M-cat is back: Young people are back on the 'indie sleaze' club drug

 (Channel 4)
(Channel 4)

If you were a teenager or upwards in 2008, chances are you’ll have come across “M-cat”. Also known as “meow meow” for its distinctive smell (distinctively smelling of cat urine, that is), the drug first emerged on the scene as a legal high which replicated the feeling of taking cocaine and MDMA in one go, for a fraction of the price.

Unsurprisingly, it took the late aughts drug scene by storm. For every Skins-style party that was flooded with coloured tights, hotpants and shutter shades, there was also a trusty supply of M-cat fuelling the hedonism.

The Conservative government quickly moved to make M-cat illegal, and its ban in 2010 forced the drug underground and out of mainstream parties and clubs.

A reporter campaigns against mephedrone at Downing Street in 2010 (PA)
A reporter campaigns against mephedrone at Downing Street in 2010 (PA)

But now, in 2024, it’s making a comeback. “I would choose to do it over everything at the moment, it’s my new favourite,” says Chris*, 28, who manages a pub in South London. The other night, Chris did a gram of M-cat in two hours while on shift. “I’m a fiend though,” he laughs. Chris first got into doing M-cat earlier this year after he was introduced to it by his friend who DJs in Berlin. Since then, he’s done it seven or eight times in total, including four days in a row at a camping festival this summer.

The same goes for Anthea*, 26, who also started taking M-cat at the beginning of the year when she went to queer raves around London. “The stigma around it has gone,” she says. “It’s so cheap and it gets you so much. I think that’s a big selling point, and it’s not as macho as coke it’s a bit more of a fun party drug.”

Anthea adds that doing M-cat has recently become a “social signifier.” “It’s like ‘I’m in the counterculture, I’m doing this previously looked down upon drug and everyone I know that I think is cool is doing it.’ It’s new and different.”

‘At one point, I was having to do it every ten minutes’

But what comes up must come down, and M-cat brings you crashing down to earth pretty heavily. “The comedown is lethal,” Anthea says, “I cried non-stop for six hours on one comedown. People in the ‘scene’ say it feels like meth. The effects and comedown are awfully similar apparently.”

Plus, it’s incredibly moreish. “A few weeks ago I was doing it and I was having to do it every ten minutes because at that point I’d done like four grams [that night],” Anthea says, adding, “you start to need more.” After a London day festival this summer, she says her “throat was fucked” pain-wise for three days due to all the sniffing.

Even in the late 2000s, M-cat wasn’t considered cool, which is why its new, rehabilitated reputation has people confused. “Because it was so cheap, it became seen as cheap and nasty,” says Professor Fiona Measham, Chair in Criminology at Liverpool University and founder of drug testing charity The Loop. “It smelled like cat piss and it made you smell like cat piss when you took it. It wasn’t cool to be doing it anymore [in the late 2000s].”

But here it is in 2024, rippling through the UK club scene once again. Measham confirms that she’s “definitely” noticed mephedrone (aka M-cat) usage amongst young people on the rise, and that it’s bad rep from the late aughts has basically vanished. “When I talk to young people now, what's interesting is they don't have those negative associations. So if I say, ‘What about how it burns your nose? Or is seen as a sort of ‘scuzzy’ drug? Or that you smell of cat piss, and all that?’ But to them it’s like a totally new drug, which is quite extraordinary.”

 (Channel 4)
(Channel 4)

This checks out for current university students, who would have been between two to four years old when M-cat first took off, and four to six years old when it was made illegal. But for the likes of Chris and Anthea, who were in or entering their teens when M-cat was made illegal, it should have left some trace of bad taste for them. But a decade can wash away a whole lot of sins, and M-cat’s return is eerily well timed for the indie sleaze revival that is so consistently tipped to co-opt the 2020s.

“I think M-cat’s comeback is in part due to the nostalgia of a time gone by for East London’s queer club scene,” says M-cat user Freddie*, who is a frequent clubber and a prominent face in East London’s queer nightlife circles. “I’d always heard it was very popular in the early 2010s but that was before I moved to London. It seemed to be a staple of queer clubbing back then. Asking people about clubs back then, one of their main memories is the smell of M-cat.”

Plus, it would be foolish to not spot a pattern here. M-kat’s first wave of popularity came in 2008, the year of the financial crisis, and now it’s back in 2024, amid a cost of living crisis. This “economic incentive” is key to M-kat’s revival, says Steve Rolles, senior policy analyst at drug policy foundation Transform.

‘Dealers are chucking it into the market because they have it and it’s cheap’

“There’s a supply theory about this and there’s a demand theory. The supply theory would be that one or more illegal market actors are introducing more of it into the market now. Maybe they've found a way to manufacture it more cheaply, or they've come into possession of a large quantity of it, or they found a new supply route from somewhere, like the Netherlands or China, wherever the hell it's being made. And they are just chucking it into the market because they have it and it's cheap.”

And just as the dealers are feeling the squeeze, making them keen to sell cheap drugs for a profit, so are the buyers. Life in the UK is depressingly expensive right now, and even if coke and MDMA are cheaper and purer than ever, numerous nights on the sauce and shake will start to really add up in 2024. “When it’s like seven, eight pounds a pint of some artisanal IPA, drinking actually becomes prohibitively expensive on a living wage in London,” says Rolles. So if you’re the type of person that will inevitably end up getting the bag in, a value packet might be exactly what you’re looking for.

M-cat died out once, though, when it was criminalised. Surely it’s set to die out again? “Mephedrone is actually one of the survivors out of that group of NPS [New Psychoactive Substance] legal highs,” says Rolles, who points out that M-cat’s staying power has far exceeded the likes of its bedfellows, like monkey dust or N-bombs. “So that suggests that it meets a demand, it meets a need. It’s like with MDMA, the demand for which has been incredibly resilient over a number of decades, basically because people like it.”

Maybe M-cat could be around for the long haul, then - or at least as long as the economy’s in the toilet. So, whether you’re partaking or not in this revival, you’ll definitely want to prepare your nostrils. It’s about to get whiffy.

*Names have been changed to protect anonymity. Advice for those struggling with mephedrone usage is available here.