What Is Pink Cocaine? The New Designer Drug Linked to Liam Payne’s Death

Drug interactions are possible, and overdose risk is heightened. Originating from Medellin, Colombia, tusi is not a single substance but a polysubstance mixture that commonly includes ketamine, MDMA, cocaine, caffeine, LSD, or anything else the dealer may have had lying around. It’s a bit of a “drug salad.” Pink dye is added at the end to give it a distinct pink color. Ohio Recovery Center is an accredited drug and alcohol rehabilitation center and licensed mental health treatment provider that helps people facing substance use and mental health disorders stabilize and find lasting recovery. We are dedicated to transforming the despair of addiction and mental illness into a purposeful life of confidence, self-respect, success, and happiness. As stated, using Tucibi is considered by the addiction treatment community to be a very serious and dangerous form of drug abuse.

Complicating the drug landscape

Pink cocaine has appeared in several South American countries, including Colombia, Argentina, and Uruguay. 2C-B entered the United States around the same time and was manufactured in secret laboratories in several states. Since 1995, 2C-B has been a Schedule I controlled substance in the United States. This means it has no accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse. On October 21, the police also seized pink cocaine and other drugs and arrested 21 people who were distributing it in vehicles configured to store packets of drugs. As always, those who use this type of drug should be much more concerned about the potential health risks and death that can result than about what law enforcement may or may not do in response.

Studies focusing on people who use tusi are needed as this concoction increases in popularity. Specifically, information is needed regarding prevalence of use, characteristics of people who use, reasons for use, and effects experienced. Co-use of alcohol, ecstasy, and cocaine was common, and effects of tusi reportedly included euphoria, sedation, dizziness, vomiting, blacking out, and loss of consciousness. Studies assessing such information are needed in the US, especially as the drug spreads and the concoction begins to change. 2C-B began to emerge as a recreational drug, particularly in rave scenes, in the 1990s, although the drug was commonly disguised as MDMA, also known as ecstasy (5). Despite prevalence being somewhat rare, by the early 2000s, 2C-B had been encountered by law enforcement in 48 US states (7).

What Is Tuci? Things To Know About The “Elite” Pink Cocaine

Thankfully, professional addiction treatment can help people overcome a 2C-B addiction and learn how to live healthier lives in recovery. These effects are comparable to other drugs, such as LSD or mescaline. Therefore, many street-level dealers will sell tucibi disguised as these more well-known or desirable drugs. Safety Note Fentanyl test strips and other components of a drug testing kit can reduce (though not eliminate) the chance of ingesting deadly compounds in any drug you take.

Treatment Process

• Effects tend to include euphoria, a sense of well-being, changes in perception, and slight hallucination (1,5,6).
• The most common physical side-effects of Tucibi are an increase in blood pressure, pupil dilation, blurry vision, dizziness, and insomnia.
• Rather, it is a mixture of an aromatic pink powder with various drugs of abuse, creating an unpredictable, dangerous, and addictive recreational party drug.
• Wherever you are in your addiction, it’s important to remember that help is available.
• This is why it’s popular inside of South American rave culture and night clubs as a replacement for MDMA (ecstasy).
• In extreme doses, it may even lead to respiratory depression, seizures, or a condition known as excited delirium, potentially resulting in hypothermia and fatal cardiac arrest.
• However, the drug can also cause people to hallucinate and feel detached from the world around them.

Over time, users can build a tolerance, needing more of the drug to get the same high, which escalates the addiction risk. Pink cocaine, also known as tusi or Tucibi is a street drug cocktail that is produced by mixing MDMA, ketamine, and speed and is also contaminated with substances like oxycodone and fentanyl. The unregulated and often unknown composition of Tuci amplifies these risks, making each use potentially life-threatening. 2C-B, also known as tucibi or pink cocaine, is a powerful hallucinogenic drug that can have a number of recreational and dangerous effects.

How Does Pink Cocaine Make You Feel?

Experts say that if we ever manage to invent a completely effective aphrodisiac, 2C-B will be the main ingredient. In 2004, this illegal drug boomed again, this time in Latin America. It became very popular in Mexico and traffickers started to import it to Colombia two years later. Then, a man who everyone came to call “Alejo Tusibi,” started to make a local version of the drug. Pink cocaine is currently considered a Schedule I controlled substance with no approved medical uses. American Chemist Alexander Shulgin is credited with synthesizing 2C-B in 1974.

The fact that this drug could literally contain anything makes the danger incalculable. This is why we prefer to think of pink cocaine as a type of drug-taking behavior rather than as a drug itself. Taking it exhibits either naivete about the dangers of street drugs or an advanced stage of the addiction process. The second group of inexperienced, naive drug users includes children, young adults, and anyone who develops an interest in drug experimentation. Because of the variable nature of the contents of Tucibi, it can be deadly the first time it is used. The nickname tusi/tuci comes from how it sounds when you say 2C — a group of psychedelic drugs that may have originally been in pink cocaine.

Pink powder drug called as pink cocaine does not contain any cocaine. It’s easy to assume that pink cocaine is exactly what it sounds like a pink version of the popular drug. However, they are two completely different drugs with only a few similarities. The similarities include the stimulating effects as well as the risk of addiction and chemical dependence. Pink cocaine is a synthetic phenylethylamine that reacts with the body’s serotonin system to achieve its psychoactive properties.

This experiment found the changes in the brain and addictive properties of 2C-B was comparable to methamphetamine. It will be replaced by some other drug fad, which will also certainly be dangerous and indicative of a person at serious personal risk. The rise of Tucibi is an artifact of massive cultural change on too many levels to discuss fully here. Tucibi itself is not a true drug, but a mix of drugs ranging from moderately to extremely dangerous. For this reason, anyone who uses Tucibi is strongly encouraged to seek treatment immediately.

• Learn more about substance use therapy with Zinnia Health today.
• However, last Wednesday, the police announced that they’d broken up a group that was trafficking pink cocaine, as well as ordinary white cocaine, intended for distribution in Malaga, in southern Spain, and the capital Madrid.
• Cocaine hydrochloride is a natural stimulant produced from the leaves of the coca plant in South America.
• Even a wide range of colorimetric reagents would likely not determine the contents very well.
• Even a small increase in dose can dramatically alter its effects.
• But, at the same time, it can because you never really know what’s in it,” Maryann Amirshahi, PharmD, MD, MPH, a medical toxicologist and co-medical director of the National Capital Poison Center, told Verywell.

Branded as a combination of LSD and MDMA, 2C-B hit the scene not that long ago. Confusingly, Tuci- or Tucibi- has nothing to do with 2C-B, or Stanley Tucci for that matter. Understanding consent is an integral part of psychedelic harm reduction. Leia Friedwoman walks you through the FRIES method in her article for DoubleBlind. We believe it works by binding itself to adrenaline, noradrenaline, and dopamine receptors when it reaches the brain.

Through 2022, there were 19 submissions of similar pink powder concoctions from within the US labeled as tusi or 2C-B (with samples analyzed by DrugsData). As shown in Figure 1, almost all samples (94.7%) contained ketamine as the main ingredient, and 84.2% contained a ketamine precursor called 1-(2-chlorophenyl)(methylimino)methylcyclopentanol. Also similar to findings by other drug checking organizations, detection of MDMA was common, detection of cocaine was relatively rare, and 2C series compounds were not detected. Pink Cocaine, also called tucibi, is a new drug imported from South America that is likely neither cocaine nor the psychedelic drug 2C-B. Rather, it is a mixture of an aromatic pink powder with various drugs of abuse, creating an unpredictable, dangerous, and addictive recreational party drug.

Most drug surveys do not query the use of actual 2C series drugs, so it is unlikely that such surveys will begin to ask specifically about tusi. Those who add questions about this concoction may assume tusi and 2C are the same product and collect unreliable data. It is also important to differentiate between what a product is called and what drug or drugs are tucibi present in the product. In this case, currently, ketamine appears to be the most common and most abundant drug present in tusi.