DXM is a long, strange, legal trip

[jersey]

http://www.arrivistepress.com/May05/Jennif..._DXM_0505.shtml

Taste the Rainbow: Take a Trip on DXM
Jennifer Henley Daniel

Because I was 16 and scraped up, naked and a cop’s daughter: no hand-cuffs. My pièce de résistance was when I threw-up on the wool blanket the officer covered me with after he placed me in the back seat of the patrol car like a dead body rolled up in a rug.

It was June, raining, and I had goose bumps and hard nipples -- so I proceeded to pull the blanket tightly over the top of my head and hold it underneath my chin. I was a wooly ghoul, tripping balls with an open, crusty mouth of vomit, staring at the shimmer of red and blue lights. I was about to make another trip downtown -- fortunately, because of my Daddy, sans the shackles and chains. The cop said one thing to me on the way down. He shook his bald head and chuckled: “You are so fucked, Miss Jen.”

From that point on, I felt just like the others who rode in the policeman’s car: Cold. Hard. Busted.

The prowler caught running through the projects with a freakin’ VCR, a carton of Winston Ultra lights and a slice of leftover pizza stuffed in his mouth (which had been left out on an unsuspecting kitchen counter)? The trannie who pissed in the same seat an hour before I threw up in it? We were all stupid criminals and we felt, most of all, indecently exposed inside and out.

This was not my first ride in the back of a cop’s car, but it was the first time I went down in an undignified blaze of drug-induced glory. It was also my messiest adventure to date. And it was all thanks to a lot of Dextromethorphan.

Whether you’re downing a bunch of over-the-counter allergy meds (skittling), or roboing till you puke -- you’re going to get bucked off the horse for a few hours or more. Names for these popular activities include: skittling, roboing or robotripping. The first one refers to eating the red-colored tablets of Coricidin HBP Cough and Cold, referred to as triple c’s. Triple c’s contain the most Dextromethorphan of all the OTC medicines currently available. Roboing, or a robo-trip is when you chug more than one bottle of Robitussin DM so you get drunker than a sailor.

And the consequences? Well, that depends on what you score, how much you take and who you are. Welcome to the DXM jungle; it’s an ingredient in more than 100 over-the-counter cold and allergy medications. A substitute since the late 50s for Codeine, DXM has been abused for 40 years. DXM is much easier to obtain than Codeine because it’s sold in a variety of forms: tablets, capsules, gel caps, lozenges, and syrups. Medicines containing DXM are cheap, readily available and legal at drugstores across America. Codeine is only available if you have a cool doctor.

Getting fucked up on DXM is like taking acid and smoking Opium laced with PCP. Long, strange trip is an understatement. Your eyeballs want to pop out of your head -- or more precisely, your body has rebelled against your eyeballs altogether and a heated debate ensues among your head, your hands, your nose and your ears, each attachment expressing its unanimous dislike for the eyes, the two omniscient bitches running the whole show. You agree with your ears, who say your eyeballs should remain in their sockets, but you do pledge to devote more time listening, feeling and smelling instead of just seeing.

There is the off-chance that you will, with an enthusiastic leap from across the room, fling yourself through your apartment building window, which is three stories up. Body chemistry -- when it comes to DXM -- is a fucked up thing. It could be a slice of heaven, your spiritual guide to sights unseen. Or it could be you, a double-barrel shotgun and a blast of bullets at every piece-of-shit motherfucker at the Piney Brook Mobile Home Park this Saturday night.

The stupid kids -- well, they eat the OTC’s and die from ingesting too much of the other ingredients found in cold medicines like acetaminophen, chlorpheniramine, and guaifenesin. In large doses, acetaminophen can cause liver damage; chlorpheniramine can cause increased heart rate, lack of coordination, seizures, and coma; while large dosages of guaifenesin causes all the puking associated with the “robo trip.” Another thing you won’t hear from your DXM dealer: The possibility of a fatal condition called Serotonin Excess Syndrome. If DXM is used with certain antidepressants (like Prozac and Paxil), your body can release too much Serotonin, and you die. Other side-effects include bleeding eyeballs and comas. So smart kids find DXM in its pure form, which, with a little "Googling," can be found from an online chemical supplier.

Apparently, DXM isn’t that big of a deal to the National Drug Intelligence Center or NDIC (a wing of the U.S. Department of Justice and a member of the Intelligence community). They don’t even list DXM in their 2005 National Drug Threat Assessment. Their Web site does, on its subsequent pages, tell you everything you need to know about procuring DXM and abusing the hell out of it:

“Pure powdered DXM -- typically intended for sale to laboratories conducting research on the drug--is available from some Internet Web sites. DXM purchased from such sites contains no other ingredients ...”

The NDIC site is most obliging for the identification and procurement of DXM, which as the Center points out, “is not illegal.” Most accommodating, in particular, are the pictures of all the DXM-containing products, along with other possibilities to be found on the streets -- like the tablets containing a mixture of Ketamine and DXM. Also pictured is a bottle of “Honey Cough” so you’ll know exactly which shit to score from Right-Aid next Friday night. There are no images of dead fourteen-year-olds or after-school-special testimonies from hospital patients bleeding from their eyeballs after eating too much Coricidin HPB, the cough and cold medicine with largest amount of DXM dosage found on the market.

On drugstore.com I found Coricidin HBP on sale for $4.59 a box, which is 30% below normal cost. Coridin HBP contains 30 milligrams of DXM in each tablet. Called Triple C’s because of the c’s printed on the red tablets, these guys will fuck you up real good, along with causing respiratory distress, high blood pressure, kidney damage, liver damage, seizures, brain damage, and even death. Rock on.

The DEA doesn’t impose any major restrictions on the use or sale of DXM and the word is nowhere to be found in the Controlled Substances Act even though the drug’s got mad street cred. Last July, the DEA busted more than a few online vendors for selling DXM, but they were also selling analogues of controlled substances in addition to Dextromethorphan. But no worries, drug enthusiasts -- bills that would prohibit minors from purchasing medicines containing DXM have only recently been introduced in Texas, North Dakota, California, New York and New Jersey in 2004 making it a misdemeanor to distribute DXM to minors. And those over the age of 18? They’re left to their own devices.

Recently, in April in Punta Gorda, Florida, college kids extracted and cooked their own DXM recipes inside mobile homes, where cramming for finals, co-habitation and fun with chemistry were only the beginning. The Sun Herald reported in April 2005:

“Authorities found small amounts of methamphetamine, heroin, a spoon with heroin residue and items used to make DXM.” The (twenty-year-old) woman went on to tell authorities that she was an "honors chemistry student" and that DXM is not illegal to possess.”

Knowledge is power. The kids were both charged with possession of narcotics equipment, possession of methamphetamine, possession of heroin and possession of less than 20 grams of marijuana, but nothing about the DXM.

“Due to the fact that DXM is the active ingredient in many cough and cold medications,” the Herald reported, “It is not illegal to have or use in Florida.”

Sometimes my hand twitches when I see something on TV affirming my older, supposedly wiser self -- the one who doesn’t drink two bottles of Robitussin and surf naked on top of cars. I am almost as happy as the actresses featured on anti-depressant commercials. I still long for carelessness and whimsy, and I know that those women are not happy people either, although they play them on TV. They hold babies with big-toothed grins; they ask for raises and confidently display rows of pearly whites.

But they don’t have the same carefree expression I sported while charmed by the flashing red and blue lights of a patrol car, while being naked and covered in puke and a wool blanket. There was nothing better to do, and there still isn’t.

(Jennifer Henley Daniel was raised as a Southern belle before she became a writer.)

[drdªv€]

A great read.

[Cool Cherry]

I enjoyed that a lot, thanks for posting it. Much better than the typical DXM article.

[drdªv€]

Originally posted by Cool Cherry@May 2 2007, 07:48 PM
I enjoyed that a lot, thanks for posting it. Much better than the typical DXM article.

Agreed, most of the BS I find searching is mostly cheap yellow journalism and I detest it.
It is good to find a neutral, level headed article from time to time.

[Zarueoh]

ORLY?

There is the off-chance that you will, with an enthusiastic leap from across the room, fling yourself through your apartment building window, which is three stories up. Body chemistry -- when it comes to DXM -- is a fucked up thing.

Although there is some evidence of deaths associated with DXM, none of them have been determined to be "cliche psychedelic-inspired death by window jumping." This and other things smack of typical scare tactics in media on drugs. I mean, she literally used the "You might go crazy and jump out the window" line. Seriously.

Also, it would be extremely difficult, even with super-powered craziness often attributed to drugs in news articles, to leap "from across the room" out a window. This may seem picky, but when you're invoking dramatic imagery in writing, it has to be realistic. Maybe she drank too much Robitussin during her writing class and missed that part because she was "drunker than a sailor."

I think the article relies heavily on slang and strong language to seem cool- you don't often come across mention of the author's "hard nipples" in a news article, for instance (which I guess swayed you guys), and I would question the extent of her experience with DxM. Some interviews or just something beyond what can be found in an hour surfing the internet would be nice.

In the end, a little Miss Hunter S. Thompson wannabe in style, but unlike Hunter, she's not saying anything different than other reporters usually do, and Hunter didn't try to sound cool, he actually was. Is it just me, or does a lot of it sound like a 45 year old trying to sound like a 20 year old? Or maybe a straight-laced writing student trying to sound like she "knows the street?" It's interesting to note that her language seems dated compared to Hunter's, even though this is a recent article and Hunter wrote in the 60's.

Even barring the inaccuracies and the annoying writing style trying so hard to sound cool, the beginning narrative part was poorly structured, sloppy and confusing to read. So she fails even on standard terms.

A big thumb down on this article, Robert. Kudos to jersey-emt for digging it up, though.

[Fantod]

I'm with Hamletthunktoomuch on this one (can I just type httm from now on?).

That old she-thought-she-could-fly-so-she-jumped-out-the-window chestnut is bad enough, but this?

Or it could be you, a double-barrel shotgun and a blast of bullets at every piece-of-shit motherfucker at the Piney Brook Mobile Home Park this Saturday night.

DXM users=spree killers & school shooters? What the fuck?

Oh, and who among us doesn't do this on the weekends:

drink two bottles of Robitussin and surf naked on top of cars

and of course, puke on the come-down.

I'd say cop-Daddy's little princess read the first chapter of Fear and Loathing and called it a semester.

[vapor]

yeah the article was written from a far more genuine perspective than we are used to, and although she didn't completely know what she was talking about, she gave a good general idea.

but hey, what up with

my nipples were hard?

[Unnamed]

Originally posted by vapor@May 3 2007, 05:49 PM
but hey, what up with

my nipples were hard?

Well either she is aroused by naked car surfing, or it was cold that night. :P

I do agree with hamlet, tho I did like the taking acid while smoking pcp laced opium relation. I do wish she would have mentioned why CCCs caused those things(Even though she did mention CPM seperatly), and most of those "chemical issues" that would make you snap.

[~*JunglEm0nkEy*~]

I actualy really enjoyed this artical. I wish that girl was part of the DV, Id love to talk to her. Never met a chick who downs a bunch of DXM and then goes surfing naked on top of cars. Thats pretty hot. <333

[Tyutchev]

Better than the average DXM article, but it still had the usual gamut of bullshit. Very sloppy grammar too, especially in the first few paragraphs.