Jim_Callahan: Magorn: That's kinda what I'm trying to fiigure out about these "bath salt zombie" stories: Nothing more than the DEA/ONDCP usual BS scare tactics? Or is this stuff really as scary as it appears? I mean on the one hand it seems a little far-fetched, on the other hand that guy CHEWED THE FACE OFF another person

Again, here's basically how bath salts are made:

Step 1: find an actual drug (usually an amphetamine-- this is where the "bath salts" name comes from, mild uppers used to be used in the literal chemicals you'd put in your bath to make it smell nice)

Step 2: Examine molecule, examine legal definition of drugs, focusing on chemical descriptions.

Step 3: Change a few functional groups on molecule until it no longer fits the legal definition of the controlled substance in question. (Alternate: you can refunctionalize at random with certain chemical processes)

Step 4: Make that instead.

The upside: whatever you just made isn't illegal. The downside: 99% of the time, you honestly don't know quite what you just made in terms of effects and side-effects. You may have rendered it completely inert, you may have turned it from a drug to a poison. More subtle stuff like emotional alteration and neurological effects can't really be tested by feeding it to the dog, so you really won't entirely know until a consumer tries it.

It Never ceases to amaze me how much effort the truly dedicated will put into getting high. I reacll during one of my Burning Man trips having a conversation with a girl who had the street equivalent of a PHD in nuerochemistry. She was doing stuff that was too new to even HAVE street names so she referred to them by their full chemical names and explained Nuerotransmitter by nuerotransmitter, how they affected the brain's chemistry and the effects they produced. And some of them were doozies. I can for the life of me, imagine the recreational value of a drug that made you feel as if you were dead and/or floating over your lifeless corpse (Something Salvia users often report too so Iimagine t was an analogue of that). Especially not when combined with one that messed with your time sense so that half an hour of real time could feel like, depending on the dosage, several days or even a month (*shudder*)

Bath Salts and Spice.

Both need to be banished from the planet, and the assholes that make this shiat need to be skinned alive and pelted by rock salt until they die.

/Son just attempted suicide while under the influence of a spice-induced psychosis.
//Several years of his life wasted so far, still hoping he can turn things around

Whatthefark: Eat pussy, not faces!

/It's a saying from an anti bath salts campaign I'm starting.

I'm in.

Bath Salts are the worst drug currently available today.

I normally don't post serious stuff on Fark but for this thread I'll make an exception. I'm an Emergency Medicine doctor and work full time in a community ER. It's a rural farm community and drugs have always been a big problem in our area. A few years ago we lead the nation in Meth production so I'm used to seeing all kinds of people in my ER doing the tweak and freak. But in the last few months Bath Salts have hit the area and they make regular meth look like bubble gum.

When we get people in that are strung out on Bath Salts they are usually out of control. Violent, agitated, uncontrollable. What usually happens is the cops respond to a domestic complaint and find some guy freaked out, yelling, fighting, and unable to be brought under control. They'll dog pile on top of him and EMS will bring him in handcuffed and fighting. A few months ago one guy had a knife in his hand and charged a group of cops. They almost shot him but an officer risked his life tackling the guy from behind because he didn't want to have to kill the guy.

Several times the only way to safely subdue Bath Salt users and keep them from hurting themselves or someone else has been to intubate them in the field. For you nonmedical types that means they inject him with a drug to paralyze him and stick a ventilator tube down his throat into his lungs so they can breath for him. Several other times I've had to do it in the ER. The regular medications we use to sedate people don't seem to work very well on Bath Salts users. Valium, ativan, versed, geodon, haldol. Nothing. I've intubated people, put them on a propofol drip, and had the nurses run it up to the maximum allowed dosage and still had to use 4 point restraints because they are still trying to wake up and fight.

Even after the high wears off it increases your chances of suicidal thoughts and behaviors and your chances of a psychotic event for weeks or months.

Bath Salts is bad bad bad stuff. I see it and treat it regularly. If you want to get high then smoke some weed or score yourself some narcotics. But if you value your life in any way then avoid Bath Salts like it was powdered death. Because it is.

"You feel like you're 10 feet tall and bulletproof, and you actually do not feel any pain."

so....



That's pretty cool.

Magorn: I can for the life of me, imagine the recreational value of a drug that made you feel as if you were dead and/or floating over your lifeless corpse (Something Salvia users often report too so Iimagine t was an analogue of that). Especially not when combined with one that messed with your time sense so that half an hour of real time could feel like, depending on the dosage, several days or even a month



Disagrees

Gandalf is a professional wizard. Please do not try this at home.

Magorn: I can for the life of me, imagine the recreational value of a drug that made you feel as if you were dead and/or floating over your lifeless corpse

more useful for tax reasons.

Jon iz teh kewl: LesserEvil: Bath Salts and Spice.

Both need to be banished from the planet, and the assholes that make this shiat need to be skinned alive and pelted by rock salt until they die.

/Son just attempted suicide while under the influence of a spice-induced psychosis.
//Several years of his life wasted so far, still hoping he can turn things around

pot does the same thing. i almost did the same thing while under the influence of pot.

True, people who actually have ADHD are susceptible to psychotic episodes, but it's a lower risk than with synthetic cannaboids like "spice" - the Navy found sailors and marines admitted with psychosis after smoking that crap took DAYS to recover and anti-psychotics had little effect. That was two years ago, and get caught with spice in the Navy or Corps and you are out.... no office hours, no slap on the wrist like you get the first time you pop a piss test for pot or even cocaine.

As it happens, my son has ADHD. Since discovering his spice problem (no, it wasn't "blue-on-blue eyes", but rather the insatiable need for money), I started doing some research. His issues began with pot smoking... dropping out of school, bouts of anger (destructive), theft. It's been worse in the last two years, and Spice (K2, Chronic, Oz...) is a big part of it. Thankfully he hasn't hooked on the bath salts crap.

I just have no idea why people do this stupid shiat.

It's all fine and dandy that some people smoke pot without any lasting effects, but there are many who can't handle it (just like alcohol). Advocates need to stop downplaying the bad side of pot, and EVERYBODY needs to work to banish bath salts and spice from the world.

namegoeshere: LesserEvil: Jon iz teh kewl: LesserEvil: Bath Salts and Spice.

Both need to be banished from the planet, and the assholes that make this shiat need to be skinned alive and pelted by rock salt until they die.

/Son just attempted suicide while under the influence of a spice-induced psychosis.
//Several years of his life wasted so far, still hoping he can turn things around

pot does the same thing. i almost did the same thing while under the influence of pot.

True, people who actually have ADHD are susceptible to psychotic episodes, but it's a lower risk than with synthetic cannaboids like "spice" - the Navy found sailors and marines admitted with psychosis after smoking that crap took DAYS to recover and anti-psychotics had little effect. That was two years ago, and get caught with spice in the Navy or Corps and you are out.... no office hours, no slap on the wrist like you get the first time you pop a piss test for pot or even cocaine.

As it happens, my son has ADHD. Since discovering his spice problem (no, it wasn't "blue-on-blue eyes", but rather the insatiable need for money), I started doing some research. His issues began with pot smoking... dropping out of school, bouts of anger (destructive), theft. It's been worse in the last two years, and Spice (K2, Chronic, Oz...) is a big part of it. Thankfully he hasn't hooked on the bath salts crap.

I just have no idea why people do this stupid shiat.

It's all fine and dandy that some people smoke pot without any lasting effects, but there are many who can't handle it (just like alcohol). Advocates need to stop downplaying the bad side of pot, and EVERYBODY needs to work to banish bath salts and spice from the world.

I am sorry that you are having problems with your son. However, his issues did not begin with pot smoking. He was most likely using pot to self-medicate and deal with the issues that he already had. Pot did not make him move on to bigger, badder things. Pot didn't cut it in terms of self medication ...

The desire to use something "like" pot, but in his mind "legal" drove him to spice.

As for his reasons for first smoking pot? Simple peer pressure. No, his life wasn't perfect... he was always difficult, but he respected his teachers, studied, and was a passing student. The minute his friends got him into pot, everything else dropped by the wayside.

Stop justifying pot usage. I said some people can handle it, but there are people who CANNOT HANDLE IT. It isn't a "harmless" drug for everybody, just because you build strawmen for those users whose lives have taken a downward spiral.

All that said, I'm far more concerned about this bath salts/spice issue. This stuff is a true menace, literally causing permanent damage to people, between the lung damage, psychosis and brain damage users suffer. The fact that a 10-year old can buy this crap at a local gas station should trouble even the hardiest pot defender.

suthrnrunt: LesserEvil: people who actually have ADHD are susceptible to psychotic episodes

all sorts of fail..... everyone is "susceptible to psychotic episodes" you don't have to have ADHD to have one and then use it as a cop-out for all your own failures in life.

I'm quoting a psychiatrist who told my son that people with ADHD were more susceptible to psychotic episodes smoking pot, and my recent research. The phrase "more susceptible" doesn't mean others can't have episodes, either. From my own experience, I suspect those episodes are typically far milder then the ones my son had, though. He was also suffering from seizures followed by brief spells of amnesia.

I'm not trying to defend or attack the usage of pot by other people, just stating the effects it had on my son, and expressing that there are people who are at a higher risk.

BigLuca: I wish they would stop calling it "bath salts." They aren't bath salts, that is just how they are marketed to get around labeling laws. It's like calling a bong a "tobacco water pipe." They are synthetic psychoactive designer chemicals, or "research chemicals", the most popular right now being MDPV, but there are a ton of others. Most of these are technically illegal under the Federal Analogues Act (some aren't), but that law is a little more difficult to enforce and use for prosecution.

They call it by its street name, then explain details. Better than earlier coverage.