Drugs can be fun and amazing but they can also totally ruin your life, make you penniless, change your personality for the worse, send you to prison and kill you. We’d say that the latter half of that sentence was more consistent with what happens to people who REALLY get into drugs.
Lots of you will experience your first brushes with the wild and crazy world of drugs at university. Some of you will puke up, have a panic attack and never do them again, but the majority of you will keep doing them, in all their different forms, until something really bad happens or your parents find out.
With this in mind, here’s a rundown of the drugs that are currently “doing the rounds” among “the young folk”. We got the guys at FRANK, the drugs helpline, to tell us about them as well.
GHB: We thought only leather boys who went to fisting nights in Berlin sex clubs still did this but apparently it’s making a resurgence at student nights. People are putting it in Snapple bottles and drinking it. Expect a euphoric high that's akin to alcohol without the sloppiness, bad breath and aggression. Be forewarned, though – mixing it with alcohol or taking too much will end up with you puking your guts out, passing out on the spot and possibly dying. Do not under any circumstances take it with coke – it will make you feel like your head is going to explode.
FRANK says: A small capful will give you a euphoric effect, make you feel happy, sensual, uninhibited. If you take too much it’ll act like a sedative and a downer and make you really sleepy. Too much will make you feel really disorientated and physically sick. Your muscles can go numb and they can start to go into spasm. You may well make yourself unconscious, maybe it will slow down your respiratory system, maybe it’ll stop.
ADRENALINE INJECTION: These little darts of potential pleasure are prescription only but as they are given out to anyone and everyone who is allergic to nuts, or bee or wasp stings, you are pretty sure to know at least one person who can get a year’s supply from one trip to the chemist. They are intended for people whose allergies result in them going into anaphylactic shock, which causes tensing of the muscles and can lead to death by asphyxiation. The EpiPen combats this tension by relaxing the muscles with pure unadulterated adrenaline. Ever read or seen Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas? Yup, adrenaline is the stuff they do at the very end that causes a three day blackout. You can get over stabbing the inch long propelling needle into your thigh.
FRANK says: Adrenaline is going to make your heart go faster. It’s not a common thing which people take. It will make everything go faster – your heart, your breathing. There’s a big danger of a heart attack. It’s something that should only ever be prescribed. It’s potentially a very dangerous drug if taken on its own without a controlled medical dose.
FOXY (5-MEO-DIPT): Foxy is one of those drugs that used to be legal, but got reclassified so it’s really, really hard to find now. It usually comes in white powder form and is the most unpleasant thing to sniff in the whole world – more unpleasant than sniffing your dad’s hangover poo mixed with vapourised sand and fumes of sulphuric acid. The effects are somewhere between that of an hallucinogen and an aphrodisiac, which means you feel frisky and get mild acid visuals. Like all drugs, the situation where you ingest it can make or break your experience. Do take with your new girlfriend at a friend’s house party, don’t take at a squat party surrounded by horny AIDS hippies.
FRANK says: I haven’t heard of that. It sounds like a form of ecstasy. Does it have a fox printed on it?
CLEAR: So-called because it dissolves to give a colourless solution, CLEAR is currently a favourite in European gay clubs, meaning it is only a matter of time before it will make its way over here. It gives a dreamy sort of high that works by actively inhibiting neurotransmitters. This causes a slowing of synapse reactions to such an extent that sound and other sensory perceptions take almost a hundred times longer to be detected by the brain. This results in the user feeling totally disassociated from their surroundings. The funniest thing about CLEAR is that in high doses it leads people into thinking they are invisible.
FRANK says: I’ve never heard of it. Quite often the gay community is where drugs start being taken - maybe even five or six years before everyone else does. That’s where crystal meth was started from. The gay community are the ones who started using ecstasy before anyone else. They’ve been doing it for years. This drug sounds like temazepam and things like that. You know, people who took those drugs used to think they were invisible. You could watch them in the shops and they could be stealing things, but in actual fact everybody could see what they were doing.
ZOLPIDEM: These are turbo nutter sleeping pills that can be bought over the counter in India. They are made to give schizophrenics a complete knockout so they don’t have lucid dreams and hear voices (great if your first term isn’t going too well). If you have been doing other drugs they have a crazy effect on you before rendering you completely unconscious. They make you really happy but slow, like a Down’s Syndrome kid that has been given a daisy chain to play with. Most commonly they make people run on autopilot and do things that they will have no memory of. The best thing about these is that you get up the next day after a nice sleep feeling great, no matter what you have been doing. The worst thing is there is a good chance you may piss all over your mate’s bathroom floor, then be woken up in a really nasty manner an hour or so later and forced to clean it all up in front of everyone (cough, cough). Don’t do in a public setting – the effect these things have on you is like the Energizer bunny running out of batteries. This opens up loads of mugging and “bum-the-unconscious-dude” opportunities for the public at large.
FRANK says: That is a prescription drug. You need to call NHS Direct before you take any type of prescription drug. I’m not sure if that’s a depressant or a tranquiliser. Tranquilisers are going to slow everything down. They are drugs which are supposed to be prescribed so if you don’t have a condition, then don’t take them. At best you’ll feel really woozy and out of it, at worst it can stop your heart.
DMT: Aka the-single-most-fucked-upthing- that-will-ever-happen-to-you. We can’t even start to explain how intense this is. No one can. It is one of the strongest hallucinogens known to man. Therefore, not the most social drug in the world. DMT is the chemical released by the brain in the final moments of life as your body shuts down to ease the moment of death. The great thing about this drug is that it only lasts for 10 minutes and there is no comedown from it. You could probably do it during lunch break at a court case and no one would be any the wiser.
FRANK says: DMT is a hallucinogen, so obviously when you hallucinate you’re never really sure what’s real and what’s not real. You could end up getting a bad trip. DMT is meant to be even more powerful than LSD, which is the best known hallucinogenic drug, so you’ve got all the dangers that go with that. If you’re in a bad mood, then you’re probably going to have a really bad trip. It definitely won’t make your mood any better. That bad trip could end up being an absolute nightmare and a nightmare that’s not going to finish until the drug leaves your system. Never take anything like that on your own. You’re going to start seeing things. It might start off with colours being brighter and then the coat stand in the corner might turn into a person. It might turn into a person you want to hug or it might turn into a person who you think is coming to kill you and that can be really frightening. You’re not in control, so you’ll misinterpret what you see. That big cuddly toy outside which is walking towards you might in actual fact be a bus. Therefore, it’s incredibly dangerous.
OXYCODONE: Aka “hillbilly heroin”, this is the drug that enslaved the Midwest of America at the start of the millennium. A super strong painkiller designed for blue collar workers who’d lost their leg in a logging accident, the itchy, smacky cosiness of these little white pills became so popular that people started to injure themselves on purpose just to get a prescription. You can get hold of these from crazy rich American girls or Yank bands on tour. It’s basically pharmaceutical heroin so it can make you feel really fucked up and is highly addictive.
FRANK says: This is a prescription drug. You should not take this unless you need to. It is for cancer patients. It can cause dizziness, light-headedness, nausea, sedation and vomiting. You need to speak to a doctor about this.