“Johnson’s Friend”, “Pink Colgate”, “Jar Jar Jam” – these are just some of the street names given to ‘Bungle’, a popular gel like designer drug that has been making the round in Perth’s nightlife scene for the past six or so weeks. Coloured pink and with a consistency similar to children’s toothpaste, Bungle is a very expensive disassociate/upper that has become the fashionable drug of choice for Perth’s young and rich. Relatively ignored by the media (a small piece in a local paper went largely unnoticed), Bungle still belongs to a select clique, probably because of its exorbitant price. Despite this, its presence is being increasingly felt in Perth’s clubs, the drug becoming somewhat of an urban legend for clubbers who claim to know dealers, or know someone who knows someone who knows someone that can get them Bungle.
Turns out Bungle is not that hard to find, just hard to attain. I talked to some users and some peddlers about it, and why it remains a phenomenon unique to Perth.
FIFO $$$
The mining boom has created a two speed economy in Perth. We have a slew of tradies, bureaucrats and miners, who have gotten obscenely rich off land rape and minerals, etc. Guess what? A bunch of guys in their mid to late 20s with cash to burn tend to get pretty bored with rampant alcoholism, whoring and custom number plates after a while. They turn to drugs. Ice and cocaine have made a big resurgence in Perth, but it is only with the snowballing wealth of the cashed up FIFO that designer drugs like Bungle have begun to emerge. There is truly a market for this shit now, and dealers and makers are laughing all the way to the black-market bank.
“TICKLE ME PINK”
Through a friend, I met two girls who are regular users of Bungle. Their boyfriend, a crane operator up north, gets them the drug from a dealer who lives in the ‘East Perthish part of town’. I got them to describe what the drug was like: “What can I say? It feels amazing. As soon as you rub it on your lips you have about thirty seconds of feeling like a firework that is moving at slow-motion through the sky then, you know, BOOM!”. Her friend concurred, “Bungle just makes everything feel like you are having sex with some…I dunno, like a cosmic being, if that makes sense?” It didn’t, but she continued. “And even coming down feels ‘ok’, I mean, compared to most shit, you know? It’s a bit like getting smothered with a pillow…filled with happy, y’know?” I didn’t. But these girls piqued my interest in Bungle, and so they promised me they’d talk to their mutual man friend and see if he’d drive me to meet their dealer.
JOHNSON THE ELEPHANT
A week later, I was with one of the girls on the way to meet her boyfriend’s dealer. She hadn’t met him either, so we were both nervous. But hey, there we were sitting outside a café in Leederville talking to a guy who seemed like your run of the mill mid-20s yipster (cashed up hipster). He was nice enough, and decided that I should call him “Johnson” after the pink elephant from the kids’ show that last played on ABC in 1993. “Remember it had that talking accordion? Haha classic!” he said between sips of his long black. He said that he had never even heard of Bungle until two months ago when a friend who is “quite keen” on happenings in the drug world started to talk about it. Soon enough, this friend had found the guy in Perth who was actually making it, and set Johnson the Elephant up. Johnson, who up til that point had just dealt cocaine, weed and all kinds of pills on a “semi-casual” basis, was now one of Perth’s first Bungle peddlers. So I asked him if it was hard to get people to buy a drug that is essentially a mystery, to which he said, “Man, I dunno, this city bores people to the point where they’ll leap well before they actually fucking think…shit sells itself! HAHA!”.
DA FUCK IS BUNGLE?
I know almost nothing about drugs or chemistry, etc, and I was out of the Bungle price range by at least two HECS debts, so I really couldn’t get my hand on any of it. People weren’t willing to share it with me either. Fair enough. There is barely any info available on Bungle, but the fact that it is applied on the lips and gums and apparently “behind the ear” like some kind of salve, suggests something like dextromethorphan, which works as a dissociative and has been known to appear in drugs applied as gel/balms/liquids on the lips and gums, and in rare cases, skin. Again, I know next to nothing about drug chemistry, and this is just me speculating. Johnson did let me “see” some Bungle, but it may as well have been some pink icing in a sealed plastic baggy for all I could tell.
As Bungle continues to be talked about, hyped up, and used in elite Perth circles, it will inevitably attract more serious attention than my own. For the moment, it is the thing to do if you are rich, young and one of the more beloved beauties of the Perth clubbing scene.
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