Pictured: A screen grab from a flick called Dirty Pictures where Alexander Shuglin gives some background on his work as the grandaddy of MDMA.

A terrifying tale of drug misadventure came to our attention from Cork today. Several people were hospitalized at a house party amidst nightmarish scenes.

The press has made a bit of a hames of the reporting, with the Irish Examiner and others citing 2CP as the drug at the root of the scare with talk of all sorts of powders and pills

The dark web’s created a widely available alphabet soup of research chemicals and mind altering analogues .  Most party goers might be familiar with 2CB. A less heady hallucinogenic with qualities similar to ecstasy but visuals that stay relatively non-bothersome.

2CI is a familiar party powder too. We’ve heard of people having proper freak outs after under-estimating doses of this at house parties. What’s a dose for one powder isn’t for all.

And yeah, while Alexandar Shulgin did synthesise a 2CP – it’s definitely well on the rarer side of things and we’ve never come across it.

Maybe a reporter somewhere along the chain misheard 2CB as 2CP and on it went like a Chinese whisper with no further questions being asked.

Meanwhile outlets like the Sunday World are happy to just print any old stock image of pills, cos drugs bad m, kay? Or are reporting it as a “known ecstasy substitute.”

If it is 2CP, then Shulgin, an individual with a psychological constitution that allowed him to push his outer limits and record the experience in great detail after said this about it:

“Could do a lot of learning with this material, but probably not a group thing. It would lend itself too easily to hypnotic power-games, and it would be too easy to open up the shared consciousness level, which would be frightening to a lot of people and bring about necessary escapes such as sickness. Excellent feeling the next day.”

Given the time outlay of tripping involved, it doesn’t really sound like the sort thing people would willing take in a party scenario had they full knowledge.

Gerard Banks, who ended up on the scene circulated this nightmarish report on his Facebook and appealed for it to be shared widely:

“Last night was one of the scariest and most surreal nights of my life. Im putting out a big appeal for everyone in Cork to be aware of the dangers of a new drug on our streets called C2B

I was walking passed late last night and heard crazy shouting in a house on Pouladuff road. So me and a friend looked in the window to see is everyone ok. The bedroom was covered in blood, walls, floor, bed and even curtains. We shouted in to see is everyone ok. A man arrived at the window clearly on drugs and in a state of shock. We asked is everyone ok. He replied “yes everything is fine”.

So we said there is blood everywhere someone must be hurt can we check to make sure no one is hurt. He said yes and opened the door. When we went in it was like a scene from CS.I. blood all over the walls, floors, couches and a man and a woman naked covered in blood shouting and screaming badly hurt and clearly in a state of dementia. The man was smashing the house up blood was everywhere. The house was destroyed. There was a man on the floor in cardiac arrest with major breathing problems and the man who let us in sitting on the chair in shock.

In shock me and my friend took control of the room. My friend started helping the man in cardiac arrest on the floor. I had to control the room to let my friend help the man on the floor in safety. It was surreal.. a naked man and woman dancing naked on the chairs as a man was having cardiac arrest on the floor. I was the man who left the guards and paramedics into the house. It was surreal.. Myself my friend, gardai and paramedics were all in shock. I have huge respect for the Gardai and Paramedics who were on the scene. I made a statement with the gardai last night and will be doing so again today. What ever drugs those people were on last night in Pouladuff road was scary. They didnt even know they were covered in blood and badly hurt, they didnt even know there was a man dying on the floor. I havnt slept a wink all night, im still in shock to be honest.

These people did not seem like bad people just like students out partying which is the most worrying thing about this new drug and its side effects. Its really scary stuff and we need to make everyone aware of its dangers. Everyone in the house was rushed to hospital. I have never seen so much blood. We were all delighted to see the man in cardiac arrest leave in an ambulance in a stable state. One night of taking this new drug has probably ruined the lives of these people for a long time to come.

Please share the message and lets warn Cork about the dangers of this new drug.”

Sounds like a vision from hell.

Contributors to the pschyonavigation vaults at Erowid aren’t selling this 2CP shit too well either:

“the last hours just filled with conversation and running around the park yelling and acting like children and fully enjoying my trip when one of the people I was tripping with began to freak out saying that the park had an evil undertone, she had to be carried out of the park, and sedated with strong xanax due to her wild antics everyone still at a plus 3 after that mess come down was comftorble and none the less smooth smoked some hash and just relaxed

hoenstly very intense not for the weak minded after this experiance a good friend of mine, my fiance and my cousin have been hospitalized because of this chemical be warned”

The HSE has issued a statement.

From what we’ve seen there’s little in the way of informing users how to spot or identify potentially contaminated batches.

Instead, they are issuing a general edict to avoid everything.

The HSE statement runs like this:

“There are problems with purity and contaminants, and there is no way of checking that what is purchased or consumed is the intended substance,” it said.

“Given the serious side-effects experienced by the young people in Cork, the HSE Addiction Services are issuing a warning about possible contaminated ’party pills’ and advise people to not consume any unknown substances that they are offered at this time.”

We know this not to be true.

They should be challenged in proliferating myths that allow them to bypass real harm reduction strategies.

There’s too much at stake here for moral hand wringing. Statements like this are an abdication of responsibility and ignore anything remotely looking like a set of forward thinking mechanisms that could alert users to what’s in their party stashes

For a start, can we talk about how proper drug testing facilities and early warning systems work abroad?

We have nothing of the sort in Ireland. They work.

For instance, this time last year the Dutch laboratory testing system had issued a nation wide alert about pills embossed with the Superman logo.

A whole five days before the first of four people died in Britain from the same batch.

We’ve been through all this before in rabble.

Let’s hope those heads in Cork pull through.