BZP and Recreational Drug Use
All parents today are concerned about recreational drug use and their children, and whether or not their child might be attracted to drugs. Talking to children about their concerns, answering their questions in a way that is factual and to the point can help children to see the reality of recreational drug use, and to decide that it is not for them.
The term “recreational drug use” is a modern day invention - a euphemism for illicit use and non-prescription, non-medical abuse of potentially harmful psychoactive drugs. Drugs used as recreational drugs are often drugs diverted from the legitimate prescription drug trade, drugs manufactured and intended to be used as specific medications.
Other drugs such as BZP, Benzylpiperazine, are specifically designed for the party drug market. Capable of causing psychosis, kidney failure and death BZP, illegal in Canada and banned in the USA, the UK and many other countries, was originally developed, in 1944, as a worming pill for animals. Piperazines are an example of a current day recreational drug that is still marketed as being a “legal” high, a drug for use at parties, that can easily be sourced by young people from the internet, that is more toxic than traditional recreational drugs.
Drugs have been used in communities for centuries to ward off fatigue, illness and to enhance good feelings at celebrations and festivities. Traditional drugs used in ancient times lacked the toxicity and potential for harm too often found in modern drugs. Ancient communities each had their traditions concerning the use of herbal extracts and medications from varieties of local plants. Drugs were used in a social context, to enhance good health, their potency at a level that induced minimal, if any, negative side effects and not inherently addictive.
Society has now produced semi or synthetic versions of traditional plant based drugs, such as cocaine from the coca leaf, opiates from the opium poppy, meth drug from the ephedra plant for many years. In modern times drugs have become more potent in what are considered to be their beneficial effects, and more toxic as regards unwanted side effects.
There are now communities of people who claim to be recreational drug users - who prefer the use of drugs to the development of other and potentially more advantageous human relationships, prefer the use of drugs to other social activities, and who will ignore or deny as a possibility that their drug use is causing them any harm.
Recreational drug use is essentially the use of a substance to mimic natural feel good, and reward effects in the body. The recreational drug user makes his drug use the focus of his life. No other relationship can satisfy the drug user in the way that drugs can provide an instant, direct, generally reliable and uncomplicated hit. All recreational drug use involves young people in illegal activity.
Recreational drug users might move on to become more interested in meeting the challenges and the rewards of the real world whilst other young people remain in the world of recreational drug use, and can move on into drug dependence and addiction.
Young people who experiment with recreational drugs, may find in drug use the answer to emotional needs that they have. It is experimental and long term recreational drug users who create a demand for new and exciting drugs.
Recreational drug users often look around to see what new drugs there are to create a new perceptual or mood experience. Drug producers have met the challenge and there is today a thriving “party drug” illicit trade, that deals in some very dangerous combinations of chemical intoxicants that are marketed aggressively, and in ways that are attractive to youth.
Foremost in the illicit party drug scene were meth drugs of all kinds – stimulants based on pseudoephedrine and made up in illicit speed labs. As law enforcement against substance abuse starts to catch up with meth drugs, drug dealers search around to find more potent drug recipes, many being cathinones or synthetic cannabinoids.
Although the image is created of illicit drug users ruthlessly creating new and more potent drugs, the eivdence suggests that illicit drug suppliers tend to copy their recipes from information available as being the latest developments in pharmaceutical drug research and development.
Among drugs offered to recreational users are the party drugs PCP, ketamine,GHB, and ecstasy (MDMA) and also ibogaine. Ibogaine is a fine example of a drug used in times both ancient and modern - the currently produced ibogaine being extremely toxic, hallucinogenic, that can make people act in a mindless “robotic” manner.
Drug effects of recreational drugs such as BZP have a sedating but euphoric effect – a person might engage for hours in repetitive behavior, feel high and happy. Side effects can include unusual body tension and extreme irritability, which often comes when users increase the dose due to rapid tolerance effects.
The issue for young people faced with the enticement of illicit drugs is that drugs do nothing to enhance a positive lifestyle or to enhance self esteem. Added to that the side effects of modern day drugs are extreme toxicity and often death – a reality denied by attractive names and the description of being drugs for party and recreational use.
Children fully informed as to the potential risks of drug taking, who have positive self esteem, rarely fall for the many traps and choose not to become recreational drug users.
