Flakka: The New Cannibal Drug

This article originally appeared on VICE Spain

One night around three years ago, I was on my computer when I started to receive images of a guy biting and tearing someone’s face off. I was absolutely stunned because I could not think of even one place in which cannibalism still happened: this time it occurred on the side of a motorway in the USA. This was the first story of the “Cannibal of Miami” who is now dead, and although drugs didn’t have anything to do with it, I had a hunch that something like this was going to be used in the mass media game against drugs and their users.

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The approach was simple. What could possibly explain a “bulletproof superhuman” who eats a living person’s face? Drugs clearly, and above all in the USA. The media soon began to talk about a drug addict under the influence of… whatever they thought it was. Some of the first reports – from neighbours in the area on local TV – were talking about crack, but there is enough crack in any city of the USA to very well know that it doesn’t provoke cannibalism. So, they searched for another candidate, of which they even mentioned the flesh eating drug krokodil, until they finally came up with a very dark explanation: bath salts.

What kind of drug is bath salts? Some new legal drugs that are being supplied – which are not actually new – have been disguised and distributed as bath salts. Although as substances they are still legal (well, not banned), they didn’t pose a problem when in this form. The formats of “plant fertiliser” and even “incense” were used, but bath salts seemed to be the favourite. In one week, articles about the fearsome bath salts could be found everywhere. Most of the time they were accompanied by images of real bath salts, which increased the hysteria in a country that isn’t very drug educated and that is used to frightening their inhabitants as a form of control. And this is how “bath salts” were created as drugs.

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Forensics and ‘science’ people began to ask themselves how it was possible that the media had pinpointed it as being an attacking drug in the body, and even specified which one it was. It didn’t make sense because at this point they still didn’t have much information. That’s when the media decided to speculate, without thinking how affordable it was, about which specific substance it could be, the winning drug was something completely different, it was MDVP also known as methylenedioxypyrovalerone.

Nowadays, because of the bad press, the drug is known as the “cannibal drug”. Weeks later the results of the complete autopsy arrived: the ‘cannibal’ attacker died after being shot and, what’s more, no traces of drugs were present in his blood. There was nothing related to drugs, but it didn’t matter: in a few days there were all types of videos about the ‘cannibal drug’ on YouTube (although, there wasn’t a drug in sight) and about people trying to eat others in an act of madness provoked by this supposed drug. People like Zombies from The Walking Dead that came up from under houses disorientated and alien like. They were dirty, but they weren’t zombies.

I tried MDPV years ago and I admit that it didn’t seem like a good substance to have on the street: it was a stimulant that created anxiety which spurred you on to excessively drug yourself up, and when the dosage is increased the state that you get into isn’t very pleasant. Tried and dismissed by my own personal use. Although, not myself, nor any of us that had tried MDPV has had the desire to take chunks out of anyone. It was another fantasy over the war on drugs but the ignorance about drugs was marked in the collective memory of the general public.

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And what does all of this have to do with flakka?

Everything and nothing: flakka is just the birth of another myth about drugs that has been induced by the media.

This case started when a few months ago someone uploaded a video online of a young woman stood next to a fence in the rain, she can be seen moving and dancing and seems to be thanking the sky for having given her water. She definitely behaves very strangely. But in theory this type of thing can be blamed on the individuals’ idiosyncrasy and other mental health factors. She is not the only person that fearlessly enjoys a good downpour and maybe she’s not crazy or drugged. The video, however, was posted with the title “Flocka is destroying USA”, and it seems like this has set a precedent. In a short space of time incidents involving people with erratic behaviour started to be branded as cases that had taken the new drug, of which its name had changed from flocka to flakka. North American media has speculated that along with the name came the latino expression la flaca (which is used as a term for a pretty, slim girl).

The media talks about people that appear to be disorientated or hyperactive, in a disturbed mental state, with incoherent speech and a million ideas, people who took their clothes off and run through the streets suffering from hyperthermia, people who act paranoid and fearful, and the “superhuman strength” that appears in USA police reports to explain why a person has to be detained with the help of bullets and countless police officers.

Although for the moment we don’t have any forensic confirmation that drugs have interfered in these incidents. The media has now caught on to a substance that could be a possible candidate: alpha-PVP also known as alpha-pyrrolidinovalerophenone. The drug was created decades ago and has a ‘big brother’ that is better known as Katovit. Katovit was a drug stimulant – of mental function – that combined an active ingredient with some vitamins. In Spain, students used it generously until 2001 because, after amphetamine was withdrawn from the pharmacopoeia (and the black market), it was the only drug stimulant that could be obtained without a prescription. The Katovit drug was the prolinate and this “new drug” was rechristened by the media as flakka, which is a prolinate plus an atom of oxygen. In fact, the alpha-PVP can chemically be called prolinate beta ketone or “oxygenated Katovit” and for those who don’t understand chemistry it’s just like having the wheel changed on your car. It does the same but, weather it be better or worse, there is a difference.

Adding oxygen to a molecule decreases its potential. For example, the ephedrine oxygen atom, when reduced, turns into a more powerful methamphetamine. This is how drugs are sought: an active is found and all possible changes that can be made to the molecule are exploited. This is to obtain other compounds that do more or less the same job but that have a lower dosage or that last for a longer period of time.

By banning the official form of MDPV (and similar drugs) one of many that came to replace it was the alpha-PVP. Reasons’ being it is from the same chemical group (methylenedioxy) and was not included in the ban, as it wasn’t considered as a chemical equivalent. So, the sellers of legal highs replaced it and the media did the same: they replaced their previous “cannibal drug” campaign with something newer.

So, now you will hear all the new hysteria about drugs that create magic effects like the “superhuman strength” (although in the end they arrested him) or bulletproof powers (although in the end they killed him). I have taken drugs like the Katovit prolinate and MDPV many times – in generous doses – but I haven’t tried alpha-PVP and I don’t have any particular interest in doing so. But if I was to do it I would apply the same criteria as I do to the other substances, I would inform myself about it, search about how to analyse the drug and how to take the correct dosage: to avoid anything similar to the frightening cannibalism stories.

While it is true that the media launches current campaigns against drugs, it doesn’t mean that there’s any truth in them. Hypothermia (which can be fatal), paranoid ideas, unpleasant hallucinations where the person fends off imaginary enemies and even those who they believe could attack, are all reactions that come from a very high dosage of stimulants. There is hardly any difference between an MDPV overdose and an alpha-PVP overdose, and old drugs that are discarded by old pharmaceutical laboratories and converted into new drugs. Substances that are much more dangerous than classic drugs wouldn’t be in the hands of the general public that want to buy them, because nobody buys a substitute when they already have the original substance in reach.

Thanks to the banning of these drugs, now anyone can get their hands on thousands of substances that otherwise would not have been possible, but with less information and more myths, lies and secretiveness. New drugs like “flakka” kill more than the old school ones did, but it’s all done legally: a breakthrough for the society.

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