‘Venom users feel happiness, excessive sleepiness for 3-4 weeks’

CHANDIGARH: Some people don’t panic when they see an angry cobra , with its hood spread out, staring at them from close quarters. They see the snake as the provider of a substitute for heroin or some other narcotic they are addicted to.Scientists at the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research’s (PGIMER) drug deaddiction centre recently came across two drug users who were hooked to cobra venom . They made the snakes bite them on their tongue to get a high which, according to them, lasted for almost a month and they did not need to take any other drug.The case history has been recently published in ‘Indian Journal of Psychological Medicine’. The study ‘Snake Venom Use as a Substitute for Opioids: A Case Report and Review of Literature’, has been done by Dr Aseem Mehra, Dr Debashish Basu, and Dr Sandeep Grover at department of psychiatry.“The study was done to make clinicians aware about such substance abuse for recreational purposes as not much medical literature is available,” says Grover. The patients were from Rajasthan and had been opioid dependent for more than 15 years.Going by the medical literature only four reports of use of snake venom for recreational purposes have been published so far from India. These users were from welloff families. According to the study, the venom users experienced “happiness, grandiosity, and excessive sleepiness for 3-4 weeks”. They took help from snake charmers to get themselves bitten on the tip of the tongue. The bite was associated with jerky movements of the body, blurry vision, and unresponsiveness for an hour. However, after waking up, they experienced heightened arousal and sense of well-being, which according to them, was more intense than the high of a normal dose of alcohol or opioid.How do opioid users survive a venomous bite? “We do not see such cases frequently and therefore need a bigger sample size to understand the mechanism. However, trying newer forms of addictions depends on the risktaking behavior and what gives someone a kick,” adds Grover. He said, “However after cognitive behavior therapy, the patients have been treated.”“The exact mechanism (that makes a person survive snake venom) is not known as the cohort who report to a hospital is small and therefore a study is not feasible,” says Dr Vikas Suri, internal medicine PGIMER. “There are people who get a high with a snake bite per se and it’s not fatal if the venom is removed.” The patients were in their late 30s. The authors hypothesise that perhaps the neurotoxins which are present in snake’s venom bind on to the nicotinic acetyl choline receptors. These actions occur in the brain. The receptors are involved in feeling of euphoric, sad, depressed, which may explain the high. “The neurotoxins in the snakes once released can result in paralysis and sometimes be fatal. But it’s not known how someone can develop antibodies and survive the bite during addiction,” says Dr Savita Malhotra, former head of the drug deaddiction centre.