#and sometimes! even with two different meds and like four different kinds of salt pills! I straight up do not retain salt!

[tj-crochets]

Went to the doctor just for a check up and he basically just told me "your body just processes sugar very well! :) :) :) It's a good thing! :) :) :) It can't possibly be the source of your symptoms even though eating fixes it :) :) :)" But there was also a moment when talking about my iron deficiency that is possibly one of the funniest things a doctor has ever said to me, up with the cardiologist who said "you're a medical mystery": He was going over my blood test results, and said "Your iron levels haven't gone up at all, they are still extremely low, but you're not anemic anymore" And I was like how am I not anemic anymore??? And he said "Your hemoglobin levels have gone up...somehow..." while frowning at the blood test results on his computer. It was very "somehow, palpatine has returned" lol

[kingofthewilderwest]

TMI expression of my emotions below. [replies fine; *NO* reblogs]

I’m beyond the point of being able to take care of myself, and it’s been that way for years. I used to function fine living on my own, with a few quirky mistakes here and there (some friends may remember the Saga of the 3 month old Popcorn on the Floor). But now I legitimately can’t handle caring for myself in the most ESSENTIAL “keep this human running” tasks. 

Food? The refrigerator has lots of mold. I’m smart enough to subsist off things that can be microwaved (frozen vegetables, baked potatoes, etc.), done on stove top (canned soups, rice), or eaten right away (celery and peanut butter). But it means imbalanced meals with little protein and often turns into too much junk food (because it requires no cooking) ...which gives me no energy to function, obviously. And I can’t cook well, so even when I do have energy to prepare a meal, it tastes bland at best - where’s the payoff? It often turns into me skipping meals because... I’m bad at keeping food stocked - no energy to shop for food - or I feel depressed, exacerbated by the vicious cycle of no food-given energy in the first place.

Cleaning? The apartment is terrifyingly messy. Nothing is sanitary, not even the shower. I can’t access my own bed because my bedroom is piled with objects that haven’t been put away. I often trip over things. I’ll reuse dishes and clothes instead of washing. If I have an upbeat day and I clean, I’ll get part of the problem squared away, but never enough to make this place neat enough to function and be maintained. Yeah yeah, peck away a little at a time and keep it maintained, I know that’s supposed to be the trick, but it ain’t happening no matter what I do. And if a place I live in isn’t neat, it makes me feel more depressed and fidgety and unable to think clearly.

Sleeping? Well. My sleep schedule is always in flux. Currently, I’m sleeping from about 8 AM to 5 PM on a given day. Soooo I get no sunlight, either, and I’m not awake during hours when other people are awake or when most stores are open.

Physical health? Well, let’s say that I’m on several prescriptions, but because my brain is so FOGGED UP and I can’t think clearly anymore (I had such a sharp brain until my mid 20s dammit???)... and because my house is a mess... I constantly forget my pills, have no clue what they are, and am never consistent with them. The last time I took pain medication pills, I was in a desperate amount of pain, and I ummmm... overdosed pretty badly and found myself vomiting on the floor shaking for nine hours. (I LEARNED MY LESSON I AM NOT TAKING OVER PRESCRIPTION AMOUNT AGAIN). I also don’t think I’m on the right meds, either, so even if I were taking them, I don’t know how much I’d be helping myself. Let’s just say that I’m drastically overdue for asking for a diagnosis on bipolar. I want to visit a doctor, get this squared away, get help for this... but that would involve so many steps to find a doctor (I just switched health insurance), transfer my medical records, schedule an appointment, be awake at the right hours to get there, have extra money to pay for potential treatments, and lots of other steps. Which I don’t have the energy to do. Nowhere close.

Socialization? [laughter] Oh dear. Between living alone in an apartment (but I really do function better living alone because I’m such an introvert who needs My Space), living in a city where none of my friends live (most people are about 30 minutes to 2 hours away), and working remotely... I get VERY little physical social interaction.

At this point in time, I’m pretty lonely, but I’m so deprived of spoons that about the best I can do is exist in the same room as someone else. Big social events aren’t going to help me and are often too overwhelming for me to even consider attending. The little things are all I have energy for, but I need them. I want to exist in a room with someone else badly; another person in the area makes me work better, think clearer, feel happier, and express affection to them. I want nothing more than to physically curl up with someone and feel them and be with them and secure with them and listening to them and sympathizing with them and laughing with them or falling asleep on their shoulder. Can I be held? Please? Touch deprivation... yeah of course that’s going on.

Since I have so little energy, I often get behind on work. Which means that, when I *do* have energy, I have to prioritize making money. I live by myself in my own apartment; if I don’t got the money, I don’t got a place to live. And if I don’t do my job consistently, I’m at more risk for losing my job, duh. I expend ALL my existing energy on work. I don’t have time for anything else (food, hygiene, fixing my sleep schedule, socialization). It’s practical to focus my attention on the most important thing: making an income. Everything else will collapse if I don’t work.

Basic human needs are NOT being met for me anywhere. Food, cleanliness, human interactions, medical shit... I am objectively not taking care of myself. And I’m not a fucking irresponsible person who can’t handle large loads of things. This asshat graduated with four college degrees (including a graduate degree) and several minors in four years with Highest Honors in Phi Beta Kappa while working several jobs and even teaching a college course at one point - that sure as hell wasn’t lack of discipline that got me there. Sure, I’ve always been lazier on some things like cooking (I hate cooking, I’m so **BAD** at cooking, YOU eat my cooking and see if you like it). And sure, before I left for college, living with family helped me live fuller because I wasn’t taking care of me myself and I with no backup. But no period of my life was anywhere near the brain-muddled, helpless disaster zone I am now, unable to do anything ANYWHERE.

I’ve asked for help. My parents have done a lot, I’m infinitely grateful, but exactly because of that, I don’t want to put any more on them. They’re empty nesters; they don’t deserve to have this weird bag of bones they raised for nearly two decades and spent a fuckton of money on... crawl back needing nannying. As far as my friends? Either it’s people long-distance who express concerns (but can’t do what I need most because of the distance), or it’s people close-by who say they’ll do something... and NEVER follow through.

I get that we all have spoon issues. Sometimes you don’t have the energy to talk to me. Sometimes you don’t have the energy to come down and visit me, or have me visit you. But if you hear me say I need help, and say you’d like to help... and then never contact me again even when I try to contact you... because you’re so sparse replying to me... then nothing helps. Spoon issues make communication more difficult. I get that. I have that problem, too. But friendships cannot be maintained and cannot be meaningful unless you interact. I get people saying “We should hang out” or “I’d like to help” and nothing ever gets done. I’m not saying this out of the selfish “help ME help ME” - or to guilt-trip people into helping me because that’d be jackshit wrong... it’s just - if we’re all doing friendships like this, we’re just going to perpetuate loneliness and unfulfilled interactions, aren’t we??? I know lots of lonely people affected by shit like this. We need to get better about this.

Of course some of it’s on me. I have trust issues where I think that even very well-meaning loving people aren’t going to make a difference because I doubt they’ll understand me enough to get what I actually need helped. I’m a logic-oriented person and lots of my friends, precious and pure and glorious sweethearts as they are, think in more emotional ways. And I’ve noticed logic-oriented and emotion-oriented people get encouraged different ways. So I never get the help that works for my brain and needs? Not to be dismissive of the kind words people give because they do want to help, but it just feels like I’m the odd one out that they don’t understand how to help, so I’m stuck at being “unhelped”? Or people telling me, “Just appreciate what they’re trying to do because they’re helping as they can!” But it... but it DOESN’T help me!

Lots of ways people try to verbally encourage fall flat to me. “I believe in you!” changes nothing; what you think of me doesn’t make me magically able to actually do it, for fuck’s sake. The point is I can’t do it, and even if I could, you thinking I could doesn’t change shit or make the problem less difficult. Heck, “You can do it!” just makes it sound like people don’t understand and acknowledge how hard this is for me. I know other people get encouraged by things like that, but for me it’s just rubbing salt in the wound. “Things will get better!” is objectively false; life is a neutral force in how it progresses; sometimes it does get better and sometimes it doesn’t. Overly squishy stuff is too coddling and actually annoying to me. Advice tends to come off as people not having processed what I’m actually going through and telling me shit I know better than they do. I know what I need and I try to communicate it humbly because I believe communication is important to good interactions with friends, and I try to listen to others to know how I can best help them in their struggles... but it just seems like there aren’t the right people in my life to be able to get the help I objectively need. I don’t mean it to sound dismissive or selfish... I really don’t... I will be the first to jump on listening and helping to friends... I always want to be there for my friends and help THEM... and it took me years to even open up to people and admit I needed help because I didn’t want to burden them...

I’m just LEGITIMATELY stuck and in a hole I can’t get out of myself. 

If I forced myself to a near-point of breaking in exhaustion every day, I possibly could do it myself... and there’s something to say about us being determined and surviving through tough times by taking that teeth-gritting step... but I don’t feel the payoff in that, as I’m pretty depressed a lot and don’t feel like my life is going anywhere meaningful. It’s a flaw but I don’t have that determination to stick through a fuckton of really really hard life changes to climb out of this hole myself. 

It’s just... everything is a tangle. I can’t solve one issue without dealing with the other issues simultaneously. Cleaning the house to make my head clearer involves me having enough energy to clean in the first place, and the time off of work to be able to afford a cleaning day. Having enough energy to do work and then clean means eating better. Eating better means having a clean enough place to cook and store food... and more energy. Having more energy means... well... you get the point. They’re all so knotted together I can’t untie this myself in my current state of mind.

It’s pathetic, really. I know that if I had more motivation, I could potentially climb my way out of this. It’d be hard work and it’d be taskmastering, especially without taking significant work time off, but the end result would be TOTALLY worth it. I can call myself out on this lack of choice too. The most successful parts of my life were those in which I cracked down on myself and disciplined myself and got shit done. I should be doing that here, too, but I’m not. I’m letting it continue to fester for half of my days. But I keep telling myself, “It’s okay, you’ll get to laundry tomorrow, you NEED to do work to pay bills,” and such as it is, then I never get this taken care of. I keep telling myself, “You can afford to sleep in after your exhaustion, even though that means prolonging the sleep schedule fix again.” I am culpable for my own problems, too. I’m not blaming myself. I’m not guilting myself. I don’t feel blame or guilt or self-hate or anything; most else might be shit, but my self-confidence is fine. I just acknowledge this problem for what it is.

Until I get these problems solved, everything else is muted. My mental processing, muted. My ability to help all my friends with all their problems, limited. The community service and church involvement I want to get back to. My desires to work on an original novel. My desire to save up money to someday afford a house. My desire to be able to get out more and make meaningful memories with friends. All that. Instead I’m stuck in this limbo of too-tired-to-work or must-work-before-tired-again and whoops-didn’t-take-care-of-myself-today-again-huhhh.

Anyway. Rant ended. For now. 

I just really really really really really want help with this mental health struggling. And I really really really want another human to Be There and non-lonely me.

[illness-to-wellness]

The questions and inspiration for this post originally came from Invisible Illness Week 2015. I’ve written a little bit about POTS before, but nothing this in-depth. This was initially published as a guest post on Kate the Almost Great with this intention: “I decided to add to the health part of [this] blog by sharing about an under-diagnosed chronic health condition, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS). Though it’s somewhat rarely diagnosed, somewhere between 1-3 million people in the United States live with it!”

1. The illness I live with is? Postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), which is a form of dysautonomia. Dysautonomia is an umbrella term for syndromes that involve misfirings of the autonomic nervous system. You can learn about POTS’ mechanisms and vast array of symptoms in this short video.

Source: Dysautonomia International.

2. I was diagnosed with it in the year: 2016.

3. But I’ve had symptoms: My entire life, but they got far worse once I turned 20 about 4 years ago.

4. The biggest adjustment I’ve had to make is: I spent almost half of my summer in 2016 at Mayo Clinic or en route to Mayo Clinic! I went for a week to get diagnosed and seen by a bunch of different doctors, and then I returned for a 20-day intensive pain and symptom management program afterward that gave me my life back. I’d do it all over again in a heartbeat. In terms of my daily life adjustments, in order to manage the symptoms I get the most – higher-than-normal heart rate upon standing or sitting, fatigue, brain fog, dizziness, sweating, weakness, headaches, and nausea – I’ve had to adjust my life significantly. Because of all of these adjustments, though, I’ve started to feel so much better. I had to start exercising 4-5 times a week, weight training 3-4 times a week, eating 6 small meals a day, ingesting 4-8x the amount of salt as a person without POTS to help my blood flow to all parts of my body better, wearing compression stockings or compression shorts, taking 3 different kinds of meds for the symptoms, drinking about a gallon of water a day, and trusting my body to do what it needs to do, even though I know it has problems. These take a lot of time, effort, endurance, and patience, and I’m not perfectly adherent in keeping them, but I do my best. I’ve written an entire piece on managing it, and chronic illnesses in general, if you want some Mayo Clinic-approved and personal success story-proven tips.

5. Most people assume: That the main symptoms of orthostatic intolerance (having the heart rate shoot up and not go back down, like it’s supposed to, upon standing up) and exercise intolerance (though you can train up to it!) are due to laziness and being out of shape. Some doctors don’t think that POTS is a real problem, and one even told me that it’s the “medicalization of inactivity.” That’s just wrong.

6. The hardest part about mornings are: Knowing that getting out of bed is going to make me feel dizzy, nauseous, and fatigued. Once I drink a few cups of water, take my meds, and eat my first small meal of the day, I start to feel human.

7. My favorite medical TV show is: Grey’s Anatomy.

8. A gadget I couldn’t live without is: My Fitbit. I have a bunch of other favorite products that help me manage my life in general, though, which I’ve put into lists based on the kind of help they give me: vocational and physical. (At some point I’ll have one for mental health!)

9. The hardest part about nights are: Sometimes being absolutely exhausted and feeling like I have nothing left in me to the point where I don’t want to talk or do anything. However, when I manage my symptoms well, and make sure to moderate and pace myself throughout the day by taking rests, I can make it to the end of the day these days. It’s often my fibromyalgia (a chronic pain syndrome that can be linked with POTS) that gives me the most trouble by the end of the day, but that’s a different story.

10. Each day I take 12-14 pills & vitamins.

11. Regarding alternative treatments I: Believe in ones with evidence and don’t buy into the ones that don’t. There are a lot of non-medical things that I do to manage my POTS symptoms (see articles on how I manage and what products I use for my vocational and physical health, but I’d be toast without my medications for it to help bolster what I already do.

12. If I had to choose between an invisible illness or visible I would choose: This is a can of worms. Living with an invisible illness (or, in my case, four different ones) means living in a liminal space where you’re never quite healthy enough, yet never quite sick enough. The truth is that many chronic illnesses are only invisible if those around you choose to avert their eyes. However, when I was at Mayo Clinic’s Pain Rehabilitation Center, I learned how to do what we termed “stealth moves” to take care of myself without others noticing so as to not worry others around me, as well as not have my life revolve around pain and symptoms by others’ constant questions. (I couldn’t recommend the PRC enough because it gave me back my life. And, amazingly, in my young adult cohort, more than 80% of us had POTS! There was an unspoken and life-changing understanding among us). At this point, I’m grateful they’re invisible because it allows me to more easily live life without others worrying or trying to accommodate me because I can usually take care of myself. However, I’m glad that I have many trustworthy family members and friends who remind me that I don’t have to go it alone.

  With the idea and urging of a friend, I created this game called “Spoonopoly” (based on the Spoon Theory of chronic illness) that shows just how much little things that most people don’t even think away can, and just might, zap away your energy if you live with something like POTS.

  13. Regarding working and career: I have to take care of myself very carefully and closely in order to assure that I will be able to keep going strong. There have been various points in my chronic illness journey when I didn’t think I’d be able to work even a part-time job, so it’s a miracle that I interned this summer as a hospital chaplain with more than full-time hours! (I’m worked 75 hours one week because, you know, 24-hour on-call shifts. What). I get to do work I love, so I try to keep well enough to do it.

14. People would be surprised to know: Just how fatigued I feel so much (read: all) of the time, yet I come across as having a lot of energy because I’m a positive and gregarious person. Looks can be deceiving, but I’d rather live life to the fullest I can rather than having it pass me by.

15. The hardest thing to accept about my new reality has been: Slowing myself down on my best ways, or pushing myself on my worst days. It looks different every day, and it’s hard not to be able to be as consistent as I’d like to be.

16. Something I never thought I could do with my illness that I did was: Hike up steep mountains again! I may be the sweatiest person alive when I get to the top, but y’all, what a gift it is to be able to see the world on foot, despite what my heart rate can be. This is a picture of me on my way up Masada in Palestine, which is pretty much a straight-up cliff that goes more than 1,300 feet up.

17. The commercials about my illness: Are non-existent. Most doctors have no idea that it’s a thing, so why would there be lucrative pharmaceutical enterprises for it?

18. Something I really miss doing since I was diagnosed is: Actually, getting my diagnosis helped me get things that I had lost back.

19. It was really hard to have to give up: Getting to be totally carefree about my health. It’s a job, y’all. But you have to laugh anyway – otherwise you won’t make it.

20. A new hobby I have taken up since my diagnosis is: Taking walks around the neighborhood on days that I want to get exercise, but don’t feel like going on the elliptical.

21. If I could have one day of feeling normal again I would: You know, at this point, I live a pretty normal life by my own standards. I wish I could be a bit more consistent and carefree, but that’s a human struggle that we all go through at points in our lives, no?

22. My illness has taught me: How weird the human body can be! I can’t even describe the strangeness of some of the tests that you have to undergo to get diagnosed conclusively with a dysautonomic condition. Here are two pictures from my diagnostic period at Mayo Clinic: one of me wearing all sorts of medical devices to monitor my heart rate and blood pressure, and after I underwent a sweat test to make sure I had autonomic nervous system dysfunction rather than brain damage They put sand on you that turns purple on contact with sweat. Let’s just say I was amused, but also a bit disturbed.

23. Want to know a secret? One thing people say that gets under my skin is: “You’re so lucky to have a handicap permit for your car!” (I use one on my worst health days.) I would do anything to not need one, so this one small societal perk isn’t even sort of worth the sometimes-disabling health conditions that allowed me to get one. “God has a good plan for your health problems.” This is plain old unhelpful and even aggravating. I believe that God does beautiful things with the situations surrounding them, and I am grateful for what I have learned, but I would erase the health problems from my life in an instant if I could.

24. But I love it when people: Are willing to sit with me when I need to take a break; flexible in making plans with me, including adventurous ones; and compassionate about what I go through, not seeing me as a victim, instead hear and help bear my pain.

25. My favorite motto, scripture, quote that gets me through tough times is: I have a LOT, but one that fits my journey particularly well is this: “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” – Oscar Wilde

26. When someone is diagnosed I’d like to tell them: That this isn’t the end of the world, even though it sometimes feels like it. How much they can work to improve their situation. How they’ll be able to have a good life, despite their symptoms. I’m living proof that things can change if you’re dedicated, and I am no stronger than you – just perhaps a bit farther in the journey! (And that means I now know some advice that’s actually helpful.)

27. Something that has surprised me about living with an illness is: The compassion, wisdom, and patience that accompany it. I’ve become a much better listener and friend now that I know more about what’s like to undergo the unexpected and undesired.

28. The nicest thing someone did for me when I wasn’t feeling well was: Take out the trash that had been accumulating for weeks, make me dinner (a dish that fit my dietary restrictions), and do the dishes for me. I sobbed. And that’s just one example – I could name so many more. I love my friends so much.

29. I’m involved with Invisible Illness Week because: 96% of disabilities are invisible, yet everyone assumes that disability is a binary where you’re either visibly disabled or entirely healthy. No such thing, y’all. I’m also involved in invisible illness awareness campaigns because being disabled does not mean that I’m a total inspiration or a horrific tragedy. That’s another false binary around disability, so I’m smashing the expectations by sharing my lived experiences – the gray area, a liminal space rather than one that is black and white.

Carol Rossetti has amazing cartoon depictions of unexpected victories in body positivity and feminism like this.

30. The fact that you read this list makes me feel: Glad because this is an under-diagnosed syndrome that needs more attention! Thank you.

30 Things About Living with Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS) The questions and inspiration for this post originally came from Invisible Illness Week 2015. I've written a…

[adambstingus]

6 Frightening New Drugs (You’ve Never Heard Of)

Since the dawn of time, mankind has endeavored to keep finding new ways to get totally shitfaced. And just because the gamut of known narcotics now ranges from a cheeky evening sherry to face-melting LSD doesn’t mean people have stopped looking for (cheaper) alternatives. So let’s take a look at the latest discoveries our often short-lived pharmaceutical pioneers have come up with.

6

People Are Abusing Their Pets’ Medication (And Their Pets)

Veterinarians may not be as well regarded as human doctors, but that doesn’t mean their work is any less difficult. Performing surgery on a cat is just as hard as it is on a person — except that if you screw up on a person, you can’t just bury them in a shoe box and call it a day (usually). Vets need about the same quality of tools and drugs to do their job properly. So it was only a matter of time before addicts figured out that if animal medication is good enough to knock out a Great Dane, it will probably also get them plenty high.

Hanna-Barbara It’s why Shaggy ditched weed and moved on to Scooby Snacks.

Unsurprisingly, most animal drugs aren’t much different than the stuff hospitals pump into us. (Try not to dwell on the fact that your healthcare’s probably not much better than your pug’s.) Heavy-duty pain relievers (like Tramadol), Valium, and even ketamine are generally available to ailing animals. The main difference between human and animal medication seems to be that one of them is a lot harder to obtain. Most of our happy pills are controlled substances, which means they’re carefully tracked. That’s not the case for animal meds, though, because nobody expects a horse to get hooked on … uh, horse.

But until legislation is put into place to stop these druggie pet owners, some states have started educating vets on how to deal with addicts coming into their practice to get high off their cat’s supply. They’re mainly taught to recognize suspicious behavior, like when owners try to get refills early, or ask for medication by name, or pretend their pet fell down the stairs but then not immediately show a YouTube video of the fall to prove it.

LuckyBusiness/iStock “Does that dog suppository fit in a pipe?” is another question that raises red flags.

But what if your pet is just too damn healthy to exploit? In 2002, one owner was caught having trained his dog to cough on command just so he could get his hands on some sweet cough medicine. But that takes a lot of work, so some addicts just resort to intentionally hurting their pets to get a fix. In Kentucky, a trash monster named Heather Pereira was discovered to have cut her dog with razor blades as an excuse to keep getting her paws on his pain medication. She was sentenced to four years in prison (28 in dog years). But that’s small potatoes compared to one small drug ring in Oregon, who used a puppy mill as a front to amass over 100,000 Tramadol pills, neglecting the puppies to the point that their crates had been flooded with their own feces. Those assholes managed to find a way to make standard drug dealers look like pillars of the community.

5

Drinking Russian Bath Lotions

In December 2016, over 100 people from the Siberian city of Irkutsk were rushed to the hospital due to alcohol-related poisoning (you may assume this is normal for Christmas in Siberia, but we assure you it is not). Their drink of choice? A strong beverage that will not only put hair on your chest, but also keep that hair silky and clean.

Biomed Even hotel minibars are getting in on the action.

Boyaryshnik is the most popular bath lotion in Siberia. Not because of the cleansing power of its hawthorn berries, but because Russians like to drink it. And while no one among us can claim that they’ve never considered chugging a bottle of delicious-smelling children’s shampoo, nobody is drinking it for its refreshing scent, but because it gets them fucked right up. The lotion has such a high alcohol content, poor Russians have been using it as a substitute for expensive vodka. But when a bad batch of lotion hit the streets of Irkutsk, the bath-time fun drink killed 61 people in record time. Instead of containing ethanol (the fun alcohol), the tainted Boyaryshnik contained methanol (the “I’m blind and I can’t feel my legs” alcohol) and antifreeze. Not exactly a party, unless your idea of a party entails shedding your physical body in order to board the mothership.

At this point it needs to be made very clear that this tragic incident didn’t happen because people started drinking bath lotion, but because they started drinking counterfeit bath lotion. This means some criminal ring thought it more profitable to make fake bath lotion than fake vodka. And they weren’t wrong. Today, over 12 million Russians drink surrogate alcohol, including perfume, after-shave, antifreeze, and window cleaner. Is it weird that some of those sound a lot more appealing than the others?

Your answer depends on how much you like blue Gatorade.

The reason for these soapy binges is mainly due to Vladimir Putin’s government, which has been steadily raising the tax on alcohol for years in order to curb excessive drinking and fill its coffers with booze money. This has left many Russians too poor to support their habit, turning to their shower caddies for sweet relief. Putin has promised to lower taxes in the future and divert the government’s attention to catching alcohol counterfeiters. Until then, Russians will just have to take pride in having the most fragrant alcoholics in the world.

4

Molly Usually Isn’t MDMA (But Something Way Crazier)

Molly is the uptown rich kid variant of ecstasy, a designer drug endorsed by paragons of cool like Jay-Z and Miley Cyrus. That must mean it’s safe as houses, right? Sure, MDMA is about as chill as hardcore drugs can get, but that pill you got off that guy juggling glow sticks? That isn’t molly. And it will probably melt your insides to a pulp.

Kind of like that other Molly. The one from the gym.

So what are these party people ingesting instead of their expensive designer drugs? It could be anything, really, from variants of meth to cannabinoids to even bath salts. All they have in common is that they’re definitely not molly and they’re definitely made by lazy idiots. Most of them are too new to have a unique name (or their makers couldn’t come up with a catchy one), so they just slid into the molly brand. Sometimes you can get “lucky” and stumble upon some chemist’s pet project like Bromo-Dragonfly, which is pretty much LSD but with “effects that can last for up to three days.” But a much more common narcotic cuckoo egg is benzylpiperazine, or BZP, the poster child for why this fake molly trend is so dangerous. BZP is incredibly easy to make, but takes a lot of cleanup to remove all of the toxins, which prevents massive kidney and liver damage — among many other terrible side effects. Dealers don’t care about that though, because it’s not like someone is going to call the Better Business Bureau and make a complaint.

They don’t worry about losing customers when their customer base is “everyone who clubs.”

Molly has become just another brand, a marketing slogan with about as much truth in advertising as “9 out of 10 dentists agree” or “Jamie Lee Curtis can help you poop better.” Its umbrella status has become such an issue that many molly-centric venues like EDM concerts, raves, and orgies have started setting up testing booths to make sure people know what’s in their entertainment for the evening. The result is quite staggering, with only typically a quarter of pills tested containing only MDMA — and just as many containing no MDMA whatsoever. Meanwhile, out of all the molly the DEA seized and tested between 2009 and 2013, only as few as 13 percent of the pills showed any trace of MDMA. You’re about as likely to get high on MDMA from some molly you bought in a warehouse loft as you would from buying Flintstones vitamins in a drugstore.

But you will get something to make you try to brake cars with your bare feet.

3

Fentanyl Can Kill A Person Just By Touching Them

Heroin might just be the scariest drug out there, especially to non-drug users. It feels like one of those drugs that, just by looking at a spoonful, could ruin your life, your health, and just about every tooth you have. But guess what, you nerd? Heroin is for wimps now. Real tough-guy addicts take fentanyl, an opioid so strong it’s the last high you’ll ever need. Or have, for that matter.

As the marketing slogan says, “Fentanyl: It’s fatyl.”

The entire fentanyl family of opioids is just a carousel of the worst horrors drugs imaginable. Like pink, a type of fentanyl that was given its cutesy name because snorting any more than what fits on the tip of a pinky is enough to kill you. In fact, just touching this shit is enough to go into cardiac arrest. Typically, one grain of a fentanyl-based drug has the same potency as a hit of heroin. Two grains will make you overdose. Not that that’s terrifyingly risky. After all, heroin addicts are known for their steady hands and attention to detail.

Then there’s carfentanil, which is like regular fentanyl except that you’re about as likely to survive a hit of it as you would a ten-car pile-up. It’s roughly 100 times more powerful than regular fentanyl and 10,000 times more so than morphine. That’s because carfentanil was never intended for human consumption: It’s an elephant tranquilizer. The only time its effect on humans was ever considered was to test how quickly it could kill them.

The answer: slightly faster than the elephant.

Ironically, it’s because of the potency of the fentanyl family that they’re incredibly easy drugs to obtain. In Canada, for example, border guards cannot open packages weighing less than 30 grams without consent — and 30 grams of fentanyl is enough to last a lifetime (which for fentanyl users is about half an hour), making them a cinch to smuggle. This easy access has been a scourge on Canada, being partially responsible for increasing overdoses tenfold in just one year.

So how come it’s easier to score mega-heroin than it is just good old classic heroin? Fittingly, this dragon also comes all the way from the home of the opioid, China. China has no real regulations against manufacturing or distributing fentanyl-based substances — and it doesn’t look like that’ll be changing anytime soon. Over the internet, dozens if not hundreds of small, shady pharmaceutical companies are openly selling their fentanyl to clients around the globe. This makes this very dangerous drug about as easy to buy as a cheap iPhone case and for about the same cost.

And with an equal probability of improving your already shitty life.

2

Synthetic Weed Is Turning The Homeless Into Zombies

With the rapid legalization of cannabis across the United States, weed is getting a bit of an image change. No longer is it just the drug of choice for lazy stoners and geriatric hippies — it’s on the cusp of becoming as acceptable as drinking a beer or taking a sniff of nail polish. Of course, these good vibrations couldn’t last forever. Enter K2, Mary Jane’s dirtbag meth-head cousin.

Instead of using cannabis leaves, K2 (like the famous mountain) or Scooby Snax (like the famous talking dog treats), K2 combines all of the natural goodness of oregano, which was what most college kids were smoking anyway, with the chemical garbage that are synthetic drugs. A K2 cigarette contains regular dried herbs with shitty chemical cannabinoids to make them more awesome. It’s basically the Axe Body Spray of narcotics.

But K2 is a lot more dangerous than regular marijuana. Cannabinoids may have the same effect as THC, but have a lot more bad side effects. In 2015, over 6,000 emergency room visits involving K2 occurred in New York City alone, with two deaths already confirmed. This epidemic has been hitting the homeless community the worst, who seem to love how cost effective these cigarettes are while still making you forget you’ve been drooling on the sidewalk for six hours straight. Cannabinoid addicts wandering the street are often referred to as “zombies,” which is appropriate, as they are the type of undead best known for being easily distracted and always hungry.

Except these ones aren’t so concerned with brains.

While K2 itself has been illegal for a while, manufacturers keep switching up its composition, leaving sellers (including many bodegas) with a comfortable uncertainty whether their product is or isn’t actually illegal. However, with the new national ban on synthetic cannabinoids and a slew of police raids, New York hospitals have seen an 85 percent reduction in K2-related medical emergencies and homeless zombie parades.

Still, if there’s one silver lining, it’s that, because of K2 existing, there must have been instances where angry parents shouted at their kids “Why can’t you just smoke weed like a normal person?” Now that’s progress.

1

NBOMe Is Lethal LSD With A Legal Loophole

Say you want to get into LSD. You’ve heard The Beatles were into it, so that’s pretty cool. But you’ve also heard LSD is very illegal, a controlled substance that can get you quite a bit of jail time. Not to worry, scumbag drug manufacturers have found just the thing for you: 25I-NBOMe, a new and exciting LSD-like narcotic that’s not illegal just yet. And the best part is, by the time bureaucracy catches up to this loophole, you’ll already be long dead from taking a highly unstable and untested chemical.

“McDonald’s? No way, that stuff’s full of chemicals.” – Hippie who then takes some NBOMe.

25I-NBOMe is one of the latest of a long line of “chemical analogs” (of which you know quite a few examples having read this article), variants of known narcotics that have been altered just enough that they can’t be considered the same as the household brands they’re imitating. This makes these analog drugs technically legal, in the same way that putting mirrors on your shoes is technically legal. Rogue chemists have been playing this cat-and-mouse game with the D.E.A. since the ’70s, always trying to be a few molecular changes ahead of the curve.

So if NBOMe is just the New Coke of LSD, why is it offing more teenagers than a camp serial killer? It turns out that its greatest asset is also what makes it so terribly dangerous. The value of chemical analogs lies in that they’re “slightly different” from their controlled cousins, but in chemistry, “slightly different” can turn your lungs into goo. And there’s no way of knowing what exactly NBOMe is capable of, as the drug was intended to be used only in animal experiments and no large human trials on its effects have ever been conducted. That means that 25I-NBOMe doesn’t have users, it only has guinea pigs.

“Hey, I removed one atom from that boring old ‘carbon dioxide.’ Wanna try some?”

Not that people know what they’re actually taking. The reason this particular variant is becoming so popular is because it’s 16 times stronger than its other NBOMe cousins. But people don’t tend to whip out their testing kits when someone hands them a sachet of white powder. It’s also quite a bit cheaper than LSD, so plenty of dealers try to pass it off as the brand name. The resulting trip is usually unpredictable and often fatal.

Deaths linked to NBOMe have been described as “violent.” One 18-year-old experienced such extreme depression after mistakenly taking the drug that he tried to commit suicide by stabbing himself repeatedly in the neck with a pair of scissors. Another appeared as if “possessed,” foaming at the mouth and smashing his head against the floor. Another teen jumped off a balcony to his death high on “N-Bomb.” He thought he had taken LSD. He also thought he could fly.

And we’ll never know if he was right because he died before we could find out.

Since it crept into drug culture in between 2010 and 2013, the NBOMe loophole has been all but closed. By 2015, most countries had rescheduled it as the dangerous narcotic that it is, making it much harder and riskier to obtain. But with NBOMe on its way out, it’s only a matter of time before some middling chemist without scruples finds another way to mod an existing drug into something not yet illegal. So the lesson here, kids, is that if you’re going to take drugs, stick to the brands you know and trust. And don’t do a taste test.

Cedric Voets is a total square who gets nervous popping an aspirin. For more of his attempts at witticisms or his famous recipes for toilet wine, do follow him on Twitter.

Also check out 5 Drugs That Turn Your World Into A Real-Life Horror Movie and 5 Awful Things I Learned About Drugs Working At A Pharmacy.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel, and check out 4 Awful Ways Our Ancestors Got High, and other videos you won’t see on the site!

Follow us on Facebook, and let’s be best friends forever.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/2017/10/13/6-frightening-new-drugs-youve-never-heard-of/ from All of Beer https://allofbeercom.tumblr.com/post/166341914167

[samanthasroberts]

6 Frightening New Drugs (You’ve Never Heard Of)

Since the dawn of time, mankind has endeavored to keep finding new ways to get totally shitfaced. And just because the gamut of known narcotics now ranges from a cheeky evening sherry to face-melting LSD doesn’t mean people have stopped looking for (cheaper) alternatives. So let’s take a look at the latest discoveries our often short-lived pharmaceutical pioneers have come up with.

6

People Are Abusing Their Pets’ Medication (And Their Pets)

Veterinarians may not be as well regarded as human doctors, but that doesn’t mean their work is any less difficult. Performing surgery on a cat is just as hard as it is on a person — except that if you screw up on a person, you can’t just bury them in a shoe box and call it a day (usually). Vets need about the same quality of tools and drugs to do their job properly. So it was only a matter of time before addicts figured out that if animal medication is good enough to knock out a Great Dane, it will probably also get them plenty high.

Hanna-Barbara It’s why Shaggy ditched weed and moved on to Scooby Snacks.

Unsurprisingly, most animal drugs aren’t much different than the stuff hospitals pump into us. (Try not to dwell on the fact that your healthcare’s probably not much better than your pug’s.) Heavy-duty pain relievers (like Tramadol), Valium, and even ketamine are generally available to ailing animals. The main difference between human and animal medication seems to be that one of them is a lot harder to obtain. Most of our happy pills are controlled substances, which means they’re carefully tracked. That’s not the case for animal meds, though, because nobody expects a horse to get hooked on … uh, horse.

But until legislation is put into place to stop these druggie pet owners, some states have started educating vets on how to deal with addicts coming into their practice to get high off their cat’s supply. They’re mainly taught to recognize suspicious behavior, like when owners try to get refills early, or ask for medication by name, or pretend their pet fell down the stairs but then not immediately show a YouTube video of the fall to prove it.

LuckyBusiness/iStock “Does that dog suppository fit in a pipe?” is another question that raises red flags.

But what if your pet is just too damn healthy to exploit? In 2002, one owner was caught having trained his dog to cough on command just so he could get his hands on some sweet cough medicine. But that takes a lot of work, so some addicts just resort to intentionally hurting their pets to get a fix. In Kentucky, a trash monster named Heather Pereira was discovered to have cut her dog with razor blades as an excuse to keep getting her paws on his pain medication. She was sentenced to four years in prison (28 in dog years). But that’s small potatoes compared to one small drug ring in Oregon, who used a puppy mill as a front to amass over 100,000 Tramadol pills, neglecting the puppies to the point that their crates had been flooded with their own feces. Those assholes managed to find a way to make standard drug dealers look like pillars of the community.

5

Drinking Russian Bath Lotions

In December 2016, over 100 people from the Siberian city of Irkutsk were rushed to the hospital due to alcohol-related poisoning (you may assume this is normal for Christmas in Siberia, but we assure you it is not). Their drink of choice? A strong beverage that will not only put hair on your chest, but also keep that hair silky and clean.

Biomed Even hotel minibars are getting in on the action.

Boyaryshnik is the most popular bath lotion in Siberia. Not because of the cleansing power of its hawthorn berries, but because Russians like to drink it. And while no one among us can claim that they’ve never considered chugging a bottle of delicious-smelling children’s shampoo, nobody is drinking it for its refreshing scent, but because it gets them fucked right up. The lotion has such a high alcohol content, poor Russians have been using it as a substitute for expensive vodka. But when a bad batch of lotion hit the streets of Irkutsk, the bath-time fun drink killed 61 people in record time. Instead of containing ethanol (the fun alcohol), the tainted Boyaryshnik contained methanol (the “I’m blind and I can’t feel my legs” alcohol) and antifreeze. Not exactly a party, unless your idea of a party entails shedding your physical body in order to board the mothership.

At this point it needs to be made very clear that this tragic incident didn’t happen because people started drinking bath lotion, but because they started drinking counterfeit bath lotion. This means some criminal ring thought it more profitable to make fake bath lotion than fake vodka. And they weren’t wrong. Today, over 12 million Russians drink surrogate alcohol, including perfume, after-shave, antifreeze, and window cleaner. Is it weird that some of those sound a lot more appealing than the others?

Your answer depends on how much you like blue Gatorade.

The reason for these soapy binges is mainly due to Vladimir Putin’s government, which has been steadily raising the tax on alcohol for years in order to curb excessive drinking and fill its coffers with booze money. This has left many Russians too poor to support their habit, turning to their shower caddies for sweet relief. Putin has promised to lower taxes in the future and divert the government’s attention to catching alcohol counterfeiters. Until then, Russians will just have to take pride in having the most fragrant alcoholics in the world.

4

Molly Usually Isn’t MDMA (But Something Way Crazier)

Molly is the uptown rich kid variant of ecstasy, a designer drug endorsed by paragons of cool like Jay-Z and Miley Cyrus. That must mean it’s safe as houses, right? Sure, MDMA is about as chill as hardcore drugs can get, but that pill you got off that guy juggling glow sticks? That isn’t molly. And it will probably melt your insides to a pulp.

Kind of like that other Molly. The one from the gym.

So what are these party people ingesting instead of their expensive designer drugs? It could be anything, really, from variants of meth to cannabinoids to even bath salts. All they have in common is that they’re definitely not molly and they’re definitely made by lazy idiots. Most of them are too new to have a unique name (or their makers couldn’t come up with a catchy one), so they just slid into the molly brand. Sometimes you can get “lucky” and stumble upon some chemist’s pet project like Bromo-Dragonfly, which is pretty much LSD but with “effects that can last for up to three days.” But a much more common narcotic cuckoo egg is benzylpiperazine, or BZP, the poster child for why this fake molly trend is so dangerous. BZP is incredibly easy to make, but takes a lot of cleanup to remove all of the toxins, which prevents massive kidney and liver damage — among many other terrible side effects. Dealers don’t care about that though, because it’s not like someone is going to call the Better Business Bureau and make a complaint.

They don’t worry about losing customers when their customer base is “everyone who clubs.”

Molly has become just another brand, a marketing slogan with about as much truth in advertising as “9 out of 10 dentists agree” or “Jamie Lee Curtis can help you poop better.” Its umbrella status has become such an issue that many molly-centric venues like EDM concerts, raves, and orgies have started setting up testing booths to make sure people know what’s in their entertainment for the evening. The result is quite staggering, with only typically a quarter of pills tested containing only MDMA — and just as many containing no MDMA whatsoever. Meanwhile, out of all the molly the DEA seized and tested between 2009 and 2013, only as few as 13 percent of the pills showed any trace of MDMA. You’re about as likely to get high on MDMA from some molly you bought in a warehouse loft as you would from buying Flintstones vitamins in a drugstore.

But you will get something to make you try to brake cars with your bare feet.

3

Fentanyl Can Kill A Person Just By Touching Them

Heroin might just be the scariest drug out there, especially to non-drug users. It feels like one of those drugs that, just by looking at a spoonful, could ruin your life, your health, and just about every tooth you have. But guess what, you nerd? Heroin is for wimps now. Real tough-guy addicts take fentanyl, an opioid so strong it’s the last high you’ll ever need. Or have, for that matter.

As the marketing slogan says, “Fentanyl: It’s fatyl.”

The entire fentanyl family of opioids is just a carousel of the worst horrors drugs imaginable. Like pink, a type of fentanyl that was given its cutesy name because snorting any more than what fits on the tip of a pinky is enough to kill you. In fact, just touching this shit is enough to go into cardiac arrest. Typically, one grain of a fentanyl-based drug has the same potency as a hit of heroin. Two grains will make you overdose. Not that that’s terrifyingly risky. After all, heroin addicts are known for their steady hands and attention to detail.

Then there’s carfentanil, which is like regular fentanyl except that you’re about as likely to survive a hit of it as you would a ten-car pile-up. It’s roughly 100 times more powerful than regular fentanyl and 10,000 times more so than morphine. That’s because carfentanil was never intended for human consumption: It’s an elephant tranquilizer. The only time its effect on humans was ever considered was to test how quickly it could kill them.

The answer: slightly faster than the elephant.

Ironically, it’s because of the potency of the fentanyl family that they’re incredibly easy drugs to obtain. In Canada, for example, border guards cannot open packages weighing less than 30 grams without consent — and 30 grams of fentanyl is enough to last a lifetime (which for fentanyl users is about half an hour), making them a cinch to smuggle. This easy access has been a scourge on Canada, being partially responsible for increasing overdoses tenfold in just one year.

So how come it’s easier to score mega-heroin than it is just good old classic heroin? Fittingly, this dragon also comes all the way from the home of the opioid, China. China has no real regulations against manufacturing or distributing fentanyl-based substances — and it doesn’t look like that’ll be changing anytime soon. Over the internet, dozens if not hundreds of small, shady pharmaceutical companies are openly selling their fentanyl to clients around the globe. This makes this very dangerous drug about as easy to buy as a cheap iPhone case and for about the same cost.

And with an equal probability of improving your already shitty life.

2

Synthetic Weed Is Turning The Homeless Into Zombies

With the rapid legalization of cannabis across the United States, weed is getting a bit of an image change. No longer is it just the drug of choice for lazy stoners and geriatric hippies — it’s on the cusp of becoming as acceptable as drinking a beer or taking a sniff of nail polish. Of course, these good vibrations couldn’t last forever. Enter K2, Mary Jane’s dirtbag meth-head cousin.

Instead of using cannabis leaves, K2 (like the famous mountain) or Scooby Snax (like the famous talking dog treats), K2 combines all of the natural goodness of oregano, which was what most college kids were smoking anyway, with the chemical garbage that are synthetic drugs. A K2 cigarette contains regular dried herbs with shitty chemical cannabinoids to make them more awesome. It’s basically the Axe Body Spray of narcotics.

But K2 is a lot more dangerous than regular marijuana. Cannabinoids may have the same effect as THC, but have a lot more bad side effects. In 2015, over 6,000 emergency room visits involving K2 occurred in New York City alone, with two deaths already confirmed. This epidemic has been hitting the homeless community the worst, who seem to love how cost effective these cigarettes are while still making you forget you’ve been drooling on the sidewalk for six hours straight. Cannabinoid addicts wandering the street are often referred to as “zombies,” which is appropriate, as they are the type of undead best known for being easily distracted and always hungry.

Except these ones aren’t so concerned with brains.

While K2 itself has been illegal for a while, manufacturers keep switching up its composition, leaving sellers (including many bodegas) with a comfortable uncertainty whether their product is or isn’t actually illegal. However, with the new national ban on synthetic cannabinoids and a slew of police raids, New York hospitals have seen an 85 percent reduction in K2-related medical emergencies and homeless zombie parades.

Still, if there’s one silver lining, it’s that, because of K2 existing, there must have been instances where angry parents shouted at their kids “Why can’t you just smoke weed like a normal person?” Now that’s progress.

1

NBOMe Is Lethal LSD With A Legal Loophole

Say you want to get into LSD. You’ve heard The Beatles were into it, so that’s pretty cool. But you’ve also heard LSD is very illegal, a controlled substance that can get you quite a bit of jail time. Not to worry, scumbag drug manufacturers have found just the thing for you: 25I-NBOMe, a new and exciting LSD-like narcotic that’s not illegal just yet. And the best part is, by the time bureaucracy catches up to this loophole, you’ll already be long dead from taking a highly unstable and untested chemical.

“McDonald’s? No way, that stuff’s full of chemicals.” – Hippie who then takes some NBOMe.

25I-NBOMe is one of the latest of a long line of “chemical analogs” (of which you know quite a few examples having read this article), variants of known narcotics that have been altered just enough that they can’t be considered the same as the household brands they’re imitating. This makes these analog drugs technically legal, in the same way that putting mirrors on your shoes is technically legal. Rogue chemists have been playing this cat-and-mouse game with the D.E.A. since the ’70s, always trying to be a few molecular changes ahead of the curve.

So if NBOMe is just the New Coke of LSD, why is it offing more teenagers than a camp serial killer? It turns out that its greatest asset is also what makes it so terribly dangerous. The value of chemical analogs lies in that they’re “slightly different” from their controlled cousins, but in chemistry, “slightly different” can turn your lungs into goo. And there’s no way of knowing what exactly NBOMe is capable of, as the drug was intended to be used only in animal experiments and no large human trials on its effects have ever been conducted. That means that 25I-NBOMe doesn’t have users, it only has guinea pigs.

“Hey, I removed one atom from that boring old ‘carbon dioxide.’ Wanna try some?”

Not that people know what they’re actually taking. The reason this particular variant is becoming so popular is because it’s 16 times stronger than its other NBOMe cousins. But people don’t tend to whip out their testing kits when someone hands them a sachet of white powder. It’s also quite a bit cheaper than LSD, so plenty of dealers try to pass it off as the brand name. The resulting trip is usually unpredictable and often fatal.

Deaths linked to NBOMe have been described as “violent.” One 18-year-old experienced such extreme depression after mistakenly taking the drug that he tried to commit suicide by stabbing himself repeatedly in the neck with a pair of scissors. Another appeared as if “possessed,” foaming at the mouth and smashing his head against the floor. Another teen jumped off a balcony to his death high on “N-Bomb.” He thought he had taken LSD. He also thought he could fly.

And we’ll never know if he was right because he died before we could find out.

Since it crept into drug culture in between 2010 and 2013, the NBOMe loophole has been all but closed. By 2015, most countries had rescheduled it as the dangerous narcotic that it is, making it much harder and riskier to obtain. But with NBOMe on its way out, it’s only a matter of time before some middling chemist without scruples finds another way to mod an existing drug into something not yet illegal. So the lesson here, kids, is that if you’re going to take drugs, stick to the brands you know and trust. And don’t do a taste test.

Cedric Voets is a total square who gets nervous popping an aspirin. For more of his attempts at witticisms or his famous recipes for toilet wine, do follow him on Twitter.

Also check out 5 Drugs That Turn Your World Into A Real-Life Horror Movie and 5 Awful Things I Learned About Drugs Working At A Pharmacy.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel, and check out 4 Awful Ways Our Ancestors Got High, and other videos you won’t see on the site!

Follow us on Facebook, and let’s be best friends forever.

Source: http://allofbeer.com/2017/10/13/6-frightening-new-drugs-youve-never-heard-of/

from All of Beer https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2017/10/13/6-frightening-new-drugs-youve-never-heard-of/

[allofbeercom]

6 Frightening New Drugs (You’ve Never Heard Of)

Since the dawn of time, mankind has endeavored to keep finding new ways to get totally shitfaced. And just because the gamut of known narcotics now ranges from a cheeky evening sherry to face-melting LSD doesn’t mean people have stopped looking for (cheaper) alternatives. So let’s take a look at the latest discoveries our often short-lived pharmaceutical pioneers have come up with.

6

People Are Abusing Their Pets’ Medication (And Their Pets)

Veterinarians may not be as well regarded as human doctors, but that doesn’t mean their work is any less difficult. Performing surgery on a cat is just as hard as it is on a person — except that if you screw up on a person, you can’t just bury them in a shoe box and call it a day (usually). Vets need about the same quality of tools and drugs to do their job properly. So it was only a matter of time before addicts figured out that if animal medication is good enough to knock out a Great Dane, it will probably also get them plenty high.

Hanna-Barbara It’s why Shaggy ditched weed and moved on to Scooby Snacks.

Unsurprisingly, most animal drugs aren’t much different than the stuff hospitals pump into us. (Try not to dwell on the fact that your healthcare’s probably not much better than your pug’s.) Heavy-duty pain relievers (like Tramadol), Valium, and even ketamine are generally available to ailing animals. The main difference between human and animal medication seems to be that one of them is a lot harder to obtain. Most of our happy pills are controlled substances, which means they’re carefully tracked. That’s not the case for animal meds, though, because nobody expects a horse to get hooked on … uh, horse.

But until legislation is put into place to stop these druggie pet owners, some states have started educating vets on how to deal with addicts coming into their practice to get high off their cat’s supply. They’re mainly taught to recognize suspicious behavior, like when owners try to get refills early, or ask for medication by name, or pretend their pet fell down the stairs but then not immediately show a YouTube video of the fall to prove it.

LuckyBusiness/iStock “Does that dog suppository fit in a pipe?” is another question that raises red flags.

But what if your pet is just too damn healthy to exploit? In 2002, one owner was caught having trained his dog to cough on command just so he could get his hands on some sweet cough medicine. But that takes a lot of work, so some addicts just resort to intentionally hurting their pets to get a fix. In Kentucky, a trash monster named Heather Pereira was discovered to have cut her dog with razor blades as an excuse to keep getting her paws on his pain medication. She was sentenced to four years in prison (28 in dog years). But that’s small potatoes compared to one small drug ring in Oregon, who used a puppy mill as a front to amass over 100,000 Tramadol pills, neglecting the puppies to the point that their crates had been flooded with their own feces. Those assholes managed to find a way to make standard drug dealers look like pillars of the community.

5

Drinking Russian Bath Lotions

In December 2016, over 100 people from the Siberian city of Irkutsk were rushed to the hospital due to alcohol-related poisoning (you may assume this is normal for Christmas in Siberia, but we assure you it is not). Their drink of choice? A strong beverage that will not only put hair on your chest, but also keep that hair silky and clean.

Biomed Even hotel minibars are getting in on the action.

Boyaryshnik is the most popular bath lotion in Siberia. Not because of the cleansing power of its hawthorn berries, but because Russians like to drink it. And while no one among us can claim that they’ve never considered chugging a bottle of delicious-smelling children’s shampoo, nobody is drinking it for its refreshing scent, but because it gets them fucked right up. The lotion has such a high alcohol content, poor Russians have been using it as a substitute for expensive vodka. But when a bad batch of lotion hit the streets of Irkutsk, the bath-time fun drink killed 61 people in record time. Instead of containing ethanol (the fun alcohol), the tainted Boyaryshnik contained methanol (the “I’m blind and I can’t feel my legs” alcohol) and antifreeze. Not exactly a party, unless your idea of a party entails shedding your physical body in order to board the mothership.

At this point it needs to be made very clear that this tragic incident didn’t happen because people started drinking bath lotion, but because they started drinking counterfeit bath lotion. This means some criminal ring thought it more profitable to make fake bath lotion than fake vodka. And they weren’t wrong. Today, over 12 million Russians drink surrogate alcohol, including perfume, after-shave, antifreeze, and window cleaner. Is it weird that some of those sound a lot more appealing than the others?

Your answer depends on how much you like blue Gatorade.

The reason for these soapy binges is mainly due to Vladimir Putin’s government, which has been steadily raising the tax on alcohol for years in order to curb excessive drinking and fill its coffers with booze money. This has left many Russians too poor to support their habit, turning to their shower caddies for sweet relief. Putin has promised to lower taxes in the future and divert the government’s attention to catching alcohol counterfeiters. Until then, Russians will just have to take pride in having the most fragrant alcoholics in the world.

4

Molly Usually Isn’t MDMA (But Something Way Crazier)

Molly is the uptown rich kid variant of ecstasy, a designer drug endorsed by paragons of cool like Jay-Z and Miley Cyrus. That must mean it’s safe as houses, right? Sure, MDMA is about as chill as hardcore drugs can get, but that pill you got off that guy juggling glow sticks? That isn’t molly. And it will probably melt your insides to a pulp.

Kind of like that other Molly. The one from the gym.

So what are these party people ingesting instead of their expensive designer drugs? It could be anything, really, from variants of meth to cannabinoids to even bath salts. All they have in common is that they’re definitely not molly and they’re definitely made by lazy idiots. Most of them are too new to have a unique name (or their makers couldn’t come up with a catchy one), so they just slid into the molly brand. Sometimes you can get “lucky” and stumble upon some chemist’s pet project like Bromo-Dragonfly, which is pretty much LSD but with “effects that can last for up to three days.” But a much more common narcotic cuckoo egg is benzylpiperazine, or BZP, the poster child for why this fake molly trend is so dangerous. BZP is incredibly easy to make, but takes a lot of cleanup to remove all of the toxins, which prevents massive kidney and liver damage — among many other terrible side effects. Dealers don’t care about that though, because it’s not like someone is going to call the Better Business Bureau and make a complaint.

They don’t worry about losing customers when their customer base is “everyone who clubs.”

Molly has become just another brand, a marketing slogan with about as much truth in advertising as “9 out of 10 dentists agree” or “Jamie Lee Curtis can help you poop better.” Its umbrella status has become such an issue that many molly-centric venues like EDM concerts, raves, and orgies have started setting up testing booths to make sure people know what’s in their entertainment for the evening. The result is quite staggering, with only typically a quarter of pills tested containing only MDMA — and just as many containing no MDMA whatsoever. Meanwhile, out of all the molly the DEA seized and tested between 2009 and 2013, only as few as 13 percent of the pills showed any trace of MDMA. You’re about as likely to get high on MDMA from some molly you bought in a warehouse loft as you would from buying Flintstones vitamins in a drugstore.

But you will get something to make you try to brake cars with your bare feet.

3

Fentanyl Can Kill A Person Just By Touching Them

Heroin might just be the scariest drug out there, especially to non-drug users. It feels like one of those drugs that, just by looking at a spoonful, could ruin your life, your health, and just about every tooth you have. But guess what, you nerd? Heroin is for wimps now. Real tough-guy addicts take fentanyl, an opioid so strong it’s the last high you’ll ever need. Or have, for that matter.

As the marketing slogan says, “Fentanyl: It’s fatyl.”

The entire fentanyl family of opioids is just a carousel of the worst horrors drugs imaginable. Like pink, a type of fentanyl that was given its cutesy name because snorting any more than what fits on the tip of a pinky is enough to kill you. In fact, just touching this shit is enough to go into cardiac arrest. Typically, one grain of a fentanyl-based drug has the same potency as a hit of heroin. Two grains will make you overdose. Not that that’s terrifyingly risky. After all, heroin addicts are known for their steady hands and attention to detail.

Then there’s carfentanil, which is like regular fentanyl except that you’re about as likely to survive a hit of it as you would a ten-car pile-up. It’s roughly 100 times more powerful than regular fentanyl and 10,000 times more so than morphine. That’s because carfentanil was never intended for human consumption: It’s an elephant tranquilizer. The only time its effect on humans was ever considered was to test how quickly it could kill them.

The answer: slightly faster than the elephant.

Ironically, it’s because of the potency of the fentanyl family that they’re incredibly easy drugs to obtain. In Canada, for example, border guards cannot open packages weighing less than 30 grams without consent — and 30 grams of fentanyl is enough to last a lifetime (which for fentanyl users is about half an hour), making them a cinch to smuggle. This easy access has been a scourge on Canada, being partially responsible for increasing overdoses tenfold in just one year.

So how come it’s easier to score mega-heroin than it is just good old classic heroin? Fittingly, this dragon also comes all the way from the home of the opioid, China. China has no real regulations against manufacturing or distributing fentanyl-based substances — and it doesn’t look like that’ll be changing anytime soon. Over the internet, dozens if not hundreds of small, shady pharmaceutical companies are openly selling their fentanyl to clients around the globe. This makes this very dangerous drug about as easy to buy as a cheap iPhone case and for about the same cost.

And with an equal probability of improving your already shitty life.

2

Synthetic Weed Is Turning The Homeless Into Zombies

With the rapid legalization of cannabis across the United States, weed is getting a bit of an image change. No longer is it just the drug of choice for lazy stoners and geriatric hippies — it’s on the cusp of becoming as acceptable as drinking a beer or taking a sniff of nail polish. Of course, these good vibrations couldn’t last forever. Enter K2, Mary Jane’s dirtbag meth-head cousin.

Instead of using cannabis leaves, K2 (like the famous mountain) or Scooby Snax (like the famous talking dog treats), K2 combines all of the natural goodness of oregano, which was what most college kids were smoking anyway, with the chemical garbage that are synthetic drugs. A K2 cigarette contains regular dried herbs with shitty chemical cannabinoids to make them more awesome. It’s basically the Axe Body Spray of narcotics.

But K2 is a lot more dangerous than regular marijuana. Cannabinoids may have the same effect as THC, but have a lot more bad side effects. In 2015, over 6,000 emergency room visits involving K2 occurred in New York City alone, with two deaths already confirmed. This epidemic has been hitting the homeless community the worst, who seem to love how cost effective these cigarettes are while still making you forget you’ve been drooling on the sidewalk for six hours straight. Cannabinoid addicts wandering the street are often referred to as “zombies,” which is appropriate, as they are the type of undead best known for being easily distracted and always hungry.

Except these ones aren’t so concerned with brains.

While K2 itself has been illegal for a while, manufacturers keep switching up its composition, leaving sellers (including many bodegas) with a comfortable uncertainty whether their product is or isn’t actually illegal. However, with the new national ban on synthetic cannabinoids and a slew of police raids, New York hospitals have seen an 85 percent reduction in K2-related medical emergencies and homeless zombie parades.

Still, if there’s one silver lining, it’s that, because of K2 existing, there must have been instances where angry parents shouted at their kids “Why can’t you just smoke weed like a normal person?” Now that’s progress.

1

NBOMe Is Lethal LSD With A Legal Loophole

Say you want to get into LSD. You’ve heard The Beatles were into it, so that’s pretty cool. But you’ve also heard LSD is very illegal, a controlled substance that can get you quite a bit of jail time. Not to worry, scumbag drug manufacturers have found just the thing for you: 25I-NBOMe, a new and exciting LSD-like narcotic that’s not illegal just yet. And the best part is, by the time bureaucracy catches up to this loophole, you’ll already be long dead from taking a highly unstable and untested chemical.

“McDonald’s? No way, that stuff’s full of chemicals.” – Hippie who then takes some NBOMe.

25I-NBOMe is one of the latest of a long line of “chemical analogs” (of which you know quite a few examples having read this article), variants of known narcotics that have been altered just enough that they can’t be considered the same as the household brands they’re imitating. This makes these analog drugs technically legal, in the same way that putting mirrors on your shoes is technically legal. Rogue chemists have been playing this cat-and-mouse game with the D.E.A. since the ’70s, always trying to be a few molecular changes ahead of the curve.

So if NBOMe is just the New Coke of LSD, why is it offing more teenagers than a camp serial killer? It turns out that its greatest asset is also what makes it so terribly dangerous. The value of chemical analogs lies in that they’re “slightly different” from their controlled cousins, but in chemistry, “slightly different” can turn your lungs into goo. And there’s no way of knowing what exactly NBOMe is capable of, as the drug was intended to be used only in animal experiments and no large human trials on its effects have ever been conducted. That means that 25I-NBOMe doesn’t have users, it only has guinea pigs.

“Hey, I removed one atom from that boring old ‘carbon dioxide.’ Wanna try some?”

Not that people know what they’re actually taking. The reason this particular variant is becoming so popular is because it’s 16 times stronger than its other NBOMe cousins. But people don’t tend to whip out their testing kits when someone hands them a sachet of white powder. It’s also quite a bit cheaper than LSD, so plenty of dealers try to pass it off as the brand name. The resulting trip is usually unpredictable and often fatal.

Deaths linked to NBOMe have been described as “violent.” One 18-year-old experienced such extreme depression after mistakenly taking the drug that he tried to commit suicide by stabbing himself repeatedly in the neck with a pair of scissors. Another appeared as if “possessed,” foaming at the mouth and smashing his head against the floor. Another teen jumped off a balcony to his death high on “N-Bomb.” He thought he had taken LSD. He also thought he could fly.

And we’ll never know if he was right because he died before we could find out.

Since it crept into drug culture in between 2010 and 2013, the NBOMe loophole has been all but closed. By 2015, most countries had rescheduled it as the dangerous narcotic that it is, making it much harder and riskier to obtain. But with NBOMe on its way out, it’s only a matter of time before some middling chemist without scruples finds another way to mod an existing drug into something not yet illegal. So the lesson here, kids, is that if you’re going to take drugs, stick to the brands you know and trust. And don’t do a taste test.

Cedric Voets is a total square who gets nervous popping an aspirin. For more of his attempts at witticisms or his famous recipes for toilet wine, do follow him on Twitter.

Also check out 5 Drugs That Turn Your World Into A Real-Life Horror Movie and 5 Awful Things I Learned About Drugs Working At A Pharmacy.

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from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/2017/10/13/6-frightening-new-drugs-youve-never-heard-of/