[Z]

I thought I'd bump this... I have three friends who are addicted to mephedrone, which from now on I'll refer to as MCAT because that's what everyone calls it around here. One of these friends is the first and only girl I've ever loved. Words can't describe how awful it is to see someone you once cared about, and I suppose I still do care for, change from a funny, beautiful girl into a gaunt looking addict. A drug addiction is so much more than just regularly getting buzzed out of your mind; it changes a person beyond recognition. Last weekend we had a reunion of most of our school friends. The girl couldn't even spend a night with her school friends without sneaking off to the toilet to do several lines of MCAT. I know she was doing it because we don't have a mirror in our bathroom yet, and she came through after doing it to speak to me and I noticed some of it on her nostril. I'd been suspicious of her for ages, but that pretty much confirmed it to me, and then I spoke to her best friend and she had been with her when she did it; confirming what I thought. How do you know you're an addict unless you try to stop? Well, a wake up call like that is one way, I suppose.

That brings me onto my second point. Nobody takes this stuff seriously. I mean, Karl's comment above mine is an example of it: it's just as addictive as heroin; and because it's been mainstream for so long and only become illegal recently, it's only now that we're seeing the bad side of MCAT. I know of kids as young as 14 who are dealing this drug. Fourteen years old!! Maybe I'm naive, but is fourteen years old and a drug dealer not just the saddest thing you've ever heard? I think there needs to be some serious attitude changes towards MCAT; it's not just some fun party drug that people do for fun - it's addictive and it's spread, innocently, far and wide. The second of these three people has lost all of her school friends bar me. That's because 1) I'm hoping that she's going to wise up soon, and 2) I live in another city for University, so I haven't seen the gradual change, I just see her at a new phase every couple of months. I haven't hung out with her once this year without her doing MCAT. All of her friends, and now her new boyfriend, are relationships built on MCAT. She's not even the same person anymore. She's lost weight, a lot of weight, and she was already thin to begin with. Her personality is different. She's driven me places whilst on MCAT, and I was stupid enough to let her. Would you let someone drink drive you across town? No, you wouldn't, because of the scare-mongering that the government has forced upon us: but it works. This was back when I saw MCAT as a light hearted, trivial thing; but my attitude has changed so much. I know of a guy who lost the ability to walk one night because he'd taken so much MCAT. And he still does it.

The third friend is a dealer. He has a reputation that has spread so rapidly that when people find out what school I went to, they ask if I know him and the conversation inevitably leads to talking about MCAT. He's still my friend, he's one of the nicest guys I know and I'd never turn my back on him - but I no longer trust him, and I'm scared to be around him; because he's a dangerous person to know. He uses his own merchandise. His skin is terrible now because he's taken so much MCAT; he looks gaunt and really ill all the time, but he can't stop taking it and he won't stop dealing it so long as people are treating it as a trivial thing. It actually upsets me that I'm in a minority of people who are against MCAT. I know people who have had to ditch their friends from Uni entirely because they didn't do MCAT and were constantly being pressurised to do it, or were told to get lost because they refused to do it. Since when was not doing drugs a valid reason to cut someone loose as a friend?

There is no argument for the drug that I can think of, just arguments about whether or not it should be illegal/be a class B drug. Sure, you can argue that it in itself is (so far, at least) harmless; but I hope that, maybe even by reading my experiences with it, attitudes towards it will change in time. I think I'll always remember 2010 as the year of MCAT.