Drugs 2.0: The Web Revolution That's Changing How the World Gets High

by Power, Mike

2011/07/bitcoin-is-not-anonymous.html

  8. www.philzimmermann.com/EN/essays/

  WhyIWrotePGP.html

  9. www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/24/ripa_jfl/

  page4.html

  10. US Attorney’s Office press release, 16 April 2012; www.justice. gov/usao/cac/Pressroom/2012/045.html

  Notes

  1. www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/

  medical_examiner/2010/02/the_chemists_war.html

  2. Ibid.

  3. www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/tell-your-children-they-can-get-naturally-high-177905211.html

  4. www.healthland.time.com/2012/07/25/after-the-ban-on-bath-salts-many-legal-highs-remain/#ixzz244z27e4z

  5. www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2012/11/21-year-old_dies_after_one_dro.html

  6. www.erowid.org/chemicals/2ci_nbome/2ci_

  nbome_death. shtml

  7. ‘New Drugs Detected in the EU at the Rate of Around One Per Week, Say Agencies’; www.emcdda.europa.eu/news/2012/2

  8. Ibid.

  9. www.kentonline.co.uk/kentonline/news/2012/

  february/9/cat_and_mouse.aspx

  10. www.ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk/sitecontent/

  newsarticles/2012/february/36-drugs-guilty

  11. www.soca.gov.uk/about-soca/library/doc_download/317-sars-annual-report-2011.pdf

  12. www.homeoffice.gov.uk/publications/alcohol-drugs/drugs/annual-review-drug-strategy-2010/acmd-letter-to-prof-les-iversen

  13. Shulgin had a stroke in 2010. His stepdaughter, Wendy, emailed as this book was going to press with news that her stepfather’s health had much improved. ‘Sasha is doing well. He’s had a wonderful sort of comeback from the severity of the dementia, due in part we believe to a medication that he’s taking now which is ergotamine, or hydergine [a precursor for LSD]. That has really helped him. He doesn’t sundown much anymore, he’s clearer and catches all conversation around him, following it, commenting on it, cracking jokes (we know he’s well when he does that!). Between a good change in diet, more exercise, and that medication, he’s really doing well.’ A year before, I had asked Shulgin’s wife Ann if her husband’s illness might have been caused by his lifelong use of drugs. She was adamant it had not. ‘Considering the hundreds of thousands of people who have experimented with psychoactive drugs and visionary plants, many of them using them as spiritual tools, there is no medical evidence whatsoever that that would be the case. It’s simply not true,’ she said.

  14. www.homeoffice.gov.uk/publications/alcohol-drugs/drugs/annual-review-drug-strategy-2010/acmd-letter-to-prof-les-iversen

  15. www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/apr/07/latin-america-drugs-nightmare

  16. www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/13/colombia-juan-santos-war-on-drugs

  17. www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/smoking.htm

  18. Sheryl Garrett, Adventures in Wonderland: Decade of Club Culture (Headline, 1999)

  19. Matthew Collin, Altered State (Serpent’s Tail, 1998)

  20. ‘New drugs detected in the EU at the rate of around one per week, say agencies’; www.emcdda.europa.eu/news/2012/2; see also ‘Drug Policy Profiles: Portugal’, Publications Office of the European Union (2011); and www.emcdda.europa.eu/

  attachements.cfm/att_137215_EN_PolicyProfile_Portugal_WEB

  _Final.pdf, p. 24

  21. ‘Portugal drug law show results ten years on, experts say’, AFP, 1 July 2011; www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/

  ALeqM5g9C6x99EnFVdFuXw_B8pvDRzLqcA

  22. Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs, 2012: ‘Analogue controls: An imperfect law’; www.ukdpc.org.uk/publication/analogue-controls-an-imperfect-law/

  23. David Fisher, ‘“Revolutionary” legal high law means state regulated drug market’, www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article. cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10822749

  Notes

  1. euchinawto.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view &id=347 &Itemid=33&lang=eeu

  2. ‘Veel xtc-pillen bevatten hoge dosis’, Associated Press, 31 January 2011; Document PZEEUC0020110131e71v0005n

  3. www.unodc.org/unodc/en/frontpage/2012/March/

  limitless-ways-to-disguise-ways-to-manufacture-party-pills-unodc-expert.html

  Useful Organizations

  For more information on drug policy, research, law, and issues around addiction, consult the following organizations:

  Release

  Providing free and confidential specialist advice to the public and professionals

  www.release.org.uk

  Angelus Foundation

  Research, education and advocacy

  www.angelusfoundation.com

  MixMag Survey and Global Drugs Survey

  World’s most in-depth drugs survey with focus on use among young people

  http://globaldrugsurvey.com/run-my-survey/case-studies/mixmag

  Addaction

  Addresses dependent use of all drugs

  www.addaction.org.uk

  Drugscope

  For independent information on drugs and drug-related issues

  www.drugscope.org.uk

  Action on Addiction

  www.actiononaddiction.org.uk/home.aspx

  Transform

  Campaigning group working towards drug policy change

  www.tdpf.org.uk

  The Club Drug Clinic

  For users of club drugs such as GHB, Ecstasy, mephedrone and ketamine, and legal highs

  www.clubdrugclinic.com

  Urban75

  Up-to-date information on drugs, effects and law. Impartial and well-informed

  www.urban75.com/Drugs/

  Pillreports

  Crowd-sourced Ecstasy quality reports

  www.pillreports.com

  Bluelight

  Drugs forum with in-depth information around all new drugs

  www.bluelight.ru

  Erowid

  Encyclopedic online drug library; essential reading

  www.erowid.org

  Glossary

  Technical Terms

  Functional groups: Groups of atoms found within molecules that are involved in the chemical reactions characteristic of those molecules.

  Ring substitution: To replace, using chemical reactions, atoms on the molecular structure of a chemical. In drug chemistry, this is deliberate and is carried out to change the drug’s effects, or its legality.

  Analogue: A contentious and legally complicated area; in some contexts this is taken to mean a chemical that is related structurally or in activity terms to a banned drug.

  Reagent: Substance used to provoke a chemical reaction; in this book’s context, to prove or disprove the presence of an illegal drug. An example is the Marquis reagent, used to demonstrate the presence of MDMA in pills sold as Ecstasy.

  Precursor: A substance from which another is formed; in drug chemistry an example might be safrole or methylamine, used in MDMA manufacture.

  Receptor binding: A measure of the efficacy of a drug in vivo; that is to say, how well a drug attaches to our brain and body’s neurotransmitters.

  Types of Drugs

  Phenethylamines: Psychedelic and stimulant drugs, many of which were invented by Shulgin and published in PIHKAL. Most are somewhat similar in effect to mescaline, the natural psychedelic found in cacti. Most often in the context of designer drug use, these are the 2C-series of drugs, such as 2C-B and 2C-I, etc. Some, such as DOM and DOC, are super-potent, at a milligram or less.

  Tryptamines: Psychedelic drugs most similar in effect to psilocybin-containing mushrooms.

  Cathinones: Stimulants whose effects resemble those of amphetamines; the parent chemical is found in Catha edulis, or khat, the woody shrub found throughout eastern Africa, especially Yemen and Ethiopia. Mephedrone is a drug in this class, as are most US bath salts type drugs.

  Piperidines: Super-potent stimulant class of drugs, to which Ritalin, the ADHD medicine, belongs. Long-lasting and low-dose.

  Methamphetamines: Stimulant class of drugs related structurally and in effects profile to amphetamines, thoug
h often with a longer-lasting effect. Crystal meth, or ‘ice’, is the most common of these, and is popular among poorer drug users in the US.

  Benzodiazepines: Tranquillizers, such as Valium (diazepam). There are hundreds of benzodiazepine variants possible and available.

  NBOME-series: Super-potent psychedelic stimulants. Most often these structural variants on Shulgin’s 2C-series of substituted phenethylamines are more potent by a factor of at least fifty. For example, 25I-NBOME is active at 300 μg, whereas 2C-I is active at 10 mg.

  Acknowledgements

  With many thanks to …

  Earth and Fire at Erowid, for your tireless work and pragmatism; to all at Pillreports for keeping people safe; to F&B (you know who you are); all posters at Bluelight and Urban75, especially editor Mike Slocombe for his contributions to harm reduction; to Yetman, Where Wolf, and Clapham Boy. To Agnetha Fältskog, wherever and whoever you may be.

  To Max ‘Narcomania’ Daly at Drugscope for kicking it all off, John Ramsey at St George’s for the analysis and commentary and unstinting generosity, Professor David E. Nichols for your generous interviews, and the Shulgin family for supporting the project and your permission to quote extensively from PIHKAL.

  To Fiona Measham, Adam Winstock, Duncan Dick of MixMag, Danny Kushlick of Transform and Alex Stevens for generous interviews and commentary.

  To Andrew Davies and Andrew Preston at Live! magazine for the commission that stepped things up a gear and to Tina Jackson for a very timely conversation. To Matthew Collin, for Altered State and many enlightening conversations.

  Endless thanks to Andrew Gordon at David Higham Associates for the constant support, motivation, tact and diplomacy, and to Philip Gwyn Jones, Laura Barber and Michael Salu at Granta/Portobello for your enduring commitment to the project.

  Special thanks go to Sara Holloway for a forensic and clear-sighted edit, and to all Portobello production staff, especially Jennie Condell for a meticulous copy-edit, and Christine Lo for making the virtual real.

  To Frank Broughton and Jason Underhill for your wit, warmth and wisdom. Michael Cook for your words of encouragement that night when the story took a strange and important twist. To Bill Brewster for the parties and the music, and to Paul Byrne at testpressing.org for assistance and diversion.

  To Jennifer Dunn for the chemistry lessons.

  To Kiley & Nunn Builders, Canning Town’s finest. Google them.

  And to …

  all those I have quoted who must remain anonymous

  To John and Margaret Power, and our Phil, Chris, Jon and Andy.

  Finally, and most fully, the biggest thank you of them all to Sasha Dunn, for your tolerance and logic and love.

  mpx

  Index

  2C-B, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

  2C-B-FLY, 1, 2

  2C-D, 1, 2, 3

  2C-E, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

  2C-I, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

  2C-P, 1, 2, 3, 4

  2C-T-2, 1, 2, 3

  2C-T-7, 1, 2, 3, 4

  2-DPMP (desoxypipradol), 1, 2, 3

  3-MA, 1

  3-MeO-2-Oxo-PCE, see methoxetamine

  3,4 methylenedioxymethamphetamine

  4-AcO-DMT, 1, 2, 3, 4

  4-HO-MET, 1, 2

  4-MeO-PCP, 1

  4-MTA, 1, 2

  4-PO-DMT, 1

  5-APB, 1

  5-IT, 1

  5-MeO-DALT, 1

  5-MeO-DIPT, 1, 2

  5-MeO-DMT, 1, 2, 3

  6-APB (Benzo Fury), 1, 2, 3, 4

  6-APDB, 1

  25C-NBOME, 1

  25I-NBOME, 1, 2

  Abama, 1, 2

  acetic anhydride, 1

  acetylproionylmorphine, 1

  Acid House, 1

  Acid Tests, 1

  Addams Family, The, 1

  Adelaide Forensics, 1

  Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD), 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

  Afghanistan, 1

  Alabama, contaminated drugs in, 1, 2

  alcohol, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

  and decriminalization debate, 1, 2, 3

  interaction with cocaine, 1

  and overdosing, 1

  and Prohibition, 1

  Alder Wright, Charles Romley, 1

  AlertPay, 1, 2

  Alexandra Palace, 1

  All the President’s Men, 1

  Alpert, Richard, 1

  alpha-ethyl tryptamine (A-ET), 1

  alpha-methyl tryptamine (AMT), 1, 2, 3, 4

  alprazolam, 1

  alt.drugs, 1, 2, 3, 4

  AM-2201, 1, 2, 3

  AM-2203, 1

  Amara, Roy, 1

  Amazon, 1, 2

  American Analog Act, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

  American Association of Poison Control Centers, 1

  American Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 1

  Ames, Dean, 1

  amphetamines, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

  Amsterdam, 1, 2, 3

  analeptics, 1

  angel dust (PCP), 1, 2

  Angelus Foundation, 1

  anti-retrovirals, 1

  aphrodisiacs, 1

  Apple Macintosh, 1, 2

  Arab Spring, 1

  Armory, 1

  ARPANET, 1, 2

  arylcyclohexylamine, 1

  Atha, Matthew, 1

  Australia, 1, 2

  ayahuasca, 1

  Babcock, Judge Lewis T., 1

  Baker, Richard, 1

  Baran, Paul, 1

  Barbarao, Pasquale, 1

  Barcelona, 1

  Barrett, Syd, 1

  Barroso, José Manuel, 1

  bath salts, 1, 2, 3

  BBC Radio Five Live, 1

  Beatles, the, 1, 2

  Bejerot, Nils, 1

  Benny, 1

  Benzo Fury, see 6-APB

  benzocaine, 1

  benzodiazepines, 1

  benzofurans, 1

  Bercow, Sally, 1

  Berners Lee, Tim, 1

  Bernstein, Leonard, 1

  beta-nitroisosafrole, 1

  Betts, Leah, 1

  Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, 1

  binge-drinking, 1

  Biorepublik, 1, 2, 3, 4

  Bishton, Michael, 1

  bitcoin, 1, 2, 3

  BK-MDMA (methylone), 1, 2, 3

  Black Mamba, 1

  Black Market Reloaded, 1

  Blaine, Minneapolis, 1

  blood-brain barrier, 1

  Blue Mystic Powder, 1

  Bluelight, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

  Boire, Richard Glen, 1

  Bonsai fertilizer, 1

  Bragg, Malcolm, 1

  Brand, Stewart, 1, 2

  Breadmore, Ian, 1

  brephedrone, 1, 2

  Brignac, Jarod, 1

  British Crime Survey, 1, 2

  British Medical Journal, 1, 2

  Brokenshire, James, 1

  bromo-dragonFLY, 1, 2, 3

  bromo-STP, 1, 2

  Brown, John B., III, 1

  Bunk Police, 1

  buphedrone, 1, 2, 3

  Burroughs, William, 1, 2, 3

  Burt, Kelly, 1

  Bush, George, 1

  butylone, 1, 2

  cacti, 1

  caffeine, 1, 2, 3

  Calea zacatechichi, 1

  Callas, John, 1

  Cambodia, 1, 2

  Cambridge News, 1

  camfetamine, 1

  cannabinoids, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

  cannabis, see marijuana

  Cardamom Mountains, 1

  Carlin, Eric, 1

  Caroff, Gaelle, 1

  cathinones, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

  and legislation, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

  relation to khat, 1

  CERN, 1

  Champlegals, 1, 2

  Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS), 1

  chilling out, 1

  China

  bilateral agreement with EU, 1

  drug laws, 1, 2, 3

  legitimate
exports, 1

  and marijuana replacements, 1, 2, 3

  mephedrone production, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

  and mephedrone replacements, 1

  Christin, Nicholas, 1

  CIA, 1

  Clapham Boy, 1, 2

  Clegg, Michael, 1

  Clinton, Bill, 1

  Club Drugs Clinic, 1

  cocaethylene, 1

  cocaine, 1

  analogues, 1, 2

  and black working class, 1

  compared with mephedrone, 1, 2, 3

  crack, 1, 2, 3

  decline in quality, 1

  and decriminalization debate, 1, 2

  intravenous use, 1

  and Mexican drugs war, 1

  online sales, 1, 2, 3

  popularity, 1

  prices, 1, 2, 3

  UK consumption, 1, 2

  Code of Practice for Scientific Advisory Committees, 1

  Collin, Matthew, 1

  Colombia, 1

  Conklin, Phillip, 1