This section is not here to frighten or to moralise. It starts from a simple observation: most serious accidents happen to people who did not know what they were taking, at what dose, or what it must not be mixed with. Each page therefore says where the substance comes from, the forms it takes, what the user is looking for, what happens in the short term, what happens in the long term, and how to spot use.
Two rules that save lives
Never use alone, and never mix depressants — alcohol, benzodiazepines, opioids. The great majority of deaths follow one of those two failures rather than the toxicity of a single substance.
The substances, one by one
Cannabis
THC content tripled, dependence, drift and psychotic risk.
Synthetic cannabinoids
Sold as legal in e-liquids. 500 reports, 71 % severe, two deaths.
Cocaine and crack
The cardiac event possible on a first use, and the come-down that organises everything.
Opioids
Heroin, fentanyl, painkillers — and naloxone, the antidote anyone can give.
MDMA and ecstasy
Heatstroke, drinking too much water, and the three-day come-down.
Amphetamines and methamphetamine
Staying awake for days, and the psychosis that almost always follows.
Ketamine, GHB and GBL
Half a millilitre between the effect and coma. The drink-spiking substances.
Nitrous oxide
Sold in supermarkets, and the leading cause of nerve damage in healthy teenagers.
Poppers
A fatal combination with erectile dysfunction treatments, and retinal damage.
Misused medicines
The home medicine cabinet is teenagers' first source of supply.
Caffeine and energy drinks
One can, in a teenager, is twice an adult's dose per kilogram.
Alcohol
Why the threshold has come down everywhere, what alcohol does to sleep and to the couple, and how to cut down without imposing abstinence.
Tobacco
How fast the body recovers once you stop, what actually works to quit, and the one real urgency: smoking and the combined pill after 35.
Screens
An addiction without a substance, using the same circuits with the same consequences.
Spotting, helping, reporting
Spotting drug use
The signs that count, the objects that tell you something, detection windows and what tests are worth.
Getting out of addiction
Services, treatments that work, helplines and how to report.
My teenager is using
What a parent can do in the first hours, and what is better avoided.
The law country by country
Use, possession and supply are not punished the same way from one country to the next: a fixed penalty here, a prison term there, mandatory treatment in some cases, capital punishment for trafficking in a few countries. Being a minor, the quantity, the substance and whether you were driving change the exposure completely. Each page gives the applicable law, the penalties, how minors are treated, the rules at the wheel and the treatment services.
Select a country to open its detailed page.