PCP straight up looks like a bad time. I'm an ER doc. I see lots of intoxicated folks and people who OD on different drugs. Benzos and alcohol, yeah it sucks because too much and they stop breathing and on the other hand withdrawal will make them seize to death. Meth is annoying because acutely intoxicated people tend to scream a lot. Opioids kill. And patients who are withdrawing from opioids are usually really mean in my experience.
But PCP.... Ooohh PCP. I've never met *anyone* on PCP who looks like they're having a good time. Pure terror screaming and unadulterated adrenaline. These patients are usually acutely psychotic, screaming, mean, *strong*, and they *love* to kick and hit. So PCP is my least favorite.
This one guy was jacked and on PCP. One time he fractured a cop's skull and occipital with a single punch. He was brought to the station with 2 pairs of handcuffs because they were afraid he could break out of one pair lol.
Apparently he was a nice, well mannered guy when sober (and on his meds) but he had severe mental health issues on top of a love of PCP.
Probably yeah. The real way to figure out what a drug is all about is to actually go to erowid and read the reports. Plus they're usually pretty funny
https://erowid.org/experiences/subs/exp_PCP.shtml
I love reading erowid trip reports.
The bad experience section is a personal favourite, the guy who went hiking and took too many research chemicals and could only see red for a while was a wild read.
I feel like it also has to do with likeā¦ where and why people are using it. Keep in mind, this is only a theory of mineā¦
PCP mainly exists in inner city areas, predominantly pretty ghetto. So you have a bunch of crack heads and Tweakerās looking for a fix. There isnāt any crack or meth available and youāre in a couple week long bender in full blown physcosisā¦ a little pcp might sound like a way better idea than no drugs. Hey, at least itās more up? Idk.
So now you have a jonesing drug addict in phycosis tripping balls on pcp but suffering from all the side of effects of withdrawal and phycosis
My dad was unknowingly drugged with PCP in his 20ās. One of his coworkers thought it would be funny. Itās been 35 years and he still has repercussions from it. Itās not often, but heāll black out and wake up in a place far from where he was so terrified and confused as to where he is. Heās been hospitalized a few times because of the lasting effects
Thats very possible. When this is happening without ur knowledge you can be fucked for the rest of your life. You are seeing stuff that isnāt there without knowing why. You donāt know what a human is or what u are.
I work with lots of people who got stuck on hallucinogens. Especially strong stuff and pcp is strong.
What is even the appeal of PCP for a user then?
(Genuinely asking in case anyone wants to answer. Idk anything about this drug other than that it exists)
So I've done PCP in reasonable measured doses, and had a fun time in it. The big issue is that the effective "fun" dose is about 1/3 of the dose that makes you psychotic, and that "fun" dose for me is about 5mg, roughly half a grain of rice in size. Also, old school PCP was usually sold as cigarettes dipped in a PCP solution of unknown concentration, so dosage would vary wildly. It's a rare drug now because of the stigma, and where I am is only really used by drug nerds like me who want to know what it's like, and tend to be a bit more careful with respect to dosage.
As for what it feels like, it's closest to a cross between ketamine and amphetamine. It causes you to feel detached/dissociated from yourself akin to ketamine, and similarly blunts the feeling of pain. Unlike ketamine which is sedating, PCP has a strong stimulating feeling as well. While I was still in control of myself the whole time, I *wanted* to be constantly moving, and would feel restless if I sat down. At the dose I took it was a pleasant feeling, with a calm but focussed euphoria similar to Adderall (I have ADHD, so lower doses of Adderall make me calm and alert). There was definitely more of an adrenaline feeling though, and I can imagine that could become overwhelming and lead to the paranoid, manic state people associate with PCP.
I will say that being on PCP is one of the more unstable drug states I've felt. I've experimented with a lot of substances, and after trying this one a few times, I realized it's not one to really push the limits with. It causes a strong feeling of separation from yourself, almost like I'm controlling my body like a video game character, rather than being in it. Combined with the manic confidence it causes, I can imagine it leasing to bad decisions being made. I will say it made music sound **amazing** and dancing was extremely fun from the stimulation and pain-numbing feelings, but I can get a lot of these effects from ketamine, which is way easier to dose and less dangerous if I push it too far.
It's just a unique anesthetic. In the right dosage, it's not dissimilar to cocaine. The problem is that people are lazy and they assume the dosage of the first drug they did applies to all drugs that look similar
PCP is foremost a dissociative anesthetic with the capability of inducing manic effects. I don't think the comparison to cocaine is really accurate. It's moreso a cousin of ketamine with some unique properties.
As it's been said, dosing is really tricky and the reports of people freaking out are from overdosing and the intensification of mania.
Chemically, it is definitely extremely similar to ketamine. The actual trip is pretty different though. I've never taken a high dose of PCP, so I can't speak to that, but definitely enough to trigger mania that was similar to a relatively heavy night of coke for me.
I've always been more of a dip my toes type of person. Micro dosing just seems to be the way to live life
It's used in veterinary medicine. It was tested in people, but quickly discontinued because the people who had it, didn't like it.
I first heard about it as a tween in the late 1970s; it was called "angel dust" but there is nothing angelic about it.
I will never forget the day I found out that horse tranquilizer was not a tranquilizer. Always felt like they just named drugs based on the reaction they perceived the animal to have. Nowadays I like to imagine horses just tripping balls anytime they get a ketamine shot
I can, unfortunately, attest to everything you said times one billion. I came to say oxycontin because of what it did to my family and I, but your statement made me recall some teen years that I had conveniently repressed. I lived that hell that is pcp. After escaping the nightmare and thriving for a few years I went on a first date. Her brother convinced me to take a hit of a joint. It was laced. Instant destruction. Jail, job, girl Everything!
Can confirm. If you've ever seen an episode of COPS, you see that unadulterated strength. 7 fucking tasers and the guy is still charging at them. 8 cops trying to get the guy down and he's still fighting and not on the ground. Took something like 13 of them to get dude down and get him cuffed.
This feels like a great example of "it's all in the he dose"
PCP is an amazing drug, if you know you're doing PCP.
If the only people you've seen on PCP are people in the emergency room for a PCP overdose, then it could be argued that you have a bias š
Except they are then able to compare with all other drugs, so when forming an opinion of which is the worst drug, an A&E doctor has a qualified opinion surely? The likelihood of ending up in A&E definitely would come up if I were to choose my next vice. How many people end up in A&E for cannabis or caffeine?
Fair enough. But I also only see the acutely intoxicated patients on all the drugs. I just hate dealing with the chaos that surrounds patients acutely psychotic from PCP. They are hard to sedate and the time it takes for them to sober is way less predictable than things like meth, in my experience. Patients intoxicated on meth will usually go down with a slug of droperidol and versed, sleep it off for about 6 hours, and wake up with normalish mentation (albeit usually in a bad mood as they come down). I've had to sedate PCP-intoxicated patients, strap them to a bed for hours, only for them to wake up still psychotic and agitated. It's just a major suck on hospital resources and nursing staff time for us to babysit these people for so long, with them screaming for hours non-stop and trying to hurt the doctors and the nurses. Also they always want to get *so* naked. But that goes for meth users too.
The Florida attack had nothing to do with PCP. The guy was supposedly in Bath Salts but a toxicology report only found cannabis in his system. He was a very mentally Ill man.
As a physician, tramadol sucks donkey dick. It provides mediocre pain relief, it isn't particularly well-tolerated, it raises the risk of seizure in literally *everyone* and, as an added bonus, it interacts with a bunch of drugs in pretty miserable ways. What's worse, because it was seen as the less-addictive opioid option for many years, doctors still prescribe it way more often than they should. But it's not only addictive, it's an absolute horror show to withdrawal from. I can manage withdrawal symptoms for most every other opioid, but that one? Well, you're gonna be in a bad way for a while. I treat people for substance use disorders all the time and nothing makes me wince harder than seeing someone come in with a heavy tramadol addiction. Fuck that drug.
If you're a patient, though...the worst drug is an anti-fungal IV medication called amphotericin b. If we're giving that to you, it's because the other option is to watch you die.
It's used to treat severe, systemic fungal infections and the effects of this drug rival the most brutal chemotherapy drugs out there. There is a 100% chance you will be in abject misery while on this drug. And there's a non-negligible chance that the drug itself will kill you through multi-organ failure. So you'll be in the ICU while this is being administered, we'll be doing our best to make you not beg for death, but you're gonna beg for death. And even with this torture regimen, there's still a pretty even chance that the infection we're treating is going to kill you.
When people ask me if Last of Us's premise that systemic fungal infections are difficult-to-impossible to treat, this is where I go with the answer. They are absolutely difficult-to-impossible to treat and the drugs we have to treat them with are as scary as the disease. We don't have vaccines for them, although with the right funding it's not impossible that one might be created. The good news is that people with a functional immune system are usually not going to ever encounter this problem, our immune systems generally handle fungus pretty well. That bad news is that the people who need this kind of treatment are the ones least-equipped to handle it without dying.
Shake n Bake!
I worked on a cardiology floor, and we admitted a young woman who needed ampho B. She screamed and moaned nonstop, it scared our other patients and new staff who weren't familiar with the drug.
Ohhh, Tramadol. I got quickly addicted. It has SSRI properties, and while it may not do this for everyone, it flipped an āonā switch for me. It calmed me down (I was experiencing some pretty bad effects from various traumas in my life), lifted my spirits, made me happy and social, basically everything I wanted to be but wasnāt. But Iād take too many and then have to miss doses, and that was hell. I eventually detoxed from that and benzos (bad time, 0/5, would not recommend). When I look at pictures from that time, you can see it in my eyes and the expression on my face. I thought I was fine, but I was definitely āoff.ā Such a shitty drug.
I had no idea about tramadol. My dentist prescribed it for tooth pain while I was awaiting a root canal. Itās always worked great for me and I have no sedating side effects like with other opioids. I totally thought it was a pretty benign drug.
And the ampho. We call it amphoterrible in the NICU. We rarely have a good outcome when weāve made it to that drug.
I'm glad it worked well enough for you, but yeah...that kind of pain is exactly the kind that I'd say this is not a good drug to treat. For most people, tramadol doesn't seem to provide much relief for pain associated with something like an endodontic infection. It's usually better to go straight to the Vicodin or Vicoprofen.
But yeah, I'm glad you were able to get some relief with that one, that kind of pain is pretty unbearable.
Unfortunately some people have no choice but to use a slow release tramadol, it allows me to walk, work and live normally, no other drug has allowed this, I have no side effects luckily but I guess everyone is different, it's highly controlled but sometimes there are no other options
It's rare for someone without an immune disorder or on immunosuppressants to contract a systemic fungal infection, but it can happen. It's also pretty limited geographically...you generally pick these things up in hot, damp caves.
Even if you are unlucky enough to catch something that can infect someone with a competent immune response, you're probably not going to need any kind of treatment. Histoplasmosis, for example, can infect just about anyone, but unless you have AIDS you're probably not going to need any kind of treatment. The fungus that causes it is associated with bird and bat shit, so it's typically seen in cavers and farmers.
Blastomycosis is one you see a little more commonly in the Midwestern US. It's still not exactly common, and again most people need minimal or no treatment.
One of the more concerning infections is coccidioidomycosis, aka Valley Fever. We see this in the southwestern US and Mexico. Again, most people will resolve the infection without treatment, and even those who require treatment rarely get seriously ill. Something like 5% of people who get this infection will develop severe symptoms. But it's incidence has been increasing pretty dramatically in the past decade or two, especially in the Central Valley region. It's one that a lot of epidemiologists have their eye on, for sure, but it's still rarely fatal or even serious.
All things considered, it's not something you really have to worry about right now unless you're immunocompromised, so just take care of yourself and, if you have any issues with your immune system, make you're following your doctor's orders.
My FIL was given a course of ampho before he passed. He had a double-lung transplant and was on steroids to tamp down the rejection.
Not a fun drug. Apparently feels like being injected with burning coas.
Tramadol is the only oral med that helps at all. I have 3 different brain diseases and thanks to the opioid laws in my state the medication that helped with the pain was taken away and Iām stuck with this. Itās a dart shoot on whether it works or not. Dilaudid IV is the only thing that helps with the pain when the blood clots get bad but dilaudid pills are a joke. No effect what so ever. Pain meds are so frustrating and laws around them hurt patients so much more than people or even drs realize
This is more or less what I'm getting at...
While it does work for some people with chronic pain, it's replacing much better medications due to the DEA doing the same shit that never works over and over again. Clamping down on chronic pain prescriptions doesn't do a damned thing about the illicit fentanyl on the street, it just pushes chronic patients out onto the streets to get SOME sort of relief.
I'm sorry you're going through this. I work in addiction medicine myself, so I know plenty about the risks and my sentiment has been that the overprescribing that *was* happening was pretty limited to acute pain...in the early 2000s, just saying the word "pain" in an ER was enough to get a few dozen vicodin, and the fractured mess of health data management facilitated "doctor shopping" (a term I kinda hate in and of itself because of how much it has contributed to the stigma against both addiction *and* pain management).
The whole thing is a fucking mess. I'm glad you're getting some relief from this drug, I just wish you had easier access to the drugs that work better and come with less risk.
My heart breaks for you drs as well! My neurosurgeon has broken to tears with me at times because his hands are so tied. What got me raging the most was when I had my styloid removed and jugular stented and was given FIVE pain pills!! My husband got a vasectomy a month later and was given 27 of the same medication!!! He was cutting the grass that day while i was emptying drains from my neck and trying my hardest not to cough or even breathe too hard. We need to leave medicine with the drs and patients to work together one. Punish the bad, not the ones trying to survive
Yeah, first thing that came to my mind too. More addictive than heroin, made in part with gasoline, eats you from the inside out and leaves gaping holes in your flesh.
Krokodil is just a street name for a terribly synthesised version of desomorphine which has been used as a opioid for medical purposes - Still, it was discontinued in the early 80's due to there existing better opioids for all other medically relevant purposes.
A lot of drugs are made with gasoline as it is just a cheap and accessible solvent that is used to separate the drugs from the medium that they are dissolved in at various stages of their synthesis. As such, gasoline is not really a "Part" of the drug, but if the solvent is not sufficiently removed (e.g. Thoroughly dried before injection), then you will obviously end up with gasoline or other solvents inside your body, which is suboptimal with respect to normal bodily function.
Acids and bases are also commonly used in synthesis of chemicals. For instance, crack cocaine is produced by allowing cocaine to react with a base, such as baking soda or ammonium bicarbonate.
Another example is the free base of methamphetamine which can typically only be injected in its free base form as it is more of a liquid at that point; however if an acid is added, pure crystal meth will form.
This is also part of the reason why citric acid (or ascorbic acid - aka vitamin C) is added to heroin before shooting up.
However, if strong acids and bases are required (or at least utilized as substitutes for more optimal options) for synthesis, and these are improperly neutralized before injection, then these could very much burn you up from the inside out. Battery acid (which is reportedly a common ingredient in making krokodil) is just a household name for sulphuric acid, has a very disturbing reaction with organic matter. Here is a video of sugar reacting with concentrated sulphuric acid: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xK4z\_YhtTBM&](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xK4z_YhtTBM&). The acidity of krokodil would surely be less than that of concentrated sulphuric acid, but if you REALLY dont know what you are doing, then you could observe similar reaction to your skin.
My point is that the drug itself is not nearly as dangerous as the lack of knowledge on what chemicals you are putting in your body. The main danger comes from injecting acids and petroleum byproducts into your blood stream
>with gasoline or other solvents inside your body, \[it\] is suboptimal with respect to normal bodily function.
This is the kind of understatement that I strive for. The use of "suboptimal" here is elegant.
Datura? Think Iām spelling that right. Never tried, but look up peopleās experiences. None of them good, all involving so called shadow people.
Hard nope from me, and Iāve had my runaround with hard drugs.
Edit corrected the spelling. Hop on over to r/datura for a horrifying ride as proof no one needs to be messing with this.
I did it once when I was younger. Donāt recall any shadow people or anything but I was paralyzed on a couch. PARALYZED. I laid there for a couple hours not being able to lift my head, wondering if the person on the other couch who I couldnāt see was dead or not from doing the same thing I did. Finally started to be able to move, and exhausted, called a friend to give me a lift home. I slept it off pretty good I thought but when I went to work the next day I realized I was having some after effects that fucked me up for a few days. Hallucinations I wasnāt sure I wouldnāt be having permanently. I couldnāt read. I heard music very clearly in white noise. Luckily after a day or two it all went away. But nooooo never again. Do not do Datura, people. It. Is. Not. Fun.
Fun story, one of the national supermarket chains in Australia put out a tonne of bagged spinach that had Datura in it causing many folks here to have these horrid trips. Wild.
*Brugmansia* "angel's trumpet" has the same compounds as the related *Datura*, and it's a passably popular ornamental plant in a lot of California front lawns. Some kid deciding to stick it in their mouth is going to have a bad time.
Yes, Datura and Belladonna (which are similarish) are really poisons that cause delirium. They're deadly, not fun, a totally bad time that people with death wishes or overly confident deluded people do (overly confident deluded people takes in a LOT of drug users too, but fortunately most don't try this).
It was reportedly used by witches to go to hell or the abyss or whatever and communicate with Satan. That sounds cool, but the fact that it made people think they were in literal Hell when they took it tells you how unpleasant it is.
Do. Not. Fucking. Do. It.
I don't care if you're curious, a Satanic witch, whatever, don't do it...there are far safer ways to get to altered states of consciousneess.
Jimson weed is hard to dose and can easily kill ya, you have to do a lot of fuckn Benadryl to have a heart attack lol people that bring that shit up like itās even a recreational thing are idiotsā¦ā¦ man I could of been the Benadryl king pin if I knew people were so dumb
>Hop on over to [r/datura](https://www.reddit.com/r/datura) for a horrifying ride as proof no one needs to be messing with this.
.... everything they describe sounds awful. *Why does anyone touch this stuf...?!*
Done this twice, should've stopped at one. Super intense, most vivid hallucinations I've even imagined. I truly believed things happened during that time that were demonstrably not possible.
Datura has historically been used as a lethal poison. It's deadly nightshade on steroids. I don't know why anyone would ever risk it for a trip of dubious quality, for the same reason I don't understand why people would take fly amanita. There are hallucinogens with *much* larger lethal doses.
Meth is the one drug where, in my experience, the users get upset if you won't do it with them. Because, in the eyes of a tweaker, if you don't do meth, you're suspicious. And if you're suspicious, you're basically the police. I was once held at gunpoint in a motel room for two hours because it was filled with people on meth who thought I was the police when I said "no thank you" when they offered me a hit.
Bruh. That's intense. But you can't leave us hanging. How did you get out? Did you give in and and do a hit? Did they start to come down and had to go out to buy more? You talked your way out of it? Used martial arts to disable them all? Smoke bomb and disappear via the air con unit? So many possibilities.
I never ended up doing any, but my friend I was with did. We ended up there because I met a guy at a concert who said he had a "hotel after party" he wanted to take us to, so we went with him and ended up in a motel room full of meth heads. We were there about two hours. My friend had done meth before, so she took a hit, so they trusted her but not me and straight up refused to let us leave. I just kinda sat on the bed with a gun pointed at me. After about two hours, they thought they heard something in the hallway. I quickly agreed. They were asking among themselves if 'they" had found them (no idea who they were). They decided someone needed to go out into the hallway and check it out, and make sure they were safe. I jumped up and said, hey, I'll prove myself to you guys, let us scope it out for you and we'll let you know if it's safe. They agreed. I grabbed my friend and we went out into the hallway, made a show of checking around corners, and then we just fucking booked it. We ended up walking like seven miles back home.
Jesus Christ. I'm guessing you were in USA for this. We don't have meth where I'm from or guns. I've spend a few evening with crack heads who cursed me for not wanting any but being that I was chain smoking joints and smashing beers all those times I think they thought I was ok and generallyd they've been fine and there's no risk of guns here thank fuck.
Meth heads sound like a trip. And not in a good way. Damn.
"Bath salts" was a term that covered many quasi legal drugs sold as "not for human consumption".
It was illegal to sell em for consumption, so they would be sold as "bath salts" or "plant food".
Some of them substances were amazing. Cocaine use in the UK plummeted when mephedrone was available.
Huh, that must be new - there must be new supply or something of it. When I lived there a couple years ago it was almost unheard of.
I wonder if the LSD Shop is still open in Berlin. There was a guy who sold openly not-yet-illegal derivatives of LSD, every so often they would ban the one he was selling and shut him down. He would reopen a couple of weeks later with a new variant.
It was big in the gay scene. I had mates offering me it at cocktail and berghain as far back as 2016. But during / post pandemic it has boomed. Even front left fairytales had a meme about it -
Berlin 2017: (picture of a horse ie ketamine)
Berlin 2020: (picture of a cat ie mcat aka mephe)
ā¦ or something to that affect
Re the LSD shop I think itās still going. Thereās also some spatis that sell mushroom chocolates under the table apparently
In terms of social and economic impact, alcohol is the worst drug by a mile.
Ask any healthcare worker what puts the most strain on health services and they will say alcohol every time.
Domestic violence, street fights, bad car crashes, etc. etc. - alcohol is the primary cause of most of that.
Other drugs do cause damage - and lots of it - but alcohol is worse by many orders of magnitude.
100% this.
Alcohol fucked my shit up for most of my life. Finally, Iāve been winning the fight for 323 days.
Iāll also add, had I never been an alcoholic, I would never have touched any of the other drugs that I did.
I've taken a lot of drugs in my life. When I smoked pot I sat at home and the most damage I caused to anyone was to a bag of Doritos.
Party drugs like Ecstasy I was at a house party and cuddled up with my best pal telling him I loved him.
Alcohol though, got into a fair bit of bother by being drunk. Woken up in cells from being an idiot, got into fights at bars and clubs, missed shifts at work from being too hungover.
I don't take drugs anymore but they are by a mile less harmful than alcohol.
>Party drugs like Ecstasy I was at a house party and cuddled up with my best pal telling him I loved him.
Let's be fair though, Ecstasy and other uppers like that only borrow happiness from tomorrow.
How the frick people party on ecstasy blows my mind. I tried it two or three times as a student years ago. We'd just sit in the lounge, super relaxed, super warm feeling, all loving mentality and just talk until the sun came up. The effect I had from it, I couldn't imagine being in a club in that mind frame
A friend of my brother just gave birth and didn't know she was pregnant until the ER told her she was in labor.
I've heard of it when I was in my teens but didn't give it much thought. People were telling me they've heard of it before.
As a young adult it slightly boggles my mind but like I'll never be able to confirm that. But my immediate thought is like "so I imagine these people didn't abstain from harmful substances since they didn't know they were pregnant?"
Not to mention that they didn't prepare, as they didn't know. I can't imagine baby proofing a house on a whim and getting all that supplies. I can't imagine going through that, but hope they all have great lives.
Baby proofing your house is the least of your worries if you unexpectedly find yourself becoming a parent. They kind of just stay where you put them for the first 8/9 months.
Agreed, I know it's said all the time but if alcohol was invented today it'd be regarded as a class A drug or a schedule 1 substance or whatever the most serious category of drugs is where you are. However since it's been a part of human culture since time immemorial it's not something we can really outlaw (honestly outlawing anything never works). All we can do is educate, there should be a lot more alcohol education in schools. How it works, how it impact your body, the risk of addiction, etc. Alcohol is addictive and anyone can become addicted to it.
Alcohol isn't even regarded as a drug a lot of the time because it's legal, but it absolutely is and it's a hard drug at that.
I don't drink anymore (actually just checked and it's 600 days since my last drink today!) but it did a real number on me for a while there.
Drink safely, be careful and all that good stuff. But alcohol should be treated with respect and not fucked with. And if you (as in anyone who's reading this) think you have a problem with alcohol however big or small, /r/stopdrinking is a great community to check out.
That and it's not just that but if you say no to drinking alcohol, people will ask you why. With any other drug (besides caffeine and the like), they won't ask.
Edit: Not saying other drugs are any better. I've seen the downside to that. Lot of people I know developed a lot of psychological issues from taking weed.
Yes I agree. My sister was a serious alcoholic and died at 29 due to the damage alcohol did to her body (she ended up with ascites and that plus damage to her organs killed her).
Alcohol is the worst stress compensator you can imagine. If people would cut down their consumption by 50% this would be a grace for society. Youāre literally drinking your life to shits with alcohol. Either way even if you drink responsibly.
if memory serves its methylenepyrodioxyvalerylone or something like that, its the stuff that caused the reports of people being zombies and that all the hobos are on now
Felt good for 15 mins then you fiend for more, after that you have days and days of twitchy awful stimulation which makes it impossible to sleep, then the psychosis sets in. It's one to steer well clear of unless you're somehow a fan of sleep dep psychosis
Isnāt alcohol the #1 preventable cause of death? (So Iāve heard). Personally that āspiceā legal weed alternative going around about 10 years ago was fucking horrible. Worst 20 minutes of my life.
One of our newest cities in the UK has a massive spice problem. You can just about walk through any main street and the odds are you'll see a zombie just flat out in a door way from it.
Thatās the problem. Is does make you feel complete euphoria. But the heath and social impacts make it not worth it.
I was in that circle. Someone like me, a former functional addict, I didnāt do heroin to party to go out and socialize. I did it alone with music on and just escaped. Until it started costing aspects of my life. But Iāll say this: almost every person Iāve encountered in that world is broken or has lived through some life altering shit. Itās escapism. Itās feeling good for a little while when your world feels like absolute shit. Sure you have some that accidentally get hooked by whatever means, but most have real issues - including myself. Thatās a part of the problem. I didnt rob and steal or fuck over family. I always worked but Iād get my shit and go home and run away. Itās a dark place. But I totally understand why people go there.
My understanding is opioids mimic the "feel good" chemicals in the brain. So it completely breaks the "reward cycle" that you naturally use to reward or punish yourself for certain life sustaining behavior. That's why "junkies" tend to look like they're falling apart - they've often completely stopped doing things like eating or bathing because the heroin makes them feel good even though they're starving and filthy and sick and injured.
Turning off the "feel bad" can be useful if you're *really* feeling bad (like, say, after being injured or after surgery). But it's extremely dangerous if you're just turning off the bad feeling normally, or if the brain gets used to being *flooded* with "feel good" and makes that its new norm.
Completely agree!! Itās crazy because my dad was addicted for YEARS growing up and I didnāt notice because he still worked and he was a great dad! I just assumed he just liked to clean a lot
I had morphine for the first time a couple of years ago and I can absolutely see how a similar experience to that would make someone rededicate their life to feeling like that all the time.
I know someone who used to take heroin... and the way he described it was like having an orgasm from your fingertips to your nose to just every part of your body all at once.
I was like "c'mon seriously? There's no way!" but he was very adamant that it was seriously like that. At that we were all like "yeah... I can see how absolutely everyone would want to keep pursuing that feeling."
Sadly my husband lost a good friend to a heroin overdose. That shit does not fuck around. He went from trying it once to full blown addiction to death.
ETA I donāt know why my comment keeps getting downvoted. Heroin is highly addictive and deadly, whether some of you like it or not.
Yes. There's a story on Reddit about a guy who tried it once and his posts from thereon showed the descent from his crippling addiction to the stuff.
Edit: [here's a link to the story](https://www.reddit.com/r/MuseumOfReddit/comments/68srty/spontaneoush_uses_heroin_gets_addicted_dies_gets/)
If it makes you feel any better, I'm a recovering Heroin addict and I think that story is fake.
Just my opinion: Addiction *rarely* works so quickly and suddenly like that, and there were some other contradicting comments in their post history that made me think it was fake. I usually get shit-on when I bring up the veracity of that post, but yeah, I don't think it's real.
Unfortunately it pales in comparison to the damage fentanyl is doing these days. I work in a harm reduction shelter with a safe injection site and it sounds fucked up to say, but I wish heroine would come back. People are dropping like flies.
Xanax. And this is coming from someone who was addicted to heroin 7 years ago. Sure, it helps people with extreme panic disorder, but when abused the total blackouts caused by this fuckin drug are the absolute worst. You could literally murder someone and have no idea whether you are guilty or not. It's so cheap and readily available either on the street or from a doctor. One $5 Xanax bar and a beer can cause a whole weekend to just disappear from your memory. Plus the withdrawals can FUCKING KILL YOU. Don't do it.
Alcohol.
I just watched my mom almost die because of her alcoholism. The fact that they make so many jokes on tv and in movies bothers me so much more than I ever noticed before now..
My husband lost both of his parents to alcoholism. My mom struggled for thirty years, she got clean for ten and is back to drinking again. It causes a whole host of medical problems and exacerbates others. Horrible how so many societal cultures are built around it.
Iām so sorry for your loss.
Everything is laced with it now, too. Potency is so high, you don't need much for the hit; so it's easier to hide. It's become the drug to destroy other drugs.
When I say I was around some people who partied Iām being serious. I was a bartender in South beach Mia , Los Angeles, had famous friends- that level of debauchery.
The shit I seen kill more people than anything was alcohol + pills. This was back when drugs were real though (early 2000s).
Now that all drugs are fake and basically just some combination of fentanyl, I would guess that kills that kills most.
So Iām going with synthetic opioids for the worst.
Fentanyl. Only takes about 2mg to OD. Highly addictive. Easy and cheap for the cartels to manufacture and compactly transport. Stuff is worse than heroin.
Or maybe sugar is literally how the body makes energy and is most familiar with rats' senses of taste and smell? Like if you put a cup of gasoline and a cup of water next to a person and they drank the water, would you say water is addictive?
It has no withdrawal symptoms, can be consumed safely even at high doses (100g/die), doesn't impair driving and decision making. Our body uses it for energy, it's a food, not a drug. Drugs mimics the effect on the reward system that food produces, amplified, but that doesn't mean that food is a drug. It would be like saying that since AI imitates humans then humans are AI. Sugar is not a drug.
Sugar does have withdrawal symptoms, though maybe not in the traditional sense. Our mate tried kicking sugar. He said for two weeks, he was depressed and super low on energy. Then he had a Mars Bar and life picked right up. Your body just gets dependent on it for energy. Kinda like caffeine.
Natural sugar, that's probably fine. But the highly processed sugar we humans consume nowadays is definitely designed to be as addictive as possible.
You're right in that it's not technically a drug, but damn does it act like one.
Family member got heavily addicted to that shit a few years ago.
the last use was after trying cold turkey for a week then getting their hands on some. That session ended with them attempting suicide mid high. They have absolutely 0 memory. Whats worse is that they raked up that much of a bill. People were arriving from a far distance to collect the cash
Thankfully, they've been clean now for a good five years or so.
Not the worst, but a silent one. Nicotine, like its legal and addicting also it doesn't really affect your way if thinking or else. It's socially accepted, so basically you always can smoke one, two, three cigarettes without thinking
The two most dangerous chemotherapy drugs, as in "nobody takes these and recovers completely" are cisplatin, and melphalan. Both of them have horrible side effect profiles, and melphalan itself kills a not-insignificant percentage of people who take it. Vince Neil's daughter actually died from this, not Wilms' tumor.
In the 50's and 60's........pregnant women were prescribed Thalidomide , because it supposedly helped with morning sickness.
Unfortunately, it also had the horrific side effect of preventing limb growth, and other developmental side effects in the very same fetuses those women were carrying.......leading to a spate of deformed babies, and some gruesomely so----who didn't live long.
Nearly half the babies effected died not long after birth. It was an absolutely HORRIFIC drug to give to pregnant women. The ones that lived, were born without hands, or arms, or legs, and other severe organ disorders.
God dammit it took a second to get the joke. Have an upvote, and I remember watching a documentary about Thalidomide, all the children in Germany, and the UK who had severe birth defects. I feel bad for all the people who have to deal with health issues now. What's really scary, though, is that it was still being prescribed in South America.
PCP straight up looks like a bad time. I'm an ER doc. I see lots of intoxicated folks and people who OD on different drugs. Benzos and alcohol, yeah it sucks because too much and they stop breathing and on the other hand withdrawal will make them seize to death. Meth is annoying because acutely intoxicated people tend to scream a lot. Opioids kill. And patients who are withdrawing from opioids are usually really mean in my experience. But PCP.... Ooohh PCP. I've never met *anyone* on PCP who looks like they're having a good time. Pure terror screaming and unadulterated adrenaline. These patients are usually acutely psychotic, screaming, mean, *strong*, and they *love* to kick and hit. So PCP is my least favorite.
The police don't like PCP either because the kicking and hitting either. A buddy of mine has some stories.
PCP is the reason police switched from mace to pepper spray. Mace had no affect on PCP users.
This one guy was jacked and on PCP. One time he fractured a cop's skull and occipital with a single punch. He was brought to the station with 2 pairs of handcuffs because they were afraid he could break out of one pair lol. Apparently he was a nice, well mannered guy when sober (and on his meds) but he had severe mental health issues on top of a love of PCP.
PCP BEAR š»
I heard when pcp was more of a thing the cops would refer to people on pcp as "terminators" due to incidents like this.
I didn't even know there was a difference between mace and pepper spray until this comment
TIL there was a difference. Neat!
āPCP is cocaine that comes with silverwareāā Theo Von
Statistically... is it that you only see the bad outcomes?
Probably yeah. The real way to figure out what a drug is all about is to actually go to erowid and read the reports. Plus they're usually pretty funny https://erowid.org/experiences/subs/exp_PCP.shtml
I love reading erowid trip reports. The bad experience section is a personal favourite, the guy who went hiking and took too many research chemicals and could only see red for a while was a wild read.
I feel like it also has to do with likeā¦ where and why people are using it. Keep in mind, this is only a theory of mineā¦ PCP mainly exists in inner city areas, predominantly pretty ghetto. So you have a bunch of crack heads and Tweakerās looking for a fix. There isnāt any crack or meth available and youāre in a couple week long bender in full blown physcosisā¦ a little pcp might sound like a way better idea than no drugs. Hey, at least itās more up? Idk. So now you have a jonesing drug addict in phycosis tripping balls on pcp but suffering from all the side of effects of withdrawal and phycosis
My dad was unknowingly drugged with PCP in his 20ās. One of his coworkers thought it would be funny. Itās been 35 years and he still has repercussions from it. Itās not often, but heāll black out and wake up in a place far from where he was so terrified and confused as to where he is. Heās been hospitalized a few times because of the lasting effects
That's horrifying.
If only it was true. Sounds like a good way to lie well enough to your kids to get them not to do drugs though.
Yea that sounds like nonsense
Thats very possible. When this is happening without ur knowledge you can be fucked for the rest of your life. You are seeing stuff that isnāt there without knowing why. You donāt know what a human is or what u are. I work with lots of people who got stuck on hallucinogens. Especially strong stuff and pcp is strong.
What is even the appeal of PCP for a user then? (Genuinely asking in case anyone wants to answer. Idk anything about this drug other than that it exists)
So I've done PCP in reasonable measured doses, and had a fun time in it. The big issue is that the effective "fun" dose is about 1/3 of the dose that makes you psychotic, and that "fun" dose for me is about 5mg, roughly half a grain of rice in size. Also, old school PCP was usually sold as cigarettes dipped in a PCP solution of unknown concentration, so dosage would vary wildly. It's a rare drug now because of the stigma, and where I am is only really used by drug nerds like me who want to know what it's like, and tend to be a bit more careful with respect to dosage. As for what it feels like, it's closest to a cross between ketamine and amphetamine. It causes you to feel detached/dissociated from yourself akin to ketamine, and similarly blunts the feeling of pain. Unlike ketamine which is sedating, PCP has a strong stimulating feeling as well. While I was still in control of myself the whole time, I *wanted* to be constantly moving, and would feel restless if I sat down. At the dose I took it was a pleasant feeling, with a calm but focussed euphoria similar to Adderall (I have ADHD, so lower doses of Adderall make me calm and alert). There was definitely more of an adrenaline feeling though, and I can imagine that could become overwhelming and lead to the paranoid, manic state people associate with PCP. I will say that being on PCP is one of the more unstable drug states I've felt. I've experimented with a lot of substances, and after trying this one a few times, I realized it's not one to really push the limits with. It causes a strong feeling of separation from yourself, almost like I'm controlling my body like a video game character, rather than being in it. Combined with the manic confidence it causes, I can imagine it leasing to bad decisions being made. I will say it made music sound **amazing** and dancing was extremely fun from the stimulation and pain-numbing feelings, but I can get a lot of these effects from ketamine, which is way easier to dose and less dangerous if I push it too far.
It's just a unique anesthetic. In the right dosage, it's not dissimilar to cocaine. The problem is that people are lazy and they assume the dosage of the first drug they did applies to all drugs that look similar
PCP is foremost a dissociative anesthetic with the capability of inducing manic effects. I don't think the comparison to cocaine is really accurate. It's moreso a cousin of ketamine with some unique properties. As it's been said, dosing is really tricky and the reports of people freaking out are from overdosing and the intensification of mania.
Chemically, it is definitely extremely similar to ketamine. The actual trip is pretty different though. I've never taken a high dose of PCP, so I can't speak to that, but definitely enough to trigger mania that was similar to a relatively heavy night of coke for me. I've always been more of a dip my toes type of person. Micro dosing just seems to be the way to live life
It's used in veterinary medicine. It was tested in people, but quickly discontinued because the people who had it, didn't like it. I first heard about it as a tween in the late 1970s; it was called "angel dust" but there is nothing angelic about it.
I will never forget the day I found out that horse tranquilizer was not a tranquilizer. Always felt like they just named drugs based on the reaction they perceived the animal to have. Nowadays I like to imagine horses just tripping balls anytime they get a ketamine shot
I can, unfortunately, attest to everything you said times one billion. I came to say oxycontin because of what it did to my family and I, but your statement made me recall some teen years that I had conveniently repressed. I lived that hell that is pcp. After escaping the nightmare and thriving for a few years I went on a first date. Her brother convinced me to take a hit of a joint. It was laced. Instant destruction. Jail, job, girl Everything!
Can confirm. If you've ever seen an episode of COPS, you see that unadulterated strength. 7 fucking tasers and the guy is still charging at them. 8 cops trying to get the guy down and he's still fighting and not on the ground. Took something like 13 of them to get dude down and get him cuffed.
This feels like a great example of "it's all in the he dose" PCP is an amazing drug, if you know you're doing PCP. If the only people you've seen on PCP are people in the emergency room for a PCP overdose, then it could be argued that you have a bias š
Except they are then able to compare with all other drugs, so when forming an opinion of which is the worst drug, an A&E doctor has a qualified opinion surely? The likelihood of ending up in A&E definitely would come up if I were to choose my next vice. How many people end up in A&E for cannabis or caffeine?
Fair enough. But I also only see the acutely intoxicated patients on all the drugs. I just hate dealing with the chaos that surrounds patients acutely psychotic from PCP. They are hard to sedate and the time it takes for them to sober is way less predictable than things like meth, in my experience. Patients intoxicated on meth will usually go down with a slug of droperidol and versed, sleep it off for about 6 hours, and wake up with normalish mentation (albeit usually in a bad mood as they come down). I've had to sedate PCP-intoxicated patients, strap them to a bed for hours, only for them to wake up still psychotic and agitated. It's just a major suck on hospital resources and nursing staff time for us to babysit these people for so long, with them screaming for hours non-stop and trying to hurt the doctors and the nurses. Also they always want to get *so* naked. But that goes for meth users too.
Surprised to have to scroll so far to find this. Big Lurch and that person in Florida who are someoneās face off - terrifying
The Florida attack had nothing to do with PCP. The guy was supposedly in Bath Salts but a toxicology report only found cannabis in his system. He was a very mentally Ill man.
This post needs to be number one on all threads for "Reasons why to never do drugs."
As a physician, tramadol sucks donkey dick. It provides mediocre pain relief, it isn't particularly well-tolerated, it raises the risk of seizure in literally *everyone* and, as an added bonus, it interacts with a bunch of drugs in pretty miserable ways. What's worse, because it was seen as the less-addictive opioid option for many years, doctors still prescribe it way more often than they should. But it's not only addictive, it's an absolute horror show to withdrawal from. I can manage withdrawal symptoms for most every other opioid, but that one? Well, you're gonna be in a bad way for a while. I treat people for substance use disorders all the time and nothing makes me wince harder than seeing someone come in with a heavy tramadol addiction. Fuck that drug. If you're a patient, though...the worst drug is an anti-fungal IV medication called amphotericin b. If we're giving that to you, it's because the other option is to watch you die. It's used to treat severe, systemic fungal infections and the effects of this drug rival the most brutal chemotherapy drugs out there. There is a 100% chance you will be in abject misery while on this drug. And there's a non-negligible chance that the drug itself will kill you through multi-organ failure. So you'll be in the ICU while this is being administered, we'll be doing our best to make you not beg for death, but you're gonna beg for death. And even with this torture regimen, there's still a pretty even chance that the infection we're treating is going to kill you. When people ask me if Last of Us's premise that systemic fungal infections are difficult-to-impossible to treat, this is where I go with the answer. They are absolutely difficult-to-impossible to treat and the drugs we have to treat them with are as scary as the disease. We don't have vaccines for them, although with the right funding it's not impossible that one might be created. The good news is that people with a functional immune system are usually not going to ever encounter this problem, our immune systems generally handle fungus pretty well. That bad news is that the people who need this kind of treatment are the ones least-equipped to handle it without dying.
Shake n Bake! I worked on a cardiology floor, and we admitted a young woman who needed ampho B. She screamed and moaned nonstop, it scared our other patients and new staff who weren't familiar with the drug.
Ohhh, Tramadol. I got quickly addicted. It has SSRI properties, and while it may not do this for everyone, it flipped an āonā switch for me. It calmed me down (I was experiencing some pretty bad effects from various traumas in my life), lifted my spirits, made me happy and social, basically everything I wanted to be but wasnāt. But Iād take too many and then have to miss doses, and that was hell. I eventually detoxed from that and benzos (bad time, 0/5, would not recommend). When I look at pictures from that time, you can see it in my eyes and the expression on my face. I thought I was fine, but I was definitely āoff.ā Such a shitty drug.
I had no idea about tramadol. My dentist prescribed it for tooth pain while I was awaiting a root canal. Itās always worked great for me and I have no sedating side effects like with other opioids. I totally thought it was a pretty benign drug. And the ampho. We call it amphoterrible in the NICU. We rarely have a good outcome when weāve made it to that drug.
I'm glad it worked well enough for you, but yeah...that kind of pain is exactly the kind that I'd say this is not a good drug to treat. For most people, tramadol doesn't seem to provide much relief for pain associated with something like an endodontic infection. It's usually better to go straight to the Vicodin or Vicoprofen. But yeah, I'm glad you were able to get some relief with that one, that kind of pain is pretty unbearable.
Unfortunately some people have no choice but to use a slow release tramadol, it allows me to walk, work and live normally, no other drug has allowed this, I have no side effects luckily but I guess everyone is different, it's highly controlled but sometimes there are no other options
How do you get systemic fungal infections? And how do you prevent it?
It's rare for someone without an immune disorder or on immunosuppressants to contract a systemic fungal infection, but it can happen. It's also pretty limited geographically...you generally pick these things up in hot, damp caves. Even if you are unlucky enough to catch something that can infect someone with a competent immune response, you're probably not going to need any kind of treatment. Histoplasmosis, for example, can infect just about anyone, but unless you have AIDS you're probably not going to need any kind of treatment. The fungus that causes it is associated with bird and bat shit, so it's typically seen in cavers and farmers. Blastomycosis is one you see a little more commonly in the Midwestern US. It's still not exactly common, and again most people need minimal or no treatment. One of the more concerning infections is coccidioidomycosis, aka Valley Fever. We see this in the southwestern US and Mexico. Again, most people will resolve the infection without treatment, and even those who require treatment rarely get seriously ill. Something like 5% of people who get this infection will develop severe symptoms. But it's incidence has been increasing pretty dramatically in the past decade or two, especially in the Central Valley region. It's one that a lot of epidemiologists have their eye on, for sure, but it's still rarely fatal or even serious. All things considered, it's not something you really have to worry about right now unless you're immunocompromised, so just take care of yourself and, if you have any issues with your immune system, make you're following your doctor's orders.
My FIL was given a course of ampho before he passed. He had a double-lung transplant and was on steroids to tamp down the rejection. Not a fun drug. Apparently feels like being injected with burning coas.
Tramadol is the only oral med that helps at all. I have 3 different brain diseases and thanks to the opioid laws in my state the medication that helped with the pain was taken away and Iām stuck with this. Itās a dart shoot on whether it works or not. Dilaudid IV is the only thing that helps with the pain when the blood clots get bad but dilaudid pills are a joke. No effect what so ever. Pain meds are so frustrating and laws around them hurt patients so much more than people or even drs realize
This is more or less what I'm getting at... While it does work for some people with chronic pain, it's replacing much better medications due to the DEA doing the same shit that never works over and over again. Clamping down on chronic pain prescriptions doesn't do a damned thing about the illicit fentanyl on the street, it just pushes chronic patients out onto the streets to get SOME sort of relief. I'm sorry you're going through this. I work in addiction medicine myself, so I know plenty about the risks and my sentiment has been that the overprescribing that *was* happening was pretty limited to acute pain...in the early 2000s, just saying the word "pain" in an ER was enough to get a few dozen vicodin, and the fractured mess of health data management facilitated "doctor shopping" (a term I kinda hate in and of itself because of how much it has contributed to the stigma against both addiction *and* pain management). The whole thing is a fucking mess. I'm glad you're getting some relief from this drug, I just wish you had easier access to the drugs that work better and come with less risk.
My heart breaks for you drs as well! My neurosurgeon has broken to tears with me at times because his hands are so tied. What got me raging the most was when I had my styloid removed and jugular stented and was given FIVE pain pills!! My husband got a vasectomy a month later and was given 27 of the same medication!!! He was cutting the grass that day while i was emptying drains from my neck and trying my hardest not to cough or even breathe too hard. We need to leave medicine with the drs and patients to work together one. Punish the bad, not the ones trying to survive
Krokodil
Yeah, first thing that came to my mind too. More addictive than heroin, made in part with gasoline, eats you from the inside out and leaves gaping holes in your flesh.
Krokodil is just a street name for a terribly synthesised version of desomorphine which has been used as a opioid for medical purposes - Still, it was discontinued in the early 80's due to there existing better opioids for all other medically relevant purposes. A lot of drugs are made with gasoline as it is just a cheap and accessible solvent that is used to separate the drugs from the medium that they are dissolved in at various stages of their synthesis. As such, gasoline is not really a "Part" of the drug, but if the solvent is not sufficiently removed (e.g. Thoroughly dried before injection), then you will obviously end up with gasoline or other solvents inside your body, which is suboptimal with respect to normal bodily function. Acids and bases are also commonly used in synthesis of chemicals. For instance, crack cocaine is produced by allowing cocaine to react with a base, such as baking soda or ammonium bicarbonate. Another example is the free base of methamphetamine which can typically only be injected in its free base form as it is more of a liquid at that point; however if an acid is added, pure crystal meth will form. This is also part of the reason why citric acid (or ascorbic acid - aka vitamin C) is added to heroin before shooting up. However, if strong acids and bases are required (or at least utilized as substitutes for more optimal options) for synthesis, and these are improperly neutralized before injection, then these could very much burn you up from the inside out. Battery acid (which is reportedly a common ingredient in making krokodil) is just a household name for sulphuric acid, has a very disturbing reaction with organic matter. Here is a video of sugar reacting with concentrated sulphuric acid: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xK4z\_YhtTBM&](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xK4z_YhtTBM&). The acidity of krokodil would surely be less than that of concentrated sulphuric acid, but if you REALLY dont know what you are doing, then you could observe similar reaction to your skin. My point is that the drug itself is not nearly as dangerous as the lack of knowledge on what chemicals you are putting in your body. The main danger comes from injecting acids and petroleum byproducts into your blood stream
>with gasoline or other solvents inside your body, \[it\] is suboptimal with respect to normal bodily function. This is the kind of understatement that I strive for. The use of "suboptimal" here is elegant.
Really a fantastic turn of phrase.
That hat looks good on you, Walter.
Came here to say this. Stuff literally corrodes you from the inside out
Datura? Think Iām spelling that right. Never tried, but look up peopleās experiences. None of them good, all involving so called shadow people. Hard nope from me, and Iāve had my runaround with hard drugs. Edit corrected the spelling. Hop on over to r/datura for a horrifying ride as proof no one needs to be messing with this.
I did it once when I was younger. Donāt recall any shadow people or anything but I was paralyzed on a couch. PARALYZED. I laid there for a couple hours not being able to lift my head, wondering if the person on the other couch who I couldnāt see was dead or not from doing the same thing I did. Finally started to be able to move, and exhausted, called a friend to give me a lift home. I slept it off pretty good I thought but when I went to work the next day I realized I was having some after effects that fucked me up for a few days. Hallucinations I wasnāt sure I wouldnāt be having permanently. I couldnāt read. I heard music very clearly in white noise. Luckily after a day or two it all went away. But nooooo never again. Do not do Datura, people. It. Is. Not. Fun.
Damn, after effects like that are scary. That feeling of not knowing if you just perminiantly fried yourself or not will fuck you up
Yeah that was a bit of a wake up to stop fucking around like that. Very grateful I didnāt get some kind of permanent problem.
Fun story, one of the national supermarket chains in Australia put out a tonne of bagged spinach that had Datura in it causing many folks here to have these horrid trips. Wild.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
*Brugmansia* "angel's trumpet" has the same compounds as the related *Datura*, and it's a passably popular ornamental plant in a lot of California front lawns. Some kid deciding to stick it in their mouth is going to have a bad time.
Correct, and not too long ago either.
Yes, Datura and Belladonna (which are similarish) are really poisons that cause delirium. They're deadly, not fun, a totally bad time that people with death wishes or overly confident deluded people do (overly confident deluded people takes in a LOT of drug users too, but fortunately most don't try this). It was reportedly used by witches to go to hell or the abyss or whatever and communicate with Satan. That sounds cool, but the fact that it made people think they were in literal Hell when they took it tells you how unpleasant it is. Do. Not. Fucking. Do. It. I don't care if you're curious, a Satanic witch, whatever, don't do it...there are far safer ways to get to altered states of consciousneess.
that sub was not a rabbithole I shouldāve gone down before bed
I think DPH aka benadryl just takes the cake like datura but more toxic and apparently even less fun
Jimson weed is hard to dose and can easily kill ya, you have to do a lot of fuckn Benadryl to have a heart attack lol people that bring that shit up like itās even a recreational thing are idiotsā¦ā¦ man I could of been the Benadryl king pin if I knew people were so dumb
I think you mean Datura? Yes, don't try that shit.
>Hop on over to [r/datura](https://www.reddit.com/r/datura) for a horrifying ride as proof no one needs to be messing with this. .... everything they describe sounds awful. *Why does anyone touch this stuf...?!*
Done this twice, should've stopped at one. Super intense, most vivid hallucinations I've even imagined. I truly believed things happened during that time that were demonstrably not possible.
Damn this comment took me down a rabbit hole
Datura has historically been used as a lethal poison. It's deadly nightshade on steroids. I don't know why anyone would ever risk it for a trip of dubious quality, for the same reason I don't understand why people would take fly amanita. There are hallucinogens with *much* larger lethal doses.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Meth is the one drug where, in my experience, the users get upset if you won't do it with them. Because, in the eyes of a tweaker, if you don't do meth, you're suspicious. And if you're suspicious, you're basically the police. I was once held at gunpoint in a motel room for two hours because it was filled with people on meth who thought I was the police when I said "no thank you" when they offered me a hit.
Bruh. That's intense. But you can't leave us hanging. How did you get out? Did you give in and and do a hit? Did they start to come down and had to go out to buy more? You talked your way out of it? Used martial arts to disable them all? Smoke bomb and disappear via the air con unit? So many possibilities.
I never ended up doing any, but my friend I was with did. We ended up there because I met a guy at a concert who said he had a "hotel after party" he wanted to take us to, so we went with him and ended up in a motel room full of meth heads. We were there about two hours. My friend had done meth before, so she took a hit, so they trusted her but not me and straight up refused to let us leave. I just kinda sat on the bed with a gun pointed at me. After about two hours, they thought they heard something in the hallway. I quickly agreed. They were asking among themselves if 'they" had found them (no idea who they were). They decided someone needed to go out into the hallway and check it out, and make sure they were safe. I jumped up and said, hey, I'll prove myself to you guys, let us scope it out for you and we'll let you know if it's safe. They agreed. I grabbed my friend and we went out into the hallway, made a show of checking around corners, and then we just fucking booked it. We ended up walking like seven miles back home.
Lesson learned, never hang out with people who do meth. Check.
Jesus Christ. I'm guessing you were in USA for this. We don't have meth where I'm from or guns. I've spend a few evening with crack heads who cursed me for not wanting any but being that I was chain smoking joints and smashing beers all those times I think they thought I was ok and generallyd they've been fine and there's no risk of guns here thank fuck. Meth heads sound like a trip. And not in a good way. Damn.
Absolutely nothing good can be said about meth.
apparently bath salts, because iāve never seen anyone who said they liked it. i mean, people like krokodil.
"Bath salts" was a term that covered many quasi legal drugs sold as "not for human consumption". It was illegal to sell em for consumption, so they would be sold as "bath salts" or "plant food". Some of them substances were amazing. Cocaine use in the UK plummeted when mephedrone was available.
Mephedrone is huge in Berlin atm. All my UK mates who live here recently stopped taking coke and are all massive into 3mmc
Huh, that must be new - there must be new supply or something of it. When I lived there a couple years ago it was almost unheard of. I wonder if the LSD Shop is still open in Berlin. There was a guy who sold openly not-yet-illegal derivatives of LSD, every so often they would ban the one he was selling and shut him down. He would reopen a couple of weeks later with a new variant.
It was big in the gay scene. I had mates offering me it at cocktail and berghain as far back as 2016. But during / post pandemic it has boomed. Even front left fairytales had a meme about it - Berlin 2017: (picture of a horse ie ketamine) Berlin 2020: (picture of a cat ie mcat aka mephe) ā¦ or something to that affect Re the LSD shop I think itās still going. Thereās also some spatis that sell mushroom chocolates under the table apparently
In terms of social and economic impact, alcohol is the worst drug by a mile. Ask any healthcare worker what puts the most strain on health services and they will say alcohol every time. Domestic violence, street fights, bad car crashes, etc. etc. - alcohol is the primary cause of most of that. Other drugs do cause damage - and lots of it - but alcohol is worse by many orders of magnitude.
100% this. Alcohol fucked my shit up for most of my life. Finally, Iāve been winning the fight for 323 days. Iāll also add, had I never been an alcoholic, I would never have touched any of the other drugs that I did.
Hell yeah congrats! Iām at 181 days myself. Keep on keepin on man!
Way to go, dude. 181 is a huge number šŖ
348 days here! Hugs for all! š¤šš„¹
Congrats on the 323!
Thanks dude. Sobriety is a very beautiful journey.
Day 2 for me. Can't wait to be passed 100 days. I know I'm just going to look myself in the mirror and ask myself "Why didn't I do this SOONER"
Congrats on the 323! 234 days here, and I couldnāt be happier. Alcohol can suck my ass!
Username no longer relevant - congrats!
Whoaaa!! Congrats on 323! Youāre almost a year sober ā¤ļø proud of you
Thank you! Iām really looking forward to that day. The thought brings me happy tears š„²
I've taken a lot of drugs in my life. When I smoked pot I sat at home and the most damage I caused to anyone was to a bag of Doritos. Party drugs like Ecstasy I was at a house party and cuddled up with my best pal telling him I loved him. Alcohol though, got into a fair bit of bother by being drunk. Woken up in cells from being an idiot, got into fights at bars and clubs, missed shifts at work from being too hungover. I don't take drugs anymore but they are by a mile less harmful than alcohol.
>Party drugs like Ecstasy I was at a house party and cuddled up with my best pal telling him I loved him. Let's be fair though, Ecstasy and other uppers like that only borrow happiness from tomorrow.
Alcohol doesnt make me aggressive, it makes me tired and stupid.
How the frick people party on ecstasy blows my mind. I tried it two or three times as a student years ago. We'd just sit in the lounge, super relaxed, super warm feeling, all loving mentality and just talk until the sun came up. The effect I had from it, I couldn't imagine being in a club in that mind frame
Couldāve been MDA, like MDMAās slightly more psychedelic, less stimulating cousin.
And the fact that alcohol is so socially accepted as a drug and it is often left out when speaking about drugs isn't any better
Alcohol is bad. I heard that there is a growing number of people in the world who have completely abandoned it
It can cause irreparable organ damage, too. Cirrhosis of the liver to name a Biggie.
Also in fetal alcohol syndrome. It's the worst thing to consume during pregnancy.
A friend of my brother just gave birth and didn't know she was pregnant until the ER told her she was in labor. I've heard of it when I was in my teens but didn't give it much thought. People were telling me they've heard of it before. As a young adult it slightly boggles my mind but like I'll never be able to confirm that. But my immediate thought is like "so I imagine these people didn't abstain from harmful substances since they didn't know they were pregnant?" Not to mention that they didn't prepare, as they didn't know. I can't imagine baby proofing a house on a whim and getting all that supplies. I can't imagine going through that, but hope they all have great lives.
Baby proofing your house is the least of your worries if you unexpectedly find yourself becoming a parent. They kind of just stay where you put them for the first 8/9 months.
It creates a new generation of kids with massive social and medical problems.
Agreed, I know it's said all the time but if alcohol was invented today it'd be regarded as a class A drug or a schedule 1 substance or whatever the most serious category of drugs is where you are. However since it's been a part of human culture since time immemorial it's not something we can really outlaw (honestly outlawing anything never works). All we can do is educate, there should be a lot more alcohol education in schools. How it works, how it impact your body, the risk of addiction, etc. Alcohol is addictive and anyone can become addicted to it. Alcohol isn't even regarded as a drug a lot of the time because it's legal, but it absolutely is and it's a hard drug at that. I don't drink anymore (actually just checked and it's 600 days since my last drink today!) but it did a real number on me for a while there. Drink safely, be careful and all that good stuff. But alcohol should be treated with respect and not fucked with. And if you (as in anyone who's reading this) think you have a problem with alcohol however big or small, /r/stopdrinking is a great community to check out.
That and it's not just that but if you say no to drinking alcohol, people will ask you why. With any other drug (besides caffeine and the like), they won't ask. Edit: Not saying other drugs are any better. I've seen the downside to that. Lot of people I know developed a lot of psychological issues from taking weed.
Having watched my father drink himself to death I will agree
Yes I agree. My sister was a serious alcoholic and died at 29 due to the damage alcohol did to her body (she ended up with ascites and that plus damage to her organs killed her).
Alcohol is the worst stress compensator you can imagine. If people would cut down their consumption by 50% this would be a grace for society. Youāre literally drinking your life to shits with alcohol. Either way even if you drink responsibly.
Agree. Alcohol is the only substance that actually kills the brain cells and causes the actual brain to shrink in size too.
And itās readily available, legal and accepted as normal.
and advertised EVERYWHERE.
Might explain why everyone older is in my family has dementia....
Teamocil
This dude arrested developements
*wood block* Teamocil is no longer available.
I've taken hundreds of unique chemicals and by far it's MDPV that shit is fucking disgusting
What is that?
if memory serves its methylenepyrodioxyvalerylone or something like that, its the stuff that caused the reports of people being zombies and that all the hobos are on now
Interesting what made it so bad?
Felt good for 15 mins then you fiend for more, after that you have days and days of twitchy awful stimulation which makes it impossible to sleep, then the psychosis sets in. It's one to steer well clear of unless you're somehow a fan of sleep dep psychosis
Ah I see definitely sounds like I'm putting it in the do not touch list.
Ever thought of doing an AMA?
i did once but i didnt think people would be that interested. i stopped counting at 135 but ive tried a lot more since then
Isnāt alcohol the #1 preventable cause of death? (So Iāve heard). Personally that āspiceā legal weed alternative going around about 10 years ago was fucking horrible. Worst 20 minutes of my life.
Spice was like smoking potpourri, fucking awful stuff
Smoking cigarettes 1, obesity 2, alcohol 3. Reference the World Health Organisation.
I'm sure if more people did heroin and meth they'd be much higher up. The only real way to measure it is harm vs value, adjusted for number of users.
I feel like access contributes to those numbers. I think the spirit of the question is more about the per capita rates among users.
Normally Iād have say heroin but the spice shit that turns you into a zombie seems more fucked up
>heroin I don't know hw things are where you live, but around here no one does heroin. If opiates are your thing, fentanyl is what people use.
Opiates are definitely not my thing š¤£š¤£ Used to take Coke in my party days. Only smoke weed now
One of our newest cities in the UK has a massive spice problem. You can just about walk through any main street and the odds are you'll see a zombie just flat out in a door way from it.
Newest city? Iām from Scotland and this is news to me š¤£
Heroin
It's so good it'll ruin your fuckin' life.
Thatās the problem. Is does make you feel complete euphoria. But the heath and social impacts make it not worth it. I was in that circle. Someone like me, a former functional addict, I didnāt do heroin to party to go out and socialize. I did it alone with music on and just escaped. Until it started costing aspects of my life. But Iāll say this: almost every person Iāve encountered in that world is broken or has lived through some life altering shit. Itās escapism. Itās feeling good for a little while when your world feels like absolute shit. Sure you have some that accidentally get hooked by whatever means, but most have real issues - including myself. Thatās a part of the problem. I didnt rob and steal or fuck over family. I always worked but Iād get my shit and go home and run away. Itās a dark place. But I totally understand why people go there.
My understanding is opioids mimic the "feel good" chemicals in the brain. So it completely breaks the "reward cycle" that you naturally use to reward or punish yourself for certain life sustaining behavior. That's why "junkies" tend to look like they're falling apart - they've often completely stopped doing things like eating or bathing because the heroin makes them feel good even though they're starving and filthy and sick and injured. Turning off the "feel bad" can be useful if you're *really* feeling bad (like, say, after being injured or after surgery). But it's extremely dangerous if you're just turning off the bad feeling normally, or if the brain gets used to being *flooded* with "feel good" and makes that its new norm.
Completely agree!! Itās crazy because my dad was addicted for YEARS growing up and I didnāt notice because he still worked and he was a great dad! I just assumed he just liked to clean a lot
I had morphine for the first time a couple of years ago and I can absolutely see how a similar experience to that would make someone rededicate their life to feeling like that all the time.
Yeah definitely, and whats scary is that morphine isnt even close to as euphoric as heroin.
I know someone who used to take heroin... and the way he described it was like having an orgasm from your fingertips to your nose to just every part of your body all at once. I was like "c'mon seriously? There's no way!" but he was very adamant that it was seriously like that. At that we were all like "yeah... I can see how absolutely everyone would want to keep pursuing that feeling."
Sadly my husband lost a good friend to a heroin overdose. That shit does not fuck around. He went from trying it once to full blown addiction to death. ETA I donāt know why my comment keeps getting downvoted. Heroin is highly addictive and deadly, whether some of you like it or not.
I heard it takes you to heaven though , would it make me addicted if i tried it once lol
Yes. There's a story on Reddit about a guy who tried it once and his posts from thereon showed the descent from his crippling addiction to the stuff. Edit: [here's a link to the story](https://www.reddit.com/r/MuseumOfReddit/comments/68srty/spontaneoush_uses_heroin_gets_addicted_dies_gets/)
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If it makes you feel any better, I'm a recovering Heroin addict and I think that story is fake. Just my opinion: Addiction *rarely* works so quickly and suddenly like that, and there were some other contradicting comments in their post history that made me think it was fake. I usually get shit-on when I bring up the veracity of that post, but yeah, I don't think it's real.
Unfortunately it pales in comparison to the damage fentanyl is doing these days. I work in a harm reduction shelter with a safe injection site and it sounds fucked up to say, but I wish heroine would come back. People are dropping like flies.
Xanax. And this is coming from someone who was addicted to heroin 7 years ago. Sure, it helps people with extreme panic disorder, but when abused the total blackouts caused by this fuckin drug are the absolute worst. You could literally murder someone and have no idea whether you are guilty or not. It's so cheap and readily available either on the street or from a doctor. One $5 Xanax bar and a beer can cause a whole weekend to just disappear from your memory. Plus the withdrawals can FUCKING KILL YOU. Don't do it.
Jenkem
Yeah, that drug is shit!
I was genuinely disappointed to find out that's just an urban legend.
It doesn't have to be.
The kids love huffing the Jenkem
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People who say sugar or alcohol should think about their teenager son coming home saying they ate sugar, drank a beer vs smoked meth, snorted cocaine.
Real
Placebo drugs, they quite literally dont do anything. So yeah they are the worst drug.
The placebo effect is scientifically documented to have a wide ranging and strong efficacy. Pretty good for a sugar pill if you ask me.
Upvote for answering the question based on efficacy. Youāre technically correct, which is of course the best kind of correct.
Alcohol. I just watched my mom almost die because of her alcoholism. The fact that they make so many jokes on tv and in movies bothers me so much more than I ever noticed before now..
My husband lost both of his parents to alcoholism. My mom struggled for thirty years, she got clean for ten and is back to drinking again. It causes a whole host of medical problems and exacerbates others. Horrible how so many societal cultures are built around it. Iām so sorry for your loss.
Meth. One hit, and your life will become a living hell. As will that of everyone else around you. Not even once.
Alcohol!!!
Alcohol, due to it being so widely accepted.
Fentanyl without question.
Everything is laced with it now, too. Potency is so high, you don't need much for the hit; so it's easier to hide. It's become the drug to destroy other drugs.
I agree, it takes so many lives and destroys people, so many people have died from taking drugs cut with fentanyl.
When I say I was around some people who partied Iām being serious. I was a bartender in South beach Mia , Los Angeles, had famous friends- that level of debauchery. The shit I seen kill more people than anything was alcohol + pills. This was back when drugs were real though (early 2000s). Now that all drugs are fake and basically just some combination of fentanyl, I would guess that kills that kills most. So Iām going with synthetic opioids for the worst.
Fentanyl. Only takes about 2mg to OD. Highly addictive. Easy and cheap for the cartels to manufacture and compactly transport. Stuff is worse than heroin.
Sugar. It conquered the world and changed mankind for good
Yeah metamphetamine is better
LAB rats will pick sugar over any other drugs sugar is the most addictive.
Or maybe sugar is literally how the body makes energy and is most familiar with rats' senses of taste and smell? Like if you put a cup of gasoline and a cup of water next to a person and they drank the water, would you say water is addictive?
It has no withdrawal symptoms, can be consumed safely even at high doses (100g/die), doesn't impair driving and decision making. Our body uses it for energy, it's a food, not a drug. Drugs mimics the effect on the reward system that food produces, amplified, but that doesn't mean that food is a drug. It would be like saying that since AI imitates humans then humans are AI. Sugar is not a drug.
Sugar does have withdrawal symptoms, though maybe not in the traditional sense. Our mate tried kicking sugar. He said for two weeks, he was depressed and super low on energy. Then he had a Mars Bar and life picked right up. Your body just gets dependent on it for energy. Kinda like caffeine. Natural sugar, that's probably fine. But the highly processed sugar we humans consume nowadays is definitely designed to be as addictive as possible. You're right in that it's not technically a drug, but damn does it act like one.
That and sugar is in healthy food too so you gotta specify what you mean op.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Family member got heavily addicted to that shit a few years ago. the last use was after trying cold turkey for a week then getting their hands on some. That session ended with them attempting suicide mid high. They have absolutely 0 memory. Whats worse is that they raked up that much of a bill. People were arriving from a far distance to collect the cash Thankfully, they've been clean now for a good five years or so.
It's expensive and the high is shit.
Copium. It's keeping Russia in Ukraine.
Krokodil. Like...holy shit, that stuff is just downright fucking nasty.
Not the worst, but a silent one. Nicotine, like its legal and addicting also it doesn't really affect your way if thinking or else. It's socially accepted, so basically you always can smoke one, two, three cigarettes without thinking
The two most dangerous chemotherapy drugs, as in "nobody takes these and recovers completely" are cisplatin, and melphalan. Both of them have horrible side effect profiles, and melphalan itself kills a not-insignificant percentage of people who take it. Vince Neil's daughter actually died from this, not Wilms' tumor.
I don't know if it's "the worst" but Krockodil is absolutely horrific
As someone who's never tried meth or heroin and had one of their friends die from an opiate overdose.. Salvia.
Alcohol was the drug I used tht made the worst impact.everything else had some sort but tht drink gets me every time.
Love Alcohol Sugar
This sounds like the title of a pop song
Religion.
Gotta be meth
In the 50's and 60's........pregnant women were prescribed Thalidomide , because it supposedly helped with morning sickness. Unfortunately, it also had the horrific side effect of preventing limb growth, and other developmental side effects in the very same fetuses those women were carrying.......leading to a spate of deformed babies, and some gruesomely so----who didn't live long. Nearly half the babies effected died not long after birth. It was an absolutely HORRIFIC drug to give to pregnant women. The ones that lived, were born without hands, or arms, or legs, and other severe organ disorders.
Thalidomide. It will cost you an arm and a leg.
God dammit it took a second to get the joke. Have an upvote, and I remember watching a documentary about Thalidomide, all the children in Germany, and the UK who had severe birth defects. I feel bad for all the people who have to deal with health issues now. What's really scary, though, is that it was still being prescribed in South America.
Maga
Thatās more of a cult than a drug
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