Cannibal drug: myth or reality?
According to data from the National Plan on Drugs, 20% of men integrated into intervention programs to reduce the consumption of narcotic substances and who live in that time with their partners, carried out some aggression against them during the year before starting the treatment.
The scientific literature relates the consumption of drugs with the appearance and consolidation of various mental disorders and, in particular, the psychotic episodes with fundamental elements such as hallucinations and delusional persecutory ideas.
The social culture of drugs does not hide, however, a general ignorance of its long-term consequences as well as the adverse effects when the drug ceases its effect. Like all narcotic substances, they work with a rebound effect when their effects pass, causing an increase in the negative incidence in the problems that are precisely sought to improve. A) Yes It is very common the increase of problems related to hostility, anxiety, insomnia and alterations in eating behavior.
Drug use is behind many episodes of crime and violence because of its influence on the body. The increase in violence, mainly among youth, may have as its main motive the appearance of new substances with a much greater stimulating power , as well as its addictive capacity.
- Related article: "Types of drugs: know their characteristics and effects"
Is the Cannibal Drug label deserved?
In recent years, the appearance of the so-called "Cannibal Drug" has been related to episodes of high impact violence that, due to its special virulence, filled pages of newspapers and newscasts, jumping alarms because of the striking of the events and the association of words so linked to the ideology of terror as cannibal or zombie.
News with alarming elements such as violence, brutality, bites, drug consumption, aggressions, carried out by what the media labeled as "predators", filled the minds of a society accustomed to the sad "normality" of drug use.
Detected for the first time in the United States, it was learned in an episode in which a young man devoured the face of a beggar, being shot by the police, being necessary 6 shots to stop him in his "zombie" frenzy. The autopsy of the aggressor revealed the consumption of a new designer drug called in the streets "wave of ivory" and that it was sold as bath salts to bypass police controls and sell it legally. Its boom due to the proliferation of information through social networks, did the rest, adopting already other names such as MTV, magic, maddie, black rob, super coke, vanilla sky, blessing, cannibal drug or white lightning.
Effects of methylenedioxypyrovalerone
Methylenedioxypyrovalerone, MDPV, had stimulant effects somewhat similar to cocaine, but with a much greater and more durable power. With hallucinogenic effects, could produce hallucinations, panic attacks and psychosis , in addition to numbness of the mouth by the effect of lidocaine incorporated into the drug in its manufacture. It acts as an inhibitor of the reuptake of noradrenaline and dopamine, being also used as a nootropic agent for its stimulating effects on the nervous system.
The MDPV presents similar effects to cocaine but with a potency 10 times greater as a psychostimulant, presenting negative effects like all narcotic substances based on tachycardia, insomnia, dizziness, dyspnea, hypertension, agitation, delusions, violent behaviors, dilation of pupils , confusion, anxiety and suicidal behavior, hypervigilance, excitement, excessive sociability, increased sexual desire, lack of inhibition and decreased need to feed or rest.
On the other hand, an article published in the year 2017 in the British Journal of Pharmacology, referring to an investigation on the MDPV carried out by López-Arnau, Lujan, Duart-Castells, Pubill, Camarasa, Valverde and Escubedo, Neurobiology of Behavior Research Group of the Health Sciences behavior research group of Pompeu and Fabra University, show that the consumption of said substance favors and multiplies the effects of any other narcotic substance in the future , especially cocaine.
Underground marketing of MDPV
The MDPV moves for its acquisition in the field of the Deep web, to which it is added therefore its mysterious drug character and not available to anyone , susceptible to multiple deceptions, selling other much more harmful substances in their place without warning consumers of the danger in which they are involved.
In 2016 in Barcelona, we detected the sale of candy bears impregnated in a substance that was sold as MDPV in some cases and as Nexus in others, being in reality another drug called 25N-NBOME or also "the pump", responsible for the deaths in the United States and Australia of several deaths caused by their consumption.
Aggressions of multi-class type
Stimulant drugs can undoubtedly induce people predisposed to episodes of aggression or violence, but in the case of the MDPV can not establish a pattern that leads us to associate it with cannibalistic behavior and much more, given the lack of rigor and adulteration in the substances that are observed in that illegal market.
Organizations such as the International Narcotics Control Board, reports that behind 46% of the serious episodes of violence associated with the use of narcotics are the history of previous mental health problems .
By way of conclusion we must mention the dangerous link that is established between drugs and fun, which seeks to bring human limits to the maximum vital risk where in many cases it ends up losing the game.
