fasted58 wrote: Is there a bath salt epidemic on the horizon we aren't aware of?
Probably. There's a very good description here of the molecular reasons why they are different than other drugs.
Short version: They act like a mix of meth (stimulates dopamine release) and cocaine (limits dopamine reuptake), with the added problem of having side effects that linger for days....possibly even longer.
But when she treats a cell with mephedrone and then turns the lever to add MDPV, something strange and interesting happens. As with cocaine, the line on the computer climbs rapidly upwards, but when she takes it away, the line does not return back to baseline like it did with the cocaine. In fact, as long as the cell stays alive, the line never returns to its original position. “Forty-five minutes after adding MDPV, it still can't go back to baseline,” Kim says. What they've found is that there seemed to be a time delay built into the drug, so that mephedrone is acting before MDPV, releasing dopamine from the cell before reuptake is blocked. And once MDPV takes hold, it doesn't seem to let go.
