Hello shell68, welcome to bluelight! Yes, you're in the right subforum, mephedrone is an empathogen/entactogen. Sorry in advance for the long reply.
Above all, try to keep an honest and open relationship about this with her, but judging from your explanation I don't think that's going to be a problem. Nice to hear you have such a good bond with your daughter. This will make it easier for you to get through to her about this. Don't condemn her because of the simple fact she's using drugs, that will backfire
Yes she can overdose, but it's very hard to do so. The main issue she needs to keep an eye on is dehydration, as with any stimulant. If she's dancing or doing other physically exhausting activities it's a good idea to drink about 0.5l water or something like gatorade every hour, in sips, not at once. Also mephedrone has the tendency to cause compulsive redosing, which means users feel an almost irresistible urge to take more to keep the effects going. This can lead to them using much higher doses than they originally intended. A good idea for her would be to only take with her what she's planning to take. MDMA (ecstasy) is known to cause a pretty big suppressing effect on the immune system and the same is rumored to be true for mephedrone. I've heard quite a few reports of users that got sick right after a session.
Mephedrone for some can be heard to quit, if they have been going at it for a long time. The drug however does work a bit in diminishing returns, meaning tolerance builds fast and after using for a while you will feel almost nothing anymore, this has a bit of a self-limiting effects, but she still needs to keep an eye on her usage pattern.
The most important thing you as a parent can do is to keep having an open and understanding attitude towards it and to help her inform herself about the do's and don'ts of using drugs.
Here and
here are good places to start. Make sure she has a basic understanding of how the drug works in the brain, what the side-effects and repercussions of abuse are, dosage guidelines, dangerous combinations to make (for instance: mephedrone + MAOI anti-depressant can be fatal, the same is true for MAOI's + any potent serotonin releaser, like MDMA or methylone),...
Apart from that try to find out why she's using drugs, that's in my opinion one of the most important things. If she uses them to get a different perspective on life, for socializing, for relaxation, to have a good time with friends... that's all fine, but using to combat depression or anxiety or to make problems go away is a very bad idea and might turn out bad. She must realize this is not weed, or coffee, or... these are serious drugs which can have bad consequences when abused, used carelessly or used uninformed. Also try to get her to buy
a testkit, that way she can have some certainty of what exactly she is putting in her body. 5g is a serious amount to do in one session by the way, that's probably the compulsive redosing that I mentioned above. The heart palpitations probably mean she's using too much, it happens with almost every stimulant out there, if abused they cause irregular heart rhythm and palpitations. She probably needs to cut down on her use
If you have any more questions don't hesitate to ask. And don't worry, this isn't the end of the world. Your child is using drugs, but if she uses them wisely and informed it isn't all that bad and they don't have to have consequences for her. I have memories because of drugs that I wouldn't trade in for the world. Drugs just aren't toys, she really needs to understand this. She's only 17 so she probably isn't thinking about consequences too much, but she really needs to when it comes to drugs
