HARDIN CO.—We’ve learned what the attendees of The Gathering of the Juggalos have been testing positive for over at the hospital in Rosiclare.
It’s a designer drug known by the technical name of 25I-NBOMe. It’s a synthetic, created to get a person high just like the K2 or bath salts craze from a couple of years back. Here’s the chemical makeup:
Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about it:
25I-NBOMe (2C-I-NBOMe) is a derivative of the substituted phenethylamine psychedelic 2C-I discovered in 2003 by chemist Ralf Heim at the Free University of Berlin. It is a highly potent serotonin agonist and, due to its psychedelic effects and ambiguous legal status, a designer drug with reports of recreational use beginning in 2010. Reports of deaths and significant injuries have been attributed to the use of 25I-NBOMe, prompting some governments to control its possession, production, and sale.
Here’s another piece of art, just to be colorful (and for all you scientific readers out there; we know we have em):
Wikipedia has this to say about the recreational uses of it:
25I-NBOMe had no history of recreational use prior to being sold online as a designer drug in 2010; street names of the drug now include “N-Bomb”, “Smiles,” and “25I”. As a recreational drug, 25I-NBOMe is roughly as potent as and similar in effect to LSD; consequently, the drug is sometimes misrepresented on blotter paper as LSD.[11] Case reports of 25I-NBOMe intoxication, with and without analytical confirmation of the drug in the body, are increasing in the medical literature.[6] The chemical has emerged as a recreational drug in Europe and the United States[12] as well as Australia.[5]
25I-NBOMe is inactive orally, and the most common methods of administration are sublingual, buccal, or nasal. The drug is frequently loaded onto paper “tabs” which are placed under the tongue or in the gums.[5] There are also reports of intravenous injection of dissolved 25I-NBOMe and smoking the drug in powdered form.[12][13]
Internet forum reports suggest that the drug debuted in the United States after an amateur American chemist imported from Europe the drug 2C-I, which was unscheduled in the US at the time, before converting it into its more potent NBOMe form and transferring it to blotter paper.[5] The drug came to media attention in early 2012 after a cluster of seven non-fatal overdoseswas reported in and around Richmond, Virginia.[14][15][16]
25I-NBOMe is frequently sold online through vendors on Silk Road or websites specializing in the sale of designer drugs. Online venders frequently ship wholesale orders from China, a manufacturing hub, for sale in the United States, Europe, and Australia.[17] Due to its potency, the drug is highly profitable, as small quantities of the drug can comprise large numbers of doses; one kilogram of powdered 25I-NBOMe can generate up to 20 million recreational doses.[5] Drug dealers often purchase 25I-NBOMe in bulk online and resell individual doses on the street for considerable profit. In Australia, $2 tabs of 25I-NBOMe can be resold for $20-30 each as LSD.[17] There are, however, methods of differentiating between LSD and adulterants like 25I-NBOMe in the field with and without test kits.[18]
The effects of N-Bomb can be the following, again according to Wikipedia: tachycardia, hypertension, agitation, aggression, visual and auditory hallucinations, seizures, hyperpyrexia, clonus, elevated white cell count, elevated creatine kinase, metabolic acidosis, and acute kidney injury
These are all the things the Juggs are suffering when brought into the hospital in Rosiclare, largely unresponsive.
We’ll see if anyone starts eating anyone’s faces.