Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Robowhat?
Yup, the young people be experimenting with the cough medicines. New term for Webster, robotripping as in taking well beyond the recommended dosage of such cough medicines as Robitussin, say 20, 30 or even 50 liquid gels. Read an article about this the other day, more and more young people are doing this to get high, to go on a trip, but then their blood pressure skyrockets, they're totally out of it and usually some nurse or doctor then calls the bewildered parents who had no idea. The age is getting stranger by the day, used to be the biggie was pot. I never got the whole trip thing, I mean whatever personal problem you're tripping from is going to be right back there foursquare and center when you get back. Must be bored, they're not out playing baseball and fishing anymore, that's too Fred MacMurrayish I guess. So watch out for all those robotrippers out there, the newest and youngest members of our zombie-fied culture.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Between that and what I hear kids so and say on MySpace, I truly fear for my kids' futures, they will be dealing with these kids the rest of their lives!
ReplyDeleteIn the past you had your standard problems like alcoholism but that's pretty straighforward (drinking too much) and so there's well-established programs dealing with that but how do you deal with liquid gel addicts? The trends are coming so fast and furious it's dizzying. I'm 44 now and figure God willing I'll live another 44 so what other things are gonna be out there in 10, 20 years? I really feel sorry for people with kids.
ReplyDeleteLook at the woman who just turned 115, I mean we need to set her up as a good example of living right. Of course I am assuming here she didn't overmedicate herself to get high.
ReplyDeleteYou told me you were going to live to be 103, Z.
ReplyDeleteThings have to get worse before they can get better, maybe by 103 we'll be on an upswing. The teens now doing robo by then will be doing the same thing with Geritol and Metamucil, take me out of that nursing home.
ReplyDeleteI usually get at least one chuckle a day at your blog, Z, thanks for your light-hearted outlook on Life, I do cherish it, really I do.
ReplyDeleteYou know I heard a story once. Seems some old guy had lung cancer due to years of heavy smoking and he was a goner anyway, nothing they could do for him, so the good doctor said just to keep smoking and that's exactly what he did.
ReplyDelete, lady's cell just went off next to me...technology.
ReplyDeleteI mean doesn't she know I'm blogging?
ReplyDeleteDon't hate, participate (in technology that is, lol).
ReplyDeletedon't hate, participate
ReplyDeletestranded in civilization
& people who live inside your head
(could all be titles for potential blogs, don'tcha think?)
You have coined some great phrases indeed.
ReplyDeleteHallucinogens... It's a wild ride indeed.
ReplyDeleteAnd to think, afterall all those fun and games I'm still more level headed than your everyday legislator.
But, you are right, one can get a little scrambled if your mind isn't in the proper place.
Soapie, Z and I have wondered the value of tripping, if its an escape from reality it's only temporary anyway, so why bother?
ReplyDeleteExactly whereas many would say the goal of alcohol is to relax, to get that buzz feeling going but that's it, unless you drink the whole bottle you're not gonna have that temporary total break from Reality. In retrospect I'm kinda proud of this, that even in my lowest moments I never resorted to drugs. Another thought, you might think you're in dire personal straits but there is always someone worse off than you, maybe you think your life could be alot better but your neighbor may secretly envy you for not being bogged down by a mortgage, for having your health etc., something to think about when Reality becomes too much for you.
ReplyDeleteIt's like with marriage, it seems to be a main goal in life for most of us to be married and for it to be a happy one but those who have never married might make the point that to never marry is to never divorce. So are our current situations good or bad? it all depends on how you look at things and maybe if people cultivated the habit of looking at things, at "problems", from different points of view than their reality wouldn't be so bad and they wouldn't resort to the latest drug trend. Not exactly a hit with the ladies? your chances of contacting an STD just went way down buddy, nobody to abort your baby and so you'll find your soulmate eventually anyway. Now compare yourself to a Holocaust survivor, now they really suffered but do they use drugs?
ReplyDelete"Soapie, Z and I have wondered the value of tripping, if its an escape from reality it's only temporary anyway, so why bother?"
ReplyDeleteWell of course I never thought to consider that at the time. But, I will tell you that, having been in that other dimension, it really was pretty unique experience in sensory perception.
While everything consists of matter (atoms, molecules, etc.) we don't have that heightened sensory perception to see it as such in our everyday world. And yet, it exists.
Granted, hallucinogens take it to the extreme but for me, it was still a very interesting (to say the least) experience and I honestly don't have any regrets about it.
They say pot and stuff leads to other drugs (and maybe it led me to try hallucinogens but I think that had more to do with my affinity for art and sculpture and design and my years in art school).
I never had any desire to try cocaine or meth or crack or heroin or anything like that.
Soapie you mentioned the art school thing, and I do wonder sometimes how much different the world of art and music would be without the influence of drugs, I would venture to say it wouldn't be the same. And yet I fear for how drugs can affect one's brain permanently, Soapie being an exception, doesn't seem to have affected your ability to think and reason. But it could be that drugs have the potential to alter one's brain permanently, and for that I don't think its worth the risk. Like how I make my kids wear a bike helmet, they are smart kids and I want them to protect their precious minds.
ReplyDeleteOh they definitely can have long term affects. And, quite possibly the arts would be different without the influence of drugs. But, there certainly are musicians and artists that never used them isn't there??
ReplyDeleteIn my case, I think it exacerbated my propensity towards objectivity and looking at things from as many angles as possible.
In my case, I think it exacerbated my propensity towards objectivity and looking at things from as many angles as possible.
ReplyDeleteA likely excuse, lol.
Aldous Huxley was one of those early proponents of LSD, said it extends our mental horizons and makes us use parts of our brains we never use when we're not on drugs to which I say
ReplyDeletehogwash,
did Shakespeare or Einstein use drugs? Jonas Salk, does Stephen Hawking use them? I like my sensory perceptions just the way they are. Now angel dust (PCP) comes from an animal tranquilizer and we had a tragic case here in Queens a couple years ago, guy on angel dust thought flashes of light were coming at him and so he kept firing his gun at them (everyone seems to have a gun these day, just like Kleenex) and so several motorists were killed in different locales 'cause this guy was into psychedelia. I don't get it and I never will.
I looked up psychedelic drugs in my Random House recently and there are 3 things, increased sensory perception (now why would you want to hear things so loudly? I'd think that would be annoying), severe perceptual distortion (like did I just go through a red light? can I fill out my tax form w/o going to jail?) and extreme feelings of either euphoria or despair. Now this last one is very important, how do you know which feeling it will produce in you? I think if you have psychological issues to begin with you might wind up jumping off the nearest bridge, your normal emotions would be magnified. Maybe that's why some of the Beatles' music was so damn depressing, listen to "Yesterday", no hope in it, my finger automatically changes the station whenever it pops up on the radio.
ReplyDeleteGood points Z, the unknown is so great when it comes to drugs that this is why I could never see the benefits to legalizing them.
ReplyDeleteMichael Savage once made an interesting and I think accurate observation about people on pot. He said they could write a newspaper column or other literary work, art, whatever and the thing could be pure dreck to the rest of us but they think they're brilliant, absolute geniuses. Probably goes a long way towards explaining the crap factor in movies today, maybe even much of the sucky music that seems to dominate the dial, the art world? lol. God's answer to the drug problem? get the proper vitamins in your diet and a good night's rest and dream away. It's known as lucid dreaming and it's totally natural but of course people under the influence of heavy drugs don't dream, dreams being our mind's way of working out problems and issues, and so that's why a drug-fueled society is all screwed up.
ReplyDeleteI can't see the benefits in legalizing them either Beth, for me the overriding factor is one of public safety. People on crystal meth for example can do all sorts of crazy things, it effects and irritates their nervous systems and it's said the high from it lasts for several weeks! Not only that even if meth doesn't give you a heart attack you'll wind up with the lovely meth mouth after prolonged use, I posted an image of this on my blog once. This is why I never got the whole growing conservative(?) trend to legalize all drugs especially with those folks over at the National Review. WFB Jr. was a big proponent of ending the War on Drugs towards the latter years of his life. You know what I think? conservatives ain't so conservative anymore.
ReplyDeleteZ-man!! Did you catch this story today???
ReplyDeletehttp://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080430/ap_on_re_eu/obit_hofmann
102!!!!
Oh yeah, very interesting. Albert Hoffman, creator of LSD, died at the ripe old age of 102 in Switzerland, said he invented the drug in 1938 from a fungus to be used as a medicine and it wasn't his fault that so many people abused it, even wrote a book called "LSD - My Problem Child". Also says he took a large dose once as the first human guinea pig and feared he would go crazy. AP column doesn't say what medicinal purposes it was to be used for, government banned it in the late 60's.
ReplyDelete