Inflexxion Bluelight Survey—Here’s what we found!
As many noted in the survey comments, there was a big focus on prescription pain reliever use. We chose this focus because, in the USA, there are a lot of public health interventions that are aimed at addressing prescription drug use, but we wanted to get information from Bluelight users about ways that people who use these types of drugs are thinking about prescription drug use and enacting harm reduction practices. And, of course, we asked additional questions!
We hope to present some of the results at the American Public Health Association annual meeting in November, 2014 (if you attend, come see us!) and we are beginning the process of writing the results up for a peer-reviewed journal. That process takes a long time and we wanted Bluelight so see the survey results more quickly. So, here’s a summary and if you'd like to look at this as a PDF, it is available here.
In total, we obtained 1381 surveys, 176 did not consent to participate, 474 did not complete the survey and 36 had inconsistent responses, resulting in 695 completed surveys.
We compared those who said that they had used the target prescription opioids to those who said that they had not. The “target opioids” for this survey were hydrocodone immediate release (IR), oxycodone IR, oxycodone extended release (ER), and oxymorphone ER. This table describes basic demographic information of those who took the survey:
We also asked about other internet destinations that people use for drug related information. We arranged the bar graph in order of the most popular to least popular internet destinations:
This table described the survey respondents’ drug use, in general.
Perceptions & strategies for reducing harm from specific substances
We asked respondents to use a slider scale to report the comparative risk of somewhat similar substances. Below is an image of the average responses: respondents perceived risk of synthetic cannabinoids to be considerably higher than marijuana, illicitly synthesized desomorphine to be considerably higher risk than heroin, and E-cigarettes to be considerable less risky than tobacco cigarettes.
If you prefer to look at the results in table form:
Those of you who took the survey identified multiple ways that you believed that drug related harm would be reduced. The most common were legal access to currently illegal drugs, easier access to preferred drug, and having a health care provider with whom the respondent could be more open. Here is the table with all of the responses.
We asked all people who reported that they had used one of the four target opioid analgesics if they had ever combined the medicines with other substances. One hundred seventy four people (65.4%) reported that they had done so. The most common reasons for combining were to attain a desirable sensation and to boost the effects of one or more other drugs. However, a substantial minority of respondents took combinations as prescribed (30.0%) or was using the combination to self-treat mental (30.5%) or physical (24.1%) health conditions.
Themes from the comments
You may recall that the last question was “Do you have any comments or thoughts about your experience taking this survey?” We compiled all the responses and came up with seven different themes from the comments. Below are each of the themes and a few examples of what people actually wrote, to illustrate.
1. Suggestions for improvements/clarifications (thank you!!)
• you should have asked about recent drug use and intensity of drug use. i used drugs casually in college and now havent done drugs > 1 year, other than etoh.
• There needs to be a way to go back and correct errors
• Surveys should be designed to work without javascript
2. Requests to view the results (most frequent theme in the comments!)
3. Several suggestions that it was overly pharmaceutical-oriented & respondents wanted to talk about different experiences
• There should be more questions related to research chemicals and other so-called legal highs such as kava, kratom, etc.
• There should be an option for health care providers who have personal experience with illicit drugs/psychoactive drugs.
4. Liked the survey
• This was an impressively thorough and adaptive survey. Probably the best survey of any kind I've taken. Very well designed. I enjoyed taking it.
• I enjoyed taking this survey: I'm used to have WTF questions incompatible with earlier statements (e.g. "I never used A" -> Q.: What galenic form of A do you prefer?) and the HTML5 sliders were cute. Besides bluelight.ru more than deserves the 15-minute tme.
• Excellent use of photo identification of opioids - a novel idea
5. Did not like the survey
• Too corporate
• Waste of my time
• I thought this survey was completely fucking stupid and would not recommend anyone else to do so, because it is a complete waist of time!. All I wanted is to register so I can ask one fucking question!!!!
6. Desire to be helpful
• This is my second survey today. Actually I feel that I have contributed. I feel useful. Thank you. I have many opinions and am a semi-educated, employed, tax paying, insightful individual. Anything to help.
• Thanks for the opportunity to contribute... something.
7. Wariness (we promise that this wasn’t a government survey & have no intention of contributing to the war on drugs…any suggestions for more ways to ease these concerns are appreciated!)
• I will feel very tricked and used if these survey results are provided to law enforcement or in any way aid the efforts of the war on drugs.
• I was a little paranoid that this survey was conducted by the government.
• I took this survey to help out Bluelight, but I really don't like to take surveys because I fear the information may be used in such a way that results in it becoming harder to obtain my drugs of choice.
Thanks for a fantastic effort and thoughtful input and feedback! We’ll look forward to hearing from you in next year’s survey!
As many noted in the survey comments, there was a big focus on prescription pain reliever use. We chose this focus because, in the USA, there are a lot of public health interventions that are aimed at addressing prescription drug use, but we wanted to get information from Bluelight users about ways that people who use these types of drugs are thinking about prescription drug use and enacting harm reduction practices. And, of course, we asked additional questions!
We hope to present some of the results at the American Public Health Association annual meeting in November, 2014 (if you attend, come see us!) and we are beginning the process of writing the results up for a peer-reviewed journal. That process takes a long time and we wanted Bluelight so see the survey results more quickly. So, here’s a summary and if you'd like to look at this as a PDF, it is available here.
In total, we obtained 1381 surveys, 176 did not consent to participate, 474 did not complete the survey and 36 had inconsistent responses, resulting in 695 completed surveys.
We compared those who said that they had used the target prescription opioids to those who said that they had not. The “target opioids” for this survey were hydrocodone immediate release (IR), oxycodone IR, oxycodone extended release (ER), and oxymorphone ER. This table describes basic demographic information of those who took the survey:
We also asked about other internet destinations that people use for drug related information. We arranged the bar graph in order of the most popular to least popular internet destinations:
This table described the survey respondents’ drug use, in general.
Perceptions & strategies for reducing harm from specific substances
We asked respondents to use a slider scale to report the comparative risk of somewhat similar substances. Below is an image of the average responses: respondents perceived risk of synthetic cannabinoids to be considerably higher than marijuana, illicitly synthesized desomorphine to be considerably higher risk than heroin, and E-cigarettes to be considerable less risky than tobacco cigarettes.
If you prefer to look at the results in table form:
Those of you who took the survey identified multiple ways that you believed that drug related harm would be reduced. The most common were legal access to currently illegal drugs, easier access to preferred drug, and having a health care provider with whom the respondent could be more open. Here is the table with all of the responses.
We asked all people who reported that they had used one of the four target opioid analgesics if they had ever combined the medicines with other substances. One hundred seventy four people (65.4%) reported that they had done so. The most common reasons for combining were to attain a desirable sensation and to boost the effects of one or more other drugs. However, a substantial minority of respondents took combinations as prescribed (30.0%) or was using the combination to self-treat mental (30.5%) or physical (24.1%) health conditions.
Themes from the comments
You may recall that the last question was “Do you have any comments or thoughts about your experience taking this survey?” We compiled all the responses and came up with seven different themes from the comments. Below are each of the themes and a few examples of what people actually wrote, to illustrate.
1. Suggestions for improvements/clarifications (thank you!!)
• you should have asked about recent drug use and intensity of drug use. i used drugs casually in college and now havent done drugs > 1 year, other than etoh.
• There needs to be a way to go back and correct errors
• Surveys should be designed to work without javascript
2. Requests to view the results (most frequent theme in the comments!)
3. Several suggestions that it was overly pharmaceutical-oriented & respondents wanted to talk about different experiences
• There should be more questions related to research chemicals and other so-called legal highs such as kava, kratom, etc.
• There should be an option for health care providers who have personal experience with illicit drugs/psychoactive drugs.
4. Liked the survey
• This was an impressively thorough and adaptive survey. Probably the best survey of any kind I've taken. Very well designed. I enjoyed taking it.
• I enjoyed taking this survey: I'm used to have WTF questions incompatible with earlier statements (e.g. "I never used A" -> Q.: What galenic form of A do you prefer?) and the HTML5 sliders were cute. Besides bluelight.ru more than deserves the 15-minute tme.
• Excellent use of photo identification of opioids - a novel idea
5. Did not like the survey
• Too corporate
• Waste of my time
• I thought this survey was completely fucking stupid and would not recommend anyone else to do so, because it is a complete waist of time!. All I wanted is to register so I can ask one fucking question!!!!
6. Desire to be helpful
• This is my second survey today. Actually I feel that I have contributed. I feel useful. Thank you. I have many opinions and am a semi-educated, employed, tax paying, insightful individual. Anything to help.
• Thanks for the opportunity to contribute... something.
7. Wariness (we promise that this wasn’t a government survey & have no intention of contributing to the war on drugs…any suggestions for more ways to ease these concerns are appreciated!)
• I will feel very tricked and used if these survey results are provided to law enforcement or in any way aid the efforts of the war on drugs.
• I was a little paranoid that this survey was conducted by the government.
• I took this survey to help out Bluelight, but I really don't like to take surveys because I fear the information may be used in such a way that results in it becoming harder to obtain my drugs of choice.
Thanks for a fantastic effort and thoughtful input and feedback! We’ll look forward to hearing from you in next year’s survey!
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