Cannibal drug: myth or reality?

According to data from the National Plan on Drugs, 20% of men integrated into intervention programs to reduce substance use narcotics and who live at that time with their partners, carried out some aggression against them during the year before starting the treatment.

The scientific literature relates drug use to the appearance and consolidation of various mental disorders and, in particular, psychotic episodes with fundamental elements such as hallucinations and persecutory delusions.

The social culture of drugs does not hide, however, a general ignorance of its long-term consequences as well as the adverse effects when the drug ceases to work. Like all narcotic substances, they work with a rebound effect when their effects pass, causing an increase in the negative impact on the problems that are precisely sought to improve. A) Yes the increase in problems related to hostility, anxiety, insomnia is very common and alterations in eating behavior.

Drug use is behind many episodes of crime and violence due to its influence on the body. The increase in violence, mainly among youth, may have as its main motive

the appearance of new substances with a much greater stimulating power, as well as its addictive capacity.

• Related article: "Types of drugs: know their characteristics and effects"

Is the Cannibal Drug label deserved?

In recent years, the appearance of the so-called "Cannibal Drug" has been related to high-impact violence episodes that, due to their special virulence, filled pages of newspapers and newscasts, raising alarms due to the striking of the events and the association of words so linked to the ideology of terror as cannibal or zombie.

News with alarming elements such as violence, brutality, bites, drug use, assaults, carried out by what the media classified as "predators", filled the minds of a society accustomed to the sad "normality" of drug use. drugs

First detected in the United States, it was discovered in an episode in which a young man devoured the face of a beggar, being shot down by the police, taking 6 shots to stop him in his frenzy "zombie". The autopsy of the aggressor revealed the consumption of a new designer drug called "ivory wave" in the streets and that it was sold as bath salts to bypass police controls and sell it legally. Its rise due to the proliferation of information through social networks, did the rest, adopting other Denominations like MTV, magic, maddie, black rob, super coke, vanilla heaven, blessing, cannibal dope, or lightning bolt White.

Effects of methylenedioxypyrovalerone

Methylenedioxypyrovalerone, MDPV, had stimulant effects somewhat similar to cocaine, but with much greater and longer lasting power. With hallucinogenic effects, could cause hallucinations, panic attacks and psychosis, in addition to numbness of the mouth due to the effect of the lidocaine incorporated into the drug in its manufacture. It acts as an inhibitor of the reuptake of noradrenaline and the dopamine, being also used as a nootropic agent for its stimulating effects on the nervous system.

MDPV has similar effects to cocaine but with a 10 times greater potency as a psychostimulant, presenting negative effects like any substance narcotic drugs based on tachycardia, insomnia, dizziness, dyspnea, hypertension, agitation, delusions, violent behavior, dilated pupils, confusion, anxiety and suicidal behaviors, hypervigilance, arousal, excess of sociability, increased sexual desire, lack of inhibition and decreased need to feed or to rest.

On the other hand, an article published in 2017 in the British Journal of Pharmacology, referring to research on the MDPV carried out by López-Arnau, Lujan, Duart-Castells, Pubill, Camarasa, Valverde and Escubedo, from the Neurobiology of Behavior Research Group from the Behavioral Health Sciences Research Group at Pompeu and Fabra University, show that the consumption of this favors and multiplies the effects of any other narcotic substance in the future, especially the cocaine.

Clandestine marketing of MDPV

The MDPV moves for its acquisition in the field of Deep web, to which it adds its character as a mysterious drug and not available to anyone, susceptible to multiple deceptions, selling other much more harmful substances in its place without warning consumers of the danger in which they are involved.

In 2016 in Barcelona, ​​the sale of some candy bears impregnated in a substance that was sold as MDPV in some cases and as Nexus in others was detected, being in fact another drug called 25N-NBOME or also "the bomb", responsible for the death in the United States and Australia of several deaths caused by its consumption.

Multi-casual assaults

Stimulant drugs can undoubtedly induce in people predisposed to episodes of aggression or violence, but in the case of MDPV it cannot be established a pattern that leads us to associate it with cannibalistic behaviors and much more, given the lack of rigor and adulteration in substances that is observed in that market illegal.

Organizations such as the International Narcotics Control Board, reports that behind 46% of serious violence episodes associated with drug use a history of previous mental health problems is found.

By way of conclusion we must mention the dangerous link that is established between drugs and fun, in which seeks to bring human limits to the maximum of life risk where on many occasions the departure.