Monkey Dust Ain’t No Joke

When Jojo said RayRay was so hungry he tried eating his own face we all got a good laugh. Everybody knows the old saw about the old horse; this simply sounded like a crazy new way to reference the cliche. But then we found out the truth. Jojo wasn’t making a joke about an old horse. In fact, she wasn’t joking at all. And neither apparently was RayRay. After all, he’d been chewing on his lower lip when he died. Monkey Dust, said the paramedics. Monkey Dust.

Yeah, and insanity.

That’s the takeaway here. Was RayRay insane enough to try and eat his own face or did the Monkey Dust make him that way? Surely the drugs pushed him over the edge. But would that have happened with other synthetic cathinones? How about other types of drugs? Methamphetamine has been known to drive folks into a psychotic break. So have benzos, especially when they’re mixed with other substances and/or alcohol. Could the wrong combination of one of the above also have caused such a monstrous act?

In a word: Yes. People have flipped their lids over all kinds of wrong drug combinations. It could be the combo itself (i.e. benzos and meth). It could be what’s in the combo (i.e. the chemical composite of that day’s cathinone batch). Heck, it could even be in the physiology of the user. After all, a binging person’s resilience changes by the hour, as well as by the day. And a multi-day binge will bring about all kinds of crazy.

What’s with this Monkey Dust?

This Monkey Dust outbreak occurred in Stoke-on-Trent (aka Stoke), a polycentric city located in the West Midlands section of England. Known as much for its industrial-scale pottery (Stoke’s also called The Potteries), as well as the six different towns that share its umbrella (which gives it six city centers), Stoke exists in the middle of everything yet at the center of nothing. Think Worcester, Massachusetts, a town known as the “Heart of the Commonwealth.” That is, a centrally-located city long past its industrial prime.

And ripe for the making of drug addicts. Addiction loves nothing more than a city on the skids. Same goes for the dealers, who seek out marginal towns for their ready, willing and eager customer base. Then, once they find a ripe marketplace, they flood the streets with the drugs. If the economy is bad, the drugs will make it worse. When the economy becomes atrocious, the drugs will make them millions. Worse, the authorities are so busy trying to stop the addicts from robbing and stealing they don’t have the time to fully pursue the dealers.

Anyway, everyone knows how a drug market is made. They also used to know how it was seeded. Not anymore. Because these days the dealers aren’t bringing in bales or even kilos of product; instead they’re manufacturing synthetics, often right in the very city they call home.

Synthetic Cathinones

That brings us to Monkey Dust. Monkey Dust is just another in the long line of synthetic cathinones to hit a given market. These happen to have a face-eating element to them, so they’re also called Zombie Dust or Cannibal Dust. But a chemical tweak in the other direction could just as easily have you eating bike parts — or pets.

Really. The point is there’s no telling what a synthetic cathinone might do, even from one batch to another. There’s no telling where they’ll pop up either. (Heck, we wrote about one hitting Jacksonville just a few days ago.) That’s why we implore everyone to be aware and skip the risk. Because unpleasantness is, well, nothing but unpleasant. For everyone.

And yes, everyone means everyone. You and your loved ones, as well as the stranger on the street. And before you discount that stranger, bear in mind they could just as easily be your next good friend.

But not of course if they’re dead. Yes, RayRay’s literally eating himself to death was an extreme case (he actually died of excessive blood loss), but the effects synthetic cathinones like Monkey Dust have on people tend to at least be severe. People have had seizures, of the brain as well as the body. They’ve also been driven blind. And though in most cases, the vision did eventually return. That was only in most cases. Others it only partially returned, if that. And why would anyone want to risk it anyway?

ITV on Monkey Dust

The ITV report says Stoke gets an average of 30-35 emergency calls a month. That’s 10 a day for anyone counting, which is more than a blip, even in a town that size. It’s also more than a blip for the 10 different people who’ve found themselves on the wrong end of this synthetic madness-maker, not to mention the 10 sets of families and friends.

But what to do? This Monkey Dust must be providing some kind of relief, otherwise why would anyone even bother, right? Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe it’s more of a distraction than a relief. And maybe another distraction will keep a person from risking the insanity. After all, once you start chowing down on your own face, there’s pretty much no going back.

So what will it take? A job? A home? A purpose? A friend? All of the above and then some? Would one at a time work? You know, many folks find once they dial down the crazy and stare straight at their day-to-day, things become much easier to navigate. In fact, they say it’s like being blessed with a new steering wheel; one that responds to hopes rather than fears, and that does so positively, rather than negatively.

How do we know? Twenty-two years of full-scale sobriety, that’s how. Yep, Healing Properties has been sober since 2002. That means thousands upon thousands of men have gotten sober here too. Give us a ring. We’ll tell you how.