The Trip Report 03/02
Even if you know exactly what you’re taking, drug use is never safe — that said, it’s much safer when you do.
Through the work of organisations such as WEDINOS, The Loop, and SaferParty, we know a little more about the drugs in circulation. The report provided below is a summary of their findings over the last week. This report is primarily UK-focused and couldn’t possibly cover everything, so if you find something I’ve missed please contact me and we’ll get it updated.
The absence of a product from this list doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be there; you might have something more dangerous than anything listed, but it just hasn’t been reported yet. A vital tool for any drug user is a testkit, which allows you to identify roughly what is actually in your stash. You can find them here and if you need any help interpreting your results, testdrugs.info provides a web/android app for identifying a wide range of substances.
Final note: This report does not constitute medical advice. Some harm-reduction tips are offered for those who have already taken the compound, but if in doubt seek medical attention.
Correction: Mislabelled Mislabelling
In this post from the 20th of January, we identified a sample of methylone which was in fact 4-CMC, and only today became aware that we were entirely incorrect and had simply misread the warning. While we’re embarrassed to have put out an error like this, it’s at least gratifying to know that the sample was actually much less dangerous. 4-CDC is far less prone to overdose than 4-CMC would be in such a substitution, mostly because it’s basically bunk. Early attempts to find some utility in this stuff led to people taking as much as 700mg orally and inject 150mg with only mild effects, so this is actually less likely to cause issues than something like caffeine.
It’s also a bit of a relief for us to find out when we did, as we had dedicated a significant portion of our first Trend Report to the possible threats posed by a glut of missold 4-CMC breaking into the market and making that claim after literally a single report might’ve been a little alarmist. However, that means that January’s edition would just be complaining about pills and we’d like to do something a little more interesting than that for our first premium post, so the Trend Report is on hold for the time being.
Standing Warning: Mislabelled Benzos
Dozens of samples from across the UK have been shown to be mis-sold, primarily a glut of etizolam being presented as diazepam and alprazolam. For the time being, it is advised to mistrust anything that didn’t come from the literal pharmacist because these samples have been pressed into convincing pills, even sold in blister packs, and reagent testing between these substances is very difficult. These “street blues” have been implicated in deaths across the country, and are not to be taken lightly.
Standing Warning: “Cannabis e-liquids”
Over the last few months, over a dozen reports have come in of substances sold as cannabis vape liquid which contain no cannabis whatsoever, and instead contain synthetic cannabinoids such as 4F-MDMB-BINACA. Does that name sound intimidating? Good. It’s a bizarre substance which started to appear a few months ago and about which we still know basically nothing. All we can do is compare it to previous “noids”, which have caused thousands of seizures, heart attacks and deaths. While cannabis e-liquids are widely enjoyed in more sensible countries, the UK is not among those countries. Instead, the UK is subject to an unregulated criminal market where the low price, undetectability and ease of production for e-liquids made of concoctions like 5F-MDMB-PINACA render them a no-brainer for unscrupulous dealers. Did you notice that that’s a completely different substance to the one mentioned up top, by the way? There are hundreds, all with inscrutable names like that. It’s exhausting.
Warning: Mislabelled Substance
Substance: Paracetamol, tramadol, codeine
Sold as: Oxycodone
Location: Cardiff
Advice: Without quantification, there’s not much we can really advise on this. Reagent testing might not be too helpful, it’s hard to spot the difference visually (we can’t comment on the physical press quality, but it certainly looks like an Oxycontin pill) and even the subjective difference after a low dose might be hard to differentiate.
What we can confidently say now is that the disastrous approach we’ve been seeing with illicit benzos appears to be spreading to opiates, with legit-looking pills produced from a mishmash of whatever substances are available. If you use these pills and aren’t literally picking them up at a pharmacist, please send the odd sample to WEDINOS for analysis and be really careful with dosing: don’t drop alone, and have naloxone available if possible.
Source: https://www.wedinos.org/db/samples/ (ref: W012708)
Paracetamol info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracetamol
Tramadol info: https://psychonautwiki.org/wiki/Tramadol
Codeine info: https://psychonautwiki.org/wiki/Codeine
Warning: Mislabelled Substance
Substance: 2C-B*
Sold as: 2C-B
Location: Tested in Utrecht
Advice: For anyone who missed this before, 2C-B* appears to be an inactive sibling to proper 2C-B: while we believe it to be inert and therefore relatively harmless, very little is known about the substance and it may prove to have long-term consequences we can’t foresee. That means that the standard harm reduction protocols apply — if nothing’s happening, stop taking it.
Source: https://www.drugs-test.nl/lijst-extra-riskante-tabletten
2C-B* info: https://bit.ly/2Kt2jvp
Warning: Mislabelled Substance
Substance: 2C-B*
Sold as: 2C-B
Location: Tested in Utrecht
Advice: For anyone who missed this before, 2C-B* appears to be an inactive sibling to proper 2C-B: while we believe it to be inert and therefore relatively harmless, very little is known about the substance and it may prove to have long-term consequences we can’t foresee. That means that the standard harm reduction protocols apply — if nothing’s happening, stop taking it.
Source: https://www.drugs-test.nl/lijst-extra-riskante-tabletten
2C-B* info: https://bit.ly/2Kt2jvp
Warning: Mislabelled Substance
Substance: DOC and traces of other substances
Sold as: LSD
Location: Tested in Zurich
Advice: To be perfectly candid, we’re kinda jealous of this one — DOxs are actually pretty hard to come by. While it’s still obviously unethical to mislabel a drug you’re selling, DOC is pretty safe in general and particularly so at the light dose present in this sample. That said, someone who’s used to and comfortable with LSD might be rendered pretty anxious by having this different experience — we can’t really offer any specific advice for what to do to deal with that as it’s different for everyone, but we always find some emergency Adventure Time wonderfully calming in such a situation. Reagent testing for this substitution is pretty simple — LSD won’t react at all to Marquis whereas DOC creates a yellow/green, and DOC won’t create any response in a standard Ehrlich test while LSD will turn it pink/purple.
You might’ve thought DOC was already pretty obscure but we literally had to consult a book to find out the deal with the second substance listed, 2,5-DMA. Alexander Shulgin’s seminal work, PiHKAL (a must for the budding psychonaut), lists the dose range for 2,5-DMA as 80–160mg, over a thousand times greater than the dose present in this sample.
The odds are that this, along with the similarly minute doses of caffeine and amphetamine present, are just minor production impurities in the DOC, far too small to have any real effect in terms of use. Whether Saferparty included them in the report for the purpose of shaming the producer, flexing their analytical muscles or simply out of interest
Source: https://bit.ly/2uX8CAO
DOC Info: https://psychonautwiki.org/wiki/DOC
Warning: High dose — 247mg
Substance: MDMA
Location: Tested in Innsbruck
Advice: These pills are generally intended to contain more than one dose and as such, most come with a breakline. If you spot a pill on The Trip report, odds are you’ll want to snap it and have a half or even less to have the best experience. However, it’s worth pointing out that the breakline on this one doesn’t appear to be anywhere near the middle of the pill — you might end up with a terribly uneven dose if you commit to using the line.
Once you’re already up, you’ll want to avoid redosing, stay cool and maintain adequate hydration. Many users will dehydrate through sweat, but sweating also sheds electrolytes and some users have suffered from hyponatremia from drinking only water to replenish themselves. If possible, find a sports drink like Lucozade or, if no other solutions are available, add a pinch of salt to the occasional glass of water.
Source: https://bit.ly/2Or4H61
MDMA info: https://psychonautwiki.org/wiki/MDMA
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