- Starry Nights - Erika Lyn Smith
White Rush, Starry Nights, Ivory Wave and Vanilla Sky are the names of synthetic bath salts that are being sold in specialty stores including smoke shops and on the internet. The bath salts are marketed in packets of 250 milligrams which is less than the size of a sugar packet from a local restaurant. The cost varies depending on where the bath salts are purchased, but usually sell for around 40 dollars. Although most of the bath salts come printed with a specific warning stating that it is not for human consumption young adults, especially teenagers, are ingesting, snorting, smoking, and injecting bath salts to obtain what is being called a legal high.
MDPV is Ingested to Obtain a Legal High
The reason it is called a legal high is that bath salts are currently not detected on the standard blood and urine drug screens. A drug screen tests for and detects both illicit and licit drugs in the body’s system. The most commonly detected drugs include cocaine, marijuana, methamphetamines (Adderall, Ritalin, and Concerta), opiates (Heroin), and benzodiazepines (Ativan, Valium, and Xanax). However, currently standard blood and urine drug screens are not set up to detect the main ingredient found in many synthetic bath salts. According to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) website, “preliminary testing indicates that the active ingredients in many brands contain MDPV (3,4-methylenedioxypyrovalerone) and/or mephedrone.”
The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) website describes methylenedioxypyrovalerone or MDPV as a central nervous system (CSN) stimulant with hallucinogenic properties that has no licit or medically approved uses. Originally MDPV was used as an experimental drug in laboratory testing, but that was in the 1980’s. In December the Department of Justice (DOJ) released a Drug Alert Watch to warn law enforcement agencies to be aware of the new trend of using synthetic bath salts containing MDPV (3,4-methylenedioxypyrovalerone) and/or mephedrone which were being sold in all 50 states and online under a variety of names. See the list at the end of this article for commonly used names the various bath salts are marketed under.
Bath salts are being ingested, snorted, smoked or main lined (liquefied through melting and injected intravenously) resulting in an extremely intense and physically dangerous high which can last from a few hours to several days based on how much and how often the substance is being ingested. The euphoric feeling or high has been described as a hyper alert and very energetic state which presents in a similar manner as a manic episode often seen in someone with a history or diagnosis of Bipolar Affective Disorder (BAD). At this time the short and long term consequences to the body and mind of people using bath salts remains unknown and likely will not be evident for many years. However, people who have used cocaine or meth in the past and now use bath salts have said that bath salts are more intense and more addicting than illicit drugs.
The Mental Health and Physical Symptoms of Using MDPV
Recently hospitals across the nation are seeing an influx of young adults who are being admitted with life threatening symptoms after ingesting the synthetic bath salts. What is being documented by hospitals and poison control centers are a variety of physical symptoms ranging from dangerously elevated blood pressures, to extreme tachycardia (a very rapid heartbeat), shortness of breath, myocardial infarctions (heart attacks), headaches, changes in appetite, blurred vision, numbness in hands and feet, dizziness, diaphoresis (sweating), kidney failure, nose bleeds, swelling of the brain, cerebral vascular accidents (CVA) or strokes, seizures, coma and death.
In addition to the physical side effects of using MDPV there are the mental health adverse reactions leading to an increase in psychiatric admissions for bath salt users. Hospitalization becomes necessary when the intense euphoria or hyper alert state leads to days and nights of total insomnia (sleeplessness), prolonged and intense panic attacks and anxiety, racing thoughts, marked changes in personality or mood, psychosis, extreme paranoid thoughts, including delusions, psychomotor agitation, restlessness, the feeling of jumping out of one’s own skin, auditory and visual hallucinations, mania (intense episodes of increased physical energy) and even suicidality. In addition to these symptoms people ingesting synthetic bath salts have been known to become extremely agitated and physically aggressive without provocation. This places the person, their friends and family and anyone like law enforcement officers and medical personnel who are trying to keep them safe in danger.
Medical Management Pertaining to Synthetic Bath Salt Overdose
The medical treatment for an overdose of bath salts is based on treating the physical symptomology that presents with a patient and unless the patient or someone with the patient is able to tell medical personnel what the person ingested the cause of the patient’s symptoms often present a medical puzzle. Unfortunately, even if medical personnel are aware that the patient has ingested bath salts there is no specific medical treatment that can reverse the effects of bath salts, unlike NARCAN or naloxone hydrochloride which is a drug used to counter the effects of an overdose of opiates such as heroin or morphine. Essentially that means medically managing an overdose of bath salts initially revolves around treating any life threatening symptoms until they clear the body.
The UK documented problems with bath salts over a year ago and several deaths were directly linked to synthetic baths salts which have now been banned from being sold or imported to the UK. Hospitals are seeing an influx of admissions related to the use of synthetic bath salts. In Missouri there has been one documented case of a suicide related to the use of Ivory Wave. Louisiana became the first state to ban synthetic bath salts with MDPV from being sold or shipped to residents in that state last year and Florida has followed their lead. Many places are declaring an emergency ban on the ingredient MDPV to allow new laws to be enacted on local, state, and federal levels on how to deal with MDPV, which is being reclassified as a scheduled narcotic.
Here is a list compiled from a variety of resources of the known brand names of synthetic bath salts which contain MDPV: Blizzard, Blue Silk, Charge+, Ivory Snow, Ivory Wave, Ocean Burst, Pure Ivory, Purple Wave, Snow Leopard, Stardust (Star Dust), starry Nights, Vanilla Sky, White Dove, White Knight, White Lightning, White Rush.
Sources:
- STLToday Health and Fitness “More people snorting 'bath salts' to get cocaine-like high” (accessed January 25, 2011).
- The Daily Mail News “The bride killed by bath salts - the new 'legal high' Ivory Wave drug that's sweeping Britain” (accessed January 24, 2011).
- U.S. Department of Justice “Drug Watch Alert Increasing Abuse of Bath Salts” (accessed January 24, 2011).
- U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency “Methylenedioxypyrovalerone” (accessed January 24, 2011).
Erika Lyn Smith - Erika Lyn Smith - is a Psych RN, who has completed the UMSL Medicolegal Death Investigator Training Course, and is finishing a BS in ...
