Another Terrible Legal High Reviewed By Somebody Who Feels Not Very Well Today

When I first heard that the new legal-ish drug that's replacing the now-illegal Mephedrone as the papers' narcotic hate-figure was called "Ivory Wave", my first thought was: "Ooh what a lovely name, I'll do that."

The classy title bewitched me and immediately conjured up an image of being hoisted into the air by a strong white tusk of ivory which belonged to a friendly elephant with kind eyes. We'd ride together really slowly on a tour of the African plains so I could take in the sights, sounds and smells of the untamed continent, waving regally to beaming poor war orphans who were drawing water from a well that didn't work properly. My elephant chum would raise his trunk and honk it, much to the orphan's amusement.

We'd hand out gifts to the orphans from a big sack on the side of the elephant's magnificent hide and the children would start bawling with happiness. Is there a better vibe in the world than that? It is absolutely the happiest mellow good vibe ever and if a drug can bring that well then I would like to take it please, thank you very much.

Sadly my dreams of friendly elephants and joy and peace were shattered upon taking my first teeny tiny bump of an almost tasteless white powder than smelled vaguely of urine. Even better, the white powder crystallised into sharp, prickly little stabbing things in the back of my throat. And put your hands up if you don't love the sensation of sharp prickly little stabbing things, ESPECIALLY in the back of your throat? Oh, it's marvelous.

Once my coughing fit had stopped I noticed immediately I was feeling quite high and perky. My palms started sweating and I started to slowly feel very very weird.

"Well at least this stuff works" I told myself, attempting to put a mental silver lining onto the scary dark raincloud which had just crowbarred its way into my brain.

And so me and a pal continued to do tiny bumps all night. When I say tiny I mean "the smallest thing you have ever seen in your whole life even with a telescope that can see other galaxies". You literally don't have to take any more than a tiny bump not even the length of your little finger nail. And so for hours we kept doing it and the "high" intensified quite rapidly. I couldn't stop looking at my palms, which were now "sweating cobs" as my dad used to say. I looked down at the top my jeans and realised that they were becoming very wet from drying my hands on them.

We started doing these tiny bumps at 2.30pm-ish and even though the amount we got from the stall in the cesspool that is Camden Town seemed to be less than a gram, we managed to have enough to keep damaging our brains till about 5 or 6am. Ever had that time scale of drug taking with less than a gram of coke? Maybe if you were a small person with really high levels of self discipline. But normal people no; no fucking chance. And I guess that's the main selling point of this crap, you only need £25 to feel totally insane for hours and hours on end.

Did we have a good time? Well if you count a good time as two men in their 30s fighting over YouTube clips while sweating and feeling paranoid while having a weird, throbbing, numb pain down the left hand side of your body, we had a fucking ball. Oh, and the involuntary vibrating of my entire body wasn't great either.

The coughing got worse with every bump. The two of us made more horrible gagging / coughing sounds than a Russian whooping cough ward from the 1940s. I also should mention here that by now I had started to feel completely insane. People who are too scared to do acid always think that acid will make you feel completely insane but that's not necessarily true. Acid generally gives you an hilarious world of weird and funny stuff that borders on feeling insane sometimes but it is nothing compared to the really unpleasant insanity that good old Ivory Wave provides its punters.

The next day I had polished it all off and I realised my whole body was actually vibrating quite violently and this started freaking me out a lot. I felt like the bit in Goodfellas where Henry's being chased by the helicopter. Actually no, it was comparable to the end scene of Scarface. In your early 20s the weird drug nightmares are kind of fun, but after having so many of them back then, I was so surprised to find myself, in 2010, faced with one of the top three worst ones yet that I was emailing people I used to go to NA with. This isn't the funniest Dos & Dont's I've ever written but it perfectly illustrates the feeling I had at the time:  and as of writing this I still kinda do.

It's now been 36 hours after receiving my first bite from the Ivory Wave python and I've had almost zero sleep. I'm still buzzing and slightly vibrating. Last night, I had taken four or five Solpadeine max and three Tylenol PM with a bottle of red wine to go to sleep. Usually after two Tylenol PM I'm out for seven hours, but Tylenol PM has never met a drug like this. It's like crystal meth without any of the good bits. Way too strong and scary for fun to happen in your brain unless you are a totally crazy person who wants to give their severe personality disorder a bit of an edge.

Kids beware! Because if you do this drug you will find it so much stronger than mepehdrone, and especially the crap that people call cocaine these days. Do not do what this guy did, although when I first saw this story about 20 hours into the Ivory Wave binge I was thinking to myself: "Where is the nearest fucking cliff around here?"

Here's the main point though: If a drug is legal and the main people that sell it are rave casualties in Camden, you can 200 per cent guarantee that it is not going to be a good time. And please let this be the last time I have to test drugs for this blog in my life ever. Can't the kids do this kind of stuff now?

The uncontrollable urge to break down in huge ugly sobs at anything remotely emotionally-affecting on TV hasn't started yet, but I'm waiting for it to show up sometime later this afternoon. When it arrives I'm gonna give it my all.

Fuck you Ivory Wave! DRUG. FREE. YOUTH.

JACK STEEL