The study
New psychoactive substances
Development of designer drugs, legal highs, bath salts (or officially new psychoactive substances - NPS) is staggering. In the recent 10 years, number of legal highs almost quadrupled and there is no indication of a slow-down in their development. In fact, makeshift laboratories produce legal highs much faster than sophisticated scientific facilities can analyze their structure and effects.
Fast development of the substances is great for the recreational user but it is not so great when something bad happens. Each year there are thousands of reports of kidney, heart and other organ failures that led to severe disability or even death of the user as a result of the drug intake. To prevent such serious cases, it is vital to identify the drug as fast as possible and start treatment. However, the problem is that currently only few legal highs can be identified in the user’s blood fast enough. Imagine that you or any of your friends takes something, becomes unwell and faints. This is a life-threatening situation, you don’t know what drug she or he took and because of missing research, there is no medical test to find out fast what drug was taken. Now you can only hope for the best. If you are a designer drug user, by participation in our study, you can help to change this – you can make fight against drug overdose easy and help to prevent serious health emergencies or even save lives. The goal of the study is to develop fast drug tests to find out which drug you might have taken and to make this a reality, we only need a few drops of blood from you. Please see the instructions below, find out if you are the right candidate for the study and if you have any questions, feel free to ask us anything.
Who can participate in the study
In our study we are looking for people older than 18 years who recreationally use novel psychoactive substances of different groups and origins – especially phenylethylamines, tryptamines, piperazines, kathinones and other. Due to our instrumental capabilities we are unable to do research on synthetic cannabinoids. You can see the list of NPS that we are interested in in the „Attachments“ tab. If you are user of one of the NPS on the list, you can participate under following conditions:
- You are older than 18 years.
- You are recreational user of novel psychoactive substances
- You are slovak citizen.
- You are not pregnant.
- You do not suffer from any immunodeficiency = weakened immunity.
- You are not transplant recipient.
- You do not have any contagious diseases - especially HIV, hepatitis type B or C and COVID-19.
- You do not suffer from any severe physical or psychical disability.
How and when to take the drop of blood
Take the NPS of your choice and collect the drop of blood after the effects of the drug have waned – as soon as you are confident that you can perform the blood drop collection procedure properly, but not later than 24 hours after you took the NPS. Ideally, collect the drop of blood on empty stomach. Use our videotutorial to learn about the process and collect the drop of blood correctly: https://interestingsamples.com/blood-collection.
Only 4 drops of blood are needed:
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Risks
If you carefully follow the blood drop collection manuals (https://interestingsamples.com/blood-collection), there is little to no risk of negative effects. The blood collection method used in our studies is applied by millions of diabetes patients every day without any major adverse effects. Nevertheless always make sure to follow these rules:
- Rigorously follow the blood drop collection manuals (https://interestingsamples.com/blood-collection)
- Avoid taking the drop of blood in crowded spaces
- Disinfect your finger before collecting the drop of blood
- Use non-dominant hand for collecting the drop of blood
- After collecting the drop of blood, cover the wound with band aid
- Prohibit use of lancet on other people than you
If despite doing everything correctly a negative effect occurs – especially:
- Blood drop collection site is hurting a lot and the pain is not declining even hours after sampling
- Large inflammated area around the blood drop collection site
- Blood drop collection site starts to hurt after not hurting for 2 – 3 days
- Fever
Make use of the „Help“ page https://interestingsamples.com/help (accessible only when logged in) to contact us.
Insurance
By participating in this study, you are automatically insured against any negative health effects resulting from the sampling procedure. The insurance does not cover any negative effects caused by the drug that you took. Also the insurance is valid only when you performed sampling exactly according to the sampling manual and you took all precautions mentioned in this informed consent form. It is extremely improbable and very hard to prove that any negative health effect was caused by sampling more than 10 days after sampling procedure. Therefore, you must inform us about any negative effect within 10 days of the sampling procedure, otherwise the insurance will be void.
