Tourists on Ibiza have been warned about the effects of the drug MDPV, which is believed to be behind a number of violent attacks on the party island.
Matilde Fernández, a nurse at a San Antonio Health Centre told Diario de Ibiza of revellers needing to be restrained in their hospital beds and trying to bite police officers while apparently ‘high’ on Methylenedioxypyrovalerone, also known as MDPV or ‘bath salts’.
Bath salts have been attributed by the media to acts of ‘cannibal zombieism’ such as Rudy Eugene’s assault on the homeless Ronald Poppo in Miami in May 2012 where he beat Poppo unconscious and then proceeded to bite off most of his face, but the relationship remains unclear. In Eugene’s case, the medical examiner only found traces of marijuana in his system despite police speculation that ‘bath slats’ were involved.
However, cathinones such as MDPV as well as other drugs that alter dopamine processing are known to cause “excited delirium” in some users, which is characterized by agitation, aggression, acute distress and sudden death, according to a study in the Western Journal of Emergency Medicine.
Partygoers have also warned people about taking the drug for its effects, with one forum commenter complaining:
“It gives a f**king terrible hangover from very little fun this drug is absolutely terrible and should be avoided at all costs”
While orginally developed in the 1960s by a team at Boehringer Ingelheim, the MDVP remained relatively unknown until around 2004 when it first started to appear as a ‘designer drug’ and ‘legal high’ alternative to ecstasy and cocaine in countries such as the UK.
The drug is a synthetic cathinone from the same family as mephedrone, and related to khat, the organic stimulant found in the Middle East and East Africa, and became illegal as a Class B drug in April 2010.
