“Legal Highs” are produced by new psychoactive substances which have properties similar to illicit psychoactive substances but have not yet been classified as illegal, and are available over anonymous internet stores. One of the most commonly abused legal highs is a stimulant called Ethylphenidate, which is also sold under the trade name “Burst”, and has been linked to a number of soft tissue infections in users who take it by the intravenous route.
Ethylphenidate is available in a drug form and maybe either snorted or dissolved in liquids and then injected IV. However, it has a very short duration of action, around 1.5 hours, which makes the user dose on it multiple times. According to the news report in The Herald Scotland, in extreme cases, the users may shoot up as many as thirty times in a day.
These soft tissue infections are usually the result of contaminated diluent liquid, contaminated needles, shared needles or syringes or even contaminated drug. The common infections associated with Burst injection includes life threatening ones such as gas gangrene, necrotising fasciitis, anthrax, botulism or tetanus.
Scepticemia 