This week’s competition winner is Synthetikal. Those pills will be shipped out tomorrow, the day of my first of three final exams. 
Last week’s winner also never got in touch, so I still have one more pack to give away. It’s almost like you guys don’t want free stuff…
So, I was having a browse round Drug Education News – a blog all about the Drug Education Forum, who are apparently “an umbrella body for national organisations committed to improving drug education in England” – and came across a post about legal highs. Admittedly, this is a repost of a member’s briefing from DrugScope, so not their own words, but that’s not why I have a problem with them. Have a read:
Devon-based Children’s Society projects are concerned about an increase in the availability of these [legal highs] substances and the use of them by young people in their area. This increase in use has been mirrored by recent articles in national press and sector publications, putting forward a range of limited research and anecdotal evidence – with particular attention paid to a few users who have experienced sometimes lethal side effects.
Steven Hawker, Young People’s Drug and Alcohol Worker at The Children’s Society Checkpoint project in Torquay, expressed concern about the way young people view these drugs and the way professionals communicate about them. “While we feel there is some advantage in highlighting specific risks and effects of individual legal highs, it concerns me there is very little literature highlighting the general risks of these substances”, he said. “Of particular concern are inexperienced substance users who may take the view that legal equals safe and that this may impact on them consuming potentially large amounts of stimulants or hallucinogens.”
The Children’s Society would be interested if any organisation has:
- produced any awareness campaigns in their area
- seen significant rises in use
- become aware of specific negative effects of particular drugs.
The Children’s Society would also welcome any thoughts on how young people should be made aware of the potential risks of legal highs, particularly substances where research into the risks of short and long-term use is limited.
Fair enough, sort of. These people are concerned for their kids, but that still doesn’t excuse the hypocrisy subtly interwoven into the fabric of their terror. I’m all for education, raising awareness and semi-anonymously informing people of their mistakes via the internet, so I thought I’d post a little comment outlining my opinion. It went something like this:
What about alcohol and tobacco? By the same reasoning employed above, their legality also suggests to kids they’re safe. In a similar vein, no respectable retailer of these legal alternatives to illegal drugs would sell them to anyone under the age of 18.
I agree that more research into these types of substance should be done, so that we know what’s safe to take and what isn’t. I can assure you though, that acohol and tobacco would end up much further towards the unsafe end of the spectrum.
Am I being a dick? No. Am I being beligerant? No. Am I furthering discussion on the topic? Fuck yeah! So why the hell did they delete my comment?! It seems to me the Drug Education News blog (notice I’m not linking to them for this very reason) simply do not want to listen when it comes to differing opinion.
And here was me thinking education was all about listening to what other people had to say in order to reinforce or refute your current understanding. At the very least, they could have let the comment stay and responded to it with a well reasoned argument about why I’m wrong. A pretty poor show, overall.
Commenting on blogs is a great idea if you have a site or blog of your own. The majority of blogs allow you to leave your URL along with your comment, allowing visitors to click through to your site, particularly if you have something interesting to say. Unfortunately for this reason, a comment system is subject to a lot of spam, but plugins for your blog can help stop those. This blog gets tonnes of spam comments from unrelated sites, but interestingly, I do get the ocassional legal highs site in there. It’s just a shame that they leave the same spammy message on multiple blog posts that add nothing to the discussion. As a result, they end up being marked as spam not only by me, but any subsequent blog that uses this plugin! NextGenBuzz & SalviaSociety are two examples – their aggressive spam tactics have ended up not only being a waste of time, but actually hurting their site’s reputation. Great going, guys!
This week’s Hypnotic Pills winner is BFitzpatric! Please email me back or comment on this post before May 9th to claim your prize. Also, last week’s winner never got in touch, so I still have one more pack to give away! For details on how these can be yours, check out this post.
Oh, and it was my birthday yesterday. Huzzah!
The second winner of my Hypnotic Pills Giveaway is R3nzer. I’ve sent you an email, so either reply to that or comment here. You have until next Saturday to claim them. 
Still got one more pack to give away, but I’ve got some other stuff to give away soon as well, so stay tuned for more freebies. Also, my dissertation deadline is next week, so that’s kept me pretty busy lately. Once that’s handed in and I’ve got some free time, I’ll post something a bit meatier
The first of three packs of Hypnotic Pills goes to Paracaine! Although that’s not your real name, you should know who you are. Actually, I emailed you yesterday, but no response. Perhaps the phases “randomly selected“, “winner” and “legal pills” tripped some sort of spam filter? Who knows! Anyway, Paracaine, can you drop me an email or comment on this post when you see this? You’ve got until next Saturday to get in touch…
Here’s some good news. Thanks to the endless badgering of a few Americans, I’ve decided to open the competition up worldwide! Yes, that’s right, the remaining two packs of pills can be won by anyone! All you need to do is subscribe to this blog by email to be in with a chance to win.
Over the past week, we’ve added a couple of new products to the site:
I think Sam Harris may have been wrong about religion keeping drugs illegal. These evangelical Christians appear to be totally battered:
(Drum & bass added for emphasis)
Luckily for you guys, I’ve happened across a few sample packs of these new legal pills. They’re called Hypnotic and are made by LightYears, the same people that brought you Diablo, Hummer, MeO, Activate, Elevate, etc. Here’s what they say on the back:
Ingredients: Guarana, Geranium extract, Poppy seed, Calcium, Magnesium and tableting aids.
Dosage: Take 2 tablets with water or fruit juice. If under 60kg take only 1 tablet.
Warning: Do not take more than 2 tablets within 24 hours. Effects may last for up to 12 hours. Do not take if pregnant, lactating, suffer from mental illness or high blood pressure. Don’t mix with other drugs or medicines, keep hydrated and party responsibly.
And here’s what they say on the inside:
Where relaxation and exhilaration meet.
Sit back and let yourself be taken away by the warm buzz that is Hypnotic. Whether you’re planning down time or party time it’ll give you that extra spark that’ll truly enhance your mood. Experience relaxation you can melt into, mixed with excitement that’ll lift you.
Hypnotic will take you to a place you won’t want to leave.
So why is it lucky for you guys? Well, I thought I’d spread the wealth a bit and give some away.
Are you:
Then you just might be in with a chance of winning! All you need to do is subscribe to this blog via email. Couldn’t be simpler! For three weeks, I’ll give away one pack a week to someone randomly selected from my list of email subscribers. So, subscribe sooner rather than later and be in with a bigger chance of winning. Winners each week will be announced at some point over each weekend, starting with the first winner on Sat 19th April.
It would also be super nice if those winners would report back here and write a little review.
Here’s a few nice plant pictures taken from Inverewe Gardens on our recent holiday.
Click on each for a high res version.
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I’m very excited! We’ve just bought quite a few new things to pad out our Legal Highs and Entheogen categories, which happen to be our favourite. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be trickling new products on here and there, including more kratom, herbal teas and other delicious extracts, as well as popular smoking mixtures in the same league as Spice Diamond. It’s going to take forever to write all the descriptions and produce a nice set of images for each. We’re going to try and put more on there about traditional usage, and maybe some pharmacology too. I just wish I was working on it full time!
Pyramidal neurones in the Cerebral Cortex
As it happens, I’m pretty busy with my second module of the semester: neuropharmacology. In a few weeks, I’ll have to do another presentation in the same vein as my one on salvia. I’m thinking I’ll talk about either kratom, ayahuasca or psychoactive mushrooms. Kratom has some very interesting properties, acting as an opioid, ayahuasca highlights the importance of drug-drug interactions, containing DMT and an MAO inhibitor, while psychoactive mushrooms are just really interesting. The last option also allows me to bring in some whole Amanita muscaria caps (another exciting new product!) in to pass around – everyone would love that, right? As if that wasn’t reason enough, it’s active constituent, muscimol, is also of use pharmacologically. During some preliminary research, I found this great paper on hallucinogens and dissociative agents naturally growing in the United States I thought I’d share with you. Not hard going at all, and totally worth a read.
I’ve also got to pick a 10 week research project to do after Christmas. One of the options, and no doubt the one with the most competition, is on cannabinoids, eating behaviour and GABA signalling. Another one that stands out is the effects of ketamine on the visual cortex. Looks like a busy few weeks ahead.
It’s been a long couple of weeks. Not only did new images need making for all of my sh0p’s categories, but several important deadlines are looming just around the corner.
As the title says, I finally finished recategorising all our products. Take a look! I dare say my photoshop skillz are improving daily. I’ve basically reorganised the entheogens and legal highs into their own separate categories, so people who want to legally batter themselves don’t try smoking some dream herb and wonder why they’re not stoned off their arse. Also DIY shamans tend not to like the association between their sacred plants and other, more suspect “herbs” like Spice. And rightly so, hence the reshuffle. The next big step will be to expand both sections considerably.
For the legal highs section, we should be getting some new big brand smoking mixtures and maybe some more pills. We’re hoping to expand the entheogens section the most though. We’ve got loads of new herbs coming, as well as some extracts of a couple we stock already. Very exciting, but a lot of work! Writing descriptions and taking multiple pictures of everything is probably a more daunting task than rearranging the categories in the first place.
I’m still not ready to properly advertise on E-Dot. I want to make sure everything’s top notch before I post about Coffeesh0p there.
I’ve also finally rearranged the legal pills by effect rather than by brand. Initially, when I only stocked two or three brands, it made sense, but now we have so many! Someone who’s never encountered legal pills before may be put off by having to chose by brand, and would instead prefer to buy a product based on it’s advertised effect. Hopefully now, we can expand these effect categories indefinitely.
What better way to celebrate all my hard work than a pack of Trip E, a pack of Spice Diamond and a massive free fireworks display!
On a more technical note, the easiest way I found to move all the products around on the site is to first calculate what the product’s URL should be based on it’s product ID (also in the URL). If the script isn’t at the calculated URL, it then forwards you to it using a 301 (permanent) redirect. Hopefully then the search engines will consider the new URLs as the original products and not new ones, so they’ll retain their rankings. As well as the search engine benefits, anyone that clicks an old link from another site to get to yours will be redirected to the URL behind the scenes. This way certainly seems more simple than filling your htaccess file full of redirects!
In other news, I’m thinking of running a competition here on this blog very soon. I have some things to give away…
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