Whoops
How toxic is mephedrone? I dont have a clue. But I might be able to help some people here have a bash from my personal experience.
Embarrassing and Stupid Part: I did 10g of meph in a period of a week. I had been sold it and introduced to it by a guy who said "yer m8, itz fukin bwilliant shit, u can dwo it awl week and nuffin bad will happen, no cumdawn or nefing" (it was actually worse english than that, but you get the message; fuckwit). Anyway, to cut to the point, it ended in disaster and the symptoms I experienced may help some people come up with some hypothesis about the potential toxicity of meph.
The first six days seemed largely ok in terms of
major side effects. The normal stimulant enduced racing heart I was particularly aware of with meph though, much more than any other. Average resting pulse was 130 at the beginning of the binge, by the end of the week it rarely went above 100BPM no matter how much I did. On day seven consumed 1.5 grams. And this is where the problems started.
I first noticed noticed that my head was hurting, and I had a sharp pain at the back of my neck where my skull joined to my spine (cervicogenic headache) whenever I moved around. I then realised how bad my headache really was, it felt like my brain was too big for my skull and there was pressure spreading all around my head, with a particularly bad pressure behind my eyes and ears when I moved around. I stood up to look at myself in the mirror and then noticed the colour of my hands. The tips of my fingers had turned slightly purple, and my hands looked very red as if covered in a huge red rash. Then I started to feel extremely light-headed, as if I was going to black out, so I lay down and stuck my feet in the air to get circulation to my head.
It was then that I noticed the colour of my knees. My knees had gone dark purple, as if covered by a massive bruise, and my feet were very pale and white. Which make me think it wasn't normal vasoconstricion, as my lips were fine aswell as my feet. Then I noticed my elbows had also turned red like my hands and had a slightly purple tip to them like my knees. I suddenly felt very hot and decided to walk out onto the street with my mates to cool off and wait for the ambulance they'd just phoned out of concern.
Then I pretty much blacked out, I felt extremely light-headed and had to sit on the ground and was covered from head to toe in sweat. There was also (paradoxically for lightheadedness) a strong feeling of pressure in my head which felt immense, it felt as if my brain was trying to squeeze its way out of my eye sockets. My hands were now turning from red to blue/purple like my knees were.
When in hospital and laying down on the emergency bed my knees kept getting darker and darker purple and it was spreading round to the back of my knees too, and an odd pimply red rash was developing on my elbows. Also noticed cold sores in my mouth and loss of sensitivity to my legs and arms when they were not moving. Whenever I got up it felt like I would pass out and I had to keep drinking lots of water. The hospital was extremely busy, and It took THREE hours for a doctor to see me. When she did come she seemed completely uninterested in my extremely bizarre symptoms and just gave me a “you're a very naughty boy” look and wrote down on the paper “amphetamine abuse”, without even asking what type of amphetamine I had taken or what the real problems I were experiencing were. They rigged me up to a heart monitor, monitored my oxygen levels and put a blood pressure monitor on for the night. My heart rate stayed at ~100 for eight hours, and the blood pressure and oxygen levels were apparently normal. The colour to my hands elbows and knees was quite better by the morning but still very odd. They discharged me eight hours after I had arrived.
So this was six months ago. The color has slowly gotten better ever since, but the knees especially are still oddly colored on occasions, especially whenever I use any stims. Oddly some days they are completely fine, some days they are really terrible again.
So, any people here with any knowledge have any theories about what may have caused all this and thus make any useful deducions about mephs toxicity? I think that theres an odd mix of cardiovascular and auto-immune symptoms to show for me. The auto-immune being temporary and only on the night really, and the cardio aspect seems more permanent.
Someone on another forum made the following suggestion, which I dont know if it hold any merit or not, but the images of the condition did quite closely match the symptoms on the night:
"The skin symptoms are similar to some of the symptoms of dermatomyositis, which is an autoimmune disease of the skin and muscles. The actual mechanism is a focal vasculitis seen at the joints (knee, elbow, knuckles) which is mediated by the compliment pathway of the immune system clogging up capillaries. High doses of mephedrone probably trigger some sort of compliment or other immune system activation, creating a temporary vasculitis. A vasculitis would be more consistent than vasoconstriction given the symptoms since it is thin areas of skin rather than distal extremities which show changes."
Which produced the following picture which was the closest I could really get to it (the one on the left, and mine was darker and more widespread with less defined edges):
And heres a pic of my legs six months later on an average day, still showing the symptoms, but it really varies dramatically from day to day. Some days people stare at me as if I've inherited legs from a smurf, some days they are 100% okay and back to normal. I haven't worked out yet what gives me a normal color day or a bright purple/blue day.
So thats that. Didn't use it for six months after that, but tried a small amount the other day which brought the purpling symptoms back bad again. I may just be an exception or a one off unlucky case, in which case I dont want to scare people shitless about a chemical that a lot of people derive so much pleasure from (me included at the time) but I feel its better to share whatever info I have then ignore it ever happened.
I look forward to reading anyones replies and thoughts about anything this may tell us about meph. Thanks.
