Meow-Meow, ‘The New Foreign Drug Craze’, Isn’t New Or Foreign

You’re an educated reader. A responsible raver, even. You keep your nose to the ground for breaking news, and you pay attention to the most hair-raising stories to grace Reddit and your Facebook wall. As a result of this attention, you’ve likely heard of the latest sketchy drug craze to hit India, the new compound with a cute name. A compound that promises ecstasy-esque highs combined with cocaine level consumption. ‘Meow-Meow’, it’s called—and you’re waiting for the inevitable day that this substance graces the shores of the good ol’ US of A.

Well, unfortunately, ‘Meow-Meow’ is nothing new. It’s mephedrone. Yes, many of the articles about ‘Meow-Meow’ do identify it as mephedrone, but they provide little information beyond a typical exaggeration of danger and addictiveness. Is it dangerous? Absolutely, there are numerous reported cases of deaths that occurred after consumption. Is it addictive? There are a plethora of anecdotal reports detailing the compulsive desire to redose that users experience. Is it as deadly as many of the articles make it out to be? Probably not, though there isn’t all that much information on mephedrone’s safety profile. It’s not PMMA, at the very least.

Furthermore, this is not a legally grey compound, this is not a research analogue that has evaded government regulation. It’s illegal in America, and was banned back in 2011 after the drug was widely abused throughout both America and the European Union. It’s been around. In fact, if ‘Meow-Meow’ is truly a novel substance in India right now, it is apparently they who have appropriated our drug habits—contrary to fears of the opposite.

So, if mephedrone is already here, what can you do to protect yourself? Well, the knee-jerk reaction is to decry drug use as evil and preach abstinence, but we’re all adults here. We understand that people are going to use drugs, whether we like it or not. Therefore, test your stuff. Numerous resources exist to get test the purity of drugs, from sending it to a lab for independent analysis to an affordable and portable testing kit. Frankly, there is no excuse for ingesting any substance without knowing its identity in this day and age. For further resources, visit our harm-reduction hub, and let us know what you think of our movement towards safe raving on Facebook, Twitter, and in our comments.