Week 11 (11.01-17.01.2016) Partying safely for all ages!

Today I’d like to talk to you about drugs. I want to do it in a different manner than you are probably used to though - I’m not going to tell you that drugs are bad and you shouldn’t be doing them, instead I will try to tell you the most important things to keep in mind while tripping – things I believe everyone should know in modern society, because even if you are not interested in using them yourself, you can be fairly certain that there are lots of people around you in every single club doing them each night, and this knowledge might just save someone – including your close friends – from having a so-called “bad trip”. Or worse.

Let me make one thing straight before we begin - by no means I want to encourage anyone to do drugs. I am not going to discourage you either though, because I do believe that we are all old and mature enough to make such decisions ourselves and we should focus on facts instead – it is more important today than it ever was that we broaden our knowledge regarding this subject and I would like you to do just that.

I’m going to talk only about the most common substances that are used widely everywhere in the world, but I will also post some links to reliable resources and trustworthy sites that I recommend reading on your own.

(source: pintrest.com)

MDMA

One of the most popular drugs today. MDMA is everywhere and I’m willing to bet there are at least a couple people rolling each night in every club in the city you go to. Well, first and the most important thing - STAY HYDRATED. Drink a lot of water, please be don’t be afraid to spend a lot of cash on water in the club and actually prepare to do exactly that.

Don’t redose even if you feel like it’s not working. It’s common for MDMA to hit after more than an hour so just wait patiently and have fun in the meantime. If you can’t feel anything, it won’t change no matter how much you take so just don’t do it.

Clean MDMA is relatively safe, the problem is that it usually gets cut with other stuff like amphetamine and meth for instance. Make sure to test it! I can’t stress this enough and please do some reading about test kits. Another thing to remember is that MDMA depletes your brain serotonin level and you are going to feel down after it fades. If it falls down to zero you are going to understand the feeling of depression. This may take up to 2 days but no matter how bad you feel it will come back to normal sooner than you think and there’s really no reason to worry about it – just eat a bar of chocolate or two and everything will be fine. If you take too much, there’s a chance you will not be able to sleep for the next day or two. That’s also nothing to worry about so stay cool and just get busy with something.

Those are all extreme examples but being aware of them may help. And no matter how you feel about it please restrain from using MDMA more than once every 3 months – just let your brain rest a little and focus on other things. This way you won’t build tolerance and you should be completely safe from any neurotoxicity. 

(source: cargocollective.com)

LSD (good practices here are shared with other psychedelics, such as shrooms for example)

Make sure you are in a good mood and in an environment you feel comfortable in. Any feeling you have will be accentuated and because of that, negative emotions may quickly become overwhelming if you focus your mind on them. Same with anxiety (although it depends on a person). So the best thing you can do is make sure there’s nothing bothering you and if you start feeling anxious about anything, just try to stop thinking about it and focus on something else – it shouldn’t be too hard.

It is said that Xanax (the prescription drug) kills any bad trip in case it happens, so it might be a good idea to keep it around if possible. I would be careful about that though, because benzodiazepines in general are said to be much more dangerous and addictive than acid itself, and unless you took an insane amount, shouldn’t be really necessary. It’s definitely worth knowing and keeping in mind though.

In case of all psychedelics a good practice could be to have a so-called “trip sitter” – a trustworthy and sober (!) person who knows what is going on, but won’t get in the way and might help you feel comfortable in case of bad thoughts.

Heroin

Heroin, well… Heroin is kind of different. And instead of telling you how to keep safe while taking heroin, I would like you to watch a short clip (about 3 minutes, don't worry) – a video about what it feels like to do heroin.

So there’s that. As usual, the decision is yours.


That’s it for today because the post has already gotten much longer than I originally intended. If you would like to learn more, there are a couple sites I can definitely recommend:

Erowid – https://www.erowid.org/psychoactives/psychoactives.shtml

First choice and the biggest, oldest and most trusted drug-related knowledge base. And for a good reason – there’s literally everything you could think of, from scientific papers and test results, FAQs, do’s and don’ts, dosage information, all the way to literally thousands of user trip reports about pretty much every single drug imaginable, sorted by categories such as first time experiences, combinations, bad trips and addiction and habituation. A great read really, and I wish this website was much more widely known.

reddit.com/r/Drugs - https://www.reddit.com/r/Drugs/wiki/faq

Reddit is great because it allows anonymous discussion, and on the /r/Drugs subreddit there are series of FAQs with a lot of different opinions and experiences. I also recommend reading through those, but have enough common sense not to blindly trust everything you read on the internet though.

TripSit - http://tripsit.me/

A great website about harm reduction with “Immediate Assistance” live chat available – another great resource everyone should be aware about. There are also lots of useful guides about dealing with addiction, overdoes and other important things you might encounter.