To read up on raw cacao – the unprocessed, antioxidant-rich stuff from which cocoa powder and chocolate are made – is to be blown away by its many virtues.

Forty times the antioxidants of blueberries! More calcium than cow’s milk! A better source of iron than any other plant on the planet!

The Amazonian superfood is also a natural mood-elevator, increasing one’s levels of serotonin, dopamine, anandamide and phenylethylamine.

Which is probably why the youth of today have taken to using it as a party drug.

In Berlin, they’re spiking their drinks with it. In London and New York, they’re popping it in pill form. Belgian chocolatier Dominique Persoone has even invented a special device that allows users to snort cacao powder as though it were cocaine – with the added benefit, of course, that it’s not.

This is all very good and well, but does treating cacao like a party drug mean that it actually works like one?

At first, the science appears to be on its side. According to a study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, raw cacao increases the number endorphins in your bloodstream, floods it with muscle-relaxing magnesium, and is choc-full – if you’ll forgive the pun – of plant-based nutrients called flavanols that increase blood circulation and stimulate brain power.

On the other hand, you’d have to snort a truckload lot of the stuff in order to actually feel any of this.

Dr. Catherine Kwik-Uribe, the director of research and development for Mars Symbioscience, the scientific division of the company that makes the famous chocolate bar, said the number of mood-enhancing compounds in raw cacao was ultimately too low to have anything like the effect of your stock-standard upper.

Which is not to say that cacao-using youngsters aren’t happier people for putting ground-up nuts up their noses. The placebo effect is a potent beast. (Dr Kwik-Uribe said that “I have never seen a person not smile when enjoying a piece of chocolate,” but then what else is someone employed by a global chocolate manufacturer going to say?)

But don’t expect to hear colours, see sounds, feel at one with the universe or experience a debilitating comedown just because you’ve had a run-in with what for want of a better term we might call the brown dragon.

Don’t necessarily expect to be healthier, either, at least not if a rolled up $20 is your delivery mechanism of choice. There may not be any research out there to suggest that snorting cacao is bad for you, but there’s plenty to suggest that eating it like a normal person has a lot to recommend it.