Nice one, guys. Seriously.

You’ve all just cost me a shitload of money. Once again, I’ve been forced to hand over more cash to upgrade my web hosting packages, due to the blog’s precipitous, yet perfectly predictable peak in popularity.

"Would you like to host a blog?"

I suppose you aren’t the only ones to blame. If my logical, well thought out, excellently articulated ideas and opinions require upgrading the infrastructure necessary to pipe them to the masses, I suppose I’m at fault too, if only a little bit. If I was wrong about something just a fraction of the time, or I was a tiny bit less modest, then maybe I could have kept the money for that death ray I’ve had my eye on.

Actually, running out of bandwidth timed rather nicely with my JWH-018 Toxicology write-up receiving over 100 mostly sensible comments. Neither is worth writing about on its own, but both things happening within a few days of each other practically forced me to write a bit of an update post.  So here’s a graph, some stats, and a few mediocre blog-related achievements:

Here’s the site’s traffic for every month since time began (I certainly can’t remember a time before Synchronium.net, and neither can you) to the end of January 2010. No actual numbers, but that’s some nice growth.

Sexy Statistics:

• We’ve written 87 posts between us
• Posts have rated 235 times with an average of score of 4.55
• There are 714 comments approved so far
• 9,178 spam comments have been dealt with
• Tim is our top commentator, closely followed by MauiGreenDragon
• Jo’s Hash Brownie Recipe has been viewed just over 100,000 times
• My first post has only had 27 views to date
• There are almost 10,000 links pointing to this site

Awesome Achievements

I’ve somehow convinced people that I know what I’m talking about

Thanks to my recent mephedrone coverage, I’ve given interviews and/or helped with research on the subject for BBC Radio, DrugScope and AOL, as well as a handful of smaller things like local or university newspapers or local radio stations. We also had the privilege of telling Jeremy Kyle to fuck off when he wanted to interview us for some (presumably terrible) legal highs “documentary”.

People keep nicking my shit

A lot of people have republished articles and images on their site without asking or linking back – the bastards. It seemed that every dickhead research chemical vendor who set up shop recently in an attempt to get rich quick has used my rather snazzy chemical structure images, and I’ve read more copied blog posts than I care to count. While definitely annoying, it’s also pretty cool to have created something worth nicking. One blog even had my entire RSS feed running down the right hand side for a while, but that was great, since each item linked back here multiple times. Which brings me onto…

People keep “licensing my content”

That’s basically the same as the above, but they ask me first and link back to the original article. (If you’re planning on nicking my shit, ask me first!)

We’ve stood up for the industry and druggies everywhere

Since Jo’s review on the second worst documentary ever made, Can I Get High Legally (the recent Horizon about infinity has to be the worst), we’ve published the views of a couple of interviewees, which tell a completely different story. Journalists occasionally mention that review when they get in touch, agreeing with us, or using that as an example of what they’re not trying to do. Are they trying to earn our trust? Maybe. I think the real reason is that my “Internet powers” scare the shit out of them. Well, maybe not.

We’ve had some interesting results in Google

First off, we immediately began to rank number one when searching for “synchronium”, above Synchronium.com, which has been there since 2004. Funnily enough, that guy probably gets more traffic now than ever, since no one ever actually searched for “synchronium” before this site came along.

Google Image Search is where all the fun is at though. At one point, our picture of Neal’s Yard Remedies superimposed with a giant rubber duck was on the first page of results for their name, but not any more. When you search for Daniel Siebert (“the salvia guy”), near the top is a picture of Kenny G, thanks to this post. Finally, Mephedrone Cat has shown his cheeky little face on the first page of results when searching for “mephedrone”.

If things continue like this, I reckon I’ll be king of the Internet in approximately 4 years.  Thanks to all of you for participating!

Apart from the exponentially expanding list of slang names for mephedrone, there have been a couple of interesting new developments everyone should be aware of.

#1 – Gabrielle Price Died From Bronchopneumonia

Gabi has featured in pretty much every mephedrone-related news story these past few weeks, since she died at a party after consuming mephedrone and ketamine (and probably alcohol as well, although alcohol is so ingrained into our society it wouldn’t occur to anyone to report it). It turns out that Gabi actually died from bronchopneumonia following a group A streptococcal infection. Don’t get me wrong, this is nothing to be cheery about – a teenager still died. I’m just reporting this here because nowhere else will report it, since it’s no longer a story. Actually, if you read about another mephedrone article that mentions this girl, do everyone a favour and leave a link to this blog post in their comments.

This also doesn’t mean mephedrone is safer than we thought. Being on any drug isn’t a good idea if you also have a potentially fatal illness, never mind a cocktail of drugs in a party environment.

#2 – No One Ripped Their Balls Off

This is another piece of bullshit whipped out by the media at every opportunity: apparently, some young gentleman thought he saw centipedes crawling about his person and tore his balls off in (a totally proportionate) response. Turns out, this probably didn’t happen, since the “facts” were obtained from unsubstantiated reports on poor quality forums and chat rooms. Well done, the media!

#3 – West Yorkshire Police Have No Idea What The Fuck They’re Talking About

Here’s what they had to say following a poster launch designed to raise awareness.

“MCAT is a substance which is currently legal, however; it is predominately used for plants and can have quite an adverse effect if consumed by a human.

“We know that this substance is often used by young people, particularly between the ages of 14 to 25. These posters are therefore designed to reach this particular generation and help them to make an informed decision.

“Police and partners in Kirklees will be placing them in various locations frequented by young people and hopefully they will take in the message.

“MCAT is often referred to as a ‘legal high’ and gives the impression that because it’s legal, it is safe. There are number of substances, which are not controlled drugs or illegal which can be abused. We would always advise against ingesting anything into your body which is not for a bone fide medical reason. MCAT in particular has the potential to damage both mental and physical health.

Their first mistake might be hard to spot, but MCAT means “methcathinone” which is NOT mephedrone (4-MMCAT). Their second mistake needs no more explaination or emphasis than a simple emboldening of their own words.

Unbelievable.

ITV’s Central News decided to do an “investigation” into legal highs, and after reading about us in The Observer, they thought they should probably talk to us. While you do get to see an excellent close-up of my untrimmed beard, Jo (the misses) is the star of the show:

Other than Jo’s point, the rest is pretty rubbish, including the terrible audio quality – sorry about that! We totally expected it would be a negative piece overall, but someone has to stick up for the industry though, right?

This is also one more thing for the CV – our own Mellow Yellow has been on telly!

[This is the first post by my girlfriend and Coffeesh0p partner Mrs_Synch!]

What’s wrong with this article?

We can all debate until we’re blue in the face about alcohol, drugs, their legal alternatives, tobacco and whatever else is a source of controversy in this country. My problem with this article, however, is not that I disagree with the journalist’s point of view (although I do). It’s that if this is what counts as journalism these days (on the BBC news website no less!) I am, quite frankly, shocked and disappointed. These are some of the reasons I felt so strongly about it (I’ll address each point in the order they come in the article):

1. ‘The pills or liquid’ – what? How vague is this? I know it’s only the second paragraph but read on and the trend continues. There are no names of the brands, retailers or wholesalers they are referring to. They mention none of the ingredients they claim are so dangerous apart from this deliberately controversial reference to BZP. As a herbal highs retailer in the UK, I can personally say that I know of no wholesalers that are willing to sell us any products containing BZP. Although the legal status of BZP does seem to be a bit dodgy (the article said it becomes illegal in March, but I’m pretty sure it’s tightly controlled here already), as far as herbal high sellers go BZP is not readily available in the UK. It is certainly not ‘one of the main ingredients in many products’ in the industry. This is quite simply a lie, and a demonstration of the lack of research done on the part of the journalist. Ten minutes on Google could have told her this is not the case.
2. ‘Twenty-five-year-old Alex from Birmingham’ – Right, I see. So the whole substance of this piece comes from a girl who got pissed, took EIGHT unidentified legal pills, slept in a field all weekend and then got the shits. Come on BBC, this is really poor. The symptoms Alex lists are also, incidentally, ones you can expect from your common or garden hangover. Admittedly the guy who sold her the pills was obviously an idiot, but you get a great many idiots in bars who continue to serve people who are so drunk they can barely stand up. I have also never seen a pack of legal pills which do not explicitly carry the warning ‘Do not drink’, and by her own admission she and her friends were already drunk.
3. “These things are packets of tablets and capsules sold as herbal highs, but are in no way herbal. These things are purely synthetic chemicals,” he said. – Yes, this is a quote from a doctor so it seems almost credible, but again, the vagueness of this point just makes it stupid. Yes, I’m sure there are pills out there that are advertised as herbal and aren’t. But certainly not all of them, and there are a large number of reputable retailers out there who actually do give a shit about the safety of what they sell. There is one very obvious example of legal pills that ARE undeniably entirely herbal, and that’s Happy Caps. If this journalist had done her research, she would have found out in minutes that Happy Caps are capsules, not tablets (so not even any harmless tabletting agents), and that they contain ground up herbs and extracts. Hell, you can SEE what’s inside them if you pull the gel cap apart, and it’s planty and quite definitely herbal.

Whilst this journalist clearly has an agenda (read: drugs are bad), this poorly written piece of tripe has given me no information whatsoever. I’m always interested to hear someone else’s point of view, and when I saw the title, was excited about reading it and possibly reporting on it for Coffeesh0p. Unfortunately, I was left disappointed in both this journalist and the standard of reporting that is obviously publishable these days. BBC news editors, you should be ashamed of yourselves!

Arrrghhh! We’ve all seen the media’s sensationalist take on Salvia Divinorum. I swear I’ve seen it mentioned as “the next LSD” and “the next marijuana” in the SAME article before. I’m sure it makes compelling reading for those conservative types, wielding the banning stick, but come on!

Just yesterday, I received a newspaper clipping through the post entitled “Concern over craze for ‘psycho sage’ videos“. The article focused mainly on those tw@s that think it’s fun to post videos of themselves on YouTube smoking salvia, which is fair enough, but in approximately 250 words of ill-informed “journalism”, I can see LSD mentioned twice.

Why This Is Fucking Stupid

1. Anything labelled so consistently as “LSD-Like” is sure to receive a banning from any MP wanting to appear “tough on drugs”. We all know how Gordon Brown likes to ignore scientific evidence when it comes to drugs, so I don’t think the fact that salvia divinorum is NOTHING like LSD will be mentioned at all. Considering that this amazing herb does actually have a lot of medicinal potential, is it really worth comparing it to LSD just to make exciting reading? This is a sure fire way to get it banned. Arsehole Journalist: I’m sure all those people with Parkinson’s will thank you! (NB: that’s not to say LSD doesn’t have any clinical use – in fact, it shows amazing potential in curing addiction far quicker than regular therapy – shame no one wants to research it any more because it’s such a ballache to get permission…)
2. The public tends to believe it, and may get hurt! If that many places are reporting its similarity to LSD, then the uninformed public will take it as read. Last night, someone submitted an anonymous report on Salvia Trip, entitled “Not for me”. This bloke is a 36 year old programmer, who used to be into LSD back in the good old days. He goes on to say that he’s heard about salvia and wanted a similar experience. As you’d expect, he didn’t enjoy it. Thankfully, nothing bad happened, but there is certainly the potential for something to go wrong. This is only one report (and the inspiration behind this post), so imagine how many more people this has happened to. This piss-poor excuse for a journalist is going to do more harm than good.