Strip-searched at the Serbian border - by Sasha Putilin
Psychotechnology
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Strip-searched at the Serbian border<br>On my way to perform standup in Serbian, 1.5 years ago
Sasha Putilin<br>Jul 17, 2026
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“What is this bottle?” asks the Serbian border control official at the border between Serbia and Montengro.<br>I’m on a bus. Its destination is Belgrade. I intend to perform standup comedy there at an open mic in Serbian language.
The bottle is a 50 ml dark plastic one, with no label. I have ADHD for which I use lisdexamfetamine (Elvanse/Vyvanse) at a dose lower than the lowest available capsule. My daily dose is 10-15 mg daily and the minimum capsule on the market is 20 mg. So I use liquid measurement: I dissolve a capsule in water and then use an oral syringe to measure out the requrired dose.<br>In the bottle, there is something a small amount of lisdexamfetamine, around 20 mg dissolved in 10 ml of water.<br>“Lisdexamfetamine. I’m prescribed it,” I tell the official.<br>“Methamphetamine?” he asks.<br>His tone is non-confrontational and trollish. He does not seem to be actually suspecting methamphetamine, but perhaps he is trying to intimidate me a bit by mentioning a clearly illegal drug in a joking fashion.<br>“Lisdexamfetamine, it’s used for ADHD” I try to explain.<br>“LSD?” He continues his bit of mentioning illegal drugs.<br>We go through a few rounds of me trying to explain what ADHD is. I pull up Google Translate and type in “Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder” which doesn’t help. There is a second official on the bus, but he also doesn’t speak much English.<br>I speak little actual Serbian — somewhere between A1 and A2 level. I can get by in textbook situations like ordering something at a restaurant, but a conversation with ADHD with border control police is not from any Serbian learning textbook I read. This level of Serbian seem low for performing on stage, but you can do standup with only rehearsed lines, plus Serbian is one of the closest languages to my mother tongue, Russian.<br>The stress of the language barrier is starting to get to me. Then a bright idea comes to me: no liquid = no problem. So I just… pour the contents on the bottle on the floor of the bus. Then stomp on the puddle.<br>Don’t do this folks. The optics of doing this are just not good. The border control guy gets pissed off and tells me to come with them.<br>In case you are wondering why I did it: in Russia, where I am from originally, the law is that the weight of a substance is counted together with any additives or impurities. If you are an unscrupolous cocaine dealer, and you cut a gram of cocaine with a gram of levamisole — congrats, in the eyes of law you now have two grams of cocaine. If you take 100 mcg of LSD — the amount on a typical blotter — and dissolve it in 500 ml of water, congrats: you now have half a kilo of LSD, and potentially a life term prison sentence. Russian laws are insane.<br>I didn’t know Serbian laws, but not having an unlabeled bottle of a controlled substance seemed like a reasonable idea. And it is indeed a very reasonable idea — but when you empty your bottle before crossing the border and not right in front of the relevant authorities.<br>We exit the bus, enter a nearby building and get to a room with only a bench in it. One of police officers shows me a phone with Google Translate that says “Don’t worry”. Has anyone ever calmed down upon hearing this phrase? Especially from the authorities pissed at what you did.<br>In the room, they tell me to take everything out of my bag and pockets. Then they instruct me to remove most of my clothes. I comply, and now I am standing in front of them in my boxer briefs and T-shirt in front of a table with all my possessions.<br>The situation is very tense. I show them that the bottle of lisdexamfetamine capsules has my name on it. They put the bottle aside and start bombarding me questions in Serbian, which I mostly don’t understand. One of them leaves and brings a guy who speaks a bit better English, which helps, but marginally.<br>The bulk of their questions seem to be about whether I have “vutra”. What is “vutra”? As Dubioza Kolektiv sings in their song “Balkan Boys”: “...I like vutra, that’s marijuna…” . Vutra is sland for marijuana, which I quickly learn from one of them. I like vutra, but I don’t have any with me. I inform the official of the latter but not the former.<br>Language-learning advice: make sure you learn your new words in stressful and unusual contexts. Get into as many of these as possible. The words become unforgettable. This story happened a year and a half ago — I didn’t know what vutra was before and the word is now burned into my subconsciousness.<br>I actually don’t know why they wanted specifically vutra. There are many fine drugs they can prosecute people for. Why not ask about coke, MDMA or psychedelics? I would’ve loved learning Serbian slang for these drugs too.<br>They go through my possessions and become interested in a transparent ziplock bag containing...