DRUGS ISSUES DISCUSSION PAPERS by Max Cruickshank.
These papers are provided free on the website of the Scottish Parliament’s,
Futures Forum, drug and alcohol, site. They are written after 47 years of
experience as a youth worker with a specialist interest in child and youth
health issues. I have run around 5,000 health workshops for more than 80,000
young people. Running such workshops not only offers an opportunity to
educate young people, they also provide an insight on the world of young
people today, which has been used by me to inform my innovative youth
work. Hopefully they will stimulate much needed public debate, on a major
public health issue that Scotland faces, the use and misuse of all forms of
drugs.
Your comments and feedback are always welcome.
DISCUSSION PAPER Number 8
16/02/08
Myths about commonly used drugs:
From the thousands of drug and alcohol workshops I have run across Scotland
with young people and adults I hear the same myths at every session. Where
they start from I don’t know, but I hear them from Shetland to Dumfries, from
Shettleston to Buckie.
These myths demonstrate peer education at it’s worst, spreading dangerous
information amongst pals. So far no government campaign or official health
education booklets have even acknowledged the existence of most of these
myths, let alone set out to correct this dangerous misinformation.
I have included this paper to challenge adults to think about how many of these
myths they may have believed to be true and so have passed on to their children.
I also challenge health educationalists, Healthier Scotland and the Scottish
Executive and the voluntary sector charitable organisations working in the
smoking, alcohol and drugs field, to take these myths seriously.
Alcohol Myths:
“See that Aftershock, it’s so strong that pubs are only allowed to sell you one
shot of it”
Fact: Not true, this myth seems to have spread like wildfire in Scotland. In fact
Aftershock is no more than a modern liqueur with a 40% per volume alcohol
content, just like Southern Comfort, Drambuie or Cointeau. There are no
restrictions imposed on bar staff selling this or any other strong alcoholic drink.
“See if you put Vodka into your eye, it gets you drunk much faster”
Fact: Oh no it won’t, but it might burst blood vessels in your eye, which would
not be a good idea. When we consume alcohol it normally goes through the
tissues in the walls of your stomach and your intestines, into your bloodstream.
Once alcohol is in your blood it gets processed through your liver at the rate of
one unit per hour and is eliminated from your system.
Sending the Vodka through your delicate eyes, will get it into your bloodstream
but no more efficiently than through your guts, and at a serious risk of damaging
your eyes. Don’t go there if you want to protect your eyes.
“Absinthe is full of psychedelic drugs and can drive you mad”.
FACT:
Not true of today. The original drink which was popular in Europe in the 1700
and 1800’s contained a variety of herbs including wormwood, which is a
convulsant poison.
It is illegal to put any potentially dangerous drugs in alcoholic drinks today.
“Absinthe is so strong that pubs are only allowed to sell you a single measure”.
Fact: Yes it is very strong at 68% alcohol. But a pub measure would be 25 mls to
35 mls, making it between 1.7 and 2.4 units of alcohol. There is nothing in the
licensing laws that prohibit selling more than one measure of any alcoholic
drink, just another of the many myths around alcohol.
See www.absinth.com for more details.
“Drinking two or 3 bottles of Buckfast Tonic Wine is not binge drinking”.
Fact: If you drank two or 3 bottles of Buckfast in one drinking session you would
have consumed between 22.6 and 33.9 units of alcohol, which is certainly
classified as binge drinking. (One definition is that more than half of your weekly
units in one session is binge drinking) For women 7 units and for men 10.5 units
is binge drinking. The three bottles of Buckfast in one drinking session means
you have consumed between three quarters and slightly more than a full bottle
of spirits, such as Vodka, Bacardi or Whisky. Get real folks this is not a good idea
unless you are determined to kick in your liver, get diabetes or any of the other
nasties that come with regular binge drinking.
“You can drink yourself sober”.
Fact: Sober is the opposite of being drunk. We get drunk if we drink too much
alcohol, so topping up with more of the drug alcohol to get sober is not going to
work. Be aware though that, like with most drugs, your mood is affected by
alcohol, so if you are in a high and happy mood then the alcohol will make you
feel good. If you are in low spirits or a depressed mood, the alcohol will make
you feel worse. When you have a hangover, you will be feeling bad, so you
might try to convince yourself that because alcohol makes you feel good
sometimes, then taking some alcohol to get rid of the hangover, should make you
feel better.
All you are doing is loading up your liver with more alcohol, which it has to get
rid of, so you prolong the hangover. Needing a drink in the morning after a
heavy drinking session, is a sure sign that you are heading for a problem with
alcohol.
Thousands of people in that state have driven off to work or wherever, and been
horrified to get stopped by the police, only to be found to be well over the drink
drive limits.
“Eating a fry up when you are drunk will sober you up”.
Fact: Sorry wrong again. People think that a fry up or any food eaten when you
are drunk will suck up the drink and sober you up, as if the food acts like a big
sponge. Nice idea, but the next question is where does the sponge full of alcohol
go to? Does it vanish mysteriously into fresh air or where? No, the food just lies
around your stomach until it is processed as usual. It is worth remembering that
the fat from the fry up does not absorb the alcohol. The extra calories from your
fry up will just add to the excessive fat that gets laid down from excess eating
and drinking. The good news though is that if you do as the Continentals do, eat
while you are drinking alcohol, then this slows down the rate that the alcohol
gets into absorbed your bloodstream, so is kinder to your body than drinking on
an empty stomach.
“Hot sweet coffee sobers you up”.
Fact: Sound like a sensible idea, but it is yet another myth. The sweet coffee
contains caffeine, a stimulant drug, it wakens you up, the sugar has lots of
calories in it, which would give you extra energy, to keep drinking perhaps.
Neither of these substances can eliminate the alcohol from your bloodstream and
sober you up. Alcohol leaves your body at the rate of approximately one unit in
one hour. So only time will sober you up. The extra calories from the sugar will
just add to your body fat, as it hangs around until your liver has got rid of the
more urgent problem of the poisonous alcohol, from you system. Remember too
that caffeine makes you pee a lot, so leads to even more dehydration than has
already happened from the alcohol. Losing more than 10% of your water content
leads to medical problems and even death. A well known example is drinking
too little water, to combat the effects of Ecstasy – resulting in serious
dehydration and death.
“Iron Bru sobers you up”.
Fact: This Scottish invention, Iron Bru has been marketed in the past as
“Scotland’s Other Drink” and as “Made from Girders (iron beams)” Nice
marketing, which belies a drink that is stuffed full of calories and flavourings,
but nothing magical that will eliminate alcohol from your system. It is said that
there are around 8-10 teaspoons of sugar in one small can of this drink. So
drinking this on top of lots of booze is a recipe for a heart attack. The volume of
sugar in Iron Bru forms acids that rips the enamel off your teeth, hence the
reason that Scotland has the highest number of toothless weans anywhere in
Europe. Yet another drinker’s myth bites the dust, I hope. All things in
moderation eh!
“Women can hold their drink just as well as men can”.
Fact: This is sadly one of the comments that are made more often today than a
couple of decades back, because young women in particular are drinking to
excess, and more like young men have always done. Because our body gets used
to using alcohol, like many other drugs we start to need more of the drug to get
the effects that we want from it. Your body builds up a tolerance to the drug, so
you can consume more than you used to do, when you first started to drink. So it
is not a myth that women can hold their drink, but, it is a very bad idea for
women to drink larger quantities of alcohol than men, because women’s bodies
cannot process it as well as a man’s can. Women’s health gets damaged faster
than a mans from alcohol. Women’s bodies have about 10% less water in their
bodies than men so they do not dilute the alcohol so well. They also have more
fat in their bodies to absorb the extra calories that come from excessive drinking.
The more they drink the more they put on fat, the fat appears, especially around
their hips and backsides.
Drug Myths:
“Taking 5 Ecstasy tablets gives you a better effect than just taking one”.
Pure Ecstasy is called MDMA and is seldom what is sold to users in the UK. Like
all illegal drugs you have no idea what you are actually buying when you buy
Ecstasy. The Metropolitan Police in London regularly see over 80 different tablets
being sold as Ecstasy. They have different shapes, different colours and different
markings on them. What is contained in them can vary and some contain
nothing more than inert powder like talcum power. You cannot tell how strong
or weak Ecstasy is before you consume it. You can have no idea what it contains
or if it has dangerous chemicals added into the mixture. So taking more than one
tablet is like playing Russian Roulette, with a pistol loaded with just one bullet, a
foolish and dangerous game. Ask yourself would you take 5 or 10 Paracetemol
to get rid of a headache faster? If you did, you would be sure to damage your
kidneys and liver, so why would you trust a drug made illegally, and with no
quality controls on it, to be safe in you body? This behaviour with ecstasy is one
of the classic examples of us Scots binging on anything we can get our hands on
– don’t do it, we don’t have to prove we are macho, hard or superior beings – the
world already knows that.
“There is often rat poison in heroin”
This is a story that started in Scotland way back in the 1960’s and had been
passed on as a fact ever since. Don’t believe a word of it.
“Cannabis is not a drug, it is a natural substance so should be legalised”.
Fact:
Wrong again folks. Cannabis is derived from a plant that is true but so is
Heroin, which comes from poppy plants. So unless you want to ignore the facts
then surely if you want to legalise Cannabis you should campaign for the
government to go the whole hog and legalise Heroin as well. See my separate
paper on cannabis.
“Most drugs help you to get to sleep”.
Not true. Some drugs, mainly the opiates, painkillers and downers do induce
sleep or anaesthetise us into a deep, sleep-like state or coma. However the
stimulants (uppers) and hallucinogens (trippy drugs) do quite the opposite. They
keep you awake, make you hyper, anxious, agitated, can make you paranoid and
very high energy. When they wear off, many of them will leave you exhausted.
Long term heavy drug use can lead to major problems of sleep deprivation. It is
not a good idea to try to sort your sleep problems by using drugs. See your
doctor if you have problems sleeping; there is usually a good reason for it and a
solution that will not cause you harm.
I have been surprised to hear of how many children, young people and even
adults today, sleep with either their television, computer or sound system on all
night. This is I believe one reason that many of them develop sleep deprivation
problems which can turn them towards drugs for relief, from the sleep
deprivation. Turn the lot of them off guys, it does you no good at all. Our body
works really hard for us when we are awake, give it a break and let it rest
naturally in the night. That way it will use all its energy to heal your body and
mind and deliver you to the morning, full of energy and fit to take on the world.
“Its safer to eat cannabis than to smoke with tobacco”
This is another common myth but it is Not True. Because, street Cannabis is
mucky stuff, so eating it, even if cooked in a microwave, in tea, in yogurt or in
soup, is absolutely not recommended. Unless you want a load of unknown
bacteria from dog faeces, mucky hands or what ever. Even the Scottish Cannabis
Campaign do not recommend this method of ingesting cannabis
“Crack is instantly addictive”.
This is an example of myths that have done the rounds of popular newspapers
and some television programmes. But it is nonsense. I know of no drug that is
instantly addictive. However crack is a very powerful form of cocaine. It most
certainly is a drug that once people get into using it, users can very quickly find
that they want to use more and more of it. The reasons for this fast dependency is
to do with the nature of the drug. It certainly is the most powerful of the
commonly used stimulant drugs. It therefore gives people the highest stimulant
effects but also the fastest come down. The effects of the stimulant speed lasts up
to 3-4 hours, cocaine lasts for around 30 minutes and crack only lasts about 10
minutes. So clearly having got extremely high and then to be dumped down after
so few minutes, makes the user want to get back to the high. This means that
they then start using again and again and in that sense it quickly becomes a
highly addictive drug.
“Using Cocaine and alcohol together gives you a better buzz”.
Fact:
Cocaine is an extremely powerful stimulant drug and alcohol is a powerful
depressant (downer) drug. The mixing of drugs is always a dodgy idea and is the
main cause of deaths of drug users, not the use of one drug on its own.
Cocaine has been slow to catch on in Scotland but is now replacing ecstasy as the
clubber’s, and many adult user’s choice. This brings its own new problems.
Because when mixed with alcohol there is a very serious side effect which is
literally killing more young people each year. The reasons for this are quite
complex but it is enough to know that when people are drinking alcohol and
then take cocaine, the effects of the alcohol seem to be reduced. You feel less
drunk and you are then falsely led into believing, that you can consume much
more alcohol, than even the average binge drinker would consume. This cocktail
of drugs, causes the body to create a third drug called cocaethylene, and that,
sadly, is what is killing, even quite young people. So unless you have a death
wish avoid this combination of drugs.
“Drugs are a great aphrodisiac, you can keep at it like a rabbit for hours”.
For thousands of years mankind and especially men have searched for the magic
potion to increase their sexual pleasure. With the exception of Viagra which has
been specially created for mainly older men, with Penile Erection problems, it
really is a myth that any drug actually improves sexual performance. Some
drugs, especially the Hallucinogens, may alter our perception of what is going
on, so it may make us feel as though we are star turns in bed. Most drug users, if
they are honest, and lots of them have told me this, will tell you that drugs have
quite the opposite effect on sexual performance. For men, the term Brewers
Droop and Speedy Willy come to mind. An embarrassing floppy, just when you
were ready for the plunge. For women, dried up vaginas, leading to chronic
infections is more likely to be the outcome, of seeking sexual pleasure from
drugs. For young guys who feel the need to get some Viagra, I can only say that
if young guys need such assistance, they either have a medical problem that
needs serious attention or they need to cut out the binge dinking, the major
source of such sexual disorders. Binge drinking and drug use can make women
infertile or stop them having their periods, as can smoking.
“Ecstasy causes brain damage”.
Fact: The answer to this one is harder to prove, as there has been so little
research done into ecstasy deaths. I have read papers that argue for and against
this theory. What we do know though is that if people are unfortunate enough to
die from using ecstasy then one of the problems they will have had, is that they
will have become seriously dehydrated.
Every cell in our body needs a certain level of water, about 70% for men and
about 65% for women. If we go even 10% below these healthy levels, then we are
dehydrated. This alone can kill you. Your brain cells like all other human cells
need their quota of water. So yes it is true that ecstasy can cause brain damage.
There is also some research I have read which found that long-term, regular,
heavy users of Ecstasy seem to suffer from mental health problems and
especially from depression. So for my money, ecstasy is not a useful drug to be
using and anyway it is now fast going out of fashion, as young people have come
to realise that what they are often buying is just a pile of junk.
“One man that took too much Acid (LSD) walks backwards now.”
Fact: I have heard this one so often in the last 40 years that I could almost believe
it. However it is a bit strange how this un-named, mysterious man, seems to be
living in the particular town that I am running my drugs workshops in that day.
So there must be lots of these guys wandering around backwards, that somehow
the press or media have never caught up with. You would think that in the age of
mobile phones, with their video cameras, it cannot be long now until this
mystery is solved. A bit like the Loch Ness Monster eh? Don’t believe a word of
it.
“If you rub Cocaine on your penis or on her privates, you can both orgasm for
hours.”
I have yet to meet anyone who has tried this, although a few people seem to
know someone, who knows someone, who has experimented with this novel
way of getting drugs into your system. Like my comments on Viagra, it seems to
me a shame that young people, who should be at their sexual prime, are having
to resort to rubbing dodgy drugs, that they don’t even know the contents off, on
their privates. Perhaps what they need is one of my sexual health workshops, to
learn the basics of how to have a good sex life. Give your bits a break folks and
get back to nature. It has worked for most people for centuries.
“If you know a good dealer you will always get a good deal”.
WRONG, dealers are not licensed to produce or distribute the substances they
sell, and have no safe way of knowing what they are selling. They buy it at the
end of a chain of distribution. Everyone in that chain is trying to make as much
money as possible so they tamper with the drugs to make them heavier by
adding in all sorts of junk. Even an experienced drugs squad officer or a
qualified chemist, would not be able to tell you about the quality of any deal,
without laboratory analysis.
Myth: the police cannot touch you now that cannabis is class C – not true
Because in Scotland the police do not have the same rules as the rest of the UK.
They cannot caution you and forget it, they are required by law to report the
offence to the Procurator Fiscal for action.
Common Myths about Smoking:
“Smoking calms you down.”
No it does not and cannot because it is a stimulant drug, and they have exactly
the opposite effect to calming you down. They make you hyper, talkative,
restless, speed up your heart. This is one of the biggest excuses that people use
all the time for smoking tobacco. The Cigarette companies love it that people
have been so easily fooled. This myth keeps the cash flowing into the coffers of
the fag dealers. It used to be that tobacco advertising highlighted this myth, as a
powerful way of attracting new smokers. They had sportsmen, the Marlboro
cowboy and other images to spread this dangerous message. Now that tobacco
advertising is banned the tobacco companies have resorted to paying script
writers of television soaps and the likes, to keep the myth alive in every episode
they can. Dot Cotton in East Enders is probably the best example of this. I am
glad to report that the UK government have at last accepted that this is a
problem and are making efforts to curb this illegal and dangerous advertising.
“Fags are so addictive it is impossible to come off them.”
Absolutely not true, but it is a very good myth to keep going the rounds if you
own a tobacco company. It is guaranteed to undermine the determination of any
smoker who was looking for an excuse not to stop anyway. Recent research has
shown that although nicotine, the main, but by no means the only dangerous
chemical in tobacco, (there are around 4,000 others across the brands range) is
highly addictive. But the good news is that it does not hang around in the body
for very long, unlike heroin, which is equally as addictive. So if you do decide to
give up smoking, don’t allow your mind to play games with you, telling you that
it is all going to be too difficult, because I am a poor drug addicted soul, you are
not. The nicotine will in fact be out of your system within a very few days. It is
only the psychological pressure to smoke, that you have lived with for years, that
is trapping you in this addiction. Within days of you stopping smoking, your
body will get to work trying to heal all the damage you have done.
“Fags keep you slim”
Oh really? So how come there are rather heavy people around who smoke like
chimneys? Why is it that one of the big pharmaceutical giants have not got onto
this and produced nicotine slimming pills, sprays or creams? Because it just one
big lie and another myth that needs well kicked into touch. The myth continues
though, because it is true that many ex-smokers put on weight when they give
up the fags. There is a very simple reason for that. When they are still smoking
the tobacco sort of puts to sleep or anesthetises your thousands of taste buds.
They are all around your mouth and tongue. The minute you stop smoking your
clever body gets to work reviving all these taste buds, so for the first time in a
long time you can really taste food. So naturally you may go to town and stuff
yourself more than you should. Beware though, comfort eating is another form
of addiction, so take it easy.
“ My granny smoked 40 a day for years and she never got that cancer”.
Well lucky granny. If you want to copy her, help yourself but don’t be surprised
if you are not so lucky, Because if you continue to smoke into adult life at that
sort of level, you are pretty well guaranteed a whole range of cancers. Mouth,
gullet, tongue, lungs, breasts, skin, stomach or liver. One in two heavy smokers
die from smoking related cancers.
©
Max Cruickshank
Youth Work Consultant & Health Issues Trainer,
A Right Pair of Chances Company
Email: Chancer@maxbis.demon.co.uk
16/02/08