Listen up, fellow students in search of an energizing substance for those all-night study sessions.
Aren’t you just fed up with pestering your ADHD friends for Adderall? Do you just hate the taste of coffee or Monster Energy Drink? Don’t you just wish you could have the energy of a cocaine or methamphetamine-like high without dealing with drug dealers?
If so, don’t fret — there’s a new solution to all of your problems.
The solution comes in the form of a powered substance supposedly used as “bath salts.”
These “bath salts” have been marketed under attractive names like “Ivory Snow,” “Red Dove” and the exquisite “Vanilla Sky.”
OK, I know what you’re thinking — “Chris, how can bath salts keep me up all night?”
Well, these “bath salts” aren’t really bath salts, if you know what I mean.
Remember when your parents caught you smoking pot so you switched to “incense,” which you had no intention of burning for the smell?
This is the same thing.
“Bath salts” are a hip new designer drug, and they aren’t exactly meant to be used in the bath.
These amazing new products contain stimulants with long names like mephedrone and methylenedioxypyrovalerone.
Sounds cool, right?
The drugs apparently give users a high claimed to be 10 to 15 times stronger than cocaine or meth.
Now doesn’t that sound great?
But wait — it gets even better!
“Bath salts” are currently legal in most states in the U.S. Unfortunately, Gov. Bobby Jindal called for a ban on “bath salts” in Louisiana.
So you can’t get it here, but what’s stopping you from taking a quick drive to Alabama?
Here’s the best part: These “bath salts” will only set you back as little as $10, according to KXXV, a news station in central Texas.
Once you have your little packet of “Vanilla Sky,” you have a few options for how you want to put it in your body.
There’s the traditional method of sucking it up like a Hoover vacuum. But if snorting isn’t your forte, you can inject it or even smoke it like “incense.”
“Bath salts” are also similar to incense in that they do not show up on drug tests.
Take that, parents!
Though this pseudo meth/cocaine sounds quite amazing, there are a few downsides.
Some users may dislike the side effects, which include rapid heartbeat, sweating, nausea, vomiting, agitation, insomnia, depression, paranoia, panic attacks, seizures and suicidal thoughts.
As a matter of fact, many people across the nation have been calling poison-control centers left and right while they trip on “bath salts.” Our great state of Louisiana even holds the national record of calls regarding “bath salts” with more than 160 calls to Poison Control.
Some people have even had severe side affects.
Neil Brown, a past drug user and inmate of Itawamba County Jail in Mississippi, told the Associated Press he got high on “bath salts” and began to slit his face and stomach with a skinning knife while having “terrifying hallucinations.”
It gets even crazier.
In Louisiana, the drug had an even worse affect on Dickie Sanders, a 21-year-old from St. Tammany Parish.
According to Fox 8, Sanders snorted a gram of “Cloud Nine Bath Salts” and began experiencing delusions. The drug’s effects lasted three days and ended with Sanders trying to cut his own throat. Later, Sanders shot himself in the head.
Then there’s another problem.
James Aiken of the LSU Health Sciences Center said the “bath salt” substances cause “immediate intense cravings” for more.
But don’t let these stories deter you.
The risk of death should never hinder a student’s desire to get things done.
Actually, maybe it should.
Maybe we should all just stick to coffee for mental stimulation.
Chris Grillot is a 19-year-old English and mass communication sophomore. Follow him on Twitter @TDR_Cgrillot.
__
Contact Chris Grillot at
[email protected]