Chasing the truth behind goey aka whizz aka speed, Australia’s golden child

Image courtesy: Unsplash.

Amid the kaleidoscope lights and chest-punching bass of Sydney’s nightlife scenes, I’ve noticed that one drug has made a real comeback – the white powder fondly nicknamed “goey” and “whizz”. I’m talking about speed.

Shoot this no-nonsense drug up your nose and you’ll be wired for hours. You’ll be hyper-alert, euphoric and more of a relentless chatterbox than Joe Rogan with a microphone and uninhibited access to the internet. 

But there’s a lot of confusion over what exactly is in this mysterious white powder, especially among communities unaccustomed to ice use.

And it’s fair enough. In recent years, trying to source old-school goey in Australia was akin to casting a fishing line into the Georges River with bread for bait. You wouldn’t have any luck catching the prize and there was a decent chance of snagging your line on a passing jet-ski, rag dolling you into a world you might or might not desire, a world of pipe-smoking meth aficionados. Sure, there was some goey floating around, and it has always remained cheap as chips. But it was rarer than ice.

Now that the edgy kid in the illicit drug family is back on the block I’ve sought to answer people’s burning questions. I’ve hit the bags – and the crack pipe – to find out more about this amphetamine powder. I’ve also visited CanTEST, a legal drug checking facility in the nation’s bush capital, with some samples. All in the name of drug harm reduction and dispelling confusion, of course.

A blitz on the glass barbie

You beauty. The speed seems to almost separate in the glass pipe. Crystal specks sparkle in the tube of the crack pipe like stars in the night sky. I’m tangoing in the heavens, ducking and weaving in this verbal dance with Mia*, as we power through lines of the speed and pour keys of it into the crack pipe. One moment we’re playing squash together and the next here we are Sweet Puff in hand. It’s honestly typical of our friendship. Sometimes drugs snatch you up from the rugby maul of the daily grind and drop kick you between the posts like you’re a football, huh. 60 metre field goal. The crowd goes wild.

Burn marks appear quickly on the glass, prompting frequent sprays with a bottle of methylated spirits and frequent wipes with a rag. Each inhale tastes like I’m eating soil from the potted plants in front of me. No amount of careful pipe maintenance can stop this. See, nobody usually smokes speed; my friend Mia* and I are doing this as an experiment.

Hazy Iphone photo from the night described. Photo courtesy: the anonymous writer of this article.

As the sun rises outside, my intuition tells me that, yes, this is low-quality methamphetamine, and Mia* agrees. While only a rookie, she’s smoked shard a few times so I trust her judgment.

Sure, the high isn’t completely out of this world – I’m prescribed dexamphetamine for ADHD and I’m a long-term goey user after all – but it definitely hits a lot harder than snorting the drug.

At 10 AM, Monday morning, we make an expedition to the bottle-o. On the way back I realise I’ve forgotten my keys. I scale the second-floor balcony of my apartment like I’m Spiderman. Thankfully I’ve left the balcony door unlocked. 24 hours after we’ve played squash we debate going back and playing again. With no sleep.

Tell me this isn’t meth.

Soon after this though my mind begins to shatter into jagged pieces. The crash has arrived.

I barely get any come down from snorting speed and taking my ADHD meds (dexies). But this time I have a full-blown existential crisis. I need to be alone, curtains drawn. The drug has a hold of me as if I’m a voodoo doll. It’s pulling down my face and cutting off circulation to my heart. I’m drooping. Wilting. Like abandoned garden vegetables in a repossessed home. Acid rain on the horizon. 

A brief history of speed in Australia

Goey, aka speed, peaked in the 80s and 90s. In those days it was usually amphetamine sulphate, a slightly different chemical to methamphetamine. It came as a white or off-white/yellow/light brown powder. Often produced by local bikie gang cooks, goey fuelled 90s gabber raves, late night hospitality venues and long-haul truck journeys. Venture into any hardcore punk squat party in Melbourne or Sydney at the time and there was a high chance you’d receive a bump of goey from the zip-lock bag of a fellow punter as a welcoming gift.

Speed cooks made amphetamine sulphate from the freebase form of amphetamine, an oily liquid known locally as “base” (confusingly some people also call base “goey” because it’s, well, gooey). When you add sulphuric acid to this amphetamine base, you end up with a practical highly-snortable moreish salt called amphetamine sulphate. Most dealers added glucose powder or crushed up caffeine tablets to their bags of speed to maximise profits.

Some people sold the gluggy freebase amphetamine called “base” because it’s stronger than speed powder. They’d often cut the drug with magnesium stearate, which is commonly used in candles and cosmetic products to this day. Even when cut like this, this amphetamine paste usually remained stronger than speed. People tended to inject base, put it into capsules or gum it. In other words, they rubbed the drug into their gums so it absorbed into their bodies. 

As you can imagine, unless you were shooting up base, it wasn’t the most practical substance to consume. Thus powder speed reigned supreme in Australia, the head monarch in the amphetamine kingdom.

But not forever.

Pushed to the edges in the late 90s by the spread of crystallised methamphetamine or “ice”, a far more profitable and potent amphetamine, amphetamine sulphate soon disappeared – not just from underground drug markets but from collective memory. A report published in 2002, summarising the findings of the Inquiry into Amphetamine and ‘Party Drug’ Use in Victoria, noted some lingering confusion among meth users about the differences between speed, base and meth. Already, by 2002, almost all speed sold on the street was, in fact, methamphetamine, not amphetamine sulphate. Not everyone understood this. But any misunderstandings about this new drug quickly evaporated as people discovered the joys and pitfalls of 6 hour long masturbation marathons, hyper-obsessive home cleaning and sleepless 48 hour house parties.

Now it seems powder speed is finally making a small resurgence.

This is purely anecdotal, mind you; there isn’t much statistical evidence. Unfortunately, a lot of drug research collapses speed, base and meth into one category. There is some research that makes the distinction – not a whole lot but some. But even here we have to take the process of data collection with a grain of salt.

In his book about crystal meth use in Australia and his own self-described addiction journey, The Ice Age, Australian journalist Luke Williams argues that data about meth use in Australia is almost certainly under-reported and inaccurate. He writes that some meth users won’t answer a government survey full stop or won’t answer accurately if they take part due to stigma, denial and paranoia. Moreover, he argues, some surveys fail to reach groups of people that are statistically more likely to use meth, such as imprisoned populations and rough sleepers. 

Many people, it turns out, agree with him. Under-reporting is a point academic researchers are now emphasising too. So it’s likely more people are using ice around us than we even realise. 

This makes the statistics really murky. We can’t rely on them to tell the whole story of drug use in Australia. 

In short, my prediction – that speed use may be on the up – is simply a reflection of what I see around me in Sydney as a long-term poly-drug user. It’s a gut feeling.

Synthetic cathinones are on the rise: A tell-tale sign or red herring?

Months ago, I was writing an article about synthetic cathinones for Users News and interviewing people who use them. I ended up having a fruitful online exchange with a mate Jim* about this emerging class of research chemicals, which mimic the effects of meth and MDMA.

Jim is quite a character. He travels semi-regularly to Berlin to lap up the city’s notorious nightlife, joining the horde of human guinea pigs who willingly participate in the release, and research, of niche experimental drugs by Europe’s criminal underworld. For him, like many others, it’s a pilgrimage.

Discussing synthetic cathinones, we quickly establish that these drugs feel like a really fiend-y form of speed.

Intriguingly, Jim reports buying goey in Australia and testing the drug with a home testing kit that apparently distinguishes between bath salts (synthetic cathinones). It turns out it was likely actually a combo of mephedrone (4-MMC) and methylone. Both are synthetic cathinones. He also says that, when he’s bought speed (goey) online a couple of times, these batches, he suspects, also contained synthetic cathinones. While it’s purely conjecture, it’s fair to say Jim is familiar with the full rainbow spectrum of drugs. He’s a trustworthy source. 

It makes me wonder: will we soon see a flood of synthetic cathinones in Australia? They’re hardly destined to rival the levels of ketamine or cocaine we see in this country. But, if they do enter in rising volumes, it’s possible that some sketchy dealers may soon sell these drugs as goey and vice versa. They certainly look remarkably similar.

In the last few years, there has been a global resurgence in synthetic cathinones. You’ll often find them called “bath salts”. 4-MMC – fondly nicknamed “mephedrone”, “m-cat”, “drone” or simply “meph” (not to be confused with meth) – is the most well-known lab-made cathinone. But there’s a whole heap of others, an alphabet soup. 3-MMC, 3-CMC, 2-MMC…

Synthetic cathinones are all over Europe. Media reports suggest these drugs are flooding Berlin nightlife scenes and popular at chem-sex parties. A recent Vice documentary, meanwhile, has suggested that people are increasingly starting to inject mephedrone in Eastern Europe.

Although it’s still very rare, mephedrone has started to pop up in Australia in the last couple of years. These drugs don’t seem to be as prevalent here as they are in Europe but they are certainly here. Enough people seem to be using them that wastewater testing in Australia, conducted around the New Year festive period between 2019 and 2022, detected a range of synthetic cathinones for the first time.

Recent drug alerts across Australia suggest they’re also appearing as unexpected substances, especially in drugs sold as MDMA, speed and ice.

Visiting CanTEST

A few weeks ago, I visited CanTEST, a legal drug checking facility in Canberra that is free and anonymous for the public. I didn’t just bring goey; I bought a sample of crystal meth as well to provide a point of comparison.

As CanTEST staff told me, there is always some leeway with the purity results; the testing equipment has limitations. They suggest a 5 percent leeway as a rough guide. 

Here are the results:

• Sample 1, a white powder sold as “speed”: methamphetamine, 10% pure (8/80). The vast majority of the powder is actually caffeine, used here as a cutting agent. 80% is the maximum possible purity for methamphetamine hydrochloride (ice), otherwise it would need to be a liquid.

• Sample 2, large clear crystals sold as “ice”: methamphetamine, 100% pure (80/80).

The results were what I expected for the goey, although the purity was a tad below my pre-visit estimation.

Besides crushing up a tiny crystal to snort, I hadn’t properly tried the ice yet. I was certain it was meth but I can’t say I predicted 100% purity. The results have actually made me approach the drugs much more cautiously, in line with many of the people who visit drug testing services in Australia.

So what’s in speed these days? Amphetamine sulphate, mephedrone, caffeine or simply crystal meth?

If you’ve made it this far and waded through all the flowery (mangrove-y?) self-aggrandising prose in this article, you’ve probably guessed the answer. In short: it’s highly likely that anything sold as powder speed these days is simply meth. This change happened a long time ago.

By 2013, 86 percent of meth seizures by police across Australia already involved the crystalline form.

Furthermore, data consistently shows that over the last 20 years people using illicit amphetamines have shifted from powder to the crystallised form. With so much ice out there and ice being so popular, it shouldn’t really come as a surprise that almost all powder speed is methamphetamine rather than amphetamine sulphate. After all, Australia is one of the highest per capita ice-using nations in the world. We aren’t so much the Lucky Country as the Speedy Country.

There’s a small chance that your bag of speed could contain a research chemical that mimics the effects of stimulant drugs – a synthetic cathinone, for instance. This black market is rife with adulterants, some quirky, others downright dangerous, so anything is possible. 

But speed in Australia is mostly likely to be meth and heavily cut. This means the purity can be unpredictable. 

This also helps explain the wider-than-usual variation in price for 1 gram: $100-$200. That said, I’ve also heard of people paying $80 and even $250 for a single gram. I would say the usual cost for a gram (without any mate’s rates) is $120-$150, although professional research suggests the average price is slightly higher.

What does all this mean?

The mainstream media plays a big role in fuelling meth stigma. Tabloid newspapers and TV networks in Australia seem to have an obsession with announcing the nation’s new “ice capital” on a weekly basis. In these media stories, meth usually features as the beginning of an individual’s downward spiral. Anyone who uses the drug and is associated with it is apparently morally corrupted, instantly hooked, irrational and violent. This is a really unsympathetic portrayal of ice-using communities. It defines people and regions by their level of meth use and suggests the drug completely controls the individual.

These media narratives also bleed into our interpersonal relationships.

“I don’t even want to see anyone using the pipe,” a mate once said jokingly. “No thanks. Yuck.”

Yet he’s used practically every drug under the sun bar opioids and he’s railed lines of speed numerous times.

This is the opposite of solidarity. This creates an us/them divide when it should be “we”.

It can also lead to awkward conversations with people and confrontation as I myself have learned the hard way. That “chill bag” of powder speed in your bum bag may not be so chill to someone who has been through an ice addiction. It is, after all, usually the exact same drug. While some people can snort speed recreationally without ever becoming addicted to it, someone else may see it as a temptation or a trigger. 

So here’s the rub: if you snort lines of speed on the weekend, you are technically-speaking a meth user. Many occasional speed users don’t associate with the meth label because they either believe they’re snorting something else or they don’t want to be seen publicly as an ice user. While smoking or injecting the drug is a whole different ball game to simply snorting it, building a fortress and moat between yourself and a pipe smoker/IV user only exacerbates stigma. 

* Name changed to protect this person’s privacy.