CONCLUSION
There are so many anti-highs I have neglected to experience, but some are seriously dangerous. Drugs with the opposite action of ketamine are potent neurotoxins, and drugs that do the opposite of alcohol and benzodiazepines are known to cause seizures. Scientists are still mapping the gelatinous landscape of our brains, and as new drugs are discovered, new anti-drugs will also be found. Who knows what kind of chemical misery the future might hold! Although I must admit, after a week of enduring these anti-highs I feel incredible. The neurochemical floodgates have opened and there is unimaginable rebound euphoria. All night I walk down the street, peaceful and optimistic, ready to high-five strangers. Ready to high-five the moon! Hey moon, what up!
All that is loved is loved by contrast. We love intoxication because we know sobriety; to love sobriety we should know anti-intoxication. We can’t know the high without the low, and after a week of getting low I’m feeling pretty high. I think the only thing we have to fear is the middle.
DRUG REPORT: LEGAL COCAINE!!!
INTERVIEW BY JAMES KNIGHT | ILLUSTRATION BY PADDY JONES
Published April 2009
Mephedrone is a drug that you can buy on the internet that’s been described as a cross between cocaine and MDMA. It’s been doing the rounds in gay clubs for a while, but now it’s crossing over into straight places. It’s not been illegalised yet and, as it only costs £60 for six grams, we had one of our writers get some and made him go on a bit of a bender with it. The interview you read below was done two days after doing the first line and was conducted about three hours after the hallucinations and panic attacks had subsided.
Vice: So where did you get it from?
Guy Who Took It: Some website that’s like an online version of one of those stalls at a festival that sells wizard hats and poppers and glow-in-the-dark aliens. It was 60 quid for six grams in a big baggie and it looked alright. It didn’t look too bad at all.
What was it like compared to coke?
It stings your nose quite bad. And it’s quite thick so it gets stuck up there. So when you’re talking to people you sound like Ringo. Which is unfortunate because I was talking a lot.
So it’s like coke. You just get all angsty and talk too much?
Kinda, but not really. It’s got mild hallucinogenic qualities. It made my eyes wobble around. Things would get blobby. My eyelids would start fluttering and I found myself staring at things and noticing floppy waves of heatwaves coming off them. There was none of the intensity of E or MDMA hallucinations though. The last time I did MDMA I did a cough sweet-sized lump and melted into a puddle in the street. My girlfriend had to come and pick me up.
Where were you when you did the mephedrone?
It was a classic way to do drugs: a crappy fashion party with free booze and loads of annoying people.
Great. And you were there talking like Ringo, and seeing heatwaves?
Yeah, and I was giving it to anybody I knew telling them how great it was because this was the first hour of taking it. I’m cringing now thinking about it.
Ouch.
Yeah, but that was the good part of the experience.
What was the bad part?
It went downhill about an hour after the first bump. Because I had this stuff in my pocket and I felt compelled to give it to people I’d never met before and, of course, to do as much of it as possible. And so you end up going to different locations, people’s houses that you normally would never go to.
How much of the six grams did you manage to plough through?
I did all of it. Sniffing and coughing it down, all the time sounding like Ringo. And then I did that thing where you drink anything with even a hint of booze in it. Like other people’s half-drunk alcopops, red and white wine mixed together in a mug, then vodka and warm diet lemonade in a paper cup. I also remember a tiny sip of straight whiskey out of the bottle that had some cigarette ash in it.
Mmmm.
I’d done all six grams by about 6 AM. Plus a gram of illegal cocaine that felt amazing in comparison.
How did you and your nose feel the next day?
Really, really terrible. It was the classic combination of sadness and fear, but feeling even more cheap and dirty than after doing proper cocaine. I guess that’s what you pay for with coke: a rarefied sense of suicidal depression and shame. There was a big lump of stuff all still stuck up there, merged into one mess of crap, and ear, nose, and throat pain. My mouth is killing me.
I have to say it doesn’t sound THAT bad.
There was also a totally paralysing mania. I felt totally insane. I remember just standing in my front room staring at the blinds on my windows and peering between them. They had heatwaves coming out of them. And I was terrified of every car that came past. Each one of them sounded like it was a bunch of people coming to visit me and tell me about all the bad things I’d done in my life, or kill me or something.
Eek.
Being on your own in an empty house intensifies all the bad stuff. And it got worse when I looked it up on Wikipedia. There was all the boring stuff about the different scientific compounds it was made out of, but what really stuck with me was the bit where it read “DEATHS” and had things like: “The 18-year-old and some friends took the substance in combination with cannabis on Friday, December 12. An ambulance was soon called to Bandhagen after the girl went into convulsions and turned blue in the face.”
Imagine dying and being left there looking like an asphyxiated Smurf. What effect did the Wikipedia thing have on you?
Panic, regret, shame, fear. I chain-smoked. I don’t normally smoke. There was a mild fear of death, but the sadness was so intense it negated the fear.
What did you learn from your mephedrone experience?
I haven’t really touched drugs for months and months because I had a wee problem with a couple of things a few years ago. And I guess this seven-gram bender was a way of reminding myself about how grim the world of free booze, shitty uppers and bad people is. It’s one of the reasons I got addicted to drugs in the first place. I’m never going back there. That’s my excuse anyway. Can I go home now?
THE VICE GUIDE TO UNIVERSITY
BY ANDY CAPPER | ILLUSTRATION BY DANIEL DAVID FREEMAN
Published March 2010
ACADEMIC SUCCESS
Don’t worry so much. The most common mark is between 50 and 65 percent. Nobody gets As except weird brainiacs or Asian people. This looks great on graduation day but understand that they have endured years of overbearing parents, endless maths tests and “educational toys” for Christmas presents. For the men, when they get to 32, they spend thousands on rare Stars Wars figures because they never had them when they were young. The women? It usually manifests itself in a huge dildo collection, prostitution,