HAVE YOU EVER DANCED WITH … A PILL?

The latest data show that amphetamines will soon replace heroin in the ranking of the most problematic drugs in Bulgaria. Then what? Everybody knows that the multicoloured pills are a powerful ally in night adventures but are harmless. Well, everybody is wrong, Maria Spirova found out after she got familiar with the possible scenarios. Now it is your turn to get to know them…

“Just a tablet and you spend the night on the dancing floor, not getting tired, neither thirsty, nor hungry. The feeling is that everybody is happy to see you there, you feel braver, you feel that you can do more than the others”. Today Lora* is 27 but she clearly remembers the euphoria she had experienced three years ago under the influence of amphetamines. She had tried them only once since then - the third time her ex-boy friend proposed to "upgrade" the experience with a cocktail of pills and cocaine. She got panicked and denied to do it. Lora’s sister, Velina* also has experience with amphetamines though she is 13 years older. “At the time I was at the University, there were not many parties but at session times we had captagon in order to memorize huge volume of material for a couple of nights. After the exams, we slept for days like dead. And at the end we did not remember anything of what we had learned”.

At the time she arrived to Sofia for her studies, Alex* (21) “dived” into club life. "It does not take you a lot of time to realize that everyone has his own poison, on which he relies for relaxing. Richer ones sniff coca, others have amphets, ecstasy, drink hard or take some kind of a combination of all these. Finally, you get extremely curious to try [the drugs] or start feeling like an idiot that you are the only one who has not tried it yet. And you do it”.

Alex, Lora, Velina are like many other young people in Bulgaria who use amphetamines – they do it in order to achieve sought effect. It is known that amphetamines, like all stimulants, cause euphoria, accelerate the heart activity and increase the blood pressure, ensure self-confidence, energy, concentration, motivation, cheerfulness and a feeling of power and happiness, suppress hunger and thirst, increase effectives and the libido. It sounds very sexy but at the time the pill is down your throat, besides a temporary super version of yourself, you turn out to be statistics about which somebody somewhere starts worrying.

 WHY ARE AMPHETAMINES HOT TOPIC?

“The next decade will be the decade of amphetamines” says Momchil Vassilev, Director of the National Focal Point on Drugs and Drug Addictions. “The trend shows that they will be the most   fashionable ones, most used ones and will replace heroine from its position of most problematic drug.  We made studies, representative for the country, on the use of drugs in 2005, 2007 and 2008. Within the framework of three years, the number of people of between 15 and 64 years of age, who have had amphetamines once in their lives, increased by one point. This sounds not so serious but in fact, it means an increase of the number of people by about 50,000. And that is not all. The number of those, who had been using amphetamines in the year before, had increased by 0.7 points which takes us to the following rough conclusion: Each month other 1,000 Bulgarians start having amphetamines”. And the fact that these pills are popular among the group of people from 15 to 25 years of age, these 1,000 persons per month one day will get involved either relatives of yours, or you, yourself. And in case you are going to try whatever illegal substance, it is best if you had “written your homework” in advance, in order to be able to make “informed choice.”

WHAT IS ACTUALLY THE PROBLEM?

The problem starts with the fact that amphetamines make you underestimate them and overestimate yourself. While the media has already demonized substances that are injected (as well as those that use them, unfortunately) pills seem to be considered as harmless as sweets, very often they are coloured and of sweet taste. They do not make you feel as if you are doing something wrong. They are not expensive (1 gram can be bought for about 20 euro and to buy a single pill in the street you need to pay between 10 and 30 leva), which makes you think that this could not be such a serious drug. They hold you in their power for about two to four hours and at the end you are exhausted, sleepy and nothing more (do not forget that the period of semi-life of amphetamines in your body is up to 24 hours). All this puts to sleep your natural suspiciousness to something that is in fact a chemical product for whose origin and precise ingredients you have no idea and in whose effects you should be more interested. According to Momchil Vassilev, the bigger part of amphetamines sold in Bulgaria are "imports of rather high quality" of almost 90% purity. But amphetamines are not one single substance but a continuously growing group of synthetic compounds, whose concentration and way of pressing into tablets vary substantially from laboratory to laboratory. To put it simply, you have no control over the dose you are going to have. Pills of similar type may contain different substances regarding the power of the effect. If in one case two pills are the exact dose for euphoria, in another case they may turn out to be … an overdose. Both experienced and new users may be misled, Vassilev warns. “Even 5 mg will affect you if you have no experience and will have you soft and nice impact on you. Then you will tell yourself “I see what is it” and the next time you will have a bigger dose. Or you will have a pill and, being disappointed because of no effect after swallowing it, not aware of the fact that its effect will start after 20 minutes, you will buy another pill.  In case you are already under the effect of amphetamines, the way you think changes, you want to get beyond yourself and you get one more pill although you are already “drunk”. And because one gets tolerant to amphetamines quite fast, you may soon find out that you need up to 700 mg a night. And an overdose of stimulants results in heart stroke and collapse. Yes, it does, regardless of the fact that you are twenty something years old.

AND WHAT IF I TAKE CARE TO NOT TAKE TOO MUCH?

Death cases because of pills are not so many and are mostly related to the severe dehydration after hours of dancing. The brain does not consider the physical load of the body, you forget drinking water, and the dehydration is of fatal consequence. But beyond this scenario amphetamines are related to many accompanying risks, which are easy to be neglected and difficult to avoid: “Because amphets create a feeling of endless power if you feel like making sex, you think: Who cares about condoms, I am great!”, says Julia Georgieva from the Health Initiative Foundation that works on the Addicted to Life European awareness campaign for informed choice in the use of amphetamines. If you review materials of theirs you will see that amphetamines are often combined with other substances (the term is poly-use) and this mixing has its specific risks.

“In 90% of the cases amphetamines are mixed with alcohol,” Georgieva says. “And because it is a depressant and the pills are stimulants, the effect is like ping-pong. You are up and then suddenly down”. Even in cases when you have drunk a lot, you will not be feeling drunk and will sit behind the wheel without hesitation. And because under the effect of the pills you move and talk in a well coordinated manner, your friends will not suspect you being under the effect of the drugs and drunk and will not try to discourage you to drive. Amphetamines make you set yourself objectives of unrealistic nature and make grand plans and this is the reason for you to drive so bravely and unreasonably to take over and get annoyed by other drivers on the road including confrontations with police officers.

If you are a smoker, amphetamines may make you chain smoke all night long. If you smoke marijuana, disorientation will be more intensive and the risk from a psychotic episode will be greater. In case you will combine the pill with cocaine, ecstasy or other stimulant you risk imposing your body to overstress and your heart may break. In addition, your sense of pain will seriously become blunt so you may hurt yourself seriously and spent hours without thinking of a doctor’s help. As you see the list is of different items: sexually transmitted diseases and catastrophes because of your changed sensations, heart problems, poisoning and bad risk assessment due to poly-use, acne after regular use, clinic depression at the time of giving up drugs … and even temporary psychosis, which may unlock long-term mental disorders like schizophrenia in case you get addicted.

 BUT IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO GET ADDICTED, ISN’T IT?

You have heard that amphetamines do not get you addicted physically, i.e. your body does not suffer, it is not in abstinence when their effect is over. This is true. But the fact that they cause serious psychic addiction at the same time is also true. And the psychic addition, regardless of how ethereal it sounds, is hard and even more difficult to overcome compared to the physical, especially in the conditions in Bulgaria.

“It is normal to believe that you can manage any problem until the problem gets you managed” Julia Georgieva emphasized. “In Bulgaria the attitude to problems of psychic nature is like this: “I am a reasonable person and I have will, this cannot happen to me”. And it should be clear that addiction, either physical or psychic, either to habits or substances, is demonstrated in absolutely one and the same way: You simply cannot perform your public functions without the help of the narcotic and in the end even with its help.”

“It is important in what situations we have the amphetamines and how often. If you go to a club every Friday and you have a pill, the situation is not that serious, but is neither OK,” thinks Momchil Vassilev. Being aware of the effect of stimulation of amphetamines, you may decide to transfer it in your work if you work a lot and the work demands big concentration. And when the pill becomes your daily routine because you have convinced yourself that you cannot achieve your goals without it, you are at the threshold of facing huge problems. In the same way a number of elderly people cannot go to bed without ever thinking of not taking their sleeping pill” By the way, tranquillizers are often in use to counter quickly the effect from the use of amphetamines. Mixed use like this brings the risk of getting addicted to these medicines.

WHAT IS THE WORST SCENARIO?

“Amphetamines shall not fry your brain if you use them from time to time but if you get them every day for let's say a month, then you will start forgetting, problems of nervous nature will occur," Julia Georgieva says.

The extreme risk is that of the so-called amphetamines psychosis when you start losing trust in the people around you and you start blaming them about non-existing bad intentions. The observations of specialists are that there are already people in Bulgaria who seek specialized help for this condition. According to Momchil Vassilev, in the coming two years their number will rapidly increase.

Doctor Radoslav Raichev, psychiatrist with experience in the consultancy of drug users, points out that there are no specialized programmes for amphetamine-addicted people in Bulgaria and the work with these people is very specific. There is no substitute treatment with amphetamine addiction like methadone treatment in cases of heroin addiction. Consultancy with a psychiatrist is the first mandatory step, followed by a long period of treatment. “In Western Europe, where the boom of stimulants had been a fact since long time, it is observed that consequences from amphetamines are much more serious and their treatment is a challenge for any healthcare system. With heroin, for example, there is abstinence that is heavy and motivates the addicts to search help at an earlier stage to reduce damages. The effect of amphetamines is not so fast – for a long time the only unpleasant effect is the weakness on the next day. In some cases they may result in lasting damages of the psyche, which will be treated all life,” says Raichev. Bulgarian institutions have small trained staff of psychotherapists and drug experts to work with the problematic use of amphetamines. Fight with addiction is not a process, in which the National Health Insurance Fund is involved, and according to the law it is only treated in psychiatric hospitals...

The way from the club to the hospital took us only four pages. In reality, this way is long, crooked and the chance to walk it all to the end because of few “happy” pills at parties is not big. However, it is there. So, be careful, OK?

Slang for the Pill

Amphets, vitamins, cocaine for the poor, rock candies, cream

WHERE DO AMPHETAMINES COME FROM?

Approximately 80% of the world production of amphetamines is concentrated in Europe (The Netherlands, Denmark, Poland and the Baltic countries) and about 30 secret laboratories are found annually. In existence is poorly studied local Bulgarian production, hidden in remote mountain villages. However, BG pills supply mainly the neighbouring Balkan countries.

WOMEN AND AMPHETAMINES

• “Women usually use less drugs than men and not so often but they also do not seek help so often. Our mentality associates the use of alcohol and drugs to big shame for the woman,“ points out the psychologist Alexandrina Alexova from the Prevention and Information Centre on Addiction Issues – Sofia.

• Some girls decide to use amphetamines as a tool to losing weight because they reduce appetite, but maintain vitality and the energy to move. Experiments of this kind most often result in even more serious problem – anorexia.

• Women who use drugs may have problems with the vagina moisture, which results in irritation of the mucous membrane and increase the risk of sexually transmitted infections.

* Names are changed