Ecstasy

Ecstasy is a powerful stimulant and mood changer that speeds up your body system and alters your perception of the world. It can make you feel both uplifted and relaxed and feeling very happy, usually with an overwhelming urge to dance.

Ecstasy is often called “the love pill” because it heightens perceptions of color and sound and supposedly amplifies sensations when one touches or caresses another, particularly during sex.

But Ecstasy often contains hallucinogens, which are drugs that act on the mind and cause people to see or feel things that are not really there. Hallucinogens can throw a person into a scary or sad experience from the past, where he or she gets stuck without even realizing it.

The image of Ecstasy as a “love pill” is one of many lies that are spread about the drug.

Ecstasy is emotionally damaging and users often suffer depression, confusion, severe anxiety, paranoia,1 psychotic behavior and other psychological problems.

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Magic Mushrooms

What are magic mushrooms?

‘Magic mushrooms’ is a slang word for psilocybe semilanceata or ‘liberty cap’ mushrooms (the most common type of ‘magic mushroom’ in the UK) and any other mushroom which produces similar ’trippy’ effects, like hallucinations.
It is important to know that different types of ‘magic mushroom’ will differ in how strong and how toxic they are.

For example, the amanita muscaria or ‘fly agaric’ mushroom is stronger than the traditional ‘liberty cap’ mushroom

After picking, magic mushrooms are often eaten raw or are dried out and stored. Some people use the dried mushrooms to make tea. Drying reduces the weight of the ‘magic mushrooms’, but not their potency. People don’t tend to eat fly agaric mushrooms raw as they can make you feel really sick and also because there is a greater risk of poisoning and death from this family of mushrooms.

Effects

• Colours, sounds and objects appear distorted.
   
• Your sense of time and movement can speed up – or slow down.
   
• You may feel disoriented, tired or sick – and some users can get stomach pains or diarrhoea. 

They can also have other effects:

• Magic mushrooms can distort colours, sounds and objects. They can make you feel as if your senses are mixed up so that, for example, you think you can hear colours and you can see sounds. Some people can feel more emotionally sensitive or more creative or feel enlightened.
• They can also speed up and slow down your sense of time and movement.
• They can make it feel like you're dreaming when you're awake.
• Sometimes, magic mushrooms can make you feel disoriented, tired or sick and can give you stomach pains or diarrhoea.

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Speed

Speed is a stimulant (‘upper’). It can be a powder or tablet which you sniff, swallow or inject.. Speed is an off white or pinkish powder and can sometimes look like crystals. Base speed is purer and is a pinkish grey colour and feels like putty. You can dab speed onto your gums or sniff in lines like cocaine using a rolled up bank note. You can also roll it up in a cigarette paper and swallow. This is called a ‘speedbomb’. You can mix it in drinks or inject it. You can smoke methamphetamine in its ‘crystal’ form. It starts to affect you within 20 minutes and lasts for 4-6 hours.

Short-term effects

• You feel exhilarated, with more energy and confidence
• You don’t need much sleep or food
• Your pupils look wider and your face paler
• Your breathing and heart rate increase and blood pressure rises
• Dry mouth, diarrhoea, need to urinate more often
• Higher doses also cause flushing, sweating, headaches, teeth grinding, jaw clenching and racing heart
• You may be talkative and aggressive
• Can sometimes cause amphetamine psychosis, when you lose contact with reality

Long-term effects

• Tolerance – you need to take more to get the same buzz
• Anxiety, depression, irritability and aggression
• Powerful cravings
• You may become violent
• Mood swings
• Mental health problems such as psychosis, paranoia, delusions and hallucinations
• Weight loss
• Scratching or itchy skin
• Sniffing speed can damage the inside lining of your nose
• Injecting speed can cause vein damage and sharing needles puts you at risk of HIV and hepatitis

Other dangers

• Risk of overdose
• Heart failure
• Very dangerous if you combine it with anti-depressants or alcohol
• Risk of HIV and hepatitis if you share snorting or injecting gear
• May trigger underlying mental health problems
• Increased sex drive can lead to unsafe sex, with the risk of unwanted pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) or HIV

How long does it stay in your system?

Speed will show up in a urine test for 2-3 days. (The length of time depends on the test used, the amount you take, if you have other medical conditions and your own metabolism. Please use this figure as a guide only).

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Cocaine

Cocaine causes a short-lived, intense high that is immediately followed by the opposite—intense depression, edginess and a craving for more of the drug. People who use it often don’t eat or sleep properly. They can experience greatly increased heart rate, muscle spasms and convulsions. The drug can make people feel paranoid, angry, hostile and anxious—even when they aren’t high.

Regardless of how much of the drug is used or how frequently, cocaine increases the risk that the user will experience a heart attack, stroke, seizure or respiratory (breathing) failure, any of which can result in sudden death.

Effects of Cocaine

• Raising the body’s temperature
• Making the heart beat faster
• Reducing feelings of hunger
• After a big night on cocaine, it's not unusual for people to feel like they've got the flu.

The effects of crack smoking are virtually immediate, peaking for about two minutes and lasting for only about 10 minutes.  When snorting coke it takes longer to peak but the effects still don’t last that long, only around 20-30 minutes.  When the effects of any cocaine use start to wear off there can be a very strong temptation to take more, particularly with the long ‘come down’, the crash period sometimes lasting for days afterwards.

History of Cocaine

Coca is one of the oldest, most potent and most dangerous stimulants of natural origin. Three thousand years before the birth of Christ, ancient Incas in the Andes chewed coca leaves to get their hearts racing and to speed their breathing to counter the effects of living in thin mountain air.

Native Peruvians chewed coca leaves only during religious ceremonies. This taboo was broken when Spanish soldiers invaded Peru in 1532. Forced Indian laborers in Spanish silver mines were kept supplied with coca leaves because it made them easier to control and exploit.

Cocaine was first isolated (extracted from coca leaves) in 1859 by German chemist Albert Niemann. It was not until the 1880s that it started to be popularized in the medical community.

Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, who used the drug himself, was the first to broadly promote cocaine as a tonic to cure depression and sexual impotence.

In 1884, he published an article entitled “Über Coca” (About Coke) which promoted the “benefits” of cocaine, calling it a “magical” substance.

Freud, however, was not an objective observer. He used cocaine regularly, prescribed it to his girlfriend and his best friend and recommended it for general use.

While noting that cocaine had led to “physical and moral decadence,” Freud kept promoting cocaine to his close friends, one of whom ended up suffering from paranoid hallucinations with “white snakes creeping over his skin.”

He also believed that “For humans the toxic dose (of cocaine) is very high, and there seems to be no lethal dose.” Contrary to this belief, one of Freud’s patients died from a high dosage he prescribed.

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