit all night instead of going clubbing, or who can’t stay up past midnight without ‘getting some gear in’ – all of it means that cocaine is no longer the sexy, dangerous intoxicant it once was. Forget Johnny Depp in Blow. Forget Jagger and Warhol in Studio 54. Think Kerry Katona. The sad fact is, Charlie’s gone to Iceland.
The average Mixmag’s amount of coke doctors say: you take in a session is 1.2g. 22% of you have taken more than 5g in one session. 48% of you have taken cocaine for more than 3 days in a row 25%-33% of those arrested for violence had snorted cocaine before fighting
“Both coke and alcohol make taking ecstasy more dangerous. Both impair your ability to regulate your body temperature and worsen dehydration. Taking coke releases more dopamine which increases the risk of toxicity to brain cells. It also boosts your body temperature and increases the risk of heart problems especially when you’re drinking too. Manage the risks by taking fewer pills less often, taking breaks from dancing, keeping cool and staying hydrated by drinking nonalcoholic drinks.”
Ecstasy
Despite 76% of users reporting that the quality of ecstasy has gone down, it’s still your second-favourite illegal drug: 80% of you have taken it in the last year, 53% of you in the last month The return of the £10 pill? Recent reports suggest that MDMA might be back in the house
n Midway through summer in Ibiza, tales were spreading amongst the workers of a batch of super-strong ecstasy pills. The story was that a hidden cache of ‘green Rolexes’ - made years ago ‘back when pills were pills’, before MDMA became scarce and manufacturers started replacing the active ingredient with BZP and other alternatives and selling them for pennies at a time - had been discovered on the island. Soon the distinctively branded pills were more in demand than an invite to Sven’s afterparty. Even if the lore surrounding their origins was hokum, judging by the messiness of nights everywhere, there was something in it. And back in the UK, reports started to reach Mixmag Towers from around the country of trusted dealers offering customers a new type of pills - at 90s prices, but with a guarantee of 90s-style effects. And even the most jaded ecstasy users were reporting that something very unusual was happening. “You know how I knew they were the real deal?” says one friend of Mixmag who stumped up £10 a pill for the new batch, “They evangelised me again: ten minutes after taking one it was a case of ‘fasten seatbelts for a trip back in time!’. Not only was I feeling rushes, empathy, euphoria, the whole works, but I started insisting that my mates
take one - like a teenager who’s done their first pill and wants to give one to his parents!” Accepted clubland wisdom has it that global efforts to clamp down on the supply of precursor chemicals for making MDMA have strangled its production, and that the pills of yesteryear the Doves and Snowballs that kicked off acid house, and the Mitsubishis that fuelled the great pre-millennial dance music explosion (a Mixmag cover in 1999 called the Mitsubishi ‘the pill that changed everything’) were gone forever. If it turns out that the £10 pill is back, and for more than just a well-connected few – and if greedy dealers don’t kill its reappearance with fakes and attempts to cash in (unfortunately, something we’ve already heard too) – the consequences for dance music could be absolutely huge.
The average number of pills you take in a session is between 4 and 5. 1% of users say they regularly take more than 20 pills at a time. 17% of you have taken ecstasy between 5-10 days in a row
The usual price for a gram of MDMA is £40. 36% of you think the quality has gone down
The price of pills varies between 40p and £8 - the usual price is £2. You normally buy 10 at a time
14% of those who take pills usually take coke at the same time (‘usually’ means between 75 and 100% of the time) 38.7% never take coke when they do pills
50% usually drink alcohol 15.5% of you say (ie between 75 you never drink and 100% of the alcohol when time) when they you do pills take ecstasy
february 2010 51
59% of you have used ‘legal highs’ of some kind Legal highs you’ve used
59.4%
Nitrous Oxide
13%
Spice / Magic
26%
BZP
29%
Other party pills
41.7%
Mephedrone
11%
Methylone
2%
MDPV
29.2%
Salvia divinorum
Legal high party pills
38% of you have used some form of legal high party pill. 7.6% of you have used them in the last month
+
+
15% of you reported using five or more pills in a typical session
52% said you had used more than three in a single session
However, the normal number of pills used in a session was two
We asked you what factors made you decide to take legal highs: Other drugs unavailable Not illegal Able to buy online
More consistent product Price
Legal Highs and the law As of Boxing Day 2009, legal alternatives to ecstasy and cannabis were added to the government’s list of controlled substances under the Misuse Of Drugs Act 1971. BZP – once the main ingredient in party pills – is now a Class C drug, and Spice is now a Class B drug. We asked how this ban would affect what other drugs you took...
ecstasy
NO CHANGE: 71.9% USE MORE: 25.3% USE LESS: 2.8%
COCAINE
oTHER LEGAL PILLS
NO CHANGE: 86.8% USE MORE: 10.9% USE LESS: 2.3%
NO CHANGE: 76% USE MORE: 16.7% USE LESS: 7.3%
Thinking they are better quality
Thinking they are safer A better high
Less likely to get side effects Less easily sniffed by dogs
Less easily detected by urine screens
Not influential
52 february 2010
Most influential
What’s next for legal highs?
Dr Ken Checinski, Senior Consultant in Addictive Behaviour at St George’s, University of London, told Mixmag: “So-called ‘legal highs’ are not a safer alternative to illegal drugs. They contain a range of potentially harmful chemicals [which] haven’t been tested over time and are particularly risky if used with alcohol.” To beat new legislation, legal high manufacturers may simply add an extra molecule to their products - making them legal again. “I’ve recently been sent samples of new non-BZP alternatives in the post… some of them are quite good,” says Jude Horrocks of www.natural-mystic.co.uk
2CB-Fly (C12H14BrNO2)
n 2CB–Fly is a synthetic psychoactive phenethylamine of which very little is known. It is an analogue of 2CB, which was first used as a legal alternative to ecstasy before being banned in the late 1990s. Self confessed 2CB-Fly connoisseur Stephanie: “I’d say 2CB-Fly is stronger than the real thing; it usually keeps me awake long after the ‘high’ has worn off. You get lots of visuals and the sense of your body floating, without any mind clutter or confusion.” Over the past few months deaths in Denmark and hospitalisations on the West Coast of America have been attributed to mislabelled bags of 2CB-Fly. However, Stephanie isn’t deterred by the reports. “Hearing about the mixed-up batches is scary, but personally I’ve never had a bad experience using Fly, and anyway, you can’t just walk into a head shop and grab a bag of 2CB-Fly, you have to buy it online as a research chemical.” 2CB-Fly is not presently listed as a controlled substance under the governments’ current misuse of drugs legislation, although there is some conjecture that it may be controlled under ‘analogue’ legislation.
Words: Johnny Lee
5-methoxyalphamethyltryptamine (C12H16N2O)
n 5-MeO-AMT is a highly potent and hallucinogenic tryptamine and a synthetic analogue of the hallucinogen AMT. It is typically sold as a powder which users snort, dissolve in water, or infuse onto sugar cubes, blotters or marshmallows. Although 5-MeO-AMT has a growing fanbase, most users told us that they’d only tried it once, claiming the substance furnished them with rotten headaches, gutwrenching nausea, diarrhoea, breathlessness and the unwanted provocation of malevolent inner demons. At the moment, 5-MeO-AMT is not scheduled on the government’s list of controlled substances; however, 5-MeO-DMT (a DMT analogue) is listed.
Lysergic Acid Amide (C16H17N3O)
n LSA is a naturally occurring substance similar to LSD that’s found in Hawaiian baby woodrose and morning glory seeds, and is now being used in many ‘psychedelic’ or ‘trip’ branded capsules sold in head shops and by online legal high vendors. It’s a powerful hallucinogen that’s been used for centuries by Mexican shamans and various remote tribes to induce a dream- or trance-like state in the user. Wilson from Middlesbrough told Mixmag: “These LSA seeds are powerful; they’re so small, you tend to think nothing is going to happen – and then boom – you’re tripping. I took four seeds whilst on a clubbing expedition to Berlin and got the fear… What followed was six hours of madness: small men wearing giant condoms and endless problems at the hostel… users should take care on their dosage, but in sensible measures, LSA is quality.”
Bromo-Dragonfly (C13H12BrNO2)
n Bromo-Dragonfly is a synthetic psychedelic which is related to phenethylamine and sold online as a research chemical. It is fairly uncommon, as potent as LSD, and as yet there have been no long-term studies into its effects on humans. Craig, a Leeds-based music producer, told Mixmag: “It takes hours to come-up on dragonfly – longer than LSD. The effect is a full-throttle artificial mushroom buzz: trippy, relaxed visuals, but with the kind of stimulation you get after a lick or two of speed. It comes as a whitish powder… it’s strong stuff; you can trip for days after taking one single dose…” However, Mills from Plymouth won’t be using Bromo-Dragonfly again: “It’s nasty and extremely potent,” he says. A spokesman from industry leader www.elegalhighs.com agreed, saying “Legal highs and research chemicals are separate types of product; research chemicals are no more legal highs than sniffing glue or taking GBL.” Bromo-Dragonfly isn’t on the government’s hit-list of banned substances; however, as with most research chemicals, its exact legal position remains blurred.