What is mephedrone?
It's a chemical drug that's been described as a mixture between speed, coke and MDMA. It started life as a 'legal high' and was sold as plant food until the Government banned it in 2010. It's a stimulant and comes in powder or crystal form. Some people say it smells like a cat's litter tray - hence the name, meow meow.

Why do people take mephedrone?
You feel amazing, in fact, you ARE AMAZING. Mephedrone gives you bags of confidence and makes you feel utterly euphoric. You love everyone. You feel like the human race is a brilliant thing, and we should, like, all totally hug each other and learn to understand each other. You can't stop talking. If you can't talk because you're gurning so hard, you'll text everyone to tell them you love them. You're wide awake and all stimulated; you could dance and dance and dance if you wanted to without getting tired. And you're likely to want to shag and shag and shag if you get the opportunity.

What are the bad side effects of mephedrone?

• It's very moreish. Lots of users find they spunk their way through entire grams to try and keep the high alive.
• Your body temperature goes haywire - you may find yourself a hot, sweaty mess, or shivering like you're in the middle of a blizzard.
• Your jaw muscles can tighten up and ache from all the gurning, and the rest of your muscles may twitch involuntarily.
• You can feel sick, paranoid and really scared.
• You can get a pretty hefty nosebleed when you snort it.
• It can give you a headache of doom, or make you vomit.
• Not many people tell you this, but it makes you need to do an almighty poo.
• Can't sleep. Won't sleep. Even though you really really want to after a while.
• It can over stimulate your nervous system, making you hallucinate, or even have a fit.

How long do the effects last?
It takes between 15 to 45 minutes to start feeling the effects, and can take a little longer if you've eaten a big meal. It lasts between two to three hours, although during that time lots of users are tempted to take more to keep the euphoric high going. It may take a further one to four hours to feel able to sleep.

Mephedrone History:
Mephedrone is a purely recreational substance. It is considered to have no true medicinal value. Today, the drug has mostly crawled back into the recesses from whence it came like all the other flash-in-the-pan drugs. But, its prevalence in the U.K. underground has kept it alive. On a macro level, mephedrone had a profound, albeit short-lived, effect on drug culture in the United Kingdom. Overall, mephedrone did not garner a huge following across the pond in the United States. The two-year stretch between 2008 and 2010 proved to be the drug's heyday in the U.K. At one point, mephedrone was squarely in the most used social drugs in the entire country. So, where did it pop up? Well, put simply: supply and demand. The year 2009 saw MDMA availability dry up with street dealers in London. This, compounded with an already short supply of cocaine, led to the perfect conditions for mephedrone's emergence and reign. But as every person chasing a mephedrone high knows, that good feeling doesn't last forever - and neither did the drug's chokehold on the market. Today, mephedrone use and distribution are minimal. It is predominantly used as an aphrodisiac among club-going homosexual men.

History:
The white powder that smells faintly of cat piss, defined the UK's party scene from 2008 to 2010 and caused a media hysteria that kickstarted the process of the government banning all psychoactive substances. The active agent in mephedrone is a form of cathinone, a substance that occurs naturally in khat, the mildly stimulative root chewed all over the Horn of Africa. The exponentially stronger "substituted cathinone" molecule in mephedrone was re-synthesized in 2003 by the legendary Israeli underground chemist Dr. Zee, but the explosion in drone's popularity in the late 2000s was down to a different source altogether: the war on drugs itself.

In June 2008, Cambodian authorities seized and destroyed 33 tons of Safrole, a key precursor chemical in MDMA. This quantity was enough to produce around 245 million ecstasy pills, so its seizure had huge reverberations throughout the international drugs market. In 2009, the purity of ecstasy sold in the UK plummeted from roughly 60 percent to 22 percent. In 2010, almost all the ecstasy seized in the UK contained no MDMA at all. At the same time, the quality of cocaine was running at historical lows. This pretty much set the scene for mephedrone - a drug described by most users as feeling like a mixture of MDMA and coke.

The explosion of this new legal high had various knock-on effects, most noticeably the unprecedented drop in deaths from cocaine use. Neil Woods, who worked as an undercover drugs cop for 14 years, tracked the phenomenon closely. "As a police drugs expert, I followed the stats and the intel. The only year since the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 that cocaine deaths have actually fallen is the year that mephedrone was at its most popular, 2009," he says. "Cathinone is far less toxic than street cocaine, and mephedrone was generally weighing in at 99.8 percent pure, whereas the average 20 percent pure cocaine had as many as 11 different adulterants."

In 2010, the drug was the fourth most popular among British clubbers; it's now used almost exclusively on the gay chemsex circuit, where drone and GHB have emerged as the two most favored types of party fuel - thanks to its chemical aphrodisiac qualities and the fact it keeps you awake and alert. By April 2010, looking to appear "tough on drugs" before the general election, the Labour government banned mephedrone. Several members of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs resigned at this obvious knee jerk reaction to tabloid reporting. But, in fairness, the ban sort of worked - people did largely stop snorting m-cat. And then they just started snorting cocaine again instead, so the cocaine deaths that had decreased in 2009 started to climb back up and have been around the same level ever since.

Effects of Mephedrone:
Most users report that mephedrone's effects are noticeably different to those of MDMA, being more stimulant-like and lacking the full extent of MDMA's sensual, empathy-promoting properties. When mephedrone is snorted, it only takes a few minutes for its effects to appear, and the effects generally peak in half an hour or less. When swallowed (usually wrapped in a cigarette paper) its effects can take more than 45 minutes to appear, depending on factors like how much food is in the stomach. Some people have unwanted side effects of the drug such as: loss of appetite, muscle clenching and tremors, headache, anxiety, elevated blood pressure and chest pain, fast/irregular heartbeat, difficulty urinating, changes in body temperature (hot flushes and sweating) and blue/cold fingers. People using the drug also report a comedown period after use, which can also be compared to the comedown periods experienced after cocaine, speed or MDMA use. Users have reported that it is very tempting to take more mephedrone again and again to keep the high going and to prevent the comedown.

What does Mephedrone look like?
Mephedrone is a white substance. It is sold most commonly as crystals or a powder, but also in the form of capsules or pills. It can have a distinctive odour, reported to range from a synthetic fishy smell to the smell of vanilla and bleach, stale urine, or electric circuit boards. This compound belongs to the class of organic compounds known as alkyl-phenylketones.

Metabocard for Mephedrone:
http://www.hmdb.ca/metabolites/HMDB0041923

Plant Food? Bath Salt?
Because it was illegal to sell the compound for human consumption, dealers began saying that the mephedrone they were selling was plant food or a bath salt and not for human consumption, but this was just to get round the law.

Mephedrone (4-methylmethcathinone) is a B-ketoamphetamine belonging to the family of synthetic cathinones, an emerging class of designer drugs known for their hallucinogenic and psychostimulant properties as well as for their abuse potential. Mephedrone is a stimulant of dopamine (DA) release and blocks its reuptake through its interaction with the dopamine transporter. Furthermore, it has some affinity for various 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT) receptor subtypes. Neurotoxic effect of mephedrone on 5-HT and DA systems remains controversial. Although some studies in animal models reported no damage to DA nerve endings in the striatum and no significant changes in brain monoamine levels, some others suggested a rapid reduction in 5-HT and DA transporter function. Persistent serotonergic deficits were observed after binge like treatment in a warm environment and in both serotonergic and dopaminergic nerve endings at high ambient temperature. Oxidative stress cytotoxicity and an increase in frontal cortex lipid peroxidation were also reported. Despite the re-classification of mephedrone as a Class B restricted substance by the United Kingdom and restrictive legislation by the United States, international policy regarding mephedrone control is still developing and interest in synthetic amphetamine-like drugs could drive the development of future mephedrone analogues.

Mephedrone:
https://drugs.ncats.io/drug/8BA8T27317

Mephedrone Risks:
More peak dopamine release than amphetamine, more serotonin release than MDMA, and a pattern of brain activation similar to that of methamphetamine. Mephedrone is a powerful drug. Mephedrone might be safer than MDMA, at least from the point of view of acute toxicity, there exists a body of literature that suggests that mephedrone is more addictive than MDMA. This means that limited and reasonable use of mephedrone is something that is hard to do, and many people who use it regularly end up taking massive doses of the drug over short time spans which could cause long-term damage. Based on the research so far, people using mephedrone wishing to minimize their risk can take the following steps.

Adverse Effects:
Adverse effects reported by abusers of mephedrone include increased heart rate, increased blood pressure, chest pain, agitation, irritability, dizziness, delusions, nose bleeding, dilated pupils, seizures, nausea and vomiting.

Mephedrone Long Term:
Mephedrone is a man-made stimulant it is very addictive, meaning that once you've taken some, you'll probably want to take more straight away. This is dangerous, because it increases the likelihood of overdosing. The longer-term effects of taking mephedrone too often aren't very well understood. Some known issues are: heart problems (such as increased heart rate or an irregular heartbeat). Increased rates of depression. Increased rates of psychosis and schizophrenia.

Tolerance and addiction potential:
As with other stimulants, the chronic use of mephedrone can be considered moderately addictive with a high potential for abuse and is capable of causing psychological dependence among certain users. When addiction has developed, cravings and withdrawal effects may occur if a person suddenly stops their usage. Tolerance to many of the effects of mephedrone develops with prolonged and repeated use. This results in users having to administer increasingly large doses to achieve the same effects. After that, it takes about 3 - 7 days for the tolerance to be reduced to half and 1 - 2 weeks to be back at baseline (in the absence of further consumption). Mephedrone presents cross-tolerance with all dopaminergic stimulants, meaning that after the consumption of mephedrone all stimulants will have a reduced effect.

Also called:
White Magic, Miow, Meph, Meow Meow, MC, M-Smack, M-CAT, Drone, Charge, Bubble, Bounce, 4-MMC

Is it dangerous to mix with other drugs?
Yes. You increase the risks to yourself, including the risk of death, if you combine alcohol with mephedrone or any other drug that causes a high. Also, you can never be entirely sure that what you're buying is actually mephedrone and not something else.

Cathinones:
Mephedrone is probably the most well known of a group of drugs derived from cathinone (the same chemical found in the plant called khat) although two other compounds are also increasingly recognized on the market. These are methedrone and methylone. The effects of methedrone are said to be broadly similar to mephedrone, although methylone is said to give the user an experience more closely related to taking ecstasy. Other less common compounds from the cathinone family that may be used recreationally include flephedrone (4-FMC), bromomethcathinone (4-BMC), ethylone (MDEC), MDPV (methylenedioxypyrovalerone) and buphedrone and it is possible that other compounds are in circulation.

Useful to Know:
Because the effects wear off quite quickly, it's easy to become dependent on mephedrone and to keep using more once the effects wear off. Some people find it hard to stop once they've started a session on the drug. If you snort it, you can get soreness in your nose and nosebleeds. Mephedrone also has an effect on the heart, with some users reporting palpitations and an irregular heartbeat. It can also cause fits because of the way it stimulates the nervous system. Although there hasn't been much research into mephedrone, medics think it is more dangerous to mix it with alcohol as this seems to increase the chances of it causing breathing problems. Less is known about mephedrone than most other drugs as it is relatively new. It is clear that it stimulates the heart, causing a rapid heartbeat. Some people have also experienced their fingers being cold or turning blue.

Mephedrone

Duration: A shortlived euphoric stimulant, developed as an analogue of MDMA, which was extremely popular in the research chemical scene before being banned. Commonly seen on street markets but rarer online. Very strong urge to redose compulsively.
Route	Onset	Duration	After Effects
Tripsit Factsheets
Mephedrone Basic Information: http://drugs.tripsit.me/mephedrone
All ROAs:	15-45 minutes	2-3 hours	6-24 hours
Detection: Mixed reports on whether the drug shows positive on standard drug tests.
Effects: Generally described as being more intense of a stimulant than MDMA but with somewhat less of an empathogenic feel.

Mephedrone Overdose:
There are cases in the research literature of fatalities due to overdosing on mephedrone. The drug is relatively easy to overdose on, as individuals who use it will often tend to binge on the drug. Moreover, mephedrone users tend to use the drug in conjunction with other drugs, such as alcohol, other central nervous system depressants like opiates, and even other stimulants. This increases the risk of an overdose on mephedrone or an overdose on the other drug.

Symptoms of overdose include:

• Numbness in the limbs
• Bluish fingers, toes, feet, or hands
• Chest pains, irregular heartbeat, or sweating
• Ringing in the ears
• Anxiety and/or paranoia

Overdoses can occur at 250 mg or more of the drug in some individuals. Overdoses on mephedrone are often treated with IV fluids and benzodiazepines. Anyone who is suspected of overdosing on mephedrone should receive immediate medical attention.

Australian Use:
Note: Mephedrone is a relatively new drug. To date, there is limited evidence of how widely it is used in Australia. Due to the lack of formal research about its use and effects, much of the information used in this fact sheet has been taken from people who have used the drug, rather than from scientific sources. (This page will be updated once more information is known.)

World Health Organization 2014:
Mephedrone (4-methylmethcathinone) is a synthetic cathinone. Mephedrone has never been licensed as a medicine, also no other legitimate uses are known. Although new on the market of recreational substances the history of mephedrone goes back to 1929 when its synthesis was published. The product started its way on the market around the time when the availability of 3,4-methylenedioxymethylamphetamine decreased. Use of mephedrone was first reported around 2007 and since then increasing especially in Europe. This has led to a risk assessment by the EMCDDA in 2010 (EMCDDA, 2011). Meanwhile use/abuse has also been reported from Australia and the USA.

The effects and the mode of use reported have similarities with (meth)amphetamine, cocaine and 3,4-methylenedioxymethylamphetamine, but its potency is less than (meth)amphetamine. The overall profile shows a molecule with unique pharmacological properties.

Not a new kid on the block, nevertheless the study into its pharmacology and toxicology started only recently. Reported toxic effects of mephedrone include soar nose/nosebleeds after snorting, tachycardia, hypertension, agitation, paranoia, hallucinations and insomnia. Some of these effects leeding to hospital admissions. A number of analytically confirmed drug-related deaths have been reported.

Mephedrone Critical Review Report (PDF 34 pages):
https://www.who.int/medicines/areas/quality_safety/4_12_review.pdf

EMCDDA - Europol Joint Report 2010:

• Mephedrone is a synthetic cathinone, and is the common name for 4-methylmethcathinone. It was first detected in November 2007 and notified via the EMCDDA's Early Warning System in March 2008.
• Mephedrone is legally available over the Internet where it can be bought in retail quantities or in bulk. In the last two years, mephedrone and mephedrone-containing products are aggressively marketed by various online mephedrone-specific suppliers as a 'legal-high' - a legal alternative to ecstasy or cocaine. In some Member States users may source mephedrone from specialised shops (head/smart shops) or street level drug dealers.
• Twenty Member States as well as Croatia and Norway reported to Europol and the EMCDDA seizures of mephedrone in powder form or tablets, ranging from 2 grams up to more than 130 kilograms of mephedrone seized, the latter equalling approximately 260 000 tablets.
• Evidence of mephedrone use and associated toxicity has been increasing, in 2009 and 2010, particularly in the United Kingdom.
• Five Member States control mephedrone under drug control or equivalent legislation and two Member States regulate mephedrone under their medicines-related legislation.
• Mephedrone has no known medical use (human or veterinary) in the European Union.
• The main precursor of mephedrone, 4-methylpropiophenone is available on the Internet. There are no indications that mephedrone may be used for other purposes.

Mephedrone Joint Reports 2010 (PDF 30 pages):
https://www.emcdda.europa.eu/system/files/publications/559/2010_Mephedrone_Joint_report_279863.pdf

Of 70 Dutch users of mephedrone, 58 described it as an overall pleasant experience and 12 described it as an unpleasant experience.