If you haven’t caught the news clip about the “living dead” in Florida that ate 75 – 80% of a person’s face like it was birthday cake, then you should perform a quick search. This isn’t for the faint of heart. The guy was on bath salt. No, he didn’t hop out of the tub in a rage because his upstairs neighbor kept beating on the floor. This was a person on the drugs entitled, bath salts.
“The injured man now needs a facial transplant. The unofficial cause for the depravity: bath salts, a synthetic cocktail that usually contains cocaine and speed (http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=20741307&title=emergency-officials-call-effects-of-bath-salt-use-frightening&s_cid=featured-3; By Peter Samore, June 7th, 2012).
These aren’t difficult to find. This new high has taken an upward swing since approximately 2009. The ease to which the consumer can acquire the drug fuels the progressive, chronic brain disease characterized by loss of control; drug use despite harm and denial: addiction.
The active ingredients, M-Cat, bk-MDMA, and NRG-1, are deemed dangerous. Thus far, there is a lack of laboratory tests to provide factual information about bath salts affects, but they have been classified as stimulants. Stimulants increase activities which normally occur. There is abnormally increased behavioral arousal and activity which results from the levels of norepinephrine in brain synapses. Bath salts can also be classified as hallucinogens. The bath salts cause distortions of senses, such as vision, to drive the user into fits of rage. One could compare its affects to LSD or PCP. Mephedrone and methylone have been tested, not on humans, though.
“Mephedrone and methylone are synthetic chemical derivatives of the psychedelic herb khat. All three of the newly banned drugs share properties of stimulants, such as methamphetamine, and psychedelics (or empathogens), such as ecstasy (WebMD, http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/news/20110908/bath-salts-used-to-get-high-are-now-illegal, September 8, 2011, By Daniel J. DeNoon, WebMD Health News)
Amphetamine addiction leads to amphetamine psychosis. This psychosis is very similar to schizophrenia. The stages of abuse effects are accelerated with bath salts.
-energized, aroused
-restless, agitated, anxious
-extreme behavioral excitation in attempt to achieve the initial high
-depression, despair, intense drug craving, drug seeking
-psychosis and drug toxicity become common
(The Neurobiology of Addiction, James D. Stoehr, 2006)
The buying and selling of these bath salts has become illegal, but chemists stay on the edge with the different combinations of legal drugs to arrive at the same illegal bath salt. The only way to deem the drug illegal is to make that recipe illegal including its protocol for production. The sellers, most of which are over the counter, such as head shops and smoke shops, have adopted the salts giving them new euphoric names; Cloud 9, Zoom, etc. The prices have been jacked up, making them easy to identify. If you are buying some bath stuff at $25-30 for 0.5g, or 500mg, then you are headed toward oblivion. Put it back. Question its origins. Leave it alone if you get an answer like, “well uh, you know, uh…”
More reports and research has to take place in order to educate society as to the damaging results of bath salt abuse. When society is educated, more will be smart in perceiving the harm in using the drug.
Speak up, who was sitting in the tub thinking, “What if someone sniffed this lavender sh..?”
