Addiction to Legal Highs Is Just as Dangerous as Addiction to Illicit Drugs

Legal highs can generally be broken into one of two categories:

• Homemade cocktails: Homemade legal highs are typically created by the end user herself, drawing on recipes found online or developed experimentally. These substances may include over-the-counter medications and herbal supplements, alcohol, household chemicals, research chemicals, and legally obtained prescription medications. Homemade cocktails can be extraordinarily dangerous, as inexperienced users cannot predict their effects.
• Commercial cocktails: Commercial legal highs come in a wide variety of forms, from synthetic drugs sold openly in shops and on websites to caches of legally formulated drugs supplied by traditional drug dealers. These may take the form of pills, powders, and “smoking blends” that are often “just a few molecules away from speed, ketamine, acid and cocaine on the chemistry table.” These drugs are not illegal, but nor are they regulated; that is, after all, the point. Hence, users cannot be sure what they are getting, what its side effects will be, or what the risk profile of the drug is.

While some legal cocktails are duds, others are remarkably potent and precisely formulated to induce specific psychological and physical responses. In an investigation by Men’s Health magazine, writer Will Nicoll found that one legal cocaine substitute is “cut with a chemical that numbs your face and gums to mimic the real thing. “ “To even think about putting something like that in there demonstrates a sophisticated product mix,” says Ian Siragher, managing director of Agenda1, a research laboratory. “Very deliberate thought has gone into making that formulation. Somebody is not just banging this together – they’re going for brand value.”

“No one I know who’s used drugs would argue that these new ones are stronger or more addictive than heroin or crack,” says Darren, a 38-year old former illicit drug user in Edinburgh who has since moved on to legal highs. “But they are ‘new’ – and that’s really the point. If a pill that’s only been around for 10 minutes can knock someone like me, that has 10 years’ experience of using heavy, illegal drugs, on a daily basis, then that’s… unusual.” The potency of the legal highs comes as unexpected to many, who have become accustomed to declining purity of illicit substances over the years. “Cocaine is only 20% pure,” he says. “Guys who are used to those illegal drugs take a larger amount of the legal equivalent, expecting less of an effect. But the legal drug is probably about 90% pure.” Purity, of course, is no indication of safety or even efficacy. However, in drug culture, “purity” has real value, even if only psychological, sometimes making these legal substances even more seductive than regular street drugs.

Despite Darren’s statement to the contrary, health experts argue that legal highs can indeed be just as strong and addictive as illicit drugs, and in some cases more so. “What we have found, certainly in the past year, is an increase in the strength of [legal] drugs,” says Josie Smith of the Welsh drug testing agency, Wedinos. “They have addiction potential far higher than some of the controlled substances.” The brain doesn’t care about the legal status of a drug; the brain cares if a drug is producing an effect that it wants to re-experience again and again, and many legal highs do just that, sparking a cycle of addiction.

But the damage of legal highs can also be more immediate than the frequently slow burn of addiction; the increased prevalence of these substances combined with their growing potency has led to an alarming rise of police incidents involving legal drugs; police in Wales “have seen a 20-fold jump in the number of incidents where the term ‘legal high’ was recorded – from 18 in 2012 to 371 in 2014.” Councillor Andrew Lewis says, “We had young people behaving erratically, literally running into the street into oncoming traffic.” Some legal drugs have been implicated in seizures, mental health issues, cardiovascular problems, brain damage, and even death. “One notable case was that of phenazepam, a tranquilizer similar to valium. Before it was banned in 2012, it was implicated in nine deaths in the UK.” And the fact is that when you take a legal drug, you don’t know if it has been created by an expert pharmacist in a lab or brewed in someone’s bathtub. You don’t know if it is fit for human consumption, and you can’t predict its effects. You aren’t guaranteed a particular experience or even a particular ingredient; what you do know is that you are taking something with the aim of affecting delicate brain functions, using substances that have never been approved for such use.