The tan junkie: so desperate for a bronze high she injects herself with an unregulated drug

Russell Jenkins, 23 April

Carolyn Arrowsmith is an exotic creature, even by the standards of those blonde models who sip garish cocktails under a thousand Swarovski crystals in Liverpool One's Palm Sugar Lounge, waiting for a footballer to wander by.

The self-styled "Bad Barbie", who works in Merseyside's tougher-than-tough market place as a glamour model and dancer, is loud, brash, charming and belligerent in equal measure. It is not her Alexander McQueen scarf, bottle blonde hair, pink lips, extravagant Scouse accent or raucous laugh that stand out as much as her ironed-on tan. It radiates a mahogany warning light.

"I am a tanorexic," she admits, giggling as she seeks reassurance that her tan is still deep and lustrous even on a "pale" day. She regularly takes sunbed treatments and "freshens" it up with Hawaiian spray tans, but she is also one of a growing number of people injecting themselves with the unlicensed tanning drug Melanotan II.

She told The Times: "It starts off with an injection. Then you inject yourself every day for the next two weeks. You need to go on a sunbed every other day as well to activate it. I couldn't do my job without a tan. I'm sure there are plenty of girls who can carry off the English Rose look, but it's not for me."

She jokes that she may be saving herself from skin cancer by having fewer sunbed treatments but "I am probably giving myself some terminal illness that they have not discovered yet".

Health agencies on Merseyside and other hotspots, notably the North East, are warning that young girls and women are risking their health with their readiness to go to extreme lengths in search of cosmetic "beauty".

Melanotan II is known as the Barbie drug because it gives you a tan, increases your libido and keeps you thin by suppressing appetite. But this hypodermic "holy grail" comes at a price. Users record a host of side-effects from nausea to vomiting, high blood pressure, facial flushing, panic attacks and depression. Men say that they can be subject to unexpected, and sometimes painful, erections. It has also been linked to skin cancer because the drug is said to activate cells associated with malignant melanoma.

The drug, developed in the US in the 1980s, is a synthetic version of a natural hormone, melanocortin, that stimulates the skin to produce more eumelanin, the chemical responsible for brown pigmentation.

Jim McVeigh, deputy director of the Centre for Public Health, John Moores University, Liverpool, is concerned that this group of "naive" young injectors could be sharing needles, risking the likes of HIV. More immediately, they are self-injecting, inherently a dangerous activity, in conditions that are unlikely to be sterile. Even if the chemicals are as advertised, there may be contaminants or other unknown additives. It is illegal to sell the drug in Britain but not to possess it.

Film-makers from VBS.TV, the online television network for the magazine Vice, spent a year following beauty queens, hairdressers and fashion hangers-on for a documentary, Beautiful Liverpool. What began as a light-hearted look at the world of models such as Amanda Harrington and Jade Ainsworth ended up casting a light on those so obsessed with body image that they were willing to become drug misusers.

Andy Capper, the producer and co-director, said: "The more we looked into the world of beauty in Liverpool, the murkier it became. There is still a lot to smile at here but there's also a dark underbelly."

In one scene Ms Arrowsmith, a well-known and outspoken figure on the Liverpool beauty circuit, invites the crew into her bathroom, where she is preparing the needle with the clear solution. An air bubble could kill you, she says with a raucous laugh. As she pushes the needle into her stomach, she winces and recalls hearing about one girl who "nearly died" when she punctured her stomach wall. "Bloody hell," she says. "That really hurt."

Ms Arrowsmith told The Times that she was introduced to Melanotan II two years ago by a friend in Manchester and had been injecting it off and on ever since. It comes with 10ml of clear liquid, enough for ten injections, an insulin needle and swabs.

"It's all completely medically safe," she insisted. "It's just what is in the drug that cannot be guaranteed. You don't absolutely know everything that is in it. It is slightly painful. A lot of people say it doesn't hurt in the same way as people say it doesn't hurt when you get a tattoo done. It does. When you push the liquid into your stomach you feel a burning sensation."

Ms Arrowsmith, who started going on sunbeds at the age of 10, is startlingly honest about the drug and her approach to life.

"The injections may make you feel very nauseous," she said. "People take them before they go to bed because you want to be asleep because they make you feel sick. The next day you have no energy. You are tired. It feels like travel sickness. You are heavy and feel fatigued for 24 hours."

Melanotan II is openly advertised online but on Merseyside it is as commonly acquired alongside anabolic steroids in gyms or passed from hand to hand in beauty shops and tanning salons. One health official suggested to The Times that the beauty shops in one particular Merseyside suburb had a reputation as "Melanotan centre".

Martin Chandler, drug misuse database manager at the Centre for Public Health, said that between April last year and the end of December, 54 melanotan users turned up at needle exchanges in Cheshire and Merseyside. He acknowledges that the figure is only the "tip of the iceberg".

"People in Liverpool love new trends especially if there is something dodgy behind the scene. People like to think they are ahead of the game."

Beautiful Liverpool, a five-part documentary series, will be available on www.vbs.tv from Monday, April 25