Speaker 1: Hey, Portland and Seattle, we are coming to see you
Speaker 1: live next January. Yep. On January we're gonna be in
Speaker 1: beautiful Seattle, Washington at the More Theater. And then on
Speaker 1: January six, the next night, we're gonna be at Revolution
Speaker 1: Hall in Portland. And we are super psyched for these right, Chuck,
Speaker 1: that's right. These tickets are going fast. So for all
Speaker 1: the deeds, go to our live home on the web
Speaker 1: s y s K live dot com. Welcome to Stuff
Speaker 1: you Should Know from how Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles
Speaker 1: w Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry over there, and they are
Speaker 1: both loaded on bath salts. No, you're not, like you
Speaker 1: even need to say that. Everybody knows you're not on
Speaker 1: bath salts. Yeah, and so c O a time. Uh,
Speaker 1: this is about the drug bath salts. It's not just
Speaker 1: about us chatting about how lovely it is to suak
Speaker 1: in a tub. What do you remember how confusing it
Speaker 1: was when these first came out being an old person
Speaker 1: or they're like, is that a bad thing? Like are
Speaker 1: they actually snorting bath salts? Uh? So, even though a
Speaker 1: lot of this episode about the drug bath salts will
Speaker 1: be about the incorrect hysteria surrounding bath salts, much like
Speaker 1: the crack episode. Yeah, you should still not ever do
Speaker 1: bath salts. Yeah, yeah, that's not an endorsement for going
Speaker 1: and trying. There's anyway. Yeah, but but there is a
Speaker 1: lot of interesting hysteria surrounding this, kind of like a
Speaker 1: BCP and crack and all this stuff. Yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: great it's a really great study in how the media
Speaker 1: can really fuel drug hysteria, and not only how they can,
Speaker 1: how every time a new drug comes out they do
Speaker 1: because anytime the media scares everybody, people pay more attention
Speaker 1: to the news, and the media makes more money, so
Speaker 1: they have a reason to scare people. This is a
Speaker 1: great example of it. But it is also an example
Speaker 1: of reality coinciding with hysteria too. There was some really
Speaker 1: messed up stuff that did happen. Um bath salts just
Speaker 1: not nearly as widespread as people thought. Yeah, it's stay
Speaker 1: off the bath salts. It's not exactly. Uh So, I
Speaker 1: guess our story sort of starts in two thousand tennish
Speaker 1: when this new drug appeared on the scene, and it
Speaker 1: is a what they call a designer drug, meaning that
Speaker 1: it is created by a person, um synthetically and in
Speaker 1: this case it's rather than God. Yeah, in this case
Speaker 1: is something called synthetic cathinone, which will we'll get into
Speaker 1: all the chemical stuff in a bit, but um. And
Speaker 1: I was shocked to learn that designer drugs there's like
Speaker 1: several hundred a year. Is that what it said? Like
Speaker 1: two hift something in Europe? So there's we We worked
Speaker 1: also off of a Smithsonian article that was great called
Speaker 1: no bath salts Won't turn you into a cannibal. And
Speaker 1: the author mentions, um that there was Yeah, like I
Speaker 1: think from two thousand nine till two thousand fourteen or fifteen,
Speaker 1: there was like two D seventy nine new designer drugs
Speaker 1: that hit them. Mark sure, yes. Um. The reason why, though,
Speaker 1: is because designer drugs are easily tweaked, and the reason
Speaker 1: that they tweak them just ever so slightly is because
Speaker 1: governments tend to outlaw specific chemicals and they do that
Speaker 1: by um, the chemical composition. Well, if you add like
Speaker 1: a covalent bond here, or a hydrogen atom there or whatever.
Speaker 1: I don't know, I'm not a chemist. But if you
Speaker 1: alter it ever so slightly so it still has basically
Speaker 1: the same effect, but it is a different chemical than
Speaker 1: the one that's outlawed. You can then turn around and
Speaker 1: sell that legally for a while until that chemical composition
Speaker 1: gets outlawed. Yeah, it's uh in this article is rightfully
Speaker 1: referred to as its cycle in a very tough cycle
Speaker 1: to battle as far as drug enforcement goes, it's it's
Speaker 1: a new day an age with a synthetic drug thing,
Speaker 1: but it's it does seem like if the media gets
Speaker 1: the nation on board, then the drug warriors can be
Speaker 1: like it's outlawed now and everybody's like, okay, cool, alright,
Speaker 1: So two thousand ten, what's going on two thousand ten?
Speaker 1: Over in London? I believe a drug called metha drone
Speaker 1: got kind of big method as an emmy p h. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not like listening like methodrone also known as miamio,
Speaker 1: which is probably the greatest drug slang name of all time,
Speaker 1: although there's another one in here that we'll get to
Speaker 1: that maybe even better than miamo. But I think I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna call everything miaw me out from now on. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I just like the idea of someone like you know,
Speaker 1: walking up to a guy on the street corner say hey, man,
Speaker 1: you got Miami, right, so I got you looked up
Speaker 1: the guys Like, you know, you could just say mea
Speaker 1: all you know what you're talking about. He's like, no,
Speaker 1: it's better to say it twice. He said, I can.
Speaker 1: I can also hook up your kiddi with some yall mix. Right.
Speaker 1: So this this stuff kind of hit the scene in
Speaker 1: Europe and then in very very short order, um, it
Speaker 1: made its way over to the US as well, and
Speaker 1: it was really popular all of a sudden among club kids, ravers,
Speaker 1: people who enjoy getting high on drugs really liked it
Speaker 1: a lot and wearing pants with wide legs. Sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a big one still probably, although I think that's
Speaker 1: like goths now, Like now ravers are called goth kids.
Speaker 1: There's been a convergence. Yeah, it's weird, but they're all
Speaker 1: like into florescent. It's it's it's a bizarre convergence that
Speaker 1: happened somewhere in our rear view after after we kind
Speaker 1: of moved out of that. I mean, I was post rave,
Speaker 1: like I wasn't in that scene even I was too
Speaker 1: old for that. I was peri rave. What does that mean? Like? Right?
Speaker 1: And oh, you did you go to those things? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I went to They might have told the story once,
Speaker 1: but I lived in a warehouse in Atlanta one year
Speaker 1: and actually it was right at the turn of two thousand,
Speaker 1: and they had raves at these warehouses for a while,
Speaker 1: and I went to one. Me and my buddies are like,
Speaker 1: all right, let's do it, and uh yeah, what my scene.
Speaker 1: But we had one friend our age that was really
Speaker 1: into it, and he even wore the clothes. It's like, dude,
Speaker 1: you're too old to be wearing. Come on, you shall
Speaker 1: remain nameless. I know exactly who it is all bet, No,
Speaker 1: you don't know who. Are you gonna say that. I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna say now then, Okay, okay, you'll tell me
Speaker 1: maybe so So anyway, uh two, long, long, long after
Speaker 1: Chuck went to his rave and I went to my rave. Um,
Speaker 1: this this new drug hit the scene. And the reason
Speaker 1: one of the reasons it was so popular and became
Speaker 1: very widespread, like out of nowhere, was because you could
Speaker 1: go to a head shop. You could go to like
Speaker 1: a Spencer's. Maybe, you could go to the mall. You
Speaker 1: could go to a gas station, you could go to
Speaker 1: like a skate shop and buy this stuff, and it
Speaker 1: was called bath salts, and some of them they had
Speaker 1: like brand names on some of the bath salts, like
Speaker 1: a Loco, Motion, Vanilla s Guy, Zoom, Ocean Snow, like
Speaker 1: every dumb name you can think of is what they
Speaker 1: call them. But they were all generally lumped into the
Speaker 1: this new drug bath salts. And it was totally legal.
Speaker 1: And if you look down the label, it would say
Speaker 1: I love that name. If you look down the label,
Speaker 1: it would say not for human consumption, this is pond
Speaker 1: cleaner or vacuum refreshing it right, um? Or plant food yeah,
Speaker 1: plant food was another fertilized or something like that, right,
Speaker 1: And then yes, you would buy this packet. I think
Speaker 1: it was like fifty bucks for fifty milligrams or something
Speaker 1: like that. I don't even know how much that is. Um.
Speaker 1: I think they came in like a packet, okay, you know,
Speaker 1: like pop rocks size packet. There you go put it
Speaker 1: in something I can, right, Okay, So about a pop
Speaker 1: rox amount was I think? Um? And yes, the people
Speaker 1: would take the home and chop it up and snort
Speaker 1: it or crazy crazy people would inject it. Um. Some
Speaker 1: people smoked it, some people just ate it. But I
Speaker 1: think the predominant way it was done with snorting it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And the reason I think we probably already said this,
Speaker 1: but the reason it's called bath salts was because it
Speaker 1: very much looked like the stuff that you put in
Speaker 1: the bathtub to have a nice quiet soak, very relaxing
Speaker 1: light of candle. Put in some bath salts in your tub,
Speaker 1: which is very ironic because the drug is the opposite
Speaker 1: of that experience. Yeah, especially if you do too much. Yeah,
Speaker 1: by all accounts, bath salts will Actually I'm gonna just
Speaker 1: go ahead and read this because it's so great. Is
Speaker 1: this from the Smithsonian article? I think it's from our own,
Speaker 1: but it really describes the experience such that why would
Speaker 1: anyone want to try this out? The bodies of basalt
Speaker 1: users experience of smortge sport of stress effects including rapid
Speaker 1: heart rate, high blood pressure, chest pain's fever, sweating, nausea, vomiting,
Speaker 1: no speeds, trimmor, seizures, muscle agitation. UH. These can lead
Speaker 1: to muscle damage, kidney failure, heart attack, stroke, and death.
Speaker 1: The brain boards an emotional perceptual roller coaster of agitation, airritability, dissneance, insomnia,
Speaker 1: taking slowly of pills of anxiety and then diving into
Speaker 1: valleys of depression concentration grows difficult. Uh, thoughts might take
Speaker 1: a turn towards suicide or extreme paranoia fuel by delusions
Speaker 1: and in some cases hallucinations, all of which can culminate
Speaker 1: in panic attacks, hostility, or aggression. Sounds great, right, So
Speaker 1: what that was describing, from what I understand was if
Speaker 1: you are a chronic user in this stuff, we should
Speaker 1: say was highly addictive. Yeah, worst worst case scenario type
Speaker 1: of experience, right, But it wasn't like out of the
Speaker 1: realm of possibility for about anybody to have this kind
Speaker 1: of experience. But it's not like if you snorted your
Speaker 1: first line of bath salts like you were immediately, you know,
Speaker 1: you've gone nuts and you're having a horrible time. The
Speaker 1: reason people tried bath salts is because usually UM at
Speaker 1: a normal dose I guess, produced euphoria, talkativeness, sociability, um
Speaker 1: energy like a sexy drive. Yeah, yeah, it would increase
Speaker 1: your sex drive and a lot of people likened it
Speaker 1: to a cross between cocaine and ecstasy. Right. And it
Speaker 1: was cheap. Yeah, that was another thing too. Yeah, Like
Speaker 1: you said again, the pop rocks thing I don't know
Speaker 1: how much it took, but um, it was pretty cheap
Speaker 1: compared to like the cocaine and the ecstasy. I think. So, um,
Speaker 1: should we take a break, I guess so. All right,
Speaker 1: well let's take a break and we'll come back and
Speaker 1: uh well, hop into the bathtub again. All right, Chuck,
Speaker 1: We're in the tub. We're soaking in it. It's very relaxing. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think it's starting to permeate through the skin. Is
Speaker 1: that your foot? I sure, hope. So, yeah, this got
Speaker 1: a lot here on that toe. Uh So, Here's here's
Speaker 1: why bath salts begin to make the news is because
Speaker 1: and this is where it gets into a little bit
Speaker 1: of hysteria, because sometimes these people were in fact on
Speaker 1: bath salts and did some extreme things, and sometimes people
Speaker 1: were not on bath salts. But a cop on the
Speaker 1: scene who talked to a reporter said, yeah, it sounds
Speaker 1: like bath salts to me, and then all of a
Speaker 1: sudden it's reported that way. Yeah. There's a very famous
Speaker 1: case of that. Yeah, most infamously is the the zombie
Speaker 1: cannibal Rudy Eugene. Yeah in Miami remember that you? Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember? Very disturbing. Yeah, Like, um, there was a
Speaker 1: man named Rudy Eugene who completely out of the blue,
Speaker 1: as he was walking around Miami one Saturday, just jumped
Speaker 1: on a homeless man that he saw and over the
Speaker 1: course of like eighteen minutes, ate his face. Eighteen minutes.
Speaker 1: Ronald Peppo was the name of the man. And he's recovered,
Speaker 1: actually has he doesn't have a face any longer, he
Speaker 1: doesn't have eyes or anything like that. Yeah, but he's
Speaker 1: taken the opportunity to learn the guitar again. Wow. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's actually seemed like he's in high spirits and everything now.
Speaker 1: But he was not in high spirits while Rudy Eugene
Speaker 1: was eating his face. And Eugene died on the scene.
Speaker 1: He was killed by cops. Yeah who um I from
Speaker 1: what I read, it took multiple rounds to to to
Speaker 1: kill him. Um making animals sounds like. It was so
Speaker 1: disturbing it immediately became a bath salt frenzy. But here's
Speaker 1: the thing. He was not on bath salts. No. A
Speaker 1: cop on the scene apparently said to a reporter, he's
Speaker 1: definitely gotta be on bath salts, and the entire media,
Speaker 1: the international media, took that and ran with it, like
Speaker 1: you said. A month later, the Talks report came out
Speaker 1: and the only thing they found in the system was marijuana.
Speaker 1: And you and you don't hear. Uh, you don't hear
Speaker 1: much about the follow up reporting usually no, you don't.
Speaker 1: And as a matter of fact, as recently as I
Speaker 1: think two thousand and sixteen, this Forbes article we found
Speaker 1: um mentioned that CBS News was still reporting that the
Speaker 1: that that episode was the result of a bath Bath
Speaker 1: Salts overdose. It is so um the fact that that
Speaker 1: happened in two thousand and twelve, right in the peak
Speaker 1: of the kind of hysteria that had been building over
Speaker 1: bath salts. Use um. It lent this this idea to
Speaker 1: bath salts, that it turned you into a zombie cannibal
Speaker 1: who was capable of like doing anything and and usually
Speaker 1: would become very physically violent, was impervious to pain. Yep,
Speaker 1: took like fifteen cops to take them down. And the
Speaker 1: media was reporting on this without facts, and somebody would
Speaker 1: do something crazy and somebody was suggested it was baths Salts,
Speaker 1: and the media would report that the bath Salts did
Speaker 1: this to this person. A month later, a Talk report
Speaker 1: would come back there was no Bath Salts involved. But
Speaker 1: it was too late. So bath salts And whether this
Speaker 1: is like unfair or not, it doesn't matter. The point
Speaker 1: is this the media was being extremely lazy and they
Speaker 1: shaped public opinion over a drug in in ways that
Speaker 1: should not have been shaped, and they should be taken
Speaker 1: to task for that. Yeah, and like, uh, here's a
Speaker 1: quote I think from that Smithsonian article said, the description
Speaker 1: of basalts UH present in these broadcast media reports was
Speaker 1: very different from the scientific literature on the topic, and
Speaker 1: it does not appear that the media took this particular
Speaker 1: source of information into account in reporting. Um. So basically
Speaker 1: that's from that Forbes article that was at the Ford plant.
Speaker 1: So basically like they were completely ignoring the science behind it,
Speaker 1: and all this notion of super strength UH and psychosis,
Speaker 1: which maybe could happen under the most extreme overdose addiction
Speaker 1: cases was not. I mean, basically, like you said, it's
Speaker 1: talkativeness energy euphoria. That's a long cry from super strong
Speaker 1: zombie cannibal. The thing that that strikes me is like,
Speaker 1: I want to know what why rude Eugene did that? Why? What? Why?
Speaker 1: Where did that come from? It was like do you
Speaker 1: remember many many years ago? I don't know ten fifteen
Speaker 1: years ago there was a guy on a on a
Speaker 1: bus on the Trans Canada Highway who out of nowhere
Speaker 1: pulls out a knife and stabs the guy sitting next
Speaker 1: to him, who he doesn't know and apparently hadn't even
Speaker 1: spoken to on the bus ride. Stabs him to death
Speaker 1: and then cuts his head off. And that guy is
Speaker 1: supposedly had no history of violence. Um, and it came
Speaker 1: out of nowhere. What makes somebody snap? What makes somebody
Speaker 1: chew someone else's face off? That's what the media should
Speaker 1: be finding out reporting on. Instead they're just parroting, or
Speaker 1: in this case, they were parroting the supposition of one
Speaker 1: police officer who was on the scene and never followed
Speaker 1: up on the talks report. Right, Should we talk about
Speaker 1: the history a little bit? Yeah, it's very interesting. I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: Am I on a am I on a soapbox? Okay? Good? No,
Speaker 1: like you're on a bar of soap, all right. I
Speaker 1: can deal with that. It's very feel like I can
Speaker 1: inch off the ground. I get so sick of myself sometimes,
Speaker 1: you know, no, no, no no. Uh. So Bath salts
Speaker 1: his historically and it is very surprising to learn, but
Speaker 1: synthetic cathinonwes Um came about in France in the nineteen twenties,
Speaker 1: which is a shock to me. It was a swinging
Speaker 1: time for France. I bet it was, uh, and it was.
Speaker 1: It didn't become like super popular and was all over
Speaker 1: the place. It kind of went back underground until it
Speaker 1: was published. The recipe was published on the web in
Speaker 1: the mid two thousand's. Could you find who published it?
Speaker 1: I couldn't find no. I mean some underground chemists from
Speaker 1: published it. Yeah, and it was taken off the web,
Speaker 1: or at least that website was shut down in two
Speaker 1: thousand and four, but it was already out there. And
Speaker 1: uh there there are some other drugs that we need
Speaker 1: to mention that sort of are in the same category. Um.
Speaker 1: One is called Hagga got, which was big in Israel,
Speaker 1: and I believe hagga got was a synthetic version of
Speaker 1: the natural plant cot k h a t yeah, and
Speaker 1: cot um is. It's a leafy plant that grows in
Speaker 1: I think the horn of Africa and parts of the
Speaker 1: Middle East, and it's kind of popular in those areas.
Speaker 1: Apparently it's just a part of everyday life, like if
Speaker 1: you're a student cramming for tests. You're going to chew
Speaker 1: cot leaves like you would chew tobacco if you're a
Speaker 1: redneck here in the US, or like you might brew
Speaker 1: a t from it um, which you would drink at
Speaker 1: like social gatherings. Some people drink it in the morning.
Speaker 1: It's it's often compared to coffee. I've seen that it
Speaker 1: is far far stronger than coffee. But it produces giddiness, um, euphoria, uh,
Speaker 1: something verging on anxiety. And so cot is the natural
Speaker 1: version of what is it, the synthetic cathone? Okay, but
Speaker 1: it's the natural version of the cathanone, and so everything
Speaker 1: else is a synthetic version, include eoting bath salts right
Speaker 1: in that Hagagat which was big in the Middle East.
Speaker 1: So there were different There are a lot of different versions.
Speaker 1: It's not like, um, it's not like there was one
Speaker 1: bath salt recipe, like I think that it was continually
Speaker 1: sort of changed in all of these synthetic drugs, like
Speaker 1: we mentioned that cycle are constantly being tweaked and changed
Speaker 1: and are sort of different versions of the same thing.
Speaker 1: But so bath salts came about because, like I said
Speaker 1: in two thousand ten, mephodrone made a big splash on
Speaker 1: the UK club scene, and methodrone is kind of like
Speaker 1: it's like a an even more synthetic version of m
Speaker 1: D m A. Right. It produces similar effects, but it's
Speaker 1: a why can't I say it? Yeah, I don't know, kathanone,
Speaker 1: Kathon Kathy, Okay, I got it. It's a right. It's
Speaker 1: a type of miamio, right, whereas m D M A
Speaker 1: is something else. Um. But methodrone what it does is
Speaker 1: it forces a release of dopamine and the neurotransmitter and
Speaker 1: that's that's your happy feeling. That's part of the reward center,
Speaker 1: the pleasure center in the brain, and it forces that. Well,
Speaker 1: everybody loved methodrone, and they said, well, if you love
Speaker 1: methrodrone also known as miamial, you're gonna love methodrone. Mixed
Speaker 1: with a couple of other drugs. Yeah, one called meth alone,
Speaker 1: which is another kath cathinone, another type of it does
Speaker 1: get a little confusing, uh. And And basically from what
Speaker 1: I can tell, the reason that they say it's like
Speaker 1: cocaine and ecstasy is because of the combination of the things,
Speaker 1: Like one is like ecstasy and one is like so
Speaker 1: two of them are like ecstasy. Methodrone and meth alone
Speaker 1: are like ecstasy, where both of those things go in
Speaker 1: and say, hey, neurons release a bunch of dopamine, so
Speaker 1: you've got more than usual, which is right, And then
Speaker 1: you've got m d p V. And I'm gonna try
Speaker 1: saying this out loud because I've practiced a couple of times.
Speaker 1: Let me see if I can. I didn't even highlight
Speaker 1: that word. Are you ready for this? Sure? Okay, Chuck.
Speaker 1: M d p V it looks like the alphabet. It's
Speaker 1: so long methylene dioxy pyro valerone. Who I told you
Speaker 1: I practice that was take one everyone, just so you
Speaker 1: know that was not the magic of editing. And m
Speaker 1: d p V is I'm not sure if it's a
Speaker 1: cathine own or not, but what it does is it
Speaker 1: stimulates the release of nora ephron. It also prevents its reuptake,
Speaker 1: but it also prevents the reuptake of dopamine. So you
Speaker 1: have two drugs that are forcing your neurons to release
Speaker 1: more dopamine and another drug that's stimulating your fight or
Speaker 1: flight response and is preventing that dopamine that's being released
Speaker 1: from being taken up. So it's just floating in your brain.
Speaker 1: It's like a perfect storm, right brain activity. I guess
Speaker 1: if you're a drug user, the right kind of brain activity. Right. So,
Speaker 1: and these are three different drugs that people liked on
Speaker 1: their own that somebody mixed together, like like m D
Speaker 1: p V is supposedly produces feelings akin to cocaine, but
Speaker 1: like ten times the impact of it. I've seen in
Speaker 1: multiple sources um and they mixed these three things together.
Speaker 1: That's what bath salts are. Correct. And so in two
Speaker 1: thousand and ten UH in the UK, poison control centers
Speaker 1: yielded um or fielded rather thirty four and seventy bath
Speaker 1: salt calls just from January to June, which is about
Speaker 1: ten times the previous year's total. By twleven, midnight states
Speaker 1: here in the United States had banned bath salts, and
Speaker 1: then finally in October, the d e A basically can
Speaker 1: can do this thing where they're like emergency, we don't.
Speaker 1: We're aint gonna go through all the rigamarole. We're just
Speaker 1: gonna say this stuff is federally banned. Yeah, wolf Blitzer
Speaker 1: said it was dangerous, so we're gonna ban it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or actually that that didn't ban it. It was October.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, July. That was a federal government right when
Speaker 1: Obama signed a federal ban on a bunch of synthetic drugs.
Speaker 1: Basalts make one of them. But like you said before,
Speaker 1: that the d e A had the authority to be like,
Speaker 1: this is outlawed. We're not even we're not going to
Speaker 1: Congress the president, and we're outlawing it. And they did. Um.
Speaker 1: So metho, drone, meth alone, and m DPV were all outlawed,
Speaker 1: I think. And the head of the e A stood
Speaker 1: in front of America and said, maa, maal, we just
Speaker 1: we just gave out ma'amo the boot. Let's take another
Speaker 1: break and then we'll come back and talk about all
Speaker 1: the reasons why you should not try bass salts. Right
Speaker 1: after that, so miamal um, what's that from super Troopers?
Speaker 1: So people may have heard like, oh wow, ten times
Speaker 1: greater than cocaine. I gotta try that. It's just like ecstasy,
Speaker 1: but even more potent. I gotta try it. Don't try this, um,
Speaker 1: and here all the reasons why you should not try it, right, So, yes,
Speaker 1: it will produce feelings of euphoria. Um. Great, sensations in you. UM,
Speaker 1: if you do a normal dose, you don't really know
Speaker 1: what a normal dose is. One of the big problems
Speaker 1: with this is that it was a designer drug, meaning
Speaker 1: that it never never spent any time in a legitimate
Speaker 1: pharmaceutical lab. There was no research, There was no R
Speaker 1: and D, there was no testing whether I'm like jailed
Speaker 1: inmates against their will or not. Nobody studied this stuff.
Speaker 1: They just did things like, um, go over patents and
Speaker 1: medical literature to find compounds that sounded like, oh, I
Speaker 1: can work with that. I'm a chemist. Let me adjust
Speaker 1: that a little bit and then give something to my
Speaker 1: neighbor who I don't really care if they live or die,
Speaker 1: and then see what happens, and if they get off
Speaker 1: on it, I'm going to flood the British club market
Speaker 1: with it, right, That's what That's how these drugs come out,
Speaker 1: So no one knows. No one who has any any
Speaker 1: idea what they're talking about, knows what an actual dose
Speaker 1: should be. And the problem with with bath salts in
Speaker 1: particular and with cathinones is that if you trapes into
Speaker 1: the overdose territory, which you very easily can, you're in big,
Speaker 1: big trouble. Yeah this, Um, I think it was the
Speaker 1: Forbes article you sent. You know, all of those awful
Speaker 1: uh side effects that I mentioned and before we took
Speaker 1: that break. Um, you can happen upon that rather accidentally.
Speaker 1: And it's said that quite often a bass salt user
Speaker 1: will get way more than they bargained for thereafter the
Speaker 1: little little sexy drive and hey, I'm up and I'm
Speaker 1: talkative and I'm feeling like I'm the king of the world. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and watch me tear my shirt in half, right, and
Speaker 1: before you know it, you're you're clawing skin off your
Speaker 1: arm and a like a psychotic break, right, So that
Speaker 1: can happen if you overdose. It apparently also can happen,
Speaker 1: um if you're a chronic user too, and apparently mean
Speaker 1: like Dr Dre's chronic or you mean just right, sometimes
Speaker 1: the two overlap. Um. But if you are, if you
Speaker 1: abuse the drug and you use it frequently, um, it
Speaker 1: can have all sorts of terrible effects on your your
Speaker 1: you're it will addict you. And the reason why apparently
Speaker 1: you see this kind of thing like any time a
Speaker 1: new drug comes out and it's addictive, they'll say that
Speaker 1: it's X number of times more addictive than the most
Speaker 1: addictive drug that came out last, Like you thought that
Speaker 1: was bad, right, So bath salts are frequently say it's
Speaker 1: to be like multiple times more addictive than math or whatever.
Speaker 1: No one knows if that's true or not, but the
Speaker 1: point is this, it is highly addictive, and anyone who
Speaker 1: knows about how it hijacks your brain can tell you, Yes,
Speaker 1: that's how drugs addict you. And a release of dopamine
Speaker 1: that that um stays in your system, in your in
Speaker 1: your synapses longer than normal, is going to create cravings.
Speaker 1: You're going to become addicted to whatever substance does that
Speaker 1: to you. So it's really easy to get addicted to
Speaker 1: the cathinones that are found in bath salts. Right. And
Speaker 1: because of the prolonged effects that these um, these chemicals
Speaker 1: have on your brain, um, the hangover is really really bad,
Speaker 1: and so you may want to use more to get
Speaker 1: back up again and again. When you use across and
Speaker 1: use it U to a chronic degree, you're setting yourself
Speaker 1: up for those really horrible side effects you can have.
Speaker 1: Yeah that even without an overdose. Yeah, that's the vicious
Speaker 1: cycle of most of the feel good drugs like that is, Uh,
Speaker 1: your body adjusting gets a little more used to it,
Speaker 1: you do more to get that same feeling. You're chasing
Speaker 1: that initial rush or whatever that you get and then
Speaker 1: before you know it, you're in bad shape as a person. Yeah,
Speaker 1: very sad. So that's not like Nancy Reagan talk like
Speaker 1: that's yeah, this is it's it's going to have terrible
Speaker 1: effects on you and it can be very addictive. This
Speaker 1: is your Uncle Josh and Chuck being real. But as
Speaker 1: we said before and Pepper throughout the show, despite that, UM,
Speaker 1: that doesn't change the fact that the media far exaggerated
Speaker 1: the um sometimes the effects of assaults. But what they
Speaker 1: really did was exaggerated how much it was going on,
Speaker 1: Like like at a certain point, I think they even
Speaker 1: found that CNN was reporting this massive up tip when
Speaker 1: in fact it was actually going down in usage. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I'm not quite sure if it was the d e
Speaker 1: A outlawing the ingredients and it made it harder to get,
Speaker 1: or if the kids who are using it and apparently
Speaker 1: it was largely a drug of the younger generation, um
Speaker 1: just said this is whack, done with this and stopped
Speaker 1: using it. But they clearly peaked in two thousand and eleven,
Speaker 1: and the usage was halved by two thousand twelve. Yes,
Speaker 1: says here in two thousand eleven poison control calls. Uh,
Speaker 1: and that should tell you how bad this thing is, right,
Speaker 1: that's that's the proxy for use calls in twenty eleven
Speaker 1: compared to fifty four and twelve. Um. And this is
Speaker 1: while CNN and we're not picking on them, like a
Speaker 1: bunch of news outlets were calling it an epidemic and
Speaker 1: it never really was. It was always sort of a niche,
Speaker 1: smallish time drug. Um. And one of the other things
Speaker 1: though that they did was say like it will turn
Speaker 1: you into this violent psychotic, will chew a face? So
Speaker 1: um when the d A outlawed the constituent drugs of
Speaker 1: bath salts, um, Yeah, yeah, I love that. Um. There
Speaker 1: was actually supposedly there's a Chinese Walter White who was
Speaker 1: sinless to life in prison, known only as Zang. But
Speaker 1: he was a chemist who apparently traveled abroad to Europe
Speaker 1: or somewhere overseas and found like there was a big
Speaker 1: demand for mepha drone and uh he was like, oh,
Speaker 1: I know how to make that. So he made like
Speaker 1: four pounds of it and was selling it over the
Speaker 1: internet via bitcoin before the Chinese caught him. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: guess so, um and uh so guys like that, we're
Speaker 1: guys like that who weren't arrested, I should say, went
Speaker 1: back and said, okay, well let me alter this a
Speaker 1: little bit. And now there's a second generation of bath
Speaker 1: salts coming out that are again synthetic cathinones. Um there's
Speaker 1: one called Alpha p VP, better known as Flacca. Oh
Speaker 1: that is floca a k A. Yeah. When I saw that,
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, finally I know what waka flocka means.
Speaker 1: And I looked it up. I'm like, Nope, spelled differently,
Speaker 1: has nothing to do with one another. It's still the
Speaker 1: quest continues. But um, Flocca apparently, if you want to
Speaker 1: see some whack stuff, look up people freaking out on
Speaker 1: Flocca on YouTube. And there are plenty of like high
Speaker 1: on bath salts videos on YouTube before Flaca seems like
Speaker 1: it might actually be worse. Yeah, and one of these
Speaker 1: friends saying, look at Timmy, I don't see we're going
Speaker 1: to put this on YouTube. One I saw was this
Speaker 1: lady I think in Miami who was in one of
Speaker 1: the weirdest positions I've ever seen on the ground next
Speaker 1: to a car, but was like had her her leg
Speaker 1: up back against the car, was like screaming at somebody
Speaker 1: to bring it on, even though she like couldn't move
Speaker 1: on the ground, just under her own will, she couldn't move. Um.
Speaker 1: And some guy, I guess he's just sitting there with
Speaker 1: his phone like recording her. But you can't really blame
Speaker 1: him because it's like in the middle sounds familiar. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And somebody goes, are you on something? You think, yeah,
Speaker 1: if it's just put like a perfect little period on that.
Speaker 1: But if you if you see those videos and then
Speaker 1: see like Batsalt videos, it seems like foka may even
Speaker 1: be a little worse. Yeah. And I mean, we're we're
Speaker 1: kind of laughing at this because that's we'd try to
Speaker 1: lighten the mood about stuff. But obviously there's nothing funny
Speaker 1: about someone under the ravages of a drug addiction. Um,
Speaker 1: even if some some yokel films it on their phone
Speaker 1: and throws it on YouTube for the world to laugh at.
Speaker 1: It's very sad. Thank you for rescuing that story. I
Speaker 1: just want to be clear, you know, it's it's super
Speaker 1: sad um that these chemists, these chemists are the ones
Speaker 1: doing the drugs for the most part, don't you think, Oh,
Speaker 1: I guess probably not. You know, they're just creating something
Speaker 1: in a lab to sell and make money off of
Speaker 1: that destroys lives, you know. UM. Luckily, though, chuck with
Speaker 1: flocca UM. The highest you get off of flocca is
Speaker 1: by vaping it. Unfortunately, nobody vapes, so probably it's actually
Speaker 1: supposedly falling to the wayside already. But that's another good
Speaker 1: study on UM. On media hysteria as well, media started
Speaker 1: to do the same thing. There was a kid in Florida,
Speaker 1: Austin Haruf. Austin Haruf beat a couple to death. Didn't
Speaker 1: know they He just happened to be walking past their
Speaker 1: house and they think we're sitting in their garage. Such
Speaker 1: a disturbing kid, and he walked up to him and
Speaker 1: killed them. He chewed on one of their faces. He
Speaker 1: was reported to be growling like an animal or whatever.
Speaker 1: And the first thing everybod and he said was that
Speaker 1: guy was on flocca. It was the sheriff on the scene,
Speaker 1: like just like it always happens. So when stuck a
Speaker 1: microphone in his face and he's like, looks like flocka
Speaker 1: to me and then all of a sudden, Austin Haruf,
Speaker 1: the nineteen year old Florida State pratt boy, Uh was
Speaker 1: a flock of abuser who did this awful, awful thing.
Speaker 1: But they found no flock in his system. No, he
Speaker 1: did do that awful thing, and by all accounts it
Speaker 1: was just a psychotic episode. Right again, he had not
Speaker 1: been on flocca. The tox report showed no flocca in
Speaker 1: his system, just like Rudy Eugene, just like that guy
Speaker 1: on the bus in Canada. What what This is the
Speaker 1: real question of the podcast. What happens to make somebody
Speaker 1: do that? I don't know. I mean, these are the
Speaker 1: cases where uh obviously, well, in Rudy Eugene's case, he died,
Speaker 1: But there needs to be some way that there's an
Speaker 1: automatic brain donation in cases like this, and so they
Speaker 1: can study what the heck is going on. I guess
Speaker 1: it's I guess you can kind of like let the
Speaker 1: media off the hook a little bit, certainly let the
Speaker 1: public off the hook, because you want to give explanation
Speaker 1: to behavior like that. You don't want to think that
Speaker 1: anybody could just be walking around and suddenly snap. You
Speaker 1: want to think that they have to be on something
Speaker 1: that overtakes their willpower, takes over their humanity and rids
Speaker 1: them of it and turns them into a monster. Not
Speaker 1: that we're all just taking time bombs. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: when you when you read interviews, uh, like a year
Speaker 1: later with that kid in Florida, like he said that
Speaker 1: the demon was after him, and when you talk to
Speaker 1: him today, he's like, I feel you know, I think
Speaker 1: he literally said this sucks, like this thing happened. I
Speaker 1: don't know why it happened. I feel fine now, um
Speaker 1: so can you guys let me go. That's not quite outworks.
Speaker 1: But and I'm not saying, like, have sympathy for this kid,
Speaker 1: it's it's a weird. Well, if he had a psychotic break,
Speaker 1: that's a weird he had like no control over. I
Speaker 1: feel a tremendous amount of sympathy for him. I certainly
Speaker 1: feel it for his victims and their families. Think if
Speaker 1: this kid just like like lost his marvels and got
Speaker 1: violent and he had no control over really honestly, then yeah,
Speaker 1: of course. Yeah, it's one of those things where there
Speaker 1: there are many victims and a tragedy on many fronts.
Speaker 1: But by all accounts in his case, it wasn't even
Speaker 1: like he was abused as a child. And uh, I
Speaker 1: mean I think it literally, things happen sometimes with the brain,
Speaker 1: and there's something physical that happens in the body, some
Speaker 1: chemical something happens in the brain. We don't know what
Speaker 1: it is, but that's the only explanation. So field of psychiatry,
Speaker 1: stop sitting around congratulating yourselves and get to work figuring
Speaker 1: out what happens. That's it on. And then lastly, um,
Speaker 1: there's one more new bath salt out on the market
Speaker 1: called four MBC. And this one is the only other
Speaker 1: one that has a rival nickname to Miamo. It's called Shrimp.
Speaker 1: You know, Emily sells bath salts in her store. I
Speaker 1: remember this was like, okay, are those bath salts are right?
Speaker 1: Bath salts? But she uh, I mean, it's not in
Speaker 1: the news so much anymore. But it would be funny
Speaker 1: if she had to have a sign up said bat salts,
Speaker 1: not those bath salts. These are your mom's bath salts
Speaker 1: instead of not your mother's bath salts. But if your
Speaker 1: mom was on bath salts and they would be her
Speaker 1: bath salts, it get confused. Yes, all right, well, if
Speaker 1: you want to know more about bath salts, go read
Speaker 1: about it. Don't go trying yourself. Okay. Uh. And since
Speaker 1: we said that, it's time for listening mail, Alright, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna call this a little one thousand episode congrats and
Speaker 1: a little Simpsons part I love the Little Simpsons, Diddy. Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: congratulations on a thousand episodes. Hope you now. I'm just
Speaker 1: joined after you brought to all of us over that milestone.
Speaker 1: As I tuned into The Simpsons Part two on Thursday,
Speaker 1: I was on a flight in the Salt Lake City
Speaker 1: to interview for a position and program pursuing my doctorate
Speaker 1: or physical therapy, and he would say, the whole day
Speaker 1: had an anxious I was anxious and I'm not knowing
Speaker 1: what to expect for my first interview, and I had
Speaker 1: a long day of traveling. It put me on edge.
Speaker 1: But man, the two partter on The Simpsons soothed my
Speaker 1: soul with med ease. Man, Comma, yeah, that's what I said.
Speaker 1: My flight landed, got the rental card, d ode to
Speaker 1: my hotel, starving, having missed dinner, had to settle for
Speaker 1: some rama out of the venning machine. So that's delicious.
Speaker 1: I sat down on the questionable Hotel comforter to eat
Speaker 1: my dinner and watch some TV before grabbing some pillow.
Speaker 1: Turned on the TV was almost creeped out to hear
Speaker 1: the Simpsons theme song playing as a new episode was
Speaker 1: beginning to play on whatever channel it just happened to
Speaker 1: be on, which would be Fox, Destiny, Fate, chance, whatever
Speaker 1: you call it. Joy instantly struck me and actually laughed
Speaker 1: out loud to myself. The two part are really brought
Speaker 1: back memories of childhood and trying to watch episodes of
Speaker 1: The Simpsons sneakily without my parents knowing because my mom
Speaker 1: thought it was the worst thing possible for my young
Speaker 1: eyes and ears. It's quite comical to me that here
Speaker 1: I was on the eve of what could be a
Speaker 1: huge turning point for my career, and what is getting
Speaker 1: me through the self doubt, anxiety and uncertainty was a
Speaker 1: podcast by chance in an episode of the Simpsons. So
Speaker 1: thanks for all your hard work. You guys brought so
Speaker 1: much happiness to all your listeners. Have turned me into
Speaker 1: the best dinner party fact nerd out there. Much love, Jerry,
Speaker 1: thanks a lot, Jared, much appreciated. It's a good one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I hope you got your job, buddy. Yeah. Same here,
Speaker 1: let us know, will you sure? Okay? Well, if you
Speaker 1: want to get in touch of this, like Jared did,
Speaker 1: you can hang out with us. I'm on Twitter at
Speaker 1: josh um Clark. Hey. Also check out my website. It's
Speaker 1: Are You Serious Clark dot com. Chuck's on Facebook dot com, slash,
Speaker 1: Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Stuff you Should Know And
Speaker 1: you can send all of us, including Jerry, and emails
Speaker 1: is stuff podcast at how stuff Works dot com, and
Speaker 1: then join us at our home on the web, the
Speaker 1: official Stuff you Should Know dot com. For more on
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com.