Doesn't come with an App Store. Does come with a great buzz.

I write this blog because I like doing it. Sure, there’s some advertising on the side, but I try to keep it as targeted (hence going through Google AdWords) and unintrusive as possible. So it makes me excessively happy when someone asks me to review their stuff, and even happier when they send me some of it to review without me having to actually get up and leave my chair. iShot, you have done well.

iShot have two products fresh to the market. The first one, which I’m dealing with here, is the more traditional caffeinated energy shot. The second is to be reviewed in a following post, but it’s basically the same thing with more ginseng and no caffeine.

So enough talk, let’s get down to it.

The slightly ambiguous ‘as much caffeine as a cup of coffee’ was clarified as containing 120mg per shot, which puts it bang on as much as the Hitz shot, and up there with the strongest shots that I’ve reviewed.  It does the trick – though the ‘all day energy’ is a bit of a gimmick as it always is with caffeinated anything, you’ll get a good two or three hours of buzz out of it without any significant crash afterward. It’s not edgy, so if you’re looking for something to punch you in the nuts this isn’t it – but as a pick-me-up it’s perfectly suited, probably due to the ginseng in there too to ease you up and down.

Taste? Brilliant. I have not shut up about the way this thing tastes, to the degree that I can detect an audible gestalt sigh whenever someone in the office asks me about it. It’s pretty much Vimto, which if you’re unfortunate enough to not have tried is a drink flavoured with mixed berries with herby hints. It’s much better than it sounds, and iShot tastes almost exactly like Vimto concentrate. Don’t get me wrong, you’re still going to grimace – but only for a few seconds, as opposed to everything else except the Red Bull and Hitz shots, where you’re running around looking for anything that tastes stronger oh god make it stop OH GOD MY TONGUE.

You’re going to have trouble finding this at the moment, as only Menzies convenience stores are carrying it in the UK (it’s just launched). Keep an eye out, though, as it comes very strongly recommended.

However, if you can’t wait to try it, we have the solution. iShot have kindly agreed to supply prizes for a giveaway of a six-pack of each variety to five lucky caffeine junkies. Details will be published after I’ve put up the review for the decaff version, but the one thing that I can reveal now is that you will need a Twitter account. Follow @dontsleepdave in the meantime if you want the very latest updates, and I’ll notify on there as well when the giveaway goes live.

Beautiful snowflakes. Snowflakes that will have you humping the wall for HOURS AND HOURS AND HOURS.

MarshallStaxx here with my inaugural post for Don’t Sleep, Dave! in which I shall fearlessly explore some of the ‘heavier’ legal stimulants out there.

My first encounter with Mephedrone was when a friend stumbled in one evening, wasted, and exclaimed “We’ve been snorting plant-food all night, and it’s awesome!”. Naturally, my first reaction was to think “You retarded junkie, you’ll stick anything up your hooter for a high”, laugh in derision and head off to bed, half expecting to find him in the morning slumped lifeless over the coffee table with blood trickling from his ruptured nostrils and begonias sprouting from his ears, like some nightmare OD genesplice of Sid Vicious and Alan Titchmarsh.

He didn’t die. Turns out he had a pretty amazing time. According to him it was just like MDMA, but with no hangover. My interest was piqued.

I may be an irresponsible, impulsive fucktard but I wasn’t about to ingest something marketed as plant-food without some cursory internet research first. There’s some useful information at both Bluelight and Erowid that I would encourage you to explore before consuming. Because I love you all like my own.

Mephedrone (or Drone as the cool kids / gay junkies call it) is legal to sell, buy, possess and consume in this country as long as it’s not sold for human consumption; which is why some drug-crazed marketing genius came up with the idea to sell it as ‘plant fertilizer’. In fact it’s only been banned in Denmark so far, with Germany soon following suit.

Mephedrone is a crystalline flaky white powder and is available to buy direct from various websites full of badly formatted HTML and shitty animated GIFs, probably run by 40-something bedroom chemists running a lab in their OAP mother’s spareroom, or is sold prepackaged at headshops under various cringeworthy names such as Space-E or SnowBlow. I purchased 1g of Space-E and 1g of mephedrone directly online. The Space-E cost £25 and came in snazzy cosmic packaging whilst the mephedrone cost £16 and came in a plain plastic sachet. The ingredients list on the Space-E claimed the active ingredient was something called ‘Ketones’, which seems to be some bullshit made-up crap that doesn’t exist. So, £9 extra for some packaging with a picture of the Milky Way on it? Get it unbranded online.

The mephedrone arrived in a padded envelope, which my 83 year old grandmother opened by mistake thinking it was her latest Diamonique fix from QVC. I told her it was some muscle-building fitness supplement I’d ordered. Sucker.

I decided to try it at a party that night. Mephedrone can be taken orally (in a Rizla bomb, as the powder tastes fouler than dogshit licked off the bottom of my Converse) or snorted in lines straight up your nose. I guess you could IV it too if you’re a total dangercat with a death wish (if you try this and flatline, Don’t Sleep, Dave! will not be held accountable for your stupidity). I swallowed a 200mg bomb, which took around 60 mins to take effect. Taken orally, the effect creeps up slowly on you, a slight tingling sensation rising up from your loins to the top of your head. Not unlike being frisked by the ghost of your dead pervert uncle. Initial feelings are a slightly increased heart-rate and a heightened sense of awareness – music seems louder, lights seem brighter. Then the energy boost hits you – feet start tapping, head starts nodding, mouth starts talking A WHOLE BUNCH OF SHIT. This feels great in a party / club situation, because you feel conscious of the effect so don’t end up shouting infinite gallons of verbal shit into the ear of the nearest person like when under the influence of other, less legal, white powder stimulants. This level of dosage would work perfectly if you were to take it at home whilst performing a task such as writing blog entries for stimulant review websites, you are totally in control, not bouncing of the walls, with a massive increase in mental energy levels.

"We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the Drone began to take hold..."

At this point I started taking 50mg doses nasally every hour. Now this is probably the worst part of the whole shebang as Mephedrone does not taste good. Snorting it made my eyes water and my nose run for about 5 mins, and 30 seconds after inhaling a line the taste hits the back of you throat. Worse than a Bombay Bad Boy Pot Noodle (although I’ve yet to snort one of those). Have a beverage handy to wash away the taste.

The effects when snorting come on MUCH faster, within about 4 minutes. It’s about this point that I started feeling the empathic side of Mephedrone. I became intensely interested in everything someone had to say, I felt that everyone at the party loved me and wanted to be my new best friend (which was probably true, I’m a cool ass motherfucker). This feeling is pretty similar to MDMA but again, I felt totally in control of myself and didn’t become a babbling white-gloved glowstick-waving fuckflap. I also had a feeling of pretty intense horniness but that’s pretty normal after just 2 cans of Stella. Talking of which, Mephedrone mixes pretty well with alcohol, the booze doesn’t seem to detract from the energy of the experience, but obviously the more you get tanked the less in control you are which, mixed with the extra energy and horniness, could result in uber messiness. At this point my heart-rate has risen pretty high and I was constantly aware of it, so be careful if you have any kind of ticker-related health issues.

Around 400 / 500mg is enough of a dosage to last about 4 hours. After that the euphoria and empathy fade off, leaving a slightly unpleasant ‘mental buzz’ which can feel quite annoying and distracting. This lasts for about another 2 / 3 hours, making sleeping rather difficult. My advice is to take advantage of the heightened libido effect and just screw (or masturbate if you didn’t get lucky) until you sleep.

Aftereffects are non-existent. The next morning I felt no comedown, mentally or physically, just tiredness from partying all night and getting only 4 hours sleep. Compared to other less legal stimulants, this is a major plus point for Mephedrone as I was functioning at pretty much 100% just 12 hours after ingesting it.

As ever, your results may vary, so be careful and do your research. Whatever you do, don’t try and fertilize your bonsai tree with it, you’ll probably kill the little guy.