Cocoa powder. Commonly found in your favorite brownie recipe, alcoholic hot chocolate, and now – in people’s nostrils? The hell? Sure, the days of snorting cocaine and other powdered drugs may be far from over, but the alternative that many users have switched to is kind of alarming.
Photo by Kevin Kozlik
A handful of European clubs are starting to offer cacao powder at their rave parties, in various forms including drink, pill, or powder. The idea is that all of these chocolate products substitute drugs and other harmful substances that may be consumed in similar settings with strobe lights, loud music, and an excess amount of people. One club in particular, Alchemy Eros, states that they’re not necessarily ‘anti’ anything – it’s just an alternative that they’re experimenting with.
Dominique Persoone, a Belgian chocolatier, has even invented a device (dubbed “the Shooter”) that facilitates the snorting of cocoa powder. His premise is largely the same: the experimentation of different products that are typically used in the kitchen, and motivating others to explore what they can sniff in the kitchen. To him, smell is a very important component of enjoying food – but we’d much prefer to get a whiff of our food without inhaling anything solid.
But does it really get you high? If anything, it’s a different sense of the word – the endorphins in the chocolate induce feelings of euphoria that pair with the loud, raging music, and the magnesium relaxes tense muscles. And even then, it could really be a placebo effect, where people are simply believing that they are achieving a high, when they actually aren’t. At the very core, the main effect you could get is a relatively strong burst of energy.
Either way, the side effects that come with cocaine are absent when it comes to snorting chocolate, though we don’t recommend trying it until more research has been done and proven. Or, like, ever. In the meantime, be more strategic with your chocolate and use it in these recipes. Actually, just eat it straight up, because why not?