Bath Salts and Harm Reduction (Synthetic Stimulants)

Harm Reduction for Bath Salts: • An educated consumer is an empowered consumer. Make sure you know what it is you are taking. Ask whoever you’re buying “salts” from which chemical it is and research that chemical on the internet. If they don’t know which chemical it is, see if they can find out.

• Avoid mixing substances. Especially alcohol and benzodiazepines. Also avoid taking MAOI’s while using bath salts.

• You can test your supply for the presence of fentanyl. Ask us for free fentanyl test strips.

• Take a magnesium supplement. Ideally magnesium aspartate, citrate, lactate, chloride, and glycinate. 200mg of elemental magnesium once per day can reduce jaw clenching, teeth grinding, and tolerance.

• You can run reagent test kits to help determine which drug(s) are present in your supply.

Visit : www.dancesafe.org for more information.

• Do not skin pop (IM) stimulants. This causes serious abscesses. Try changing your route of administration to reduce harm.

• Sleep. Not sleeping increases chances of negative side effects and psychosis. We all need a break sometimes.

• If injecting, always run it through a new cotton filter. Do not “backload” your shots. Use a cotton filter to protect your body from impurities and environmental contaminants. You do not want what’s left behind the cotton in your body. Use a new cotton every time.

• Set personal limits on use. Bath salt use can cause compulsive redosing, even when not necessary. Set a time and consumption limit for yourself. Only buy what you intend to use.

Practice Moderation Management strategies.

• Stay hydrated and nourished. Drink water.

You’ll feel better. Chew sugar-free gum to increase saliva production. Dry mouth causes complications and infections. Get enough calories in you. Tell us what you like to eat, and we can try to help you. Protein shakes are a solid choice.

• Take breaks. Keep your tolerance down with sleep, food, and water. It’s more enjoyable in the long run if you practice SELF-CARE.

• People with heart conditions are at a higher risk for fatal bath salt overdose. If you have heart problems, please go easy.

Bath Salts What’s in your baggie?

Or whatever they’re calling the new synthetic stimulants.

Lebanon, NH 03766 Online at: h2rc.org 603.276.9698

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“Bath salts” is a slang term used for a new generation of recreational drugs, mostly referring to stimulants (uppers) in the “substituted Cathinone” or “synthetic Cathinone” family.

• The term “bath salts” comes from a time when these designer drugs were sold as bath salts to evade law enforcement.

In the late 2000s, synthetic cathinones were being sold as plant food or cleaning/hygienic products labelled “Not for Human Consumption.”

• Cathinone occurs naturally in the plant khat whose leaves are chewed as a recreational drug around the world. It is a flowering plant native to the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. Over 20 million people in the Arabian Peninsula and East Africa chew khat leaves daily • The drug “bath salts” are “synthetic cathinones”, which means they are man-made in a laboratory.

Terminology & Effects

• Each compound in the “bath salt” (synthetic cathinone) family is different. Some have a euphoric “dancey” effect like MDMA. Some have an edgy paranoid effect like PCP. Some compounds seem more similar to methamphetamine, but don’t last as long.

Synthetic cathinones are “euphoric stimulants,” meaning they have a short acting duration of physical and psychological effects similar to stimulants like amphetamine. These can include: • Increased energy and alertness • Elevated mood • Sociability • Anxiety • Paranoia

Methods of use and the media

Media has reported reactions that include violent behavior, heart attack, kidney failure, liver failure, suicide, an increased tolerance for pain, dehydration, and breakdown of skeletal muscle tissue. Continued use of “bath salts” can result in mild depression due to dopamine depletion. Taken in larger doses or for longer stretches; “bath salts” seem to bring on powerful feelings of paranoia and depression.

• Bath salts can be ingested orally, snorted, smoked, or injected. Bath salts can be detrimental to human health and can potentially cause erratic behavior, hallucinations, and delusions.

• The impurities in the substance can cause severe skin irritation and infections. This can cause people to pick at their skin as the chemicals are metabolized through the body.

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• Diminished appetite • Delirium or hallucinations • Excessive and/or uncontrolled motor activity • Increased heart rate, increased blood pressure • Nausea

• There are hundreds of compounds in this family. Some common ones are MDPV, alpha-PVP (“flakka”), Eutylone, Methylone, and mephedrone. New compounds hit the market every week.

Do you know which one you’re using?

• Chemists around the world are constantly creating new analogues, or chemical substitutions to existing drugs, to make new “legal” compounds that sell in global grey markets and black markets.

• Very little is known about how bath salts interact with the brain and how they are metabolized by the body.

They are similar to amphetamines in that they cause stimulant effects by increasing the concentration of dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine in the brain, and sometimes inhibit the reuptake of those neurotransmitters.

• “Bath salts” are usually short-acting stimulants with high potential for addiction and are characterized by compulsive redosing.

• Because “bath salts” are potent, fastacting, short-lasting, and characterized by redosing, overdose is common.

A stimulant overdose is not like an opioid overdose — people who have overdosed on bath salts display symptoms of agitation, for example — but they can also be fatal..

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