The Trip Report 06/01
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 at https://www.reagent-tests.uk 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.
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: Alprazolam (Xanax)
Sold as: MDMA
Location: London
Advice: While this sample looks different, we hope that it’s of the same batch reported last month in Scotland and isn’t becoming a widespread substitution.
It’s unbelievably dangerous to mix benzos with other depressants such as opiates or, crucially, alcohol. This is where this substitution becomes lethal: even a small dose, if the user has been drinking, could cause them to pass out and stop breathing. If you or someone you know falls victim to this, emergency services should be contacted immediately — there’s really not much else we as individuals could do at that point.
A Marquis test will differentiate these two immediately, however — alprazolam will have no effect on the reagent, while it will turn a deep purple/black in the presence of MDMA.
Source: https://www.wedinos.org/db/samples/ (Ref:W012270)
Alprazolam info: https://psychonautwiki.org/wiki/Alprazolam
Warning: Mislabelled Substance
Substance: Caffeine
Sold as: Amphetamine
Location: Cardiff
Advice: As substitutions go, this is probably one of the safer ones — caffeine is active at higher doses than amphetamine, better tolerated (particularly given that most of the population is using it regularly) and relatively safe on membranes. The exception to this, of course, is among those allergic to caffeine, who need to be careful with any stimulant — even without substitution, caffeine is commonly cut into speed and related stimulants to bulk it out. The best way to test for the presence of caffeine in your speed is Mandelin reagent, which will turn green in the presence of amphetamine and brown in the presence of caffeine.
Source: https://www.wedinos.org/db/samples/ (Ref:000041947)
Caffeine info: https://psychonautwiki.org/wiki/Caffeine
Warning: Mislabelled Substance
Substance: Methamphetamine and caffeine
Sold as: MDMA
Location: Brighton
Advice: We’re feeling a bit nostalgic looking at this one. It’s been years since we’ve seen meth passed off as what appears to be a pill of ecstasy, back before PMA and NEP were on the scene.
While this is inarguably safer than either of those, let’s not look on it with too rosy a tint — this carries a very real risk of damaging the user’s heart, depending on the purity of the sample. With WEDINOS’s decision not to quantify purity we can’t gauge that precisely, but being as we’re safety-minded folk let’s err on the side of caution on this one and say we’d rather avoid an unexpected nose-full of meth.
Tester doses are always recommended, but without more knowledge of the purity or, to be honest, the taste of meth we couldn’t specifically advise doing so for this sample. A simple Marquis test, however, will show the difference pretty plainly: Marquis will turn reddy-orangey-brown in the presence of methamphetamine (let’s say a generally autumnal colour scheme) and won’t respond at all to caffeine, a perfect contrast with the purple-black colour produced by MDMA.
Source: https://www.wedinos.org/db/samples/ (Ref:W012226)
Methamphetamine info: https://psychonautwiki.org/wiki/Methamphetamine
Caffeine info: https://psychonautwiki.org/wiki/Caffeine
Warning: Mislabelled Substance
Substance: MDMA
Sold as: Cocaine
Location: Bristol
Advice: This is an odd one — it’s unclear if this deception was mistaken or intentional, and exactly how much damage it could cause depends heavily on the user.
If the user is wise enough to take a tester dose and experienced enough to know the radical difference in taste between MDMA and cocaine, they’ll realise the issue long before any damage is done. However, one could equally already be rolling and looking to top up with the cocaine, and think that the face-stabbing pain of snorting MDMA is instead an indicator of low quality coke. At best, a user would stop using it and just end up with a particularly unpleasant comedown; at worst they might dose higher and end up in the throes of serotonin syndrome.
Fortunately, this is another case which can be easily identified with a quick Marquis test: Marquis reagent will not respond at all to cocaine and will, as above, turn a rich purple-black in the presence of MDMA.
Source: https://www.wedinos.org/db/samples/ (Ref:W012320)
MDMA info: https://psychonautwiki.org/wiki/MDMA
Warning: Mislabelled Substance
Substance: Ketamine
Sold as: Crack cocaine
Location: Croydon
Advice: Ketamine’s an acquired taste even if you’re taking it intentionally, and given the different dose ranges of the two substances it’s highly likely that the unfortunate user took a fairly-large dose and realised their mistake even as they were plummeting headlong into a k-hole.
However, in terms of true physical harm ketamine is incredibly well-tolerated, so if the poor sod who took this is properly cared for they’ll likely be fine. You can avoid this situation by practicing simple harm reduction practices like taking small doses more frequently, but if you do find yourself already in it, then you should be ok so long as you have some friends with you who can keep an eye on you and remove you from the situation if required.
Caveat: we’re speaking from an understanding of regular powder here (and it looks like the image shows powder, so we’re guessing the user was just sold “crack” as a brand-name), but if the user was to rock this up and smoke it like crack then the effects would be broadly similar, albeit much quicker and more robust in their onset.
The only key difference we would note here would be how much more irritation the user would experience — ket is pretty robust but doesn’t tolerate heat nearly as well as cocaine, so you might experience some heat degradation in addition to the increased pressure it places on mucus membranes (anyone who has snorted both ketamine and cocaine can attest to this). We can’t say for sure without smoking crack and ket ourselves, and probably aren’t going to try it, but this could hurt.
Source: https://www.wedinos.org/db/samples/ (Ref:W012346)
Ketamine info: https://psychonautwiki.org/wiki/Ketamine
Warning: Mislabelled Substance
Substance: 2C-B*
Sold as: 2C-B
Location: Edinburgh
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 rules apply — if nothing’s happening, stop taking it.
Source: https://www.wedinos.org/db/samples/ (Ref:W012370)
2C-B* info: https://bit.ly/2Kt2jvp
Warning: Mislabelled Substance
Substance: Ketamine
Sold as: Mephedrone
Location: Manchester
Advice: Finding out that a substance has been replaced with ket is always a mixed bag (pun not intended, but it’s definitely staying in). On the one hand, it’s low-risk in itself, has an exceptionally forgiving upper limit for dosage and is generally pretty recognisable in terms of experience, taste and looks. In this case, though, we see the other side of ketamine. A normal mkat dose is a heavy dose for ketamine, and a user expecting to take mkat is likely to be doing so in an environment that’s highly unsuitable for being suddenly and extremely ketty — while relatively physically safe, this would be a terrifying experience.
Hopefully this is just an accidental baggie switch rather than A Thing, but just in case: test substances where possible, even if this just means taking a really small dose to start off when you have a new bag. If you take a big line and find it tastes a lot kettier than expected, you’ll want to find a friend and explain what happened ASAP, just in case they need to get you out of there.
Source: https://www.wedinos.org/db/samples/ (Ref:W012404)
Ketamine info: https://psychonautwiki.org/wiki/Ketamine
Warning: Mislabelled Substance
Substance: 4-CMC
Sold as: Mephedrone
Location:London
Advice: What better way to close out our first report of 2020 than with a brand new substance! 4-CMC has floated around the research chemical markets for a while as producers worked around initial attacks on mephedrone (4-MMC) but this is the first report we’ve seen of it in our sources. By simply swapping a little CH3 for a chlorine atom, these enterprising chemists created a substance subtly different enough to evade regulation, but similar enough that it can apparently pass for mephedrone at point of sale.
However, when it comes to conversations of safety, the similarities begin to shrink. 4-CMC is orally active at a much lower dose than mephedrone, with Tripsit listing its threshold between a “common” and “strong” dose at 100mg, exactly where they place the line between “light” and “common” for mephedrone. While we don’t have data for snorting them, let’s err on the side of caution and assume the same relationship exists. Substitutions like this are a strong argument for the practice of tester-doses — taking a very small nip at first and gradually increasing it until you achieve the desired effect. This lets you identify any shifts in purity or substitutions like this one the easy way, rather than by accidentally overdosing and working backwards from there.
Luckily, these can also be identified by a simple Marquis test. In the presence of mephedrone the Marquis reagent will fizz clear, whereas it will not respond at all to 4-CMC.
Source: https://www.wedinos.org/db/samples/ (Ref:W012386)
4-CMC info: http://drugs.tripsit.me/4-CMC
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