smoking pot as a kid (like, 9, say) never really had that much of an effect
I had the same experience aged 28. But then again the first time I got drunk was when I was 3.
the same experience aged 28
I've generally assumed this to be a function of not quite knowing how to smoke effectively, a practice that definitely must be learned, as it's a pretty unnatural behavior. But perhaps my assumption is unsound.
But perhaps my assumption is unsound.
Not in my case. (Which is also why I believed the ex Prez when he said he didn't inhale. Very likely he didn't know how.)
I got drunk the first time at two. My mom was pissed. And yeah, when PK was two, I totally had the moment of realizing that mom was right, and dad was insane.
I've smoked banana peels before. Also oregano, which was very, very painful. In high school, a friend heard that smoking a cigarette through an old, mushy bell pepper would give you a buzz. It doesn't, as we proved through rigorous testing, but it will give you a disgusting taste in your mouth that is difficult to remove. So that's something.
The LA Times ran a long article in 1967 on "The Great Banana Peel Experiment." If you can get into the their historical archive you can read it online. A summary of the controversy is here:
"...Perhaps the best put-on, the grandest, was the Great Banana Conspiracy, which first broke in the Berkeley _Barb_ that [1967] March. A new psychedelic had been discovered, the _Barb_ reported, one anyone could obtain, since the only ingredient was dried banana peel. Dry the peel, scrape off the inner portion, and smoke it. The high, according to cognoscenti quoted in the _Barb_, was comparable to opium, with some nice psilocybin shadings.
From the _Barb_ the banana hoax bounced to the wire services and thence across the country. Students held banana smoke-ins and grocery stores experienced a repeat of the run on morning glory seeds a few years earlier, as scraggly young kids began appearing at the checkout counters with carts full of bananas. Was America going to have to ban the banana? Or require licenses before people could buy them? A congressman from New Jersey jokingly introduced two new acts to Congress: the Banana Labeling Act of 1967 and the Banana and Other Odd Fruit Disclosure and Reporting Act of 1967. But not everyone was laughing. United Fruit was more than a little alarmed. They asked Sidney Cohen to find out whether bananas really were hallucinogenic, a question that the FDA also was taking very seriously. And after a lengthy and sober evaluation, it was announced that bananas were good sources of potassium and fiber, and definitely not hallucinogenic."
I think I was about 11 or 12 before I got drunk for the first time and it definitely wasn't with parental connivance.
My parents were quite 'french' about drinking -- the occasional very small amount of alcohol with a meal from when we were quite young -- but wouldn't have condoned me getting drunk.
Once I got old enough to procure alcohol outside the house though (around 11 or 12) and especially once old enough to get served in one of the less reputable pubs (around 14) they took the attitude that it was my responsibility and it was up to me to make sure I didn't do something stupid or make myself ill.
We also tried banana peels but the other thing that you could smoke that was easy to get hold of locally was scotch broom.
The whole banana smoking thing was also perpetuated by the Anarchist Cookbook, which has instructions for the preparation of "bananadine"
I got drunk the first time at two. My mom was pissed. And yeah, when PK was two, I totally had the moment of realizing that mom was right, and dad was insane.
My parents were quite sane, but it's funny to watch friends who grew up with relatively crazy home lives have that same realization.
Nah -- the thing with Clinton -- I was told by an Oxford friend of his -- was that he had asthma. That's why he couldn't inhale. They baked him cookies instead. I have always thought that it was a real testimony to his character that no one who knew this ratted out on him in the election campaign.
I can testify that the psychedelic properties of nutmeg are no hoax.
"Oxbridge hash brownie bakers for truth"?
13: My cat has a totally freaky hangup about nutmeg. Straight, it's too strong, but if you use it generously in food--spinach, pumpkin pie, potatoes--she'll rub her face in it and generally act the same way she does with catnip. It's gross, and hilarious, and I have no idea if it's just her or if all cats do this.
I propose that those of you with cats do some testing, and get back to me.
You can also get high from nutmeg, but the hangover is so unpleasant that it really, really isn't worth it.
We used to have a dog who would go down to the pool hall and cadge beers, but now that I think of it he was about 28 in dog years when he did it.
True story.
My daughter got drunk at 1, at a friend's first birthday party. She went round when we weren't looking, swigging our glasses of fizz. Giggled all the way home, no hangover. Now, at 21, nearly teetotal.
"mellow yellow" s/b "mello yello"
"Webelopes" = swift internet-based horny creatures. Like gswift! Sir, you are outed.
Outed as far as the swiftness goes. gswift's web-based horniness is not obviously over the average at the Mineshaft.
When I was in Boy Scouts (I was probably 11 or so), some of the bad-ass kids smoked rolled up sheets of notebook paper while on a camping trip. Nothing in them, just paper. And let me tell you, it was a moment of moral crisis for me. Do I smoke it, thus becoming cool? Do I reject it, since every authority figure had told me that smoking is bad?
I split the difference by putting it up to my lips, but not breathing in. Only later did I realize that we were all idiots.
Morning glory seeds. Hawaiian woodrose. Jimson weed. Ether. Toluene.
Never give up. If you're resourceful and enterprising, there's always something out there for you. Dream the impossible dream.
13, 16:
There's something basically wrong with my body chemistry with respect to drugs. On a bored weekend in Samoa, some friends and I tried the nutmeg thing (a couple of Tbsps, ground, in water or juice.) They got high -- described as decent pot, with overtones of shrooms -- for a couple of hours, and were then semi-catatonic for the rest of the weekend (that is, coherent, but prone to remaining motionless and staring into space for six hours at a time if you didn't nudge them.) Me? Nothing. Which is pretty much the experience I've had with pot.
I get drunk fine, and acid works, but I just don't get much in the way of subjective effects out of other things I've tried.
Morning glory seeds.
Oh past youth.
Don't forget cough syrup. That is a very serious drug indeed. The most intense I've ever had, far beyond LSD.
25: I'm a bit surprised they still sell dextromethorphan over the counter. And now that it comes in gelcaps, the kids don't even have to gag down entire bottles of nasty syrup. That is indeed serious stuff.
I'm a bit surprised they still sell dextromethorphan over the counter.
It's been a long time since I've kept up with the state of DXM availability, but from what I recall, it was sort of informally watched, at least around these parts. You might get questions if you were buying suspiciously large amounts of it, some stores wouldn't carry it (at least without other, undesired active ingredients included), and so on. I believe in some states, you have to be over 18 to purchase. But yeah, you'd think it would be controlled.
Gelcaps! Kids today have it easy. We used to precipitate out the DXM and make our own. I never smoked it, though. I heard that was pretty bad.
There's a cough suppressant called benzonatate (Tessalon) which has no side effects and works better. But it's not over-the-counter. I don't like the effects of regular cough medicine when used for cough suppression. And actually, never tried it as a recreational drug. I thought that only the codeine type got you off, though.
Boy, the first time I got stoned, I sure did get stoned. I was 17, and with my father and aunt and great uncle. Pot would have been available to me much sooner if I'd told my dad I wanted it, but I always resisted; I was the kind of kid who rebels against her libertine parent by being very conservative and upright. But that day I was having murderous period cramps that weren't associated with any period, but a psychosomatic response to having seen my great aunt post brain surgery. She was, at that point, the most physically repulsive person I'd ever seen; I'll spare you all the details, but the surgery had apparently damaged her inhibition control so she was making passes at everyone from the orderly to her brother in law, and her husband was like, "She loco, comprenda?" to the Hispanic orderly, adding to the general mortification level. That night the cramps still hadn't subsided, so I gave in and smoked some pot. Not realizing that I'd have to wait a while before it took effect, I took about 7 hits off the joint, and I think it was pretty strong pot to begin with. I can't say it was exactly a pleasant experience. The muscle swirls are usually kind of nice, but then I started laughing hysterically about nothing, so much so I couldn't breathe, and then I got freaked out that everyone was watching me laugh, so I started crying hysterically. Then we went out for Italian and I was convinced everyone knew I was stoned and I annoyed my entire family by interrupting their conversations repeatedly to inquire whether the waiter had given any clues that he could see the truth. I also asked what time it was every two minutes. The food tasted phenomenal though.
Wasn't this all covered in teh Onion, at one point?
Not that it isn't interesting the second time around, too.
I thought that only the codeine type got you off
Codeine just makes you rubbery and groggy. Sufficient doses of DM will make you hallucinate.
Ob: Unfogged says don't do drugs, kids.
I saw people try to smoke lipton tea pouches on a camping trip when I was 12 or 13. They reported no effect.
The first time I ever smoked pot, I ate almost an entire loaf of frozen raisin bread, straight from the freezer.
It was the most delicious thing I'd ever tasted.
Munchies are kind of fun. I have never experienced that much pleasure in the flavor of food I eat whilst thus possessed, though -- more the rhythmic chewing activity and the sensuality of the masticated granules of food passing across my palate and along my gullet that turns me on. Also: munchies have taught me to appreciate a lot of foods that I was picky about as a young lad and thus broadened my palate.
Not realizing that I'd have to wait a while before it took effect, I took about 7 hits off the joint
I had a similar experience the first (and last) time I used a bong. I'm not a big pot smoker (probably less than 10 times in my life) and nobody had ever explained to me that a bong hit was much stronger than smoking a joint so I took 4 huge hits in close succession. I was fine and groovy until the fourth – the second that happened I felt something click and I got totally paranoid and freaked the fuck out. One of my friends (god bless him) stayed up all night talking me down.
Have you guys ever been to a grocery store...on weed? The bulk candy bins alone are good for a half half hour of delightful indecision.
The first time I got stoned, I gave the boot to an unwary armadillo I found crossing the street. Just cold punted the thing. It was the most unmellow thing I've ever done.
Once, my friends and I drank bottles of Tussin at a party. For the first forty-five minutes, nothing happened. Then our ears got really hot. While I was talking to some other guy, my co-tripper Jeff threw a glass of ice water at my head. I turned and threw a massive right hook at his face. Someone grabbed my arm and it took three people to tackle me to the ground while I shouted, "I have to kill Jeff!" He just giggled and said, "You said your ears were hot! I was helping!"
That's the last thing I remember, feeling murderous. This is my problem with pot, too. Suddenly no one is funny. I'm a really pleasant drunk, though.
The song "Mellow Yellow" by Donovan contains the line "Electrical banana is going to be a sudden craze," which made some people think of smoking banana peels. Donovan claims it's about vibrators.
37 -- are you no longer content with simply smashing them, then? Sicko.
Switched over from clubs to knives, I see.
Have you guys ever been to a grocery store...on weed?
I have several too-long-to-type-now stories about going to the grocery store on acid. Everything is so bright and colorful to begin with, that it's like being a three-year-old at Disney World. It's magical.
However.
It absolutely WILL be the trip when you are trapped in line behind the woman with the severely brain-damaged kid in the cart and in front of the guy with no arms, waiting for the cashier with the port wine birthmark covering half of her face. And you'll be doing your 19-year-old level best not to freak the fuck out and just start laughing hysterically. You will almost succeed.
37: Man, the opportunities for picturesque bad behaveior are so much greater in the red states.
picturesque bad behaveior
Y'mean the slashing, or the punting?
apo: large enough doses of acid make handlin that sort of thing gracefully pretty hopeless, though.
41--Then you might enjoy actually going to Disneyland under similar circumstances...
I have several too-long-to-type-now stories about going to the grocery store on acid.
To my eternal regret, I agreed to be the designated driver for a group going to a Ross Perot rally on Boston Common in 1992. Everyone else was on acid. It was still pretty surreal for me, but not nearly at the level the others experienced.
I realized a short while ago that it is almost exactly 10 years since I last took any kind of illicit substance. March, 1996: smoking dope and hanging out at the Rijksmuseum. Not a bad way to end that phase.
That why you hate traveling, JL? All the fun's been let out of it?
almost exactly 10 years
Me too! Oh, wait. "yea" s/b "hou"
The terror of childhood intoxication that some people have amazes me. I can remember being at friends for Shabbos when my son and daughter were about five and seven and the consternation at the fact that I poured them (very small) portions of the regular dry red table wine. I think there were two things going on: people seem to have internalized an absolute prohibition on any alcohol at all for preteens (always excepting the bris...); they had told their kids that they wouldn't like the taste and watching my son down his undermined that.
"So what do you pour them?" I said.
"Welch's," was the answer.
"See, this is why I'm no longer a Presbyterian," was the best I could come up with on the spur of the moment.
But as a kid I always liked the grape juice and thought the Maniscewitz was nasty. Actually I still think that.
Maneshevitz is nasty. And maybe you have a very early bad association.
Oh, dear. My husband had never tasted Manischevits, and loves Concord grapes. He brought a bottle home last fall, saying "Check it out! I had no idea anyone made Concord grapes into wine!"
He was truly impressed by the nastiness of it all.
Hey, first time I was drunk was off pilfered Maniscewitz and communion wine, and I'm neither Jewish nor Catholic. Sacrilicious!
Yes, acid at the grocery store. Particularly the laundry detergent aisle.
I'm suprised that my friends let me smoke again after the first time. We had a "bong" that was made out of a baby food jar. I was taking a hit when someone made me laugh, and I blew a geyser through the bowl. It worked pretty well though. I was 16 at the time, which makes me a Republican around these parts.
If kids could get natural, honest-to-goodness drugs, they'd be less prone to huffing gas fumes. And if kids could get beer legally, they might just ignore drugs altogether.
44: Yeah, you also come home with the craziest bagful of food you aren't going to eat anyhow. You'll love watching the ice cream melt all over the counter and run down the cabinets, though. "Dude, it is SOOO great that we got neapolitan. Oh man oh man oh man."
55: north americans on average are indeed almost as irrational about alcohol as they are about sex.
I doubt kids would ignore drugs though. I can't say I'm convinced that's a bad thing (cf alcohol, at least), and I'm certain usage patterns would change (for the better).
Many, but obviously not all, Americans abroad are very wierd about alcohol.
Quite puritanical but also simultaneously unable to handle it when they do drink.
Of course the British have their own issues with drinking but I think it's much rarer for people to get into their 20s without acquiring any sense of how much drink they can actually handle.
58: The lascivious Puritan is part and parcel of the American character. It isn't just abroad.
I taught my son to drink while he was in HS. Just the normal things like, don't drink and drive, know how much you really want, drink a glass of water before you go to bed. But he said that once he got to college he had to do stupid binge drinking just to be one of the guys. It's sort of like he was a creepy, decadent sophisticate whereas they had retained their stupidity and innocence.
But I think the late drinking age has a fair amount to do with it. It trains kids to alternate not drinking at all with furtive binging -- they don't get a sense of what drinking a bottle of wine with and after dinner, and geting a little lit up but not vomiting drunk, feels like. In college, people thought I was weird for having a sixpack of beer in the fridge, that I'd get through at the rate of about a beer a day -- drinking was for parties, not for day-to-day life.
Unfortunately, our freshman experiments with "how much drink they can actually handle" have an all-or-nothing quality. That, too is due to residual puritanism, supposedly dying for centuries but always springing up anew.
Drinking culture in Scotland where I grew up was quite different. Everyone drank a LOT in their teens but it was quite uncool to appear more than a little drunk -- being able to 'hold' your drink was important.
Ultimately all a bit stupidly macho and of course that also explains all the middle-aged guys keeling over in their 50s with heart attacks and damaged livers -- decades of savagely heavy drinking combined with an iron-tight grip on actually appearing that drunk. Not necessarily the best combination.
Still, I'd have been embarrassed to be seen appearing as drunk in public as some of the American students abroad I've met.
A friend of mine (who later had major issues with alcohol) told me that when in high school, he was an exchange student in Belgium. Extreme delight when he discovered that he could legally drink beer there. Extreme perplexity when his teenage Belgian friends warned him, "Careful, you'll get drunk."
I have never been drunk in my life.
I didn't mean "by another person", apostropher.
Bphd illustrates a Humean point.
68: I swear I had "Funny, it's always worked for me." typed out and ready to go, and then thought better of it.
70: Thank god you thought better of it, who knows what we'd have thought.
Actually, while it's supposed to cut performance, etc., for an anxious kid, the disinhibition is priceless. Young woman likered me up good once. She probably felt she had to. Been grateful ever since.
Here's to the year that's awa'!
We'll drink it in strong and in sma'!
And here's to young w-lfs-n who ne'er got drunk
While swift flew the year that's awa;
And here's to young w-lfs-n who ne'er got drunk
While swift flew the year that's awa;
Here's to the sodger we read,
And the sailor who bravely did fa';
Their fame is alive, though their spirits are fled
On the wings o the year that's awa';
Their fame is alive, though their spirits are fled
On the wings o the year that's awa'.
Here's to the friend we can trust
When the storms of adversity blaw;
May he live in our song and be nearest our heart,
Nor depart like the year that's awa';
May he live in our song and be nearest our heart,
Nor depart like the year that's awa'.
Is this the thread where I explain how to cook Preludin and Dexosyn? Never mind.
You saute them lightly in butter, then serve them over fresh angel hair with some grated romano.