Scopolamine in Colombia
Scopolamine, also known as Burundanga, is a powerful sedative extracted from the Brugmansia flower, which is native to Colombia. Scopolamine is commonly used as a central nervous system depressant in patch form to treat nausea, seasickness, motion sickness, and less commonly in treatments of Parkinson’s symptoms and in anesthesia. Scopolamine is starting to attract attention for its potential in treating addiction, specifically nicotine.
Scopolamine comes with a slew of side effects ranging from dry mouth and impaired speech, amnesia, excitement and restlessness, to hallucinations and delirium. In years past it was used in conjunction with painkillers to induce Twilight Sleep, which relieves pain during childbirth while keeping the patient awake. Scopolamine was studied by the Nazis and a few intelligence agencies during the Cold War as a truth drug. In very rare cases, scopolamine is used as a recreational drug for its hallucinogenic side effects. The chemical extract is highly toxic, so non-medical use is dangerous. The prescribed uses call for as little as 330 micrograms.
Unfortunately, scopolamine’s most common use is for robberies and assaults in Colombia. The extent to its damage is near endemic – 1 out of 5 emergency room visits due to overdose result from scopolamine. Organized groups of thieves prey on unsuspecting victims by drugging them and taking advantage of them once they’re under the influence. I started hearing horror stories as soon as I arrived. It’s described as a GHB that turns people completely agreeable to any suggestion, with the amnesia effects making it perfect for robberies and / or rape.
The stories I hear jump the shark from urban legend to nutty ridiculousness. One of those chain emails you idiots forward went around last year telling a story of an American woman incapacitated and robbed by accepting a business card brushed with scopolamine. Here’s Snopes debunking that nonsense.
Junk mail aside, the urban legend’s epitomized in the popular VBS documentary, Colombian Devil’s Breath. VBS won’t let me embed their content so you’ll have to watch the 35-minute documentary on their site.
Colombian Devil’s Breath – Part 1
Colombian Devil’s Breath – Part 2
Or watch Headline News’ 7 minute summary piece on the film, “Zombie Drug” (about as un-sensational as the VBS title):
After I saw the VBS film, I was curious. However, the natural skeptic inside didn’t buy it. It’s true that a tiny amount of this stuff is enough to take effect, but I don’t believe some of the reported methods of drugging victims. The most unbelievable is the taxi driver blowing it in your face, after which you’re immediately in a hypnotic trance at his mercy. I heard about somebody getting it into their skin from reading magazines in the back of a taxi and, most ridiculously, via ATM machine buttons.
After watching the VBS piece, I asked some born-and-raised Colombian bogotanos about scopolamine. Most echoed the taxi driver stories and urban legend fodder. One girl told me her cousin was taking a bus to Bogota from Girardot and somebody offered him a cigarette. The next thing he knew he was in a park with no money.
Another Colombian told me how he was drunk in a taxi. He didn’t remember much, but all of a sudden the taxi driver had some thugs around the car and they beat him up and took his money. I told him he didn’t get drugged and robbed. He got beat the fuck up and robbed. That’s not a scopolamine story.
Here are scopolamine stories I believe:
An Irish guy I knew living in La Candelaria had met a girl and they made plans to hang out. He met her and her friends at a bar on the west side of the city. He said he was drinking with them and that’s all he remembered. He woke up back in his room with nothing in his pockets. He called her to bitch her out and she hung up on him. Then she called back a few days later, saying something about how insulted she was that he accused her and she would never do that. She said he left her and her friends at the bar and she didn’t know where he went. While he was telling me this, he seemed to believe her story. I never saw that guy again, but God I hope he didn’t hang out with her after that.
An AA friend told me about a member in Medellin. This guy’s rock-bottom event came after partying in a brothel and waking up the next day in a run-down motel with no money and no clothes. He tried to leave but the motel staff told him he had to pay for the room. They didn’t care about his story. He had no recollection of what happened.
I looked for high-brow journalism on scopolamine but there isn’t much out there. I found a Reuters story about a Colombian woman who was found wandering topless in Bogota, asking about her baby. Police believe a gang trafficking infants was responsible. This story doesn’t appear on the Reuters site and seems a bit suspect. I found a Phillip Stewart on Reuters (the name on the byline), and emailed him asking whether he wrote the story and does he stand by it. His reply:
I met that poor woman years ago and never forgot it. Yes I wrote it.
A Canadian traveler told me a story that started in Medellin’s Parque Lleras. He’d lived in Envigado the year before so he wasn’t new to the country. He and a guy from his hostel started drinking beer and aguardiente with a couple Colombians they met. Things got drunk and his pal from the hostel was put into the back of a cop car while breaking up a fight, but the pal confirmed for to our Canadian traveler that he saw him get into a Mercedes with the two Colombians they were drinking with. He woke up the next day in Envigado, broke. A Colombian friend’s doctor father examined him and confirmed the symptoms of having taken scopolamine.
Of course there’s feedback from The Mick, who spent 20+ extremely alcoholic years in Bogota. We sometimes buy cheap stuff in 7 de Agosto, where we have to ride through this horrible little prostitution and drug zone. One time I asked if he partied there in his drinking days. He frowned and said he did, but that he hated those people because they always gave him scopolamine (which he pronounces “escopolamina”). He said he’s been drugged “loads of times” and “at least 30 times.” He took some heavy losses but generally believes scopolamine didn’t affect him as much because he was such an extreme alcoholic and drug user – getting drunk at breakfast, lunch, and dinner while smoking and snorting the whole time.
The Mick’s first time “scoped” came soon after an ex-girlfriend left him with their baby for five months. He, a raging alcoholic, was on a trip somewhere up north with a friend when they stopped for lunch and drink. He dropped the baby off at a day-care and started pounding beer and aguardiente at a tienda. They hopped into a taxi and The Mick clearly remembers his friend saying, “Everything’s gone white! It’s like we’re in heaven!” And then The Mick fell under the spell. (The campesinos at the tienda drugged them.)
The taxi driver ended up kicking them out of his cab. The Mick vaguely remembers crawling in the street, at one point crawling under a bus. They eventually remembered the baby and made it back to the day-care. They were stumbling and pissy while carrying the baby, and eventually made a scene in front of some cops and military guys. The Mick woke up in the Bogota British Embassy.
Another time he was drinking as hard and heavy as usual in the Bogota streets. He remembers bouncing around various street scenes; then he was kissing some girl. Then he woke up in his apartment wrapped in a blanket. The apartment was cleared out. He went to the police station naked. He’s done that a few times.
The open-to-suggestibility is the scariest aspect to the scopolamine rumors. You consciously allow thieves to take everything? It seems too crazy to believe. The Mick describes the buzz in a way that makes me want to characterize it as an extreme form of the ecstasy high, which you’re in love with everything and everybody. Everything is peace and love. No evil anywhere. You want everything to be pleasant and feel nice and it does. This all comes with an impenetrable amnesia effect from everybody I’ve talked to – except fuzzy memories from The Mick.
From the Crime section on the US State Department’s Colombia page:
Use of disabling drugs: The Embassy continues to receive reports of criminals in Colombia using disabling drugs to temporarily incapacitate tourists and others. At bars, restaurants, and other public areas, perpetrators may offer tainted drinks, cigarettes, or gum. Typically, victims become disoriented or unconscious, and are thus vulnerable to robbery, sexual assault, and other crimes. Avoid leaving food or drinks unattended at a bar or restaurant, and be suspicious if a stranger offers you something to eat or drink.
Scopolamine is surely used in Colombia, but the urban legends are rampant. The amnesia effect of scopolamine is crucial to the scam, and also adds to the myth. If nobody remembers what happened, it slows our learning about this drug and how it’s used. And anybody who’s taken it doesn’t know how because they didn’t see it – which is the obvious intent of the thieves.
Some stories are silly. One says women can rub it on their breasts and have guys lick them later in the night. I could buy that one, but it’d render the skin-absorption through magazines or ATM buttons bullshit. The whore would get drugged if it can be absorbed by the skin. Similarly, blowing the powder at the mark’s face exposes the thief just as much as the mark. And if you’ve ever snorted coke, you know how far powder has to go to enter the bloodstream. You don’t need as many micro-grains of scopolamine, but you’d still need to snort it through some kind of tube like (with) cocaine. You’re not going to catch enough molecules out of the air with a casual nasal inhale unless somebody pelts you in the face with a handful of it – like flour – hundreds of thousands of pesos worth of the shit.
I think the vast majority of scopolamine cases come from spiking drinks or mixing it with cocaine. And I believe most of the scopolamine bandits operate in brothels, which adds to the urban legend. This is how: First, the amnesia effect of scopolamine completely confuses the victim as to what happened. He remembers he was at the brothel, and he knows he can’t tell his wife that. He realizes he was drugged and decides to tell her one of these bullshit stories about the taxi driver blowing magic dust or passing him a tainted copy of El Tiempo.
I’m convinced these bullshit stories and the extremity of the urban legend are due to (A) the amnesiac effect and (B) guys lying to their wives, girlfriends, and female relatives to cover up their indiscretions. Until I hear a scopolamine story from a woman who got robbed or raped while NOT drinking recklessly, I’m sticking with my theory.
I think what happened to the Irish guy is as elaborate as the scams get these days. I can see that being executed. A gringo just arrived to Latin America. He’s still living in La Candelaria and doesn’t recognize the difference in women that are easy and too easy. Those women may use different weapons, but they exist across Latin America. After meeting, they lure him out to their neighborhood to drink with a table full of girls, maybe one guy. The bartender might be in on the operation. They drink and have fun while slipping the gringo a mickey. Whenever they spot the effects, they get everything in his pockets and then put him in a taxi back to La Candelaria. In the case that he calls back and isn’t sure if they robbed him, they play innocent and try to get him again.
I was skeptical about the suggestibility aspect of the stories but undecided and unsure. The VBS film showed bank footage of a victim at the ATM fetching cash for his robbers. On the other hand, the Nazis and Cold War agencies all abandoned it for any use so could it really be that powerful? Ultimately, The Mick’s hazy recollections of a hyper-ecstatic ecstasy pill high make a strong case for how that level of agreeableness can happen.
Most Colombians haven’t been “scoped,” so don’t be afraid of Colombia. The Mick said the stuff’s very hard to buy; he would have a hard time finding it (that says a lot given his last 20 years, see The Mick’s stories). And almost every story I’ve heard involves reckless drinking. Not just drinking, reckless drinking. If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, think me-in-Peru reckless drinking. Colombia can be tough on a drunk. And while stories of victims who were not drinking recklessly are rare, there are a few. (But even most of those are guys lying to females about the night they went to bang whores).
I’m thrilled to be living in Bogota, Colombia, and I realize that a disproportionate amount of my writing showcases the danger, the annoyances, the scary, the sketchy, the bad. That content is the most compelling, but life is beautiful here. I’m going to stay longer than the previous plan of one year. There’s almost a sensation in the country that all the beauty, the attraction, the romance, the draw, comes with an equally dangerous and bloody risk. The rose comes with thorns. It sounds corny, but it’s true.
The Brugmansia flower, which contains the main ingredient in scopolamine and grows wild throughout Bogota and Colombia.
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6 Responses to “Scopolamine in Colombia”
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you know this shit needs to become a book at some point.
Agreed. Don’t know if your penning short stories, poems, or novels but you should. Been reading your blog for ~ 6 months now and you have such an incredible eye for wit, observation and prose. Your style reminds me of a hybrid between Hemmingway and Bukowski. Truly bold and refreshing. Keep ‘em coming Colin.
(Hopefully the Ernie/Buke comment doesn’t offend.)
Thanks a lot guys, I’m humbled. Actually, I’ve just started writing The Mick’s story. We’ll see how it works out.
Soon after publishing this post, I got this email from the Canadian Traveler:
Colin,
Just read the story on your webpage. Well written.
“The Mick describes the buzz in a way that makes me want to characterize it as an extreme form of the ecstasy high, which you’re in love with everything and everybody. Everything is peace and love. No evil anywhere. You want everything to be pleasant and feel nice and it does. This all comes with an impenetrable amnesia effect from everybody I’ve talked to – except fuzzy memories from The Mick.”
I`ve never tried ecstasy so can’t compare the two but this description pretty much sums it up for me. Friends called me while I was on it (I have no memory of this) and they said I sounded like I was having a really good time. The owner of the hostel where I was staying called me and apparently I just kept saying “I love you” over and over to her. Anyways thanks for writing the article and hope you have a good trip there. It`s a cool city when this kindof shit doesn´t happen.
Take care,
You need to read this book — http://www.amazon.com/One-River-Wade-Davis/dp/0684834960. Its about the travels of this ethnobotanist that researches the usage of plants and halucogenics among Colombian tribes.
[...] as drunk as I was, I insisted he go first and I go second. None of these fools are going to give me scopolamine. I do this (insist they go first) with booze too. After the little buff black guy and I had our [...]
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