When Jay-Z rapped those words on the song "Allure," he probably wasn't talking about knocking back a frothy mug of reindeer piss, subjecting himself to multiple bee stings or huffing spray paint out of a paper bag.
The vast majority of drug users get their kicks from the classics -- everything from cocaine to plain ol' Mary Jane -- but for the adventurous, bored, poor and pitifully desperate there is always some way to find a fix.
Recently in St. Louis, a fifteen-year-old girl told one TV news station that when she and her friends couldn't find any weed, they raided her mom's pantry and rolled a spliff out of nutmeg instead. While undeniably misguided, the idea wasn't actually that outlandish. Nutmeg, ingested high concentrations, is a potent hallucinogen.
Another local girl ended up in the hospital when she snorted a brand of "bath salts" called Ivory Wave. Though effective -- the product contains a pair of legal ingredients that mimic cocaine's stimulant and anesthetic properties -- it sounds quite unpleasant. A writer for Vice magazine described his Ivory Wave experience as "like crystal meth without any of the good bits."
Remarkably, however, neither of these substances compare to some of the other truly idiotic things people have (supposedly) used to get high.*
10. Synthetic Marijuana
In the early '90s, a scientist at Clemson University synthesized a variety of chemicals that mimic the effect of marijuana on the brain's cannabinoid receptors. The substances were supposed to be used for medical research, but now head shops across the country are spraying the stuff on potpourri and selling it for $30 a bag to both teenagers who don't know any better and adults who are desperate to get stoned but have to pass a drug test.
The DEA recently banned several of the chemicals, but new varieties are already on sale. Our colleagues at the KC Pitch tried one of the new types -- a brand called Syn -- and described it as "some skeevy shit" that "tastes sour and smells like halitosis."
9. Whip-Its (a.k.a. Hippie Crack)
Perhaps the only enjoyable part about the dentist's office is the complimentary dose of laughing gas. Less enjoyable, one would imagine, is locking lips on the top of whipped cream can and sucking out the little bit of nitrous oxide that propels the delicious dessert topping onto your plate. Long a favorite break time activity of restaurant employees -- to the point that most businesses now keep track of their stock of nitrous canisters -- it's also known as "hippie crack" for its popularity on the jam band circuit. Pro tip: If a drug has "crack" anywhere in the name, you probably want to avoid it.
8. Toads
Spoofed by both Simpsons and Family Guy, hallucinogenic toads and frogs are very real things. The venomous skin of the Colorado River toad (Bufo alvarius) contains a potent psychoactive substance called 5-MeO-DMT. Licking the critters, however, is a very bad idea and can cause serious illness and/or death. The hallucinogens have to be extracted and then smoked for humans to be able to get high off of them.
Hear that kids? Be sure to smoke your toads, not lick them.
7. Annoying Ambient Music
A website called i-Doser is the purveyor of "biaural brainwaive audio doses" that "powerfully alter your mood." The "beats" are vaguely similar to techno and have names like "peyote," "trip" and "orgasm."
The site boasts that more than a million people have downloaded the songs, which means that more than a million people probably spent a good fifteen minutes locked in their bedroom, staring at the ceiling, listening to digital blips and wishing they could have found some place to score pot.
6. Paint
The marginal upside: Vapors from many types of inhalants -- including spray paint -- cause intense euphoria and vivid hallucinations when abused. The ginormous downside: They also cause headaches, nausea, vomiting, loss of motor skills, hearing loss, limb spasms, liver and kidney damage, pneumonia, cardiac arrest and/or drowning to death on your own vomit. You'll also end up looking like this guy:
