People’s “Purposeful, Rational” Reasons for Mixing Meth and Opioids

published on July 25, 2022 by Doug Johnson in Filter

People mixing stimulants and opioids is not a new phenomenon. Mixing heroin and cocaine, a “speedball,” was fairly common practice in the 1990s, for instance. More recently, mixing fentanyl and methamphetamine, in what’s known as a “goofball,” is a growing trend. But according to a new paper, put out by the University of British Columbia and other partnering universities, people mix these uppers and downers in intricate, measured ways, rather than just throwing them together—and do so for a number of specific reasons.

“We know poly-drug use is common. It sort of came on our radar [from] talking to people in the community,” said Andrew Ivsins, PhD, a research scientist at the British Columbia Centre for Substance Use, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of British Columbia in the department of medicine, and one of the authors of the paper…