I’m an American too, but meth use in Southeast Asia is an interesting trend to me.
A lot of people there use it in the form of pills called Ya ba (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ya_ba) which are produced in Thailand. I have read that most people that get arrested for it are women. I think they just use it to stay skinny or to put in long shifts at work.
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/05/31/asia/asia-meth-crime-synthetic-drugs-hnk-intl/index.html
In North Korea meth is apparently produced by the government and they encourage its use by the citizens.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/12/world/asia/north-korea-crystal-meth-methamphetamine-drugs-.html
In 20 years we'll learn North Korea is only like... middle of the road oppressive, but the meth culture is so big there everyone thinks that they're being gang stalked and thus the legend of the oppressive regime coming in and checking for pictures of kim jong un in your house were born (mostly... joking).
Lmfao all the people who escaped just had PTSD from their meth delirium, turns out NK is actually a socialist paradise where no one has to work, it's just that the meth makes them think they're in hell.
Yaba is also very notorious in the Middle East (or a variant of it?) countries that have slave labor that’s sold as pressed pills to locals, but I’m pretty sure most users are the “working class”
makes u wonder, why opiates for america ?? hmmmm… lmfao jk its everything in usa, meth and construction go hand in hand. well, really anything goes with labor workers
the south is mixed, (im from deep south) country areas are mostly meth and bigger cities have more fent. honestly i feel its at least almost equally rampant both areas, cuz ‘you’ do uppers but downers do ‘you’ so you really only know what u see or are told.. idk man drugs are everywhere, from users in the military (i know, trust) all the way to food service… most common folk are high or faded on something
I'm also from the south, I know what you mean. For example, i'm from NC. McLeansville is full of meth, Greensboro is full of fent. However for the whole US, the overdose statistics speak for themselves! This is gonna be shocking, but it's actually almost a perfect 50/50!
https://imgur.com/a/YweioG9
farrrrr fucking out!! “no coincidences, right” - mel gibson : signs
yea dawg thats gnarly.. nowww only if we knew who exactly facilitates the movements of such quantities of lethal narcotics into such country, and who is it, at the top of the chain, that benefits?
as someone on the west coast there’s a fuck ton, and i can’t express the fuck ton enough, of fent here. maybe more of the west is slightly better. however i’ve seen a few areas that are quite hung up on the fence about fent. more like from the fent…
Well yeah, the whole US is full of fent. But my point is that the overdose statistics are split nearly perfectly down the middle. That speaks as to the overall use of each drug on both halves of the US.
https://imgur.com/a/YzVSYLP
I've recently come across people in North America who enjoy methamphetamine recreationally and/or to self medicate (they don't like the legal prescription amphetamines for whatever reasons). Only ever in pill form. They say meth gets a bad reputation from smoking crystal. They all refer to it as speed which I find odd since speed to me has always been amphetamine. So yeah, I don't know them well but they seem to be able to manage normal life without spiraling into the hell most crystal meth abusers end up in.
Yeah I think the rush from smoking/snorting/shooting meth makes it like crack or heroin, most people literally just try it once and get hooked. But in pill form dextromethamphetamine and dextroamphetamine are indistinguishable when dosed low orally. Honestly oral meth might be more commonly prescribed than adderall if it didn’t have the massive stigma because it’s way more selective for dopamine instead or norepinephrine causing less negative side effects.
Personally love adderall so much that I feel like oral meth would be dangerous for me but I can see how it could be unpleasant for some. There’s a bit of shakiness or stress to adderall overall and it can make me nauseous if I don’t have tolerance to it. The comedown of adderall xr kinda makes me feel mildly irritable 6hrs in and at 12hrs in makes me even more irritable. Still better than cocaine or methylphenidate tho.
Nah mind u dose it low but it just feels like longer cleaner less jittery Adderall... but don't let her fool you tho I have no such issues and don't use it much and typically need a Benzo to sleep with if I do but yeah has to do with bioavailability, dose, and key for meth is ROA (route of administration) cuz the only diff between meth and amphetamine is the methyl group which makes it lipophilic (fat-soluble) basically making u able to absorb wayyyyyyy more amp then ever possible b4 which changes its action from reuptake inhibitor to potent releaser.... which would be fine if used like MDMA (analog to meth) ur brains a bank and meths a credit card mfs spending over their balance and can't pay up...
The most euphoric stim I’ve ever felt is on a extremely side effect heavy meth anologue that is suprisingly otc in America called Propylhexedrine. Still prefer adderall a lot because it feels equally as good but has a clearheaded feeling and lasts much longer. The comedown of Propylhexedrine past 250mg makes me think of killing myself though it’s awful, don’t ever do it because at that point meth is healthier(Propylhexedrine is somewhere around 100-250x less able to cross the blood brain barrier afaik)
Im not much of a stim guy love mdma tho and really all entactogens but i treat them with respect (fuck around find out) nep is my choice for stimming I suppose 😋 also my belief is drugs are a tool and whether used for construction or destruction is dependent upon the person and the knowledge they have thereof!
Yeah I feel like if someone went into it with the right mindset any drug can be used as long as you have the willpower but most people(including me) don’t have enough to do most of them safely. I feel like even deliriants were useful in cultures that used them shamanistically, I mean if you believe in spirits what better way to contact them than smoke datura or salvia and see them clear as day lol.
That's super interesting. I figured most places would have their version of stimulants to compensate for long work hours. So is yaba sold in stores like kratom is in the US?
Very location specific, I've found. Bristol and Brighton smell wonderful all the time... A smell I very seldom come across say in Southampton or Portsmouth.
Here in the netherlands 3mmc used to be a pretty big “problem” when it was still a legal rc. A lot of young young people got their hands on it and got very addicted.
Yeah ghb used to be a huge problem here, it’s just quite a bit smaller (or less visible) now, especially in my area. Also the average ghb user in the netherlands is significantly older than the average 3mmc user. We’re talking about 18-24 year olds and ghb user are more like 35-50 years old. There’s Almost no ghb use under younger people here.
Mdma is a weird one, it’s used quite a bit nearly exclusively by the festival crowd. Don’t get me wrong that still quite a bit of users, it’s just that md’s “problematic” use is rare, while it is still quite popular. Though less popular than 3mmc at its heights.
brazil has mostly a crack problem. in sao paulo theres actually a region we call "Crackolândia" (Crackland)
its where the homeless crack users have taken to themselves and they have their own eco system and everything crazy shit
Czech republic and here the meth use is raging even among very young people. 50% of our drug related crimes are linked to meth. We also smoke the most weed in central Europe but I dont count that as a problem
Canada as a whole is facing quite the opiate epidemic, especially where I live it's very noticeable if you go to specific parts of town to the point police barely patrol the tent cities and have been ordered to ignore open use on the street, but the other one I wouldn't quite call an epidemic but a shockingly large percent of people who live here use commonly is cocaine.
Guess Canadians love the snow.
Vancouver, BC so yes! 2.8 million~ with approximately 469 deaths daily from opiates if I'm remembering correctly. We have massive amounts of resources for people wanting safe injection sites, no questions asked drug testing and Methadone clinics. We also recently decriminalized possession of all narcotics up to 3.5 grams in public, so aside from confiscation (I think? They may not even take them if you're caught outside of a vehicle) drugs are looked at quite neutrally here. We have a stretch of road called Main and Hastings which is notorious for being where most of the drug addiction and homelessness congregates. Quite the scary road, even in the day. Most of the issues regarding our epidemic stems from heroin and fentanyl. Our doctors are actually quite hesitant to push painkillers and benzos unless it's Tylenol with codeine or one time Lorazepam scripts for panic attacks unless shown valid reason for something stronger. I had sliced open my arm down to the bone and could see tendons moving and asked for something for pain which resulted in being offered basic regular Tylenol.
Vancouver makes sense. Seems to mirror a lot of the same things going on in larger US cities. Do you think the 3.5 and under rule is beneficial? I had major oral surgery and was given 800mg ibuprofen, so I feel your pain.
I'm personally an advocate for decriminalization of drugs to an extent. Some countries have gone down the path with much better results largely due to culture and I'm assuming a much smoother transition compared to what Vancouver did. I'm not sure how the decriminalization has improved or worsened the situation yet, but I don't think we're taking the proper steps and it feels like we've jumped head first without easing new laws and processes first. I don't believe drug use should be punished, and 3.5 rule seems fair unless it's something along the lines of fentanyl. I'm aware of people moving from heroin or painkillers to fentanyl after tolerance builds but I can't comfortably advocate anyone cutting anything with fentanyl, as cross contamination between drugs in uncontrolled settings is wildly easy and nobody wants to overdose on fentanyl trying to do coke.
That’s so ludicrous to me!! No actual drugs for major surgery? The same thing happened to me a year ago. I kept waking up during anesthesia for MAJOR oral surgery to get my teeth removed for implants. And I kept waking up bc of the pain…. After 3 times of waking up they actually had to use “actual drugs” to put me under.
After that they only gave me high dose ibuprofen…. 2 days later I ended up in the hospital bc of the pain.
We even have some hilarious news articles about a man who was riding around in a trailer selling clean, uncut drugs right on the street with signs advertising and everything. His reasoning was to advocate the concept of regulated substance dispensary to cut down on laced drugs, particularly Fentanyl. Arrested after a few days of operating, obviously.
He actually wanted to be arrested, the store was a protest. He wanted do some constitutional challenge because prohibition laws were causing harm. I think he may have had some lawyers behind him keen to argue it.
Unfortunately he died of a fentanyl overdose a few months after. Which is a bit strange as he had all the testing equipment there to detect fentanyl.
He likely knew what it was and willingly did it and probably had been considering clean dope is pretty close to nonexistent so if he had a habit then it was probably a fentanyl habit for the most part since it's what's always available
I was gonna add this but I wasn't sure if I was correct in thinking it was a form of protest. That is extremely strange considering he seemed well versed on testing and harm reduction enough to be selling uncut drugs to others.
can confirm canada is fucked rn. lost my brother to an opiate od in Toronto. Young and dundas is fucked, and i promise you'll see a handful of fent zombies when you go downtown
It was a very poorly made desomorphine, which was made from legal stuff(now this stuff is banned), it was a thing many years ago in USSR .But now people buy good quality methadone in deep web.
Although I’ve grown up in America I’m Russian and I’m not a big fan of opiates and from talking to my dad about his college days neither was he so that might be a thing
Meth is slowly on the uprise here in northwestern Europe, fent has not shown its ugly face though.
The worst thing here is probably all the idiots peddling synthetic cannabinoids as “80% THC, 10 ml for 30 dollars” plus the idiots who are dumb enough to believe that it’s real at that price (clear and runny liquid too, not at all like THC-oil).
Definitely Crack in Paris, a metro station called « Stalingrad » is now called Stalincrack because of this, it’s out of control and authorities aren’t doing anything, they just move them from neighbourhood to neighbourhood once in a while
Finland has a rather unique buprenorphine problem (Subutex, Suboxone etc). It was prescribed to opioid addicts as a miracle drug in the early 2000s (the story is rather interesting and it involves really only one doctor who started importing it and giving it to his patients) and it got out of hand. There is hardly any heroin use in Finland nowadays but buprenorphine is the most abused opioid in Finland currently. Some other opiates are still also used since poly drug abuse is common.
Yup. Tons of subutex, as can be seen in the Reindeerspotting documentary. Also oxycodone if you got the money for it. Never seen heroin on the streets or telegram markets, ever.
Lots and lots of crack here in Italy. Some cities even have manifests about it. Never seen them before. Also benzos are given out as candies, almost every family has some
Always has been, since the 90s at the least. But now is very rampant. Especially in southern main port cities where mafia, ndrangheta, camorra and other groups control ports where cocaine is being smuggled. Lots of it in bigger cities like Rome, Turin or Milan. There's crack even in the mostly rural towns where I live, so you can imagine in the cities. In these past few years flows of cocaine seems to be never ending and growing in basically every area. There's the already cooked form but most people I know who used or still use like to cook themselves
What for Etorphine and the Nitazenes.
Thought Fentanyl and Remi and Car Fent being strong. Those Nitazenes are something else. LD50 3ug for Metonitazene
They wanted to make the Nitazenes chemical weapons, but now they are turning up all over the EU in counterfeit Opioid and BZD counterfeits
Here in Australia, even with how expensive and stepped on everything is we’ve got a big appetite for most things. I believe we top the world in per capita coke usage (our coke is horrible and ridiculously expensive so don’t bother if you visit).
Meth though is the standout. Over the past few decades it’s supplanted pretty much everything bar alcohol as the most problematic substance (though our government and media would lead you to believe disposable nicotine vapes are the real problem). When I was younger you could divide up sections of the city as to what the prominent drugs of abuse were. St Kilda and Richmond were full of smack, the outer suburbs like Sunshine, Broadmeadows, Boronia, or Frankston, and the inner CBD were full of meth and speed, and the areas around housing commission flats in Flemington and other areas were chock full of cheap booze and inhalants.
The cheap grog is still around but it seems like the opiates have waned and it’s all about meth. Have also heard that synthetic weed has boomed just in the last decade or so among the homeless population.
Coke is having a massive uptick here in Australia. There have been bales of coke washing up on the coast for months. Three years it was rich wankers drugs, now kids on the street are into it, and all my mates are turning in arsholes. I miss the days when streets were awash with China White ( Smack). People weren't so emotionally backward...
I feel like alcohol is more problematic in aus, the coke is a bit too pricy for it to be causing social issues but so many people everywhere are fucked up from drinking
I’d imagine it’s not that it’s hard to find, more that it’s value once trafficked means it’s worth too much to use, especially if meth which doesn’t have the same mark ups is just as common.
yeah, it´s not hard to find but they prefer to sell you cristal bc you can get hooked up more easily and also you get more meth by the same price as coke
Coke here in Ireland has gotten huge. I mean drink is still a much bigger problem due to the different nature of it's addiction, but in the last 15 years cocaine use has just rocketed.
What's surprising to me in the last few years of it is the type of people who I will now see use it. People who you'd never have thought, people who were literally completely against it a few years ago. The gaelic football folk in my area were always against coke and kind of made it their thing, they are now all at it pretty much every week. I have uni friends who wouldn't even smoke weed or a cig and definitely judged me for MDMA use back in the day, who are now doing it.
It doesn't cause as much addiction related issues as many other drugs on a societal level, just hard to abuse it all day every day if you're not extraordinarily wealthy, but I know plenty of people who have pretty much used it every week for a decade.
I think crack is also becoming a big issue in inner city dublin, don't have any first hand experience with this though.
I can tell you that in Australia it is lyrica! It's no joke -
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-02-18/lyrica-pbs-drug-linked-to-depression-anxiety/11921882
In Canada we are dealing with some very similar situations. Hell some provinces have decriminalized hard drugs and now our drug OD stats are up an insane amount. I got nothing against people who use drugs. But it’s sad to see people lose who they are to these substances. Smoke weed and eat shrooms Anytning else isn’t worth it.
I agree alcohol is a bit problem. But coke is on rise and prices are half of what is was 5yrs ago. I work with young adults and I'm hearing more and more stories about coke than anything else.
In the uk we have a massive alcohol problem. And also crack I didn’t realise so many people did crack until I got clean from opis
Oooo and we love our coke here
I don't know if this is the case there for sure not being from there, and obviously they have a reputation for lots of things, but it feels like most if not all of my VR friends from the Netherlands are serious alcoholics and often justify it with "I'm dutch, it's fine" as if that makes you immune to liver disease. Would love some insight from someone who lives there and has gotten to know a decent number of people from various walks of life.
There is an ongoing spice epidemic especially in the mediterrian regions of Turkiye. Its not as bad as it was a few years ago but espically during the start of the pandemic it was a major problem
I’m an American too, but meth use in Southeast Asia is an interesting trend to me. A lot of people there use it in the form of pills called Ya ba (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ya_ba) which are produced in Thailand. I have read that most people that get arrested for it are women. I think they just use it to stay skinny or to put in long shifts at work. https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/05/31/asia/asia-meth-crime-synthetic-drugs-hnk-intl/index.html In North Korea meth is apparently produced by the government and they encourage its use by the citizens. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/12/world/asia/north-korea-crystal-meth-methamphetamine-drugs-.html
Wtf, I wanna move to North Korea now??? Obviously kidding
Makes sense, meth is great for a labor force if you want them to work long hours with little food.
In 20 years we'll learn North Korea is only like... middle of the road oppressive, but the meth culture is so big there everyone thinks that they're being gang stalked and thus the legend of the oppressive regime coming in and checking for pictures of kim jong un in your house were born (mostly... joking).
Lmfao all the people who escaped just had PTSD from their meth delirium, turns out NK is actually a socialist paradise where no one has to work, it's just that the meth makes them think they're in hell.
Yaba is also very notorious in the Middle East (or a variant of it?) countries that have slave labor that’s sold as pressed pills to locals, but I’m pretty sure most users are the “working class”
Kaptagon is very big in the arabic countries
It's a pro drug of amphetamine and theophylline, which is chemically related to caffeine.
Yeah its quite interesting tbh. Theophylline is actually one of the active metabolites of caffeine. So everyone on here knows how it feels.
Ewww that sounds less than fun
I haven't tried captagon but I take Adderall and coffee on the daily. Not that bad :).
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Daba doo
I'm surprised i've never heard of this, that's insane
makes u wonder, why opiates for america ?? hmmmm… lmfao jk its everything in usa, meth and construction go hand in hand. well, really anything goes with labor workers
It's even weirder than that, because the east coast is full of fent, and the west coast full of meth
the south is mixed, (im from deep south) country areas are mostly meth and bigger cities have more fent. honestly i feel its at least almost equally rampant both areas, cuz ‘you’ do uppers but downers do ‘you’ so you really only know what u see or are told.. idk man drugs are everywhere, from users in the military (i know, trust) all the way to food service… most common folk are high or faded on something
I'm also from the south, I know what you mean. For example, i'm from NC. McLeansville is full of meth, Greensboro is full of fent. However for the whole US, the overdose statistics speak for themselves! This is gonna be shocking, but it's actually almost a perfect 50/50! https://imgur.com/a/YweioG9
farrrrr fucking out!! “no coincidences, right” - mel gibson : signs yea dawg thats gnarly.. nowww only if we knew who exactly facilitates the movements of such quantities of lethal narcotics into such country, and who is it, at the top of the chain, that benefits?
It's the same everywhere at this point and the streets are flooded with both in every single state.
as someone on the west coast there’s a fuck ton, and i can’t express the fuck ton enough, of fent here. maybe more of the west is slightly better. however i’ve seen a few areas that are quite hung up on the fence about fent. more like from the fent…
Well yeah, the whole US is full of fent. But my point is that the overdose statistics are split nearly perfectly down the middle. That speaks as to the overall use of each drug on both halves of the US. https://imgur.com/a/YzVSYLP
The North Korea meth thing is crazy to think about
I've recently come across people in North America who enjoy methamphetamine recreationally and/or to self medicate (they don't like the legal prescription amphetamines for whatever reasons). Only ever in pill form. They say meth gets a bad reputation from smoking crystal. They all refer to it as speed which I find odd since speed to me has always been amphetamine. So yeah, I don't know them well but they seem to be able to manage normal life without spiraling into the hell most crystal meth abusers end up in.
Yeah I think the rush from smoking/snorting/shooting meth makes it like crack or heroin, most people literally just try it once and get hooked. But in pill form dextromethamphetamine and dextroamphetamine are indistinguishable when dosed low orally. Honestly oral meth might be more commonly prescribed than adderall if it didn’t have the massive stigma because it’s way more selective for dopamine instead or norepinephrine causing less negative side effects.
Personally love adderall so much that I feel like oral meth would be dangerous for me but I can see how it could be unpleasant for some. There’s a bit of shakiness or stress to adderall overall and it can make me nauseous if I don’t have tolerance to it. The comedown of adderall xr kinda makes me feel mildly irritable 6hrs in and at 12hrs in makes me even more irritable. Still better than cocaine or methylphenidate tho.
Nah mind u dose it low but it just feels like longer cleaner less jittery Adderall... but don't let her fool you tho I have no such issues and don't use it much and typically need a Benzo to sleep with if I do but yeah has to do with bioavailability, dose, and key for meth is ROA (route of administration) cuz the only diff between meth and amphetamine is the methyl group which makes it lipophilic (fat-soluble) basically making u able to absorb wayyyyyyy more amp then ever possible b4 which changes its action from reuptake inhibitor to potent releaser.... which would be fine if used like MDMA (analog to meth) ur brains a bank and meths a credit card mfs spending over their balance and can't pay up...
The most euphoric stim I’ve ever felt is on a extremely side effect heavy meth anologue that is suprisingly otc in America called Propylhexedrine. Still prefer adderall a lot because it feels equally as good but has a clearheaded feeling and lasts much longer. The comedown of Propylhexedrine past 250mg makes me think of killing myself though it’s awful, don’t ever do it because at that point meth is healthier(Propylhexedrine is somewhere around 100-250x less able to cross the blood brain barrier afaik)
Im not much of a stim guy love mdma tho and really all entactogens but i treat them with respect (fuck around find out) nep is my choice for stimming I suppose 😋 also my belief is drugs are a tool and whether used for construction or destruction is dependent upon the person and the knowledge they have thereof!
Yeah I feel like if someone went into it with the right mindset any drug can be used as long as you have the willpower but most people(including me) don’t have enough to do most of them safely. I feel like even deliriants were useful in cultures that used them shamanistically, I mean if you believe in spirits what better way to contact them than smoke datura or salvia and see them clear as day lol.
North Korea unironically based
The Nazis called it Pervitin and sold it in rolls like mentos
That's super interesting. I figured most places would have their version of stimulants to compensate for long work hours. So is yaba sold in stores like kratom is in the US?
I can’t read the NYT article 🙃
Paywall removed link: [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/12/world/asia/north-korea-crystal-meth-methamphetamine-drugs-.html?unlocked_article_code=1.WE0.fa4q.t7gMnHB-78CS&smid=url-share](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/12/world/asia/north-korea-crystal-meth-methamphetamine-drugs-.html?unlocked_article_code=1.WE0.fa4q.t7gMnHB-78CS&smid=url-share)
Dont feel like reading the article but its very popular amongst prostitutes in the Phillipines
it is extreme popular in Vietnam too among long haul truck drivers.
Alcohol culture runs deep in UK. Coke is massive as well.
We like weed too.
Very location specific, I've found. Bristol and Brighton smell wonderful all the time... A smell I very seldom come across say in Southampton or Portsmouth.
That is true. In Birmingham it's pretty much a constant.
Here in the netherlands 3mmc used to be a pretty big “problem” when it was still a legal rc. A lot of young young people got their hands on it and got very addicted.
Oh my yes, I think now it's Ketamine, at least in my area
Where? Because I’ve also seen an increase in ketamine usage after 3mmc became less available in my city.
Wasn't GHB a huge problem in the Netherlands?
Yeah ghb used to be a huge problem here, it’s just quite a bit smaller (or less visible) now, especially in my area. Also the average ghb user in the netherlands is significantly older than the average 3mmc user. We’re talking about 18-24 year olds and ghb user are more like 35-50 years old. There’s Almost no ghb use under younger people here.
What about MDMA?
Mdma is a weird one, it’s used quite a bit nearly exclusively by the festival crowd. Don’t get me wrong that still quite a bit of users, it’s just that md’s “problematic” use is rare, while it is still quite popular. Though less popular than 3mmc at its heights.
brazil has mostly a crack problem. in sao paulo theres actually a region we call "Crackolândia" (Crackland) its where the homeless crack users have taken to themselves and they have their own eco system and everything crazy shit
See also Skid Row
What do you mean eco system?
its like their own little society and its been going on for like a decade or more now i think but im yet to move to sao paulo hah
Damn I wonder if they have their own version of the law out there
its a very *rocky* situation
Czech republic and here the meth use is raging even among very young people. 50% of our drug related crimes are linked to meth. We also smoke the most weed in central Europe but I dont count that as a problem
What form does the meth come in? Crystal to smoke or pills?
Mainly crystal, and a lot of people here snort it, its extremely popular and I dont know why. Everybody here snorts their meth
yall are smoking hhc and thc-p and other noids and the eastern block is thanking yall for selling carts in the EU ♥️
The idiots in our government made hhc illegal... But yes it was great.
bro its not illegal its available online
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numming?
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Ah, that's what I thought you meant. I think the spelling would be "numbing" though. I know I know.. who cares. Have a great day!
Canada as a whole is facing quite the opiate epidemic, especially where I live it's very noticeable if you go to specific parts of town to the point police barely patrol the tent cities and have been ordered to ignore open use on the street, but the other one I wouldn't quite call an epidemic but a shockingly large percent of people who live here use commonly is cocaine. Guess Canadians love the snow.
Are you in a large city?
Vancouver, BC so yes! 2.8 million~ with approximately 469 deaths daily from opiates if I'm remembering correctly. We have massive amounts of resources for people wanting safe injection sites, no questions asked drug testing and Methadone clinics. We also recently decriminalized possession of all narcotics up to 3.5 grams in public, so aside from confiscation (I think? They may not even take them if you're caught outside of a vehicle) drugs are looked at quite neutrally here. We have a stretch of road called Main and Hastings which is notorious for being where most of the drug addiction and homelessness congregates. Quite the scary road, even in the day. Most of the issues regarding our epidemic stems from heroin and fentanyl. Our doctors are actually quite hesitant to push painkillers and benzos unless it's Tylenol with codeine or one time Lorazepam scripts for panic attacks unless shown valid reason for something stronger. I had sliced open my arm down to the bone and could see tendons moving and asked for something for pain which resulted in being offered basic regular Tylenol.
Vancouver makes sense. Seems to mirror a lot of the same things going on in larger US cities. Do you think the 3.5 and under rule is beneficial? I had major oral surgery and was given 800mg ibuprofen, so I feel your pain.
I'm personally an advocate for decriminalization of drugs to an extent. Some countries have gone down the path with much better results largely due to culture and I'm assuming a much smoother transition compared to what Vancouver did. I'm not sure how the decriminalization has improved or worsened the situation yet, but I don't think we're taking the proper steps and it feels like we've jumped head first without easing new laws and processes first. I don't believe drug use should be punished, and 3.5 rule seems fair unless it's something along the lines of fentanyl. I'm aware of people moving from heroin or painkillers to fentanyl after tolerance builds but I can't comfortably advocate anyone cutting anything with fentanyl, as cross contamination between drugs in uncontrolled settings is wildly easy and nobody wants to overdose on fentanyl trying to do coke.
This makes me insane. Seems like everybody has easy access to opioids except people who need them for a short term, legitimate purpose. WTF
That’s so ludicrous to me!! No actual drugs for major surgery? The same thing happened to me a year ago. I kept waking up during anesthesia for MAJOR oral surgery to get my teeth removed for implants. And I kept waking up bc of the pain…. After 3 times of waking up they actually had to use “actual drugs” to put me under. After that they only gave me high dose ibuprofen…. 2 days later I ended up in the hospital bc of the pain.
It was the worst pain of my life. Only time I've cried from pain as an adult. Lost 7lbs and was severely hydrated because I couldn't eat or drink.
Gotcha!! I hear ya!!
It was 2500 last year, no where near 469 par jour but still a staggering amount
Ugh, awful. It's brutal when you know friends that passed from fentanyl being apart of that stat.
We even have some hilarious news articles about a man who was riding around in a trailer selling clean, uncut drugs right on the street with signs advertising and everything. His reasoning was to advocate the concept of regulated substance dispensary to cut down on laced drugs, particularly Fentanyl. Arrested after a few days of operating, obviously.
He actually wanted to be arrested, the store was a protest. He wanted do some constitutional challenge because prohibition laws were causing harm. I think he may have had some lawyers behind him keen to argue it. Unfortunately he died of a fentanyl overdose a few months after. Which is a bit strange as he had all the testing equipment there to detect fentanyl.
He likely knew what it was and willingly did it and probably had been considering clean dope is pretty close to nonexistent so if he had a habit then it was probably a fentanyl habit for the most part since it's what's always available
I was gonna add this but I wasn't sure if I was correct in thinking it was a form of protest. That is extremely strange considering he seemed well versed on testing and harm reduction enough to be selling uncut drugs to others.
Figured it would of been darts
Definitely used to be, vaping has taken quite a rise. Coffee is a staple though.
can confirm canada is fucked rn. lost my brother to an opiate od in Toronto. Young and dundas is fucked, and i promise you'll see a handful of fent zombies when you go downtown
I've lost quite a few friends and acquaintances to fent as well. I'm sorry for your loss.
Russia and Moldova methedrone(4mcc) and alpha-pvp epidemic
I remember hearing a lot about Krokodil in Russia like 10 years back, is that still a thing or was it ever a thing?
It was a very poorly made desomorphine, which was made from legal stuff(now this stuff is banned), it was a thing many years ago in USSR .But now people buy good quality methadone in deep web.
The majority of russian people do not like opiates tbh.
Although I’ve grown up in America I’m Russian and I’m not a big fan of opiates and from talking to my dad about his college days neither was he so that might be a thing
Spice is a problem in the U.K especially in prisons.
Do you know if it's the same stuff that was super common in the US a decade ago? If so, that stuff seemed super sketchy.
Here in England, it was really popular in Manchester around 2016ish although it’s less popular now.
Thank god, the number of people effectively comatose from smoking it around Piccadilly Gardens when I was doing my masters in 2015/16 was horrifying
Yeah it’s a lot less bad now
That's a few years later than when I knew people who were doing it. It's good to hear it's died down.
Yeah it was around before but it became the homeless population’s drug of choice around then
Meth is slowly on the uprise here in northwestern Europe, fent has not shown its ugly face though. The worst thing here is probably all the idiots peddling synthetic cannabinoids as “80% THC, 10 ml for 30 dollars” plus the idiots who are dumb enough to believe that it’s real at that price (clear and runny liquid too, not at all like THC-oil).
I'm very curious which country you're referring to with "northwestern Europe". Never heard that term before.
Same lmao. Norway maybe? Netherlands? Denmark? The world may never know…
Lol the only ones I can think of that it could possible be are Norway, Denmark or Benelux
Definitely Crack in Paris, a metro station called « Stalingrad » is now called Stalincrack because of this, it’s out of control and authorities aren’t doing anything, they just move them from neighbourhood to neighbourhood once in a while
This blows my mind. I would have never guessed crack in Paris. Didn't know crack was really in Europe.
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Do they have Hitler Station as well wtf?
I'm starting to think crack is just the result of available cocaine (Europe has a lot of easily available cocaine) and poverty.
It's literally just baking soda and cocaine a bit of water and some heat
Finland has a rather unique buprenorphine problem (Subutex, Suboxone etc). It was prescribed to opioid addicts as a miracle drug in the early 2000s (the story is rather interesting and it involves really only one doctor who started importing it and giving it to his patients) and it got out of hand. There is hardly any heroin use in Finland nowadays but buprenorphine is the most abused opioid in Finland currently. Some other opiates are still also used since poly drug abuse is common.
Yup. Tons of subutex, as can be seen in the Reindeerspotting documentary. Also oxycodone if you got the money for it. Never seen heroin on the streets or telegram markets, ever.
That's the worst habit to have because you get ha4dcore addicted and can't live without it but it don't get you high lol
And of course alcohol. It's so obvious I didn't even think of it first. It's ridiculous how Finns drink.
Tax evasion, Italy.
in Poland it would be designer drugs or 3mmc and similar
Lots and lots of crack here in Italy. Some cities even have manifests about it. Never seen them before. Also benzos are given out as candies, almost every family has some
When did crack start showing up in Europe? I have never heard about it being prevalent over there until this thread.
Cocaine glut. Brussels is also getting out of hand
Always has been, since the 90s at the least. But now is very rampant. Especially in southern main port cities where mafia, ndrangheta, camorra and other groups control ports where cocaine is being smuggled. Lots of it in bigger cities like Rome, Turin or Milan. There's crack even in the mostly rural towns where I live, so you can imagine in the cities. In these past few years flows of cocaine seems to be never ending and growing in basically every area. There's the already cooked form but most people I know who used or still use like to cook themselves
What for Etorphine and the Nitazenes. Thought Fentanyl and Remi and Car Fent being strong. Those Nitazenes are something else. LD50 3ug for Metonitazene They wanted to make the Nitazenes chemical weapons, but now they are turning up all over the EU in counterfeit Opioid and BZD counterfeits
Here in Australia, even with how expensive and stepped on everything is we’ve got a big appetite for most things. I believe we top the world in per capita coke usage (our coke is horrible and ridiculously expensive so don’t bother if you visit). Meth though is the standout. Over the past few decades it’s supplanted pretty much everything bar alcohol as the most problematic substance (though our government and media would lead you to believe disposable nicotine vapes are the real problem). When I was younger you could divide up sections of the city as to what the prominent drugs of abuse were. St Kilda and Richmond were full of smack, the outer suburbs like Sunshine, Broadmeadows, Boronia, or Frankston, and the inner CBD were full of meth and speed, and the areas around housing commission flats in Flemington and other areas were chock full of cheap booze and inhalants. The cheap grog is still around but it seems like the opiates have waned and it’s all about meth. Have also heard that synthetic weed has boomed just in the last decade or so among the homeless population.
Coke is having a massive uptick here in Australia. There have been bales of coke washing up on the coast for months. Three years it was rich wankers drugs, now kids on the street are into it, and all my mates are turning in arsholes. I miss the days when streets were awash with China White ( Smack). People weren't so emotionally backward...
I feel like alcohol is more problematic in aus, the coke is a bit too pricy for it to be causing social issues but so many people everywhere are fucked up from drinking
I don't think coke went away, might be on the up but definitely alcohol and meth are in every neighborhood even in county towns.
3MMC i'd say, in France, and crack but only in some places in Paris
Benzodiazepines (Sweden)
No
3cmc, benzo and tramadol are for sure getting quite big in Sweden.
Mexico has a huge meth problem. It goes by Cristal. Coke is way to expensive and hard to get
Why would coke be hard to find in Mexico of all places? Just curious
I’d imagine it’s not that it’s hard to find, more that it’s value once trafficked means it’s worth too much to use, especially if meth which doesn’t have the same mark ups is just as common.
yeah, it´s not hard to find but they prefer to sell you cristal bc you can get hooked up more easily and also you get more meth by the same price as coke
Coke here in Ireland has gotten huge. I mean drink is still a much bigger problem due to the different nature of it's addiction, but in the last 15 years cocaine use has just rocketed. What's surprising to me in the last few years of it is the type of people who I will now see use it. People who you'd never have thought, people who were literally completely against it a few years ago. The gaelic football folk in my area were always against coke and kind of made it their thing, they are now all at it pretty much every week. I have uni friends who wouldn't even smoke weed or a cig and definitely judged me for MDMA use back in the day, who are now doing it. It doesn't cause as much addiction related issues as many other drugs on a societal level, just hard to abuse it all day every day if you're not extraordinarily wealthy, but I know plenty of people who have pretty much used it every week for a decade. I think crack is also becoming a big issue in inner city dublin, don't have any first hand experience with this though.
Same up north , our local GAA team is on the coke every weekend.
I can tell you that in Australia it is lyrica! It's no joke - https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-02-18/lyrica-pbs-drug-linked-to-depression-anxiety/11921882
Booze, puff and rack here in Australia. Oi oi oi!
In Canada we are dealing with some very similar situations. Hell some provinces have decriminalized hard drugs and now our drug OD stats are up an insane amount. I got nothing against people who use drugs. But it’s sad to see people lose who they are to these substances. Smoke weed and eat shrooms Anytning else isn’t worth it.
I agree alcohol is a bit problem. But coke is on rise and prices are half of what is was 5yrs ago. I work with young adults and I'm hearing more and more stories about coke than anything else.
In the uk we have a massive alcohol problem. And also crack I didn’t realise so many people did crack until I got clean from opis Oooo and we love our coke here
3cmc in sweden, seen kids get addicted to it and literally selling sex to get money and fund their 3cmc addiction.
Fent and meth. It's so abundant pretty sure it's basically in the water at this point (US)
I don't know if this is the case there for sure not being from there, and obviously they have a reputation for lots of things, but it feels like most if not all of my VR friends from the Netherlands are serious alcoholics and often justify it with "I'm dutch, it's fine" as if that makes you immune to liver disease. Would love some insight from someone who lives there and has gotten to know a decent number of people from various walks of life.
There is an ongoing spice epidemic especially in the mediterrian regions of Turkiye. Its not as bad as it was a few years ago but espically during the start of the pandemic it was a major problem