Urban legends about drugs
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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- from the December 2005 Wikipedia article
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Urban Legends about LSD
A number of urban legends exist about LSD. The aura of mystique popularly associated with the drug, and a great deal of misinformation issued and propagated by anti-drug groups, particularly in United States anti-drug education programs in schools, provide fertile ground for misconceptions to take hold. Such misinformation may be propagated due to simple ignorance, or through deliberate attempts to frighten students away from LSD usage through scare tactics.
Bad LSD
The most widespread misinformation about LSD, is that it is possible for LSD to be tainted, or bad, or adulterated. While it is possible that a pill sold with the claim that it "contains" LSD actually contains something else, there is nothing as potent as LSD and also psychoactive that can be ingested in blotter or droplet form. The most famous example of this legend spreading was at Woodstock, where there was an announcement from the stage to not eat a certain variety of blotter.
Blue Star Tattoos
One popular meme is the blue star tattoo legend. This meme frequently surfaces in American elementary and middle schools in the form of a flyer that has been photocopied through many generations, which is distributed to parents by concerned school officials. It has also become popular on Internet mailing lists and websites. This legend states that a temporary lick-and-stick tattoo soaked in LSD and made in the form of a blue star, or of popular children's cartoon characters, is being distributed to children in the area in order to get them addicted to LSD [sic]. The flyer lists an inaccurate description of the effects of LSD, some attribution (typically to a well-regarded hospital or a vaguely specified "adviser to the president"), and instructs parents to contact police if they come across the blue star tattoos. No actual cases of LSD distribution to children in this manner have ever been documented. The legend is debunked here [1] at Snopes.
Retention of LSD in Spinal Fluid
A meme with particular appeal to anti-drug educators who wish to instill a fear of the potential long-term effects of LSD in their pupils, and also among casual high school age LSD users, is that the body stores crystallized LSD in spinal fluid or in fat cells, which at some point dislodges and causes horrific flashbacks, perhaps years later. The scientific evidence provides no support whatsoever for this theory, and rather indicates that LSD has a very short half-life in the body, and that most of the drug's already minuscule dose is eliminated from the system before its action is even over. (see LSD#Flashbacks).
This legend may be derived from the fact that an inert, metabolized form of THC, the main active constituent of marijuana, is in fact stored by the body in fat cells for about a month after use.
Different Types of LSD
A popular meme with high school and college age users is that there are different "types" of LSD, which produce different types of trips. The types are usually associated with a particular blotter paper design or other dosage form (e.g. sugarcube or geltab), and the resultant trips associated with each dosage form are typically described in terms such as that "blue pyramids [a blotter paper design] give body trips" (a trip of mainly physical sensations with not much mental effect) or a "head trip" (the reverse, mainly mental effects with little physical sensations) or "great visuals" (hallucinations).
While there is no actual physical variation in the LSD molecules carried on different substrates, this meme is self-reinforcing insofar as a user taking LSD who strongly expects to have a particular type of experience due to ingesting a particular substrate is thus much more likely to actually have that particular kind of experience.
Banana Peel Synthesis
Another popular theme among naïve LSD users is that it is possible to synthesize LSD from banana peels or other common household foods and chemicals, or that the synthesis of LSD can be easily accomplished in a bathtub. Variants of this legend often circulate on the Internet, and were popular on 'underground' BBSes run by high schoolers before the advent of widespread home Internet access. This myth is sometimes related in a way so as to bolster social standing within a drug-using social group through association with the purported chemist, e.g. "My boyfriend/cousin/friend/roommate makes LSD in the bathtub from banana peels". The actual synthesis requires university training in organic chemistry and requires both expensive laboratory equipment and expensive, carefully controlled precursor chemicals.
Strychnine
Anti-drug educators frequently tell their students some variant on the theme of inevitable strychnine poisoning through LSD use, for example, that strychnine is commonly sold as a cheaper substitute for LSD by unscrupulous drug dealers; that strychnine is a byproduct of LSD synthesis; that the body produces strychnine as a result of LSD metabolism; or that strychnine is somehow necessary to bond LSD to blotter paper. None of these are true. These memes may even be believed and propagated by drug users themselves.
Strychnine has indeed rarely been discovered mixed with LSD and other drugs in a few samples recovered by law enforcement agencies, but these were all found in murder or attempted murder investigations where someone was being specifically targeted for poisoning, and not associated with recreational LSD use.
A related myth is that a new type of gang initiation requires the initiate to put a mixture of LSD and strychnine on the buttons of as many payphones as possible.
Fruit Juice Synergy
Several legends claim that drinking some specific type of fruit juice (varying from legend to legend) will intensify an LSD trip. While there is no specific physical evidence supporting this claim, if a person under the influence of LSD does something that they believe will intensify their trip, then it is likely to do so.
Legally Psychotic
There is an urban legend that a person who has used LSD more than seven times is automatically legally declared psychotic. This, of course, makes no sense seeing as there is no exact definition of "legally psychotic" and, if there were, taking LSD more than seven times would have no effect on ones sanity anyways.
Various Atypical Psychotic Reactions
Anecdotal legends retell the stories of LSD users who:
- believed they could fly and jumped out of a high window (the comedian Bill Hicks noted that more intelligent users would probably try to take off from the ground first);
- believed themselves immortal and walked onto a highway, only to be hit by a car
- thought that they were oranges and locked themselves in a closet for hours for fear of being peeled, etc.
While it is not unlikely that isolated instances of such cases have occurred in the history of LSD use, these are extraordinarily rare and atypical reactions. Ill-informed anti-drug educators sometimes present them as common, possibly to warn students away from LSD by any means necessary. Delusions such as these are more common among LSD users with existing prepsychotic mental illness.
Urban Legends about Mescaline
The primary urban legend about mescaline, is claims of people to have taken, found, or bought pure extracted mescaline, as opposed to taking it from San Pedro or Peyote cactus. All evidence seems to show that mescaline has never been extracted in any large quantities and distributed. Most often alleged users have instead ingested another phenethylamine or LSD.
Urban Legends about PCP
The drug with the largest amount of urban legends about it is PCP, which is almost always described in pop culture in ways that are incompatible with its status as a dissociative anesthetic very similar to DXM and Ketamine. PCP is said to cause extremely powerful hallucinations, of the kind found in deliriants like Dramamine, but non-mundane.
Several drugs, such as PCP, crack, meth, etc.. are said to cause superhuman strength, so that 10 strong and well trained policemen are needed to control an unarmed and untrained user of those drugs. This myth is spread by police forces around the world in spite of its scientific and physical impossibility. This myth is used to justify a lot of unnecessary violence against users of drugs.
Urban Legends about Cannabis
There are many urban legends about cannabis, perhaps due to its popularity, despite its illegality.
Cannabis causes psychosis, schizophrenia, or clinical depression
There is no evidence that cannabis use causes these illnesses. Rather, cannabis may trigger latent conditions or be part of a complex coordination of causes. Also, the physiological effects of cannabis as well as the subjective evidence of some users indicate the likelihood of people with depression using cannabis to alleviate its symptoms.
This opinion was widespread in the psychiatry community in Australia until the last 10 years or so. However the use of cannabis in remote Aboriginal communities, where alcohol restrictions are in place, has changed that thinking. Psychiatric illness has been diagnosed in extra-ordinary rates which have not been seen in those communities before access to cannabis was readily available, or other communities where cannabis is not accessible. The use of "bucket bongs" and extremely heavily consumption seems to be the factor that triggers psychiatric reactions among individuals with no known risk factors and no past history. So the would sem to be very unlikely that "only latent" psychiatric illness is unmasked by cannabis use, unless you subscribe to the theory that we ALL suffer "latent psychiatric illness".
Using a bong or water pipe removes tars from the smoke
This is not entirely true; while water will remove some of the tars from the smoke, it will also filter out some of the THC, so the user actually has to smoke more to produce an equivalent high. Some people dispute this however, saying that since THC isn't appreciably water-soluble, the "filtering" effect is not all that prominent, implying that it is indeed safer to smoke pot through water than via a cigarette. Due to the lack of scientifically valid studies on this topic, it is presently impossible to classify this myth as entirely true or false.
A joint is equal in carcinogens to 5 cigarettes
The concentration of carcinogens in cannabis smoke is actually less than that in tobacco smoke, due to the lack of nicotine. Cannabis smokers do, however, tend to not use filters and they also hold the smoke in their lungs longer, and therefore absorb more of the carcinogens present, though a 5x increase over tobacco smoke would be unlikely.
