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viscosity Offline
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Posts: 2,346
Join Date: Feb 2006
Location: St. Louis
Default 09-02-2010, 02:06 PM

Quote:
It’s the classic good news bad news sort of thing. Just when you find a medicine that really works on your cold or cough, someone figures out a way to get high on it and it becomes harder to get.

Robitussin and several other cough suppressants are very effective, and the reason is an ingredient called DXM for short.

It stands for Dextromethorphan, which was discovered by the Navy in the late 50’s when they wanted a non-addictive replacement for codeine.

Dr. Chris Hable of ETMC says, “They used to use codeine. That was the drug that was used in these medications. And they realized that these became drugs of abuse. And so they all changed over to DXM.”

But DXM carries it’s own issues. When used in excess, it acts like PCP, causing hallucinations, excitement and other effects typical of a drug high.

“If you do use it in high quantities, you can get those effects similar to PCP,” Hable told us. “That is most likely the disassociative feelings of out of body kind of thing.

It’s called robotripping, and is growing in popularity among teens, although still fairly rare here.

For that reason, the FDA is considering making it harder to buy, like pseudophedrine is now, moving it behind the counter. Because it is sold over the counter, kids think it’s safe. They’re wrong.

“It’s probably a good idea,” Hable concluded. “It’s like alcohol. in excess it can cause problems.”

The FDA will meet later this month to consider moving it behind the counter and restricting its purchase to adults.
Why do they always show cough medications containing other ingredients in addition to DXM (which are much more harmful than DXM alone) or ones that don't contain DXM at all in videos like this?

Quote:
“It’s like alcohol. in excess it can cause problems.”
I do agree with this though.


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