Party Vibe

it didn’t harm me either but we are both slightly older and also previously aware of the effects of party drugs before taking it. It was the younger users who suffered these problems.

@tryptameanie 986973 wrote:

Tbh GL I don’t agree with the assertion of mental health issues being caused by cathinones. Even massive use (and I managed so pretty fucking massive use myself back in the day) did not cause any lasting psychological disorders, it wasn’t “stimmy” enough and if there actually are any proven cases of 4-MMC causing psychologcal impairment that was prolongued, then I’d like to see that persons medicl history because I’d imagine they were either predisposed to mental illness and/or were having a serious crisis in their lives.

“acute” conditions are not usually irreversible (that is when they woukd be classed as chronic).

In physical health it would be the same as a builder who is fit, healthy and otherwise careful has an accident when working on a buildiing site and breaks their leg. They would go to hospital but would only be an inpatient for the first part of the treatment and very likely make a full recovery.

That doesn’t mean breaking their leg doesn’t hurt or require health service resources to treat them, there is the further impact that they cannot work during the recovery period, and their bosses are without a member of staff during this time. So there is usually an investigation and if it turns out a lot of people have the same accidents then there may even be monitoring or regulation to prevent this happening (such as the barrier things they put up on scaffolds or raised platforms).

At the same time society sees value in whatever is being built, so accepts the risk of accidents on the building site provided the safety regulations are followed.

Getting back to cathinones there is a complication that many young people are in poor mental health compared to 10-20 years ago.

Stuff like social media has put more pressure on them on top of the relentless demands of education systems. These have thus become like a building site lacking most of the effective safety precautions, and what does exist keeps changing at the whim of governments and those who elect them. And that is the “building site” for the future generations! Add drugs on to this and you can see the risks.

Even then it is not even that they cause a massive rise in psychotic episodes, self harm or anything bad like that (any more than is already happening) but even tolerant middle class parents see their kids acting out of character or not achieving in life and that causes the backlash worldwide. What is lacking especially in UK and USA (compared to NL.DE and TBH even the Asian countries) is the constructive family and society relations, and other stuff in the community that encourage young people to self regulate their use and also give them other things to to as well as merely sit at home and take drugs, whilst at the same time not making their progress in life totally dependent on employers or education systems.

It is not even the popular drugs that are directly the cause of mental health problems, but the flawed society beneath them. Until that changes there will always be this issue, as TBH even young people who hardly drink alcohol and avoid legal pharms suffer from all sorts of mental health issues these days, but fixing that costs more tax money then just passing laws against drugs (at least if enforcement costs are not correctly reckoned for) and fewer and fewer people seem to want to pay taxes for anything in society for “people not like them”.

The 2 lads who died had been taking synthetic opiates rather than cathinones.

There is a big problem especially in UK (not even a conspiracy, just the way things are currently run) where because the Police are lead agency for many serious incidents and many people don’t understand mental health issues anyway that any healthcare related issues are pushed aside in favour of criminal justice viewpoints. So the wider population accepts a simplistic solution of “prohibit more substances” or “limit the lifestyles of younger people” rather than delve deeper into why problems are happening.

Poor mental health amongst young people is also a problem in DE (mostly unrelated to drugs), it has has caused 3 young men to create incidents that have harmed others, these being the Germanwings aircraft crash, the crash of trains in Bavaria (by a young man who couldn’t stay away from his mobile phone game) and a mass shooting also in Bavaria. The last one was blamed in popular and social media on the attackers ancestry (although the attacker was a German citizen of foreign ancestry, not an immigrant as such – BND couldn’t prove it was anything really to do with terrorism)

The other two were committed by middle class white kids with no provable previous history of drugs use (although in the case of the plane crash the strong German medical privacy laws were a factor). I’m not even sure if DE have properly addressed the underlying issues so either incident could potentially happen again.

NL however clearly deliniates the rôles of harm reduction agencies and the Police, properly funds the harm reduction groups and they are respected within Dutch society. On Trimbos there is advice for both users and parents on how to look out for (minor) mental health issues and when to cut back on use or abstain. What they don’t merely say is “drugs are bad, don’t do them”. Even the cops accept there will be some drugs use.

It is not surprising that there are considerably less “drugs related” incidents there, and those which do occur tend to be more street dealers in bad areas being caught with dangerous weapons as well as drugs, or blatantly anti social things like keeping genuinely dangerous chemicals used (solvents etc) in unsuitable locations or dumping unwanted chemicals in rural areas.

Even so NL’s complex health insurance system and the aftermath of the global recession and Brexit (which has cost NL healthcare companies millions of Euros in lost business with UK) is leading to cutbacks in young persons mental health.

Clamping down on drug use and “non-productive risky lifestyles” is unfortunately seen as an easy and cheaper option rather than put more money into mental health treatment for young persons. It isn’t the right thing to do but with society dividing and fracturing too many people accept it.

In my town nearly every EDM venue is closed, the authorities were really quick to stop any retail sale of NPS, both party drug and NPS use is actually quite uncommon but the mental health problems in young people have not declined one bit.