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Drugs: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
THE CHANCES ARE THAT at some point someone, probably some shady-looking guy in a nightclub on a night out, will offer you drugs. People tend to become involved with drugs, if at all, during their teens, but it’s by no means confined to that time. During my teens, I experimented with drugs – this chapter is not intended to steer you either away from or towards recreational drug use. That isn’t to say I don’t have my own opinions on the subject. People with Asperger’s have an environmental proclivity towards depression, born of a feeling of ‘living on the outside’. As I’ve struggled with these issues myself, and being diagnosed with bipolar disorder, I make a marked point of avoiding anything that may inadvertently affect my already somewhat disordered neurochemistry. However, having looked around at some research on the subject, there isn’t all that much from a personal point of view. Just because a drug is included in here, it doesn’t mean that I’ve tried it. I’m very careful with
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Al l ri gh ts r es er ve d. M ay n ot b e re pr od uc ed i n an y fo rm w it ho ut p er mi ss io n fr om t he p ub li sh er , ex ce pt f ai r us es p er mi tt ed u nd er U .S . or a pp li ca bl e co py ri gh t la w.
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what I put into my body – when I was younger, I had some strange reactions to various pharmaceutical drugs and so I felt that when taking drugs for recreational reasons I’d have similar unusual effects.
Personal opinions aside, one of the most glaring reasons to give all due care and attention when it comes to recreational drugs is the inherent lack of regulation. As recreational drugs such as MDMA are Class A illegal drugs, ones that are shipped into or made in the UK are made safe only at the makers’ discretion. That means you’re never completely sure (and contrary to popular belief, neither is the person you get it from) whether what you’re getting is actually active and pure, or whether it’s safe or not – and sometimes it isn’t. I’ve known a couple of people who died from badly made or poorly manufactured MDMA and it was more than enough to dissuade me from becoming involved in that scene.
I have heard so many arguments for and against drugs, but the fact is that anything, even if it’s not physiologically addictive, can be addictive on a personal, psychological level. Humans can grow to crave something that makes them feel a certain way and this can quickly turn into a habit, which can turn into a full-blown addiction, especially if somebody already has a predisposition towards escapism in the first place. It can become a crutch, something that takes away the edge at times of difficulty, and when this happens, you’re in trouble. There are too many variables, and each time you take something it is different to the last time. It depends on whether and what you’ve eaten, if you’ve had a drink, how much you’ve drunk, whether you’re happy, sad, angry, bewildered or stressed, and that’s just personal variables. It also depends on who you’re with, where you are and what the music’s like. Add to this the body’s natural ability, or tendency, to develop an immunity to certain drugs, and you have yourself a crutch made of sticks and straw.
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Drugs are generally split into two categories: ‘hard’ drugs and ‘soft’ drugs. They’re split in terms of harmfulness to the users, judged by both toxicity and addictiveness. Soft drugs include cannabis, LSD and ecstasy, while hard drugs are things like cocaine and heroin. One of the biggest things to remember is that just because something is legal, it doesn’t mean that it’s safe. Some drugs, such as tobacco and alcohol, come between hard and soft drugs. Both are highly addictive and highly dangerous. Caffeine is also highly addictive, but its stigma has been all but removed because of its legality.
The world of drugs is a strange one. In an effort to make sense of this weird drug-based landscape, we’re going to call on an old friend, the bulleted list. The list that follows is a rundown of the more common street drugs that are around, their synonyms, effects and risks. Some of it is based on my own experience, in one way or another, some of it on other people’s experience, and some of it on research. As there are a great many resources online about the good and bad points of recreational drug use, I’m going to try to describe the various street drugs, specifically the five main drugs you’re most likely to be offered when you’re out – ecstasy, ketamine, speed, cannabis and cocaine – with relation to their effects on an autistic individual. Anyway, down the rabbit hole we go.
• Ecstasy – MDMA, Es, Mitsubishi, XTC, Mandy, Molly, Mum, Dad, pills
Ecstasy is taken in pill form and is an ‘upper’. The pills are often given their names by the image stamped into the front of the pill. It has strong links to dance music because it was used to help people survive the all-night party scene of the late 80s/early 90s. It makes people feel awake, invigorated and refreshed, as if they have the energy to
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do anything. Sounds, smells and everything else are much more finely tuned. Often it has the side-effect of causing feelings of love and adoration for other people. Generally, it takes about 20 minutes or so to ‘come up’ and tends to last about three to six hours.
If the positive effects were the only effects it had, I’m pretty sure everybody would be taking it all the time. Recently there have been trials of MDMA for use in people with post-traumatic stress disorder, with limited results. However, these aren’t the only effects. While I must stress, for the purpose of impartiality, that these effects don’t happen all the time, they sometimes do, which means every time you take a pill, you make a gamble.
One of the short-term effects and one of the most noticeable from an outsider’s perspective is an onset of anxiety. As anxiety is ‘a feeling of worry, nervousness or unease about something with an uncertain outcome’, the chances are high that if you have an ASD, you’ve already had some form of acute anxiety before. Obviously, everyone is anxious at some point, but if you’re more prone to anxiety, adding outside influences such as ecstasy to this can certainly compound the issue. This added anxiety also raises the chance of a panic attack or meltdown, and as the effects of ecstasy can also cause confusion, people often end up less than able to deal with these attacks.
From an outside perspective, to someone sober, the effects of ecstasy aren’t pretty. The drug generally results in a rise or fall in body temperature, causing sweating or the chills, and shaking. This, coupled with occasional involuntary muscle tension, causes gurning – the rolling of the tongue, clenching of the jaw and licking of the lips – to create a not altogether pleasant look. On top of this,
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the tendency to become more conversational and lose any or all sense of personal space means that it’s much, much easier to get into fights.
One of the most notable and most talked about side- effects of ecstasy, however, is the comedown. MDMA acts on serotonin, a neurotransmitter within the brain thought to play an important part in mood. It comes in leaps and bounds and the elevated serotonin levels go towards causing the pleasurable feeling and oneness that are so associated with the drug. Afterwards, people can experience two or three days of depression, often called a comedown. One possible explanation for this is that the brain takes a while to regulate after being bombarded with serotonin, which could be what causes what is often known as the ‘midweek blues’, due to people’s tendency to take ecstasy at the weekends. Restoration of proper serotonin levels can take 48 hours or even a week,…
