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Bath Salts: Steer Clear · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Hey, Portland and Seattle, we are coming to see you
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Speaker 1: that's right. These tickets are going fast. So for all
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Speaker 1: the deeds, go to our live home on the web
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Speaker 1: s y s K live dot com. Welcome to Stuff
0:27
Speaker 1: you Should Know from how Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
0:36
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles
0:40
Speaker 1: w Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry over there, and they are
0:43
Speaker 1: both loaded on bath salts. No, you're not, like you
0:48
Speaker 1: even need to say that. Everybody knows you're not on
0:51
Speaker 1: bath salts. Yeah, and so c O a time. Uh,
0:56
Speaker 1: this is about the drug bath salts. It's not just
0:59
Speaker 1: about us chatting about how lovely it is to suak
1:00
Speaker 1: in a tub. What do you remember how confusing it
1:03
Speaker 1: was when these first came out being an old person
1:05
Speaker 1: or they're like, is that a bad thing? Like are
1:06
Speaker 1: they actually snorting bath salts? Uh? So, even though a
1:12
Speaker 1: lot of this episode about the drug bath salts will
1:16
Speaker 1: be about the incorrect hysteria surrounding bath salts, much like
1:21
Speaker 1: the crack episode. Yeah, you should still not ever do
1:25
Speaker 1: bath salts. Yeah, yeah, that's not an endorsement for going
1:28
Speaker 1: and trying. There's anyway. Yeah, but but there is a
1:32
Speaker 1: lot of interesting hysteria surrounding this, kind of like a
1:36
Speaker 1: BCP and crack and all this stuff. Yeah, it's a
1:38
Speaker 1: great it's a really great study in how the media
1:42
Speaker 1: can really fuel drug hysteria, and not only how they can,
1:45
Speaker 1: how every time a new drug comes out they do
1:49
Speaker 1: because anytime the media scares everybody, people pay more attention
1:54
Speaker 1: to the news, and the media makes more money, so
1:57
Speaker 1: they have a reason to scare people. This is a
2:00
Speaker 1: great example of it. But it is also an example
2:05
Speaker 1: of reality coinciding with hysteria too. There was some really
2:08
Speaker 1: messed up stuff that did happen. Um bath salts just
2:13
Speaker 1: not nearly as widespread as people thought. Yeah, it's stay
2:19
Speaker 1: off the bath salts. It's not exactly. Uh So, I
2:23
Speaker 1: guess our story sort of starts in two thousand tennish
2:27
Speaker 1: when this new drug appeared on the scene, and it
2:31
Speaker 1: is a what they call a designer drug, meaning that
2:35
Speaker 1: it is created by a person, um synthetically and in
2:40
Speaker 1: this case it's rather than God. Yeah, in this case
2:43
Speaker 1: is something called synthetic cathinone, which will we'll get into
2:48
Speaker 1: all the chemical stuff in a bit, but um. And
2:53
Speaker 1: I was shocked to learn that designer drugs there's like
2:56
Speaker 1: several hundred a year. Is that what it said? Like
2:59
Speaker 1: two hift something in Europe? So there's we We worked
3:03
Speaker 1: also off of a Smithsonian article that was great called
3:06
Speaker 1: no bath salts Won't turn you into a cannibal. And
3:09
Speaker 1: the author mentions, um that there was Yeah, like I
3:13
Speaker 1: think from two thousand nine till two thousand fourteen or fifteen,
3:17
Speaker 1: there was like two D seventy nine new designer drugs
3:20
Speaker 1: that hit them. Mark sure, yes. Um. The reason why, though,
3:25
Speaker 1: is because designer drugs are easily tweaked, and the reason
3:31
Speaker 1: that they tweak them just ever so slightly is because
3:33
Speaker 1: governments tend to outlaw specific chemicals and they do that
3:38
Speaker 1: by um, the chemical composition. Well, if you add like
3:41
Speaker 1: a covalent bond here, or a hydrogen atom there or whatever.
3:44
Speaker 1: I don't know, I'm not a chemist. But if you
3:47
Speaker 1: alter it ever so slightly so it still has basically
3:49
Speaker 1: the same effect, but it is a different chemical than
3:52
Speaker 1: the one that's outlawed. You can then turn around and
3:54
Speaker 1: sell that legally for a while until that chemical composition
3:57
Speaker 1: gets outlawed. Yeah, it's uh in this article is rightfully
4:01
Speaker 1: referred to as its cycle in a very tough cycle
4:04
Speaker 1: to battle as far as drug enforcement goes, it's it's
4:07
Speaker 1: a new day an age with a synthetic drug thing,
4:12
Speaker 1: but it's it does seem like if the media gets
4:15
Speaker 1: the nation on board, then the drug warriors can be
4:19
Speaker 1: like it's outlawed now and everybody's like, okay, cool, alright,
4:23
Speaker 1: So two thousand ten, what's going on two thousand ten?
4:26
Speaker 1: Over in London? I believe a drug called metha drone
4:31
Speaker 1: got kind of big method as an emmy p h. Yeah,
4:35
Speaker 1: I'm not like listening like methodrone also known as miamio,
4:40
Speaker 1: which is probably the greatest drug slang name of all time,
4:43
Speaker 1: although there's another one in here that we'll get to
4:45
Speaker 1: that maybe even better than miamo. But I think I'm
4:48
Speaker 1: just gonna call everything miaw me out from now on. Yeah.
4:50
Speaker 1: I just like the idea of someone like you know,
4:53
Speaker 1: walking up to a guy on the street corner say hey, man,
4:54
Speaker 1: you got Miami, right, so I got you looked up
4:58
Speaker 1: the guys Like, you know, you could just say mea
5:00
Speaker 1: all you know what you're talking about. He's like, no,
5:02
Speaker 1: it's better to say it twice. He said, I can.
5:03
Speaker 1: I can also hook up your kiddi with some yall mix. Right.
5:07
Speaker 1: So this this stuff kind of hit the scene in
5:10
Speaker 1: Europe and then in very very short order, um, it
5:14
Speaker 1: made its way over to the US as well, and
5:16
Speaker 1: it was really popular all of a sudden among club kids, ravers,
5:21
Speaker 1: people who enjoy getting high on drugs really liked it
5:24
Speaker 1: a lot and wearing pants with wide legs. Sure, yeah,
5:27
Speaker 1: that's a big one still probably, although I think that's
5:30
Speaker 1: like goths now, Like now ravers are called goth kids.
5:34
Speaker 1: There's been a convergence. Yeah, it's weird, but they're all
5:37
Speaker 1: like into florescent. It's it's it's a bizarre convergence that
5:42
Speaker 1: happened somewhere in our rear view after after we kind
5:46
Speaker 1: of moved out of that. I mean, I was post rave,
5:49
Speaker 1: like I wasn't in that scene even I was too
5:52
Speaker 1: old for that. I was peri rave. What does that mean? Like? Right?
5:56
Speaker 1: And oh, you did you go to those things? Yeah,
5:59
Speaker 1: I went to They might have told the story once,
6:02
Speaker 1: but I lived in a warehouse in Atlanta one year
6:04
Speaker 1: and actually it was right at the turn of two thousand,
6:09
Speaker 1: and they had raves at these warehouses for a while,
6:13
Speaker 1: and I went to one. Me and my buddies are like,
6:15
Speaker 1: all right, let's do it, and uh yeah, what my scene.
6:21
Speaker 1: But we had one friend our age that was really
6:23
Speaker 1: into it, and he even wore the clothes. It's like, dude,
6:25
Speaker 1: you're too old to be wearing. Come on, you shall
6:29
Speaker 1: remain nameless. I know exactly who it is all bet, No,
6:33
Speaker 1: you don't know who. Are you gonna say that. I'm
6:36
Speaker 1: not gonna say now then, Okay, okay, you'll tell me
6:39
Speaker 1: maybe so So anyway, uh two, long, long, long after
6:45
Speaker 1: Chuck went to his rave and I went to my rave. Um,
6:49
Speaker 1: this this new drug hit the scene. And the reason
6:53
Speaker 1: one of the reasons it was so popular and became
6:56
Speaker 1: very widespread, like out of nowhere, was because you could
7:00
Speaker 1: go to a head shop. You could go to like
7:02
Speaker 1: a Spencer's. Maybe, you could go to the mall. You
7:05
Speaker 1: could go to a gas station, you could go to
7:09
Speaker 1: like a skate shop and buy this stuff, and it
7:12
Speaker 1: was called bath salts, and some of them they had
7:15
Speaker 1: like brand names on some of the bath salts, like
7:18
Speaker 1: a Loco, Motion, Vanilla s Guy, Zoom, Ocean Snow, like
7:22
Speaker 1: every dumb name you can think of is what they
7:25
Speaker 1: call them. But they were all generally lumped into the
7:29
Speaker 1: this new drug bath salts. And it was totally legal.
7:34
Speaker 1: And if you look down the label, it would say
7:37
Speaker 1: I love that name. If you look down the label,
7:39
Speaker 1: it would say not for human consumption, this is pond
7:43
Speaker 1: cleaner or vacuum refreshing it right, um? Or plant food yeah,
7:51
Speaker 1: plant food was another fertilized or something like that, right,
7:54
Speaker 1: And then yes, you would buy this packet. I think
7:56
Speaker 1: it was like fifty bucks for fifty milligrams or something
7:59
Speaker 1: like that. I don't even know how much that is. Um.
8:03
Speaker 1: I think they came in like a packet, okay, you know,
8:05
Speaker 1: like pop rocks size packet. There you go put it
8:08
Speaker 1: in something I can, right, Okay, So about a pop
8:10
Speaker 1: rox amount was I think? Um? And yes, the people
8:15
Speaker 1: would take the home and chop it up and snort
8:18
Speaker 1: it or crazy crazy people would inject it. Um. Some
8:22
Speaker 1: people smoked it, some people just ate it. But I
8:25
Speaker 1: think the predominant way it was done with snorting it. Yeah,
8:30
Speaker 1: And the reason I think we probably already said this,
8:32
Speaker 1: but the reason it's called bath salts was because it
8:35
Speaker 1: very much looked like the stuff that you put in
8:38
Speaker 1: the bathtub to have a nice quiet soak, very relaxing
8:42
Speaker 1: light of candle. Put in some bath salts in your tub,
8:45
Speaker 1: which is very ironic because the drug is the opposite
8:48
Speaker 1: of that experience. Yeah, especially if you do too much. Yeah,
8:51
Speaker 1: by all accounts, bath salts will Actually I'm gonna just
8:55
Speaker 1: go ahead and read this because it's so great. Is
8:58
Speaker 1: this from the Smithsonian article? I think it's from our own,
9:00
Speaker 1: but it really describes the experience such that why would
9:04
Speaker 1: anyone want to try this out? The bodies of basalt
9:08
Speaker 1: users experience of smortge sport of stress effects including rapid
9:11
Speaker 1: heart rate, high blood pressure, chest pain's fever, sweating, nausea, vomiting,
9:14
Speaker 1: no speeds, trimmor, seizures, muscle agitation. UH. These can lead
9:18
Speaker 1: to muscle damage, kidney failure, heart attack, stroke, and death.
9:21
Speaker 1: The brain boards an emotional perceptual roller coaster of agitation, airritability, dissneance, insomnia,
9:27
Speaker 1: taking slowly of pills of anxiety and then diving into
9:30
Speaker 1: valleys of depression concentration grows difficult. Uh, thoughts might take
9:35
Speaker 1: a turn towards suicide or extreme paranoia fuel by delusions
9:38
Speaker 1: and in some cases hallucinations, all of which can culminate
9:41
Speaker 1: in panic attacks, hostility, or aggression. Sounds great, right, So
9:46
Speaker 1: what that was describing, from what I understand was if
9:49
Speaker 1: you are a chronic user in this stuff, we should
9:52
Speaker 1: say was highly addictive. Yeah, worst worst case scenario type
9:55
Speaker 1: of experience, right, But it wasn't like out of the
9:58
Speaker 1: realm of possibility for about anybody to have this kind
10:01
Speaker 1: of experience. But it's not like if you snorted your
10:04
Speaker 1: first line of bath salts like you were immediately, you know,
10:08
Speaker 1: you've gone nuts and you're having a horrible time. The
10:11
Speaker 1: reason people tried bath salts is because usually UM at
10:15
Speaker 1: a normal dose I guess, produced euphoria, talkativeness, sociability, um
10:21
Speaker 1: energy like a sexy drive. Yeah, yeah, it would increase
10:25
Speaker 1: your sex drive and a lot of people likened it
10:27
Speaker 1: to a cross between cocaine and ecstasy. Right. And it
10:31
Speaker 1: was cheap. Yeah, that was another thing too. Yeah, Like
10:34
Speaker 1: you said again, the pop rocks thing I don't know
10:37
Speaker 1: how much it took, but um, it was pretty cheap
10:40
Speaker 1: compared to like the cocaine and the ecstasy. I think. So, um,
10:48
Speaker 1: should we take a break, I guess so. All right,
10:50
Speaker 1: well let's take a break and we'll come back and
10:52
Speaker 1: uh well, hop into the bathtub again. All right, Chuck,
11:21
Speaker 1: We're in the tub. We're soaking in it. It's very relaxing. Yeah.
11:25
Speaker 1: I think it's starting to permeate through the skin. Is
11:27
Speaker 1: that your foot? I sure, hope. So, yeah, this got
11:30
Speaker 1: a lot here on that toe. Uh So, Here's here's
11:34
Speaker 1: why bath salts begin to make the news is because
11:39
Speaker 1: and this is where it gets into a little bit
11:41
Speaker 1: of hysteria, because sometimes these people were in fact on
11:44
Speaker 1: bath salts and did some extreme things, and sometimes people
11:48
Speaker 1: were not on bath salts. But a cop on the
11:52
Speaker 1: scene who talked to a reporter said, yeah, it sounds
11:54
Speaker 1: like bath salts to me, and then all of a
11:56
Speaker 1: sudden it's reported that way. Yeah. There's a very famous
11:59
Speaker 1: case of that. Yeah, most infamously is the the zombie
12:04
Speaker 1: cannibal Rudy Eugene. Yeah in Miami remember that you? Oh yeah,
12:10
Speaker 1: I remember? Very disturbing. Yeah, Like, um, there was a
12:13
Speaker 1: man named Rudy Eugene who completely out of the blue,
12:18
Speaker 1: as he was walking around Miami one Saturday, just jumped
12:22
Speaker 1: on a homeless man that he saw and over the
12:25
Speaker 1: course of like eighteen minutes, ate his face. Eighteen minutes.
12:31
Speaker 1: Ronald Peppo was the name of the man. And he's recovered,
12:34
Speaker 1: actually has he doesn't have a face any longer, he
12:37
Speaker 1: doesn't have eyes or anything like that. Yeah, but he's
12:40
Speaker 1: taken the opportunity to learn the guitar again. Wow. Yeah,
12:44
Speaker 1: he's actually seemed like he's in high spirits and everything now.
12:48
Speaker 1: But he was not in high spirits while Rudy Eugene
12:51
Speaker 1: was eating his face. And Eugene died on the scene.
12:54
Speaker 1: He was killed by cops. Yeah who um I from
12:58
Speaker 1: what I read, it took multiple rounds to to to
13:01
Speaker 1: kill him. Um making animals sounds like. It was so
13:06
Speaker 1: disturbing it immediately became a bath salt frenzy. But here's
13:12
Speaker 1: the thing. He was not on bath salts. No. A
13:14
Speaker 1: cop on the scene apparently said to a reporter, he's
13:18
Speaker 1: definitely gotta be on bath salts, and the entire media,
13:22
Speaker 1: the international media, took that and ran with it, like
13:26
Speaker 1: you said. A month later, the Talks report came out
13:28
Speaker 1: and the only thing they found in the system was marijuana.
13:31
Speaker 1: And you and you don't hear. Uh, you don't hear
13:34
Speaker 1: much about the follow up reporting usually no, you don't.
13:36
Speaker 1: And as a matter of fact, as recently as I
13:38
Speaker 1: think two thousand and sixteen, this Forbes article we found
13:42
Speaker 1: um mentioned that CBS News was still reporting that the
13:46
Speaker 1: that that episode was the result of a bath Bath
13:51
Speaker 1: Salts overdose. It is so um the fact that that
13:55
Speaker 1: happened in two thousand and twelve, right in the peak
13:59
Speaker 1: of the kind of hysteria that had been building over
14:03
Speaker 1: bath salts. Use um. It lent this this idea to
14:08
Speaker 1: bath salts, that it turned you into a zombie cannibal
14:12
Speaker 1: who was capable of like doing anything and and usually
14:16
Speaker 1: would become very physically violent, was impervious to pain. Yep,
14:21
Speaker 1: took like fifteen cops to take them down. And the
14:24
Speaker 1: media was reporting on this without facts, and somebody would
14:30
Speaker 1: do something crazy and somebody was suggested it was baths Salts,
14:34
Speaker 1: and the media would report that the bath Salts did
14:37
Speaker 1: this to this person. A month later, a Talk report
14:40
Speaker 1: would come back there was no Bath Salts involved. But
14:42
Speaker 1: it was too late. So bath salts And whether this
14:45
Speaker 1: is like unfair or not, it doesn't matter. The point
14:49
Speaker 1: is this the media was being extremely lazy and they
14:54
Speaker 1: shaped public opinion over a drug in in ways that
14:58
Speaker 1: should not have been shaped, and they should be taken
15:01
Speaker 1: to task for that. Yeah, and like, uh, here's a
15:03
Speaker 1: quote I think from that Smithsonian article said, the description
15:06
Speaker 1: of basalts UH present in these broadcast media reports was
15:10
Speaker 1: very different from the scientific literature on the topic, and
15:14
Speaker 1: it does not appear that the media took this particular
15:17
Speaker 1: source of information into account in reporting. Um. So basically
15:22
Speaker 1: that's from that Forbes article that was at the Ford plant.
15:25
Speaker 1: So basically like they were completely ignoring the science behind it,
15:29
Speaker 1: and all this notion of super strength UH and psychosis,
15:35
Speaker 1: which maybe could happen under the most extreme overdose addiction
15:41
Speaker 1: cases was not. I mean, basically, like you said, it's
15:46
Speaker 1: talkativeness energy euphoria. That's a long cry from super strong
15:52
Speaker 1: zombie cannibal. The thing that that strikes me is like,
15:57
Speaker 1: I want to know what why rude Eugene did that? Why? What? Why?
16:03
Speaker 1: Where did that come from? It was like do you
16:05
Speaker 1: remember many many years ago? I don't know ten fifteen
16:07
Speaker 1: years ago there was a guy on a on a
16:10
Speaker 1: bus on the Trans Canada Highway who out of nowhere
16:15
Speaker 1: pulls out a knife and stabs the guy sitting next
16:17
Speaker 1: to him, who he doesn't know and apparently hadn't even
16:19
Speaker 1: spoken to on the bus ride. Stabs him to death
16:22
Speaker 1: and then cuts his head off. And that guy is
16:25
Speaker 1: supposedly had no history of violence. Um, and it came
16:30
Speaker 1: out of nowhere. What makes somebody snap? What makes somebody
16:34
Speaker 1: chew someone else's face off? That's what the media should
16:37
Speaker 1: be finding out reporting on. Instead they're just parroting, or
16:41
Speaker 1: in this case, they were parroting the supposition of one
16:44
Speaker 1: police officer who was on the scene and never followed
16:48
Speaker 1: up on the talks report. Right, Should we talk about
16:51
Speaker 1: the history a little bit? Yeah, it's very interesting. I'm sorry,
16:53
Speaker 1: Am I on a am I on a soapbox? Okay? Good? No,
16:57
Speaker 1: like you're on a bar of soap, all right. I
17:00
Speaker 1: can deal with that. It's very feel like I can
17:02
Speaker 1: inch off the ground. I get so sick of myself sometimes,
17:04
Speaker 1: you know, no, no, no no. Uh. So Bath salts
17:07
Speaker 1: his historically and it is very surprising to learn, but
17:12
Speaker 1: synthetic cathinonwes Um came about in France in the nineteen twenties,
17:17
Speaker 1: which is a shock to me. It was a swinging
17:19
Speaker 1: time for France. I bet it was, uh, and it was.
17:23
Speaker 1: It didn't become like super popular and was all over
17:26
Speaker 1: the place. It kind of went back underground until it
17:30
Speaker 1: was published. The recipe was published on the web in
17:32
Speaker 1: the mid two thousand's. Could you find who published it?
17:36
Speaker 1: I couldn't find no. I mean some underground chemists from
17:40
Speaker 1: published it. Yeah, and it was taken off the web,
17:43
Speaker 1: or at least that website was shut down in two
17:44
Speaker 1: thousand and four, but it was already out there. And
17:48
Speaker 1: uh there there are some other drugs that we need
17:49
Speaker 1: to mention that sort of are in the same category. Um.
17:53
Speaker 1: One is called Hagga got, which was big in Israel,
17:58
Speaker 1: and I believe hagga got was a synthetic version of
18:02
Speaker 1: the natural plant cot k h a t yeah, and
18:06
Speaker 1: cot um is. It's a leafy plant that grows in
18:11
Speaker 1: I think the horn of Africa and parts of the
18:13
Speaker 1: Middle East, and it's kind of popular in those areas.
18:17
Speaker 1: Apparently it's just a part of everyday life, like if
18:19
Speaker 1: you're a student cramming for tests. You're going to chew
18:22
Speaker 1: cot leaves like you would chew tobacco if you're a
18:25
Speaker 1: redneck here in the US, or like you might brew
18:29
Speaker 1: a t from it um, which you would drink at
18:32
Speaker 1: like social gatherings. Some people drink it in the morning.
18:35
Speaker 1: It's it's often compared to coffee. I've seen that it
18:38
Speaker 1: is far far stronger than coffee. But it produces giddiness, um, euphoria, uh,
18:46
Speaker 1: something verging on anxiety. And so cot is the natural
18:51
Speaker 1: version of what is it, the synthetic cathone? Okay, but
18:55
Speaker 1: it's the natural version of the cathanone, and so everything
18:57
Speaker 1: else is a synthetic version, include eoting bath salts right
19:01
Speaker 1: in that Hagagat which was big in the Middle East.
19:04
Speaker 1: So there were different There are a lot of different versions.
19:06
Speaker 1: It's not like, um, it's not like there was one
19:09
Speaker 1: bath salt recipe, like I think that it was continually
19:13
Speaker 1: sort of changed in all of these synthetic drugs, like
19:16
Speaker 1: we mentioned that cycle are constantly being tweaked and changed
19:20
Speaker 1: and are sort of different versions of the same thing.
19:22
Speaker 1: But so bath salts came about because, like I said
19:25
Speaker 1: in two thousand ten, mephodrone made a big splash on
19:28
Speaker 1: the UK club scene, and methodrone is kind of like
19:33
Speaker 1: it's like a an even more synthetic version of m
19:37
Speaker 1: D m A. Right. It produces similar effects, but it's
19:40
Speaker 1: a why can't I say it? Yeah, I don't know, kathanone,
19:47
Speaker 1: Kathon Kathy, Okay, I got it. It's a right. It's
19:51
Speaker 1: a type of miamio, right, whereas m D M A
19:53
Speaker 1: is something else. Um. But methodrone what it does is
19:58
Speaker 1: it forces a release of dopamine and the neurotransmitter and
20:02
Speaker 1: that's that's your happy feeling. That's part of the reward center,
20:06
Speaker 1: the pleasure center in the brain, and it forces that. Well,
20:09
Speaker 1: everybody loved methodrone, and they said, well, if you love
20:12
Speaker 1: methrodrone also known as miamial, you're gonna love methodrone. Mixed
20:17
Speaker 1: with a couple of other drugs. Yeah, one called meth alone,
20:20
Speaker 1: which is another kath cathinone, another type of it does
20:25
Speaker 1: get a little confusing, uh. And And basically from what
20:29
Speaker 1: I can tell, the reason that they say it's like
20:31
Speaker 1: cocaine and ecstasy is because of the combination of the things,
20:35
Speaker 1: Like one is like ecstasy and one is like so
20:38
Speaker 1: two of them are like ecstasy. Methodrone and meth alone
20:41
Speaker 1: are like ecstasy, where both of those things go in
20:44
Speaker 1: and say, hey, neurons release a bunch of dopamine, so
20:46
Speaker 1: you've got more than usual, which is right, And then
20:51
Speaker 1: you've got m d p V. And I'm gonna try
20:54
Speaker 1: saying this out loud because I've practiced a couple of times.
20:57
Speaker 1: Let me see if I can. I didn't even highlight
20:59
Speaker 1: that word. Are you ready for this? Sure? Okay, Chuck.
21:02
Speaker 1: M d p V it looks like the alphabet. It's
21:06
Speaker 1: so long methylene dioxy pyro valerone. Who I told you
21:12
Speaker 1: I practice that was take one everyone, just so you
21:14
Speaker 1: know that was not the magic of editing. And m
21:16
Speaker 1: d p V is I'm not sure if it's a
21:19
Speaker 1: cathine own or not, but what it does is it
21:24
Speaker 1: stimulates the release of nora ephron. It also prevents its reuptake,
21:32
Speaker 1: but it also prevents the reuptake of dopamine. So you
21:35
Speaker 1: have two drugs that are forcing your neurons to release
21:39
Speaker 1: more dopamine and another drug that's stimulating your fight or
21:43
Speaker 1: flight response and is preventing that dopamine that's being released
21:49
Speaker 1: from being taken up. So it's just floating in your brain.
21:51
Speaker 1: It's like a perfect storm, right brain activity. I guess
21:57
Speaker 1: if you're a drug user, the right kind of brain activity. Right. So,
22:00
Speaker 1: and these are three different drugs that people liked on
22:03
Speaker 1: their own that somebody mixed together, like like m D
22:06
Speaker 1: p V is supposedly produces feelings akin to cocaine, but
22:11
Speaker 1: like ten times the impact of it. I've seen in
22:14
Speaker 1: multiple sources um and they mixed these three things together.
22:19
Speaker 1: That's what bath salts are. Correct. And so in two
22:22
Speaker 1: thousand and ten UH in the UK, poison control centers
22:26
Speaker 1: yielded um or fielded rather thirty four and seventy bath
22:30
Speaker 1: salt calls just from January to June, which is about
22:34
Speaker 1: ten times the previous year's total. By twleven, midnight states
22:41
Speaker 1: here in the United States had banned bath salts, and
22:44
Speaker 1: then finally in October, the d e A basically can
22:48
Speaker 1: can do this thing where they're like emergency, we don't.
22:52
Speaker 1: We're aint gonna go through all the rigamarole. We're just
22:55
Speaker 1: gonna say this stuff is federally banned. Yeah, wolf Blitzer
22:58
Speaker 1: said it was dangerous, so we're gonna ban it. Yeah,
23:01
Speaker 1: or actually that that didn't ban it. It was October.
23:04
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, July. That was a federal government right when
23:07
Speaker 1: Obama signed a federal ban on a bunch of synthetic drugs.
23:11
Speaker 1: Basalts make one of them. But like you said before,
23:13
Speaker 1: that the d e A had the authority to be like,
23:15
Speaker 1: this is outlawed. We're not even we're not going to
23:17
Speaker 1: Congress the president, and we're outlawing it. And they did. Um.
23:21
Speaker 1: So metho, drone, meth alone, and m DPV were all outlawed,
23:26
Speaker 1: I think. And the head of the e A stood
23:29
Speaker 1: in front of America and said, maa, maal, we just
23:32
Speaker 1: we just gave out ma'amo the boot. Let's take another
23:36
Speaker 1: break and then we'll come back and talk about all
23:37
Speaker 1: the reasons why you should not try bass salts. Right
23:40
Speaker 1: after that, so miamal um, what's that from super Troopers?
24:15
Speaker 1: So people may have heard like, oh wow, ten times
24:18
Speaker 1: greater than cocaine. I gotta try that. It's just like ecstasy,
24:22
Speaker 1: but even more potent. I gotta try it. Don't try this, um,
24:25
Speaker 1: and here all the reasons why you should not try it, right, So, yes,
24:30
Speaker 1: it will produce feelings of euphoria. Um. Great, sensations in you. UM,
24:35
Speaker 1: if you do a normal dose, you don't really know
24:38
Speaker 1: what a normal dose is. One of the big problems
24:41
Speaker 1: with this is that it was a designer drug, meaning
24:45
Speaker 1: that it never never spent any time in a legitimate
24:48
Speaker 1: pharmaceutical lab. There was no research, There was no R
24:52
Speaker 1: and D, there was no testing whether I'm like jailed
24:56
Speaker 1: inmates against their will or not. Nobody studied this stuff.
25:00
Speaker 1: They just did things like, um, go over patents and
25:04
Speaker 1: medical literature to find compounds that sounded like, oh, I
25:08
Speaker 1: can work with that. I'm a chemist. Let me adjust
25:11
Speaker 1: that a little bit and then give something to my
25:13
Speaker 1: neighbor who I don't really care if they live or die,
25:16
Speaker 1: and then see what happens, and if they get off
25:18
Speaker 1: on it, I'm going to flood the British club market
25:21
Speaker 1: with it, right, That's what That's how these drugs come out,
25:24
Speaker 1: So no one knows. No one who has any any
25:27
Speaker 1: idea what they're talking about, knows what an actual dose
25:31
Speaker 1: should be. And the problem with with bath salts in
25:35
Speaker 1: particular and with cathinones is that if you trapes into
25:40
Speaker 1: the overdose territory, which you very easily can, you're in big,
25:44
Speaker 1: big trouble. Yeah this, Um, I think it was the
25:47
Speaker 1: Forbes article you sent. You know, all of those awful
25:52
Speaker 1: uh side effects that I mentioned and before we took
25:54
Speaker 1: that break. Um, you can happen upon that rather accidentally.
25:59
Speaker 1: And it's said that quite often a bass salt user
26:02
Speaker 1: will get way more than they bargained for thereafter the
26:05
Speaker 1: little little sexy drive and hey, I'm up and I'm
26:08
Speaker 1: talkative and I'm feeling like I'm the king of the world. Yeah,
26:10
Speaker 1: and watch me tear my shirt in half, right, and
26:12
Speaker 1: before you know it, you're you're clawing skin off your
26:15
Speaker 1: arm and a like a psychotic break, right, So that
26:19
Speaker 1: can happen if you overdose. It apparently also can happen,
26:22
Speaker 1: um if you're a chronic user too, and apparently mean
26:25
Speaker 1: like Dr Dre's chronic or you mean just right, sometimes
26:29
Speaker 1: the two overlap. Um. But if you are, if you
26:33
Speaker 1: abuse the drug and you use it frequently, um, it
26:37
Speaker 1: can have all sorts of terrible effects on your your
26:41
Speaker 1: you're it will addict you. And the reason why apparently
26:45
Speaker 1: you see this kind of thing like any time a
26:46
Speaker 1: new drug comes out and it's addictive, they'll say that
26:50
Speaker 1: it's X number of times more addictive than the most
26:53
Speaker 1: addictive drug that came out last, Like you thought that
26:56
Speaker 1: was bad, right, So bath salts are frequently say it's
27:00
Speaker 1: to be like multiple times more addictive than math or whatever.
27:03
Speaker 1: No one knows if that's true or not, but the
27:05
Speaker 1: point is this, it is highly addictive, and anyone who
27:09
Speaker 1: knows about how it hijacks your brain can tell you, Yes,
27:12
Speaker 1: that's how drugs addict you. And a release of dopamine
27:16
Speaker 1: that that um stays in your system, in your in
27:20
Speaker 1: your synapses longer than normal, is going to create cravings.
27:25
Speaker 1: You're going to become addicted to whatever substance does that
27:28
Speaker 1: to you. So it's really easy to get addicted to
27:31
Speaker 1: the cathinones that are found in bath salts. Right. And
27:37
Speaker 1: because of the prolonged effects that these um, these chemicals
27:42
Speaker 1: have on your brain, um, the hangover is really really bad,
27:47
Speaker 1: and so you may want to use more to get
27:49
Speaker 1: back up again and again. When you use across and
27:53
Speaker 1: use it U to a chronic degree, you're setting yourself
27:57
Speaker 1: up for those really horrible side effects you can have.
28:00
Speaker 1: Yeah that even without an overdose. Yeah, that's the vicious
28:03
Speaker 1: cycle of most of the feel good drugs like that is, Uh,
28:07
Speaker 1: your body adjusting gets a little more used to it,
28:10
Speaker 1: you do more to get that same feeling. You're chasing
28:13
Speaker 1: that initial rush or whatever that you get and then
28:17
Speaker 1: before you know it, you're in bad shape as a person. Yeah,
28:21
Speaker 1: very sad. So that's not like Nancy Reagan talk like
28:25
Speaker 1: that's yeah, this is it's it's going to have terrible
28:28
Speaker 1: effects on you and it can be very addictive. This
28:30
Speaker 1: is your Uncle Josh and Chuck being real. But as
28:36
Speaker 1: we said before and Pepper throughout the show, despite that, UM,
28:41
Speaker 1: that doesn't change the fact that the media far exaggerated
28:46
Speaker 1: the um sometimes the effects of assaults. But what they
28:51
Speaker 1: really did was exaggerated how much it was going on,
28:54
Speaker 1: Like like at a certain point, I think they even
28:56
Speaker 1: found that CNN was reporting this massive up tip when
29:00
Speaker 1: in fact it was actually going down in usage. Yeah.
29:03
Speaker 1: I'm not quite sure if it was the d e
29:06
Speaker 1: A outlawing the ingredients and it made it harder to get,
29:09
Speaker 1: or if the kids who are using it and apparently
29:11
Speaker 1: it was largely a drug of the younger generation, um
29:16
Speaker 1: just said this is whack, done with this and stopped
29:20
Speaker 1: using it. But they clearly peaked in two thousand and eleven,
29:24
Speaker 1: and the usage was halved by two thousand twelve. Yes,
29:28
Speaker 1: says here in two thousand eleven poison control calls. Uh,
29:32
Speaker 1: and that should tell you how bad this thing is, right,
29:34
Speaker 1: that's that's the proxy for use calls in twenty eleven
29:39
Speaker 1: compared to fifty four and twelve. Um. And this is
29:44
Speaker 1: while CNN and we're not picking on them, like a
29:46
Speaker 1: bunch of news outlets were calling it an epidemic and
29:50
Speaker 1: it never really was. It was always sort of a niche,
29:54
Speaker 1: smallish time drug. Um. And one of the other things
29:59
Speaker 1: though that they did was say like it will turn
30:01
Speaker 1: you into this violent psychotic, will chew a face? So
30:05
Speaker 1: um when the d A outlawed the constituent drugs of
30:09
Speaker 1: bath salts, um, Yeah, yeah, I love that. Um. There
30:14
Speaker 1: was actually supposedly there's a Chinese Walter White who was
30:18
Speaker 1: sinless to life in prison, known only as Zang. But
30:22
Speaker 1: he was a chemist who apparently traveled abroad to Europe
30:25
Speaker 1: or somewhere overseas and found like there was a big
30:28
Speaker 1: demand for mepha drone and uh he was like, oh,
30:31
Speaker 1: I know how to make that. So he made like
30:33
Speaker 1: four pounds of it and was selling it over the
30:36
Speaker 1: internet via bitcoin before the Chinese caught him. Yeah, I
30:42
Speaker 1: guess so, um and uh so guys like that, we're
30:47
Speaker 1: guys like that who weren't arrested, I should say, went
30:50
Speaker 1: back and said, okay, well let me alter this a
30:52
Speaker 1: little bit. And now there's a second generation of bath
30:55
Speaker 1: salts coming out that are again synthetic cathinones. Um there's
31:00
Speaker 1: one called Alpha p VP, better known as Flacca. Oh
31:05
Speaker 1: that is floca a k A. Yeah. When I saw that,
31:10
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, finally I know what waka flocka means.
31:12
Speaker 1: And I looked it up. I'm like, Nope, spelled differently,
31:15
Speaker 1: has nothing to do with one another. It's still the
31:19
Speaker 1: quest continues. But um, Flocca apparently, if you want to
31:24
Speaker 1: see some whack stuff, look up people freaking out on
31:28
Speaker 1: Flocca on YouTube. And there are plenty of like high
31:31
Speaker 1: on bath salts videos on YouTube before Flaca seems like
31:36
Speaker 1: it might actually be worse. Yeah, and one of these
31:39
Speaker 1: friends saying, look at Timmy, I don't see we're going
31:44
Speaker 1: to put this on YouTube. One I saw was this
31:46
Speaker 1: lady I think in Miami who was in one of
31:49
Speaker 1: the weirdest positions I've ever seen on the ground next
31:53
Speaker 1: to a car, but was like had her her leg
31:57
Speaker 1: up back against the car, was like screaming at somebody
32:01
Speaker 1: to bring it on, even though she like couldn't move
32:03
Speaker 1: on the ground, just under her own will, she couldn't move. Um.
32:08
Speaker 1: And some guy, I guess he's just sitting there with
32:11
Speaker 1: his phone like recording her. But you can't really blame
32:14
Speaker 1: him because it's like in the middle sounds familiar. Yeah,
32:17
Speaker 1: And somebody goes, are you on something? You think, yeah,
32:21
Speaker 1: if it's just put like a perfect little period on that.
32:23
Speaker 1: But if you if you see those videos and then
32:26
Speaker 1: see like Batsalt videos, it seems like foka may even
32:29
Speaker 1: be a little worse. Yeah. And I mean, we're we're
32:33
Speaker 1: kind of laughing at this because that's we'd try to
32:36
Speaker 1: lighten the mood about stuff. But obviously there's nothing funny
32:39
Speaker 1: about someone under the ravages of a drug addiction. Um,
32:43
Speaker 1: even if some some yokel films it on their phone
32:48
Speaker 1: and throws it on YouTube for the world to laugh at.
32:51
Speaker 1: It's very sad. Thank you for rescuing that story. I
32:56
Speaker 1: just want to be clear, you know, it's it's super
32:58
Speaker 1: sad um that these chemists, these chemists are the ones
33:03
Speaker 1: doing the drugs for the most part, don't you think, Oh,
33:06
Speaker 1: I guess probably not. You know, they're just creating something
33:09
Speaker 1: in a lab to sell and make money off of
33:11
Speaker 1: that destroys lives, you know. UM. Luckily, though, chuck with
33:16
Speaker 1: flocca UM. The highest you get off of flocca is
33:20
Speaker 1: by vaping it. Unfortunately, nobody vapes, so probably it's actually
33:26
Speaker 1: supposedly falling to the wayside already. But that's another good
33:29
Speaker 1: study on UM. On media hysteria as well, media started
33:35
Speaker 1: to do the same thing. There was a kid in Florida,
33:38
Speaker 1: Austin Haruf. Austin Haruf beat a couple to death. Didn't
33:45
Speaker 1: know they He just happened to be walking past their
33:48
Speaker 1: house and they think we're sitting in their garage. Such
33:50
Speaker 1: a disturbing kid, and he walked up to him and
33:52
Speaker 1: killed them. He chewed on one of their faces. He
33:55
Speaker 1: was reported to be growling like an animal or whatever.
33:58
Speaker 1: And the first thing everybod and he said was that
34:00
Speaker 1: guy was on flocca. It was the sheriff on the scene,
34:03
Speaker 1: like just like it always happens. So when stuck a
34:06
Speaker 1: microphone in his face and he's like, looks like flocka
34:08
Speaker 1: to me and then all of a sudden, Austin Haruf,
34:11
Speaker 1: the nineteen year old Florida State pratt boy, Uh was
34:17
Speaker 1: a flock of abuser who did this awful, awful thing.
34:21
Speaker 1: But they found no flock in his system. No, he
34:24
Speaker 1: did do that awful thing, and by all accounts it
34:27
Speaker 1: was just a psychotic episode. Right again, he had not
34:33
Speaker 1: been on flocca. The tox report showed no flocca in
34:37
Speaker 1: his system, just like Rudy Eugene, just like that guy
34:40
Speaker 1: on the bus in Canada. What what This is the
34:45
Speaker 1: real question of the podcast. What happens to make somebody
34:49
Speaker 1: do that? I don't know. I mean, these are the
34:51
Speaker 1: cases where uh obviously, well, in Rudy Eugene's case, he died,
34:57
Speaker 1: But there needs to be some way that there's an
35:00
Speaker 1: automatic brain donation in cases like this, and so they
35:05
Speaker 1: can study what the heck is going on. I guess
35:08
Speaker 1: it's I guess you can kind of like let the
35:10
Speaker 1: media off the hook a little bit, certainly let the
35:12
Speaker 1: public off the hook, because you want to give explanation
35:15
Speaker 1: to behavior like that. You don't want to think that
35:18
Speaker 1: anybody could just be walking around and suddenly snap. You
35:21
Speaker 1: want to think that they have to be on something
35:24
Speaker 1: that overtakes their willpower, takes over their humanity and rids
35:29
Speaker 1: them of it and turns them into a monster. Not
35:31
Speaker 1: that we're all just taking time bombs. Yeah, I mean
35:35
Speaker 1: when you when you read interviews, uh, like a year
35:38
Speaker 1: later with that kid in Florida, like he said that
35:42
Speaker 1: the demon was after him, and when you talk to
35:45
Speaker 1: him today, he's like, I feel you know, I think
35:48
Speaker 1: he literally said this sucks, like this thing happened. I
35:51
Speaker 1: don't know why it happened. I feel fine now, um
35:55
Speaker 1: so can you guys let me go. That's not quite outworks.
35:59
Speaker 1: But and I'm not saying, like, have sympathy for this kid,
36:02
Speaker 1: it's it's a weird. Well, if he had a psychotic break,
36:04
Speaker 1: that's a weird he had like no control over. I
36:08
Speaker 1: feel a tremendous amount of sympathy for him. I certainly
36:12
Speaker 1: feel it for his victims and their families. Think if
36:15
Speaker 1: this kid just like like lost his marvels and got
36:19
Speaker 1: violent and he had no control over really honestly, then yeah,
36:25
Speaker 1: of course. Yeah, it's one of those things where there
36:28
Speaker 1: there are many victims and a tragedy on many fronts.
36:31
Speaker 1: But by all accounts in his case, it wasn't even
36:34
Speaker 1: like he was abused as a child. And uh, I
36:37
Speaker 1: mean I think it literally, things happen sometimes with the brain,
36:41
Speaker 1: and there's something physical that happens in the body, some
36:45
Speaker 1: chemical something happens in the brain. We don't know what
36:49
Speaker 1: it is, but that's the only explanation. So field of psychiatry,
36:54
Speaker 1: stop sitting around congratulating yourselves and get to work figuring
36:58
Speaker 1: out what happens. That's it on. And then lastly, um,
37:02
Speaker 1: there's one more new bath salt out on the market
37:05
Speaker 1: called four MBC. And this one is the only other
37:08
Speaker 1: one that has a rival nickname to Miamo. It's called Shrimp.
37:15
Speaker 1: You know, Emily sells bath salts in her store. I
37:18
Speaker 1: remember this was like, okay, are those bath salts are right?
37:21
Speaker 1: Bath salts? But she uh, I mean, it's not in
37:24
Speaker 1: the news so much anymore. But it would be funny
37:26
Speaker 1: if she had to have a sign up said bat salts,
37:28
Speaker 1: not those bath salts. These are your mom's bath salts
37:31
Speaker 1: instead of not your mother's bath salts. But if your
37:34
Speaker 1: mom was on bath salts and they would be her
37:36
Speaker 1: bath salts, it get confused. Yes, all right, well, if
37:39
Speaker 1: you want to know more about bath salts, go read
37:42
Speaker 1: about it. Don't go trying yourself. Okay. Uh. And since
37:46
Speaker 1: we said that, it's time for listening mail, Alright, I'm
37:50
Speaker 1: gonna call this a little one thousand episode congrats and
37:53
Speaker 1: a little Simpsons part I love the Little Simpsons, Diddy. Hey, guys,
37:56
Speaker 1: congratulations on a thousand episodes. Hope you now. I'm just
37:59
Speaker 1: joined after you brought to all of us over that milestone.
38:03
Speaker 1: As I tuned into The Simpsons Part two on Thursday,
38:05
Speaker 1: I was on a flight in the Salt Lake City
38:06
Speaker 1: to interview for a position and program pursuing my doctorate
38:10
Speaker 1: or physical therapy, and he would say, the whole day
38:13
Speaker 1: had an anxious I was anxious and I'm not knowing
38:15
Speaker 1: what to expect for my first interview, and I had
38:18
Speaker 1: a long day of traveling. It put me on edge.
38:20
Speaker 1: But man, the two partter on The Simpsons soothed my
38:23
Speaker 1: soul with med ease. Man, Comma, yeah, that's what I said.
38:29
Speaker 1: My flight landed, got the rental card, d ode to
38:31
Speaker 1: my hotel, starving, having missed dinner, had to settle for
38:34
Speaker 1: some rama out of the venning machine. So that's delicious.
38:40
Speaker 1: I sat down on the questionable Hotel comforter to eat
38:43
Speaker 1: my dinner and watch some TV before grabbing some pillow.
38:46
Speaker 1: Turned on the TV was almost creeped out to hear
38:48
Speaker 1: the Simpsons theme song playing as a new episode was
38:52
Speaker 1: beginning to play on whatever channel it just happened to
38:56
Speaker 1: be on, which would be Fox, Destiny, Fate, chance, whatever
39:00
Speaker 1: you call it. Joy instantly struck me and actually laughed
39:03
Speaker 1: out loud to myself. The two part are really brought
39:05
Speaker 1: back memories of childhood and trying to watch episodes of
39:08
Speaker 1: The Simpsons sneakily without my parents knowing because my mom
39:11
Speaker 1: thought it was the worst thing possible for my young
39:13
Speaker 1: eyes and ears. It's quite comical to me that here
39:16
Speaker 1: I was on the eve of what could be a
39:18
Speaker 1: huge turning point for my career, and what is getting
39:21
Speaker 1: me through the self doubt, anxiety and uncertainty was a
39:24
Speaker 1: podcast by chance in an episode of the Simpsons. So
39:29
Speaker 1: thanks for all your hard work. You guys brought so
39:30
Speaker 1: much happiness to all your listeners. Have turned me into
39:33
Speaker 1: the best dinner party fact nerd out there. Much love, Jerry,
39:38
Speaker 1: thanks a lot, Jared, much appreciated. It's a good one. Yeah,
39:41
Speaker 1: I hope you got your job, buddy. Yeah. Same here,
39:43
Speaker 1: let us know, will you sure? Okay? Well, if you
39:47
Speaker 1: want to get in touch of this, like Jared did,
39:49
Speaker 1: you can hang out with us. I'm on Twitter at
39:52
Speaker 1: josh um Clark. Hey. Also check out my website. It's
39:55
Speaker 1: Are You Serious Clark dot com. Chuck's on Facebook dot com, slash,
40:00
Speaker 1: Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Stuff you Should Know And
40:04
Speaker 1: you can send all of us, including Jerry, and emails
40:06
Speaker 1: is stuff podcast at how stuff Works dot com, and
40:09
Speaker 1: then join us at our home on the web, the
40:11
Speaker 1: official Stuff you Should Know dot com. For more on
40:19
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff
40:21
Speaker 1: Works dot com.