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Mysterious hallucinogenic African anti-retroviral?

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hamhurricane

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7768059.stm

Smoking the pills has a hallucinogenic and relaxing affect.
"When I asked them why they like doing it, they said it helps them relax and forget about their problems," said Ms Nhlapo.
"When you look at them, just a few seconds after taking it, they are in another world," she added.
The children do not know where they are and they stop making sense.
The young users that Ms Nhlapo spoke to get access to these drugs from HIV patients or healthcare workers.
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Does anyone know what this drug is, or can anyone speculate as to what it might be? i looked over the commonly used HAARTs and nothing had info about abuse potential, I'm curious about what the possible mechanism of these effects would be?
 
i saw your other posts on this, and so I looked it up. I believe the drug is Efavirenz (if you believe wiki that is).

As for mechanism of action, who knows? I mean, it's a non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor, so it really shouldn't interact with human cells all that much.

edit: found this in prescribing information.
Nervous System Symptoms: Fifty-three percent of patients receiving SUSTIVA in controlled trials reported central
nervous system symptoms compared to 25% of patients receiving control regimens. These symptoms included, but
were not limited to, dizziness (28.1% ), insomnia (16.3% ), impaired concentration (8.3% ), somnolence (7.0% ), abnormal
dreams (6.2% ), and hallucinations (1.2% ).
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and taking more than the recommended dose (600mg a day) results in increased nervous system effects. it is also supposed to be taken at bedtime to make the nervous system effects more tolerable.

hallucinations the result of taking too much during the daytime? my best guess.
 
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I remember some article talking about Atripla... No idea the pharmacokinetics of smoking anti-retrovirals... to each their own I guess. Sounds akin to shooting amoxicillin.
 
Efavirenz (brand names Stocrin, Sustiva, Atripla) is the ARV they are talking about. Smoking crushed Stocrin tablets has been described as "Hallucinogenic, dissociative, Marijuana-like, Heroin-like, etc". Some quotes from users say it is like Mandrax only better (reffering to the South African illicit drug custom of smoking crushed Mandrax [Methaqualone] tablets). Some articles say users combine the Stocrin with Marijuana and/or Dagga or Tobacco.

No one seems to have a clue as to the method of action, and the short term or long term health risks of abuse. I forget the name, but there is a term for the placebo-esque effect one receives from smoking anything whether it is active or inactive- thought it escapes me at the moment.

This is a neat footnote in the long list of strange recreational drug trends, as there are terrible health consequences from smoking pharmaceutical tablets, the high has been described several different ways (meaning that even the users can't agree on how it feels or what it is similar to).

It's like the Rhesus monkeys who repeatedly choose to inject themselves with Bupropion; it is a desperate struggle for anything to take the edge off reality. Same thing in parts of South Africa- crippling poverty, AIDS/infectious disease epidemics, lack of decent employment and living wages, etc. By no means is this a good idea.
 
Nope! Dr Kasongo is referring to the antiretroviral strategy of combining several pharmaceuticals to effectively reduce the virus load. The abuse of efavirenz is done without any other additions (apart from the ones mentioned above, like weed, dagga or mandrax).

Or was this just ironical? :\

- Murphy
 
I also read that BBC article a few days ago..

I find it hard to give this any creedence, especially after she states that they also smoke opiate pain pills for a high? That right there is simply a wonderful way to fuck with your lungs, and just about nothing else...

I smell hysterics..
 
^ that was my other guess, before i deleted it. don't know how though. I'm thinking that the nervous system side effects probably makes more sense, combined with the placebo effect of smoking it that Tchort talked about. some get hallucinations, tell the others, then everyone thinks they have them.
 
a while back I posted about some nut doctor on the radio saying tamiflu was being abused in asia. edit: the reason he was a nut was because he was trying to say tamiflu was related to PCP.
 
Sturnam said:
^ that was my other guess, before i deleted it. don't know how though. I'm thinking that the nervous system side effects probably makes more sense, combined with the placebo effect of smoking it that Tchort talked about. some get hallucinations, tell the others, then everyone thinks they have them.
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Cannabinoid like based upon it producing a false positive for a THC test? You do realize how these tests work, right? That makes no sense.

Second, the idea that this is placebo is nonsense. 25% in controlled studies report psychiatric symptoms, including hallucinations with Efavirenz. You could read the wiki entry and learn that much.
 
^ before you're so quick to dismiss my assumptions, READ THE PRESCRIBING MANUAL!
you could read something other than the wiki entry and actually learn something about this.

i quoted ACTUAL numbers for the hallucinations. and the hallucinations are part of the nervous system side effects, NOT the psychiatric symptoms. by psychiatric they are talking about severe depression, suicidal thoughts, aggressive behavior, and manic reactions. not to mention that these are extremely rare (the most prevalent clocks in at a little over 2% )

and if you read any of this thread, I already gave reasons on how they could increase the prevalence of the nervous system side effects.
 
i quoted ACTUAL numbers for the hallucinations. and the hallucinations are part of the nervous system side effects, NOT the psychiatric symptoms. by psychiatric they are talking about severe depression, suicidal thoughts, aggressive behavior, and manic reactions. not to mention that these are extremely rare (the most prevalent clocks in at a little over 2% )
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Wonderful. You realize though that there's a whole bunch of research on the issue beyond the PI sheet? I can't find Kadian's PI sheet, but could we take bets on how often euphoria showed up? How they classify hallucinations is irrelevant, and I'm not sure why the issue is even brought up. It doesn't take much imagination to figure out how hallucinations are a psychiatric symptom, regardless of where they're placed into the PI sheet box.

I already gave reasons on how they could increase the prevalence of the nervous system side effects.
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Sure- dose, administration method (smoking obvious results in a faster onset than swallowing) obviously increase the prealence- why a chain reaction placebo effect is invoked makes no sense when more obvious and likely reasons are available.
 
hamhurricane said:
^^^
could someone briefly explain why, do the THC tests not look for THC metabolites, or are these metabolites frequently encountered in other drugs?
thanks
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Because they involve reagents that react in predictable ways to certain substances and very similarly to very similar substances- that is, substances with similar structures. However, some drugs and their metabolites will produce responses that are very similar despite their dissimilarity.

That's what happens here.
 
Hammilton said:
Wonderful. You realize though that there's a whole bunch of research on the issue beyond the PI sheet? I can't find Kadian's PI sheet, but could we take bets on how often euphoria showed up? How they classify hallucinations is irrelevant, and I'm not sure why the issue is even brought up. It doesn't take much imagination to figure out how hallucinations are a psychiatric symptom, regardless of where they're placed into the PI sheet box.
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uh, its relevant because in your other post you said 25% of people get the nervous system symptoms. but 96% of those people reported symptoms other than hallucinations. and i highly doubt that 'dizziness' or 'nausea' is this awesome hallucinagenic drug all these african kids are smoking.
 
Sturnam said:
and taking more than the recommended dose (600mg a day) results in increased nervous system effects. it is also supposed to be taken at bedtime to make the nervous system effects more tolerable.

hallucinations the result of taking too much during the daytime? my best guess.
Click to expand...

Sounds a lot like zolpidem to me.
 
Sturnam said:
uh, its relevant because in your other post you said 25% of people get the nervous system symptoms. but 96% of those people reported symptoms other than hallucinations. and i highly doubt that 'dizziness' or 'nausea' is this awesome hallucinagenic drug all these african kids are smoking.
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Other?
 
this one

Hammilton said:
Cannabinoid like based upon it producing a false positive for a THC test? You do realize how these tests work, right? That makes no sense.

Second, the idea that this is placebo is nonsense. 25% in controlled studies report psychiatric symptoms, including hallucinations with Efavirenz. You could read the wiki entry and learn that much.
Click to expand...

sorry i'm a little all over the place. finals have got me down and stressed :!

but i retract some of my previous statements. maybe the hallucinations are more common recreationally because for the controlled studies they probably had people take it at night. and since they'd be asleep, they wouldn't notice it.

maybe along the lines of zolpidem, like Temeraroius said.
 
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