I learned a new word today, and that word is SIZZURP:
As American Idol’s Nicki Minaj, rapper Drake, and more celebrities visited the Los Angeles hospital where rapper Lil Wayne recovers, speculation swirls as to what’s really behind his recent health scare.
The New Orleans native suffered several serious seizures last week that hospitalized him twice. His condition was considered so dire at one point that the celebrity gossip site TMZ reported that the 30-year-old was close to death. Those reports proved to be false, but little official information has been released as to the cause of Wayne’s current medical condition.
“They’ve done the tests, and they did tests last year,” said one friend close to the rapper. “They even gave him seizure medicine last year that was supposed to help. It did for a while, but I’m not sure how much Wayne takes care of himself when no one is around.”
Some friends continue to point to Weezy’s (as he’s often called) long habit of sipping “syrup, sizzurp, lean, or Texas tea” as the real cause of his ailing health. They also say that it’s simply not true that Wayne stopped the addictive habit, which involves sipping prescription-strength cough syrup laced with codeine and other extras that can increase the high.
Really? Really? This is a widespread craze across the south? I guess it may explain their voting habits, but cough syrup? And doesn’t Lil’ Wayne have enough money to buy good drugs?
If nothing points out the futility of the war on drugs better than this, I don’t know what will. PEOPLE ARE DRINKING COUGH SYRUP TO GET HIGH. How do you win that war?
JPL
Did you find your mustard?
srv
It’s the poor rapsters meth
Roger Moore
Ban cough syrup, and give people 25 to life for possessing any. Eventually, we’ll ban all non-prescription drugs.
schrodinger's cat
The last time I bought cough syrup at a CVS I had to show my driver’s license.
JPL
Well I’m sitting in the closet cuz of the tornado sirens and the dog needs some of that stuff. She’s hiding under clothes in the laundry basket
Bubblegum Tate
AKA Bo
AKA Tussin
AKA Robo-trippin’
Lean’s been around for a while–at least since the mid-’90s. 3-6 Mafia and UGK did “Sippin on Some Syrup” (the source of “sizzurp”) back in 1999, I believe.
Sideshow Bill
At the small private college I went to in Virginia, those that were underage (and usually quite wealthy) would often drink 2 bottles of Robitussin. It was called Robo’ing. Nothing new.
Emma
You don’t. But you do create a ridiculously expensive security apparatus where everyone, from the for-profit jails, to the highly influential prison guard unions, to the government departments supposedly fighting the war, make money. And the power-hungry get their fix.
scav
Wazzup? Sizzurp! Fo shizzle.
Ben Franklin
PEOPLE ARE DRINKING COUGH SYRUP TO GET HIGH. How do you win that war?
American Idol is the bath salts of the blogging community. Thank you, Cole for making this important issue a subject for debate.
Comrade Jake
I’ve never heard of this. Wouldn’t a guy like lil Wayne have access to, ahem, other resources?
Mnemosyne
I’m pretty sure he’s not buying codeine (aka opium) over the counter. We don’t live in that particular libertarian paradise just yet.
And, yes, even though I am an Old and live on the West Coast, I have heard of kids drinking cough syrup to get high. Though I’m guessing the high alcohol content of most cough syrups is what really does the trick, not the other stuff in it.
Imani Gandy (ABL)
oh mah gah, you people are so white.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsANbNz0W_c
Bubblegum Tate
@Comrade Jake:
Wayne also has a prodigious weed habit.
ninjapornstar
@Sideshow Bill:
@Bubblegum Tate:
Actually, I think there are two ways to get high off of cough syrup. What you two are describing is drinking certain kinds of cough syrup (generally Robitussin extra strength, about 1-2 bottles) for its dextromethorphan (a dissociative anesthetic, think “special K,” which, btw, is a horse tranquilizer).
What these folks are drinking is also cough syrup, but the active ingredient they’re after is codeine, an opiate (just think legal heroin). I think they also drink way less than a whole bottle.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recreational_use_of_dextromethorphan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple_drank
Don’t ask me how I know this.
Davis X. Machina
Grape Drank. Ima grip ‘n sip.
Brendan in NC
Same stuff that got JaBustus (oops sorry JaMarcus) Russell arrested, and hastened his pursiut of Ryan Leaf as the biggest #1 overall bust in the NFL.
Comrade Jake
What happened to just getting ahold of some good, old-fashioned crack?
c u n d gulag
OY!
Soon, cough syrup will be, like decongestants, more difficult to purchase than assault weapons with extra-large clips, magazines, penises, bullet-sacks, or what ever else it is that the feckin’ gun-nuts call them, where the bullets are held, before being released into somebody elses (hopefully for the owner of the gun’s, sadly, for the victim’s) body.
NotMax
And not all Sterno sold is intended for heating or cooking uses.
Squeeze
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Presumably he’s drinking the cough syrup for the taste.
MattF
Yeah, well. I’m old enough to actually remember when people tried smoking banana peel to get high. Fact: people like to get high.
srv
@JPL: It’s only bad if the roof comes off.
c u n d gulag
OY!
Soon, cough syrup will be, like decongestants, more difficult to purchase than assault weapons with extra-large clips, magazines, p*nises, bullet-sacks, or what ever else it is that the feckin’ gun-nuts call them, where the bullets are held, before being released into somebody elses (hopefully for the owner of the gun’s, sadly, for the victim’s) body.
Let’s see if a little asterisk can get me out of “Your comment is awaiting moderation.”
Keith G
Really? Where the hell have you been…for the last 12+ years? This lil fun trip to hocus pocus land has been a thing for at least that long.
Do hope you were kidding, right?
What the fishtails do you thing “Gin and Juice” is all about?
Hal
@Imani Gandy (ABL):
Ha, my thoughts exactly. Maybe it’s more of a Southern thang too, but I thought the purple drank had made it into popular lexicon.
Anyhoo, if he’s drinking that much of it, I’m amazed he even has a liver. In fact, the conspiracy theorist in me was thinking of hepatic encephalopathy when I read about the seizures. Cough syrup is pretty gross, but I’ve had some cheap 100 proof vodka’s that tasted the same.
YellowDog
It’s also known as Drank, or Purple Drank when mixed with Jolly Ranchers. A Stillers fan should know that. That was JaMarcus Russell’s drug of choice.
Omnes Omnibus
@Bubblegum Tate: Yep, this is not new.
ETA: I am damn near translucent and much closer to 50 than 40 and I know about this. Oh, yeah, I am from Wisconsin. What is the matter with you people?
c u n d gulag
Jeez, John, I LOOOOVES Ya!
But, since the upgrade, we can’t even write the word for dicks, like “p*nis,” without an asterisk?
WHAA HAPPEN?!?!
J.W. Hamner
In my day it was Robitussin and the active ingredient of interest was DXM. My impression was it was mainly for people who had run out of different drugs to try.
Eric U.
this was a big problem in Utah when we left in ’94. Kids would go into drug stores and pound a bottle and then put it back on the shelf. It’s a bad high from what I can tell.
ETA: don’t know if you can get any more white than that. This was my first experience with OTC drugs that had to be requested from the pharmacist
Jade Jordan
Football Fan @JohnCole where were you when JaMarcus Russell was arrested for possessing Purple Drank (aka SIZZURP) years ago.
In his defense he was trying to escape the Oakland Raiders.
Just Some Fuckhead
OMG, John. All the hep cats is dexing. U is crunk boyee.
JPL
@srv: It’s passed here and heading towards Raven’s. When I look outside and see dark greenish grey, I head to the closet.
nitpicker
Heh. Reminds me of cheese.
Mike B
This is not new. Jazz musicians in the 50’s and 60’s
used to drink it for the codeine. When you couldn’t afford
the usual street drugs, cough syrup and the wicks
from old fashioned Vicks inhalers (placed under the tongue)
were alternative highs. I knew a drummer who would pour
cough syrup on his pancakes at the diner after the gig.
I had plenty of cough syrup as a kid for asthma, so I
wasn’t the least bit interested in recreational cough syrup.
SmallAxe
Slippin people, been around for a while but this isn’t your regular cough syrup… note the Codeine… lots of it with promethazine. Shit will knock you on your ass. Like Oxi’s with whiskey. This ain’t no tussin we’re talking about here. Zombie high for sure, prefer hash, a soma, the couch and a good NFL game if I’m going for the Zombie but to each his own.
Cacti
@J.W. Hamner:
Same here. I remember first hearing about “Robo-tripping” in the mid 1990s.
I always figured it was for people who were either too broke or too timid to buy illegal drugs.
ruemara
@Imani Gandy (ABL): Hush. I’ve never heard of this stuff. I snuck Tia Maria & Appleton like any decent Jamaican teen. Or true ginger beer and sorrel. You people -the cough syrup slurping ones- are insane. That shit tastes nasty.
cbear
Thank god he seems to be recovering—I’m not sure the nation could survive the trauma of losing another towering music icon.
Trollhattan
Who is lil Wayne and why is he little and did somebody take his “t”s because of his size?
Lawn: offa mine.
dollared
@Omnes Omnibus: You live in a college town. That keeps you in touch with what the young’uns is doin.
geg6
I always thought it was for the alcohol in most over-the-counter cough syrups that kids drank it. How the hell are they getting the prescriptions for the codeine? I have to sign my life away just to get my Claritin D and during bad allergy periods, I have to get John to get it for me because I have used my allotment of milligrams. At least, that’s what the lady at the pharmacy told me. It’s not the number of pills you use in a month because I used exactly what I bought, taking one a day, and still got told I couldn’t buy any more because I’d used up my monthly number of milligrams. When I asked why they made the pills more milligrams than what would add up to what’s allowed in a month, she said she had no idea but that she had the same problem.
Suffern ACE
@Roger Moore: go ahead. Ban it. I’ll just go back to huffing paint and putting jenkem in my coffee.
max
PEOPLE ARE DRINKING COUGH SYRUP TO GET HIGH.
Shit, I thought that was why you were takin’ the Robitussin & the Muscinex. (As in: ‘I’m sick, might as well get fucked up’.)
Of course, taking that shit in combination with other exciting medications can either destroy your internals or kill you deader ‘n fuck.
I admit to enough (recent) whiteness to have not heard the word sizzurp, but not enough to have not heard of getting fucked up with cough syrup and other OTC meds.
I’m stil surprised cheese never spread. Although PCP seems to be steadily gaining ground from out of the gutter.
max
[‘Or anyways, a lot of dudes are getting busted for nutting off on PCP.’]
Gex
What about our politics do you not understand, Cole? The war on drugs puts a lot of money and a lot of weaponry (like tanks!) in the hands of the right people. And it raises prices for all the rich untouchable people (like banks!) that profit off of the illegal drug trade.
This is working as planned.
maya
Apparently, it is widespread among teens.
Was in a food store a few months ago when two HS girls ahead of me on line tried to purchase some cough medicine. They couldn’t have been more than 15. The checker told them they need to be 21 to buy it, store or legal policy, and so they left still with that tickle in their throats unscratched. Checker couldn’t figure what that was all about but we both concluded it had to have something to do with the ingredients. Oh yeah, it was during school lunch hour.
YellowJournalism
NyQuil was often the poor teen’s alcohol of choice when I was in high school. Easier to break into the medicine cabinet than the liquor cabinet. I can’t drink that crap. It gives me a jittery effect that’s opposite of what it’s supposed to do. I ins thy often with drugs that are supposed to knock me out.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
OT: Rush Limbaugh just compared Thomas Perez to the “Grand Kleagle” of the Ku Klux Klan.
Or maybe it’s not off topic. Maybe Rusty’s sending the maid out to score sizzurp these days.
? Martin
…says the guy from Meth Virginia.
Omnes Omnibus
@dollared: Plus, for Cole.
SmallAxe
@ruemara:
you think cough syrup tastes nasty and you are spouting about Sorrel??? My God that stuff is the nastiest drink my Trini in-laws have ever given me. Let’s go drink some red tree bark (Sorrel) nasty nasty stuff. Now the ginger beer & rum I like.
Jethro Troll
There used to be a midwestern punkrock fanzine in the 80s called “Tussin Up”
MikeJ
@dollared:
Doesn’t Cole?
Steve M.
John, do you know the history of screw music? It was cough syrup music a dozen years ago.
SmallAxe
Oops I stand corrected, wife tells me the tree bark drink is mauby, sorrel from the flower, still red and nasty. Like drinking red dirt water to my palate anyway.
Ultraviolet Thunder
My dad’s a pharmacist. He sez it’s still legal to sell/buy codeine cough syrup over the counter in most places. But the majority of pharmacies will not stock it. Most customers will be addicts looking for the opioid buzz. It’s not worth their time to sort them out. They stock the prescription varieties only.
Nylund
@Roger Moore: While there are ingredients to get you high from OTC cough syrup (eg. dextromethorphan), in this case we are talking about prescription cough syrup with codeine in it. That’s an opiate painkiller like vicodin, percocet, oxycontin, etc. That is to say, the cough syrup in question is akin to buying some NyQuil and spiking it with morphine or heroin.
It’s not hard to get either. Just tell the doctor you have a cough that keeps you up at night and codeine cough syrup is what they’ll likely give you.
And as for John’s comment, people have been getting high on opiates for a very long time. No matter the form it comes in, be it a pill or a syrup, whether it’s being given for back pain or a bad cough, there will be someone abusing it for fun.
Randy P
Doesn’t drinking cough syrup go back to Prohibition?
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Omnes Omnibus: Hell, I’m older than you and in Ohio, and *I* know about it. I’m also kinda pale of skin. Though to be honest, Mr. Q did have to explain the not codeine version to me several years ago, when I asked what the hell he meant when he said his organist buddy “drank bottles of Robotussin.” That’s when I learned that dextromethorphan has hallucinogenic properties in higher than therapeutic doses. An opiate buzz could clearly take your mind off our trouble.
I had not a clue, but the dissociative stuff wouldn’t appeal to me. What will kill your liver tripping or sizzurping is all the acetaminophen you’d consume doing that. There’s an OTC drug that probably shouldn’t be.
ChrisNYC
Yeah, Cole, I’m your age more or less and I heard about this at my nerdy college — Robitussin. The kids from Kansas and Oklahoma, that region, talked about it.
Trollhattan
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Mmm-kay, did not see that one coming but I suppose if anybody living can compare and contrast mister Perez to a grand kleagle, it’s Rush.
Ben Franklin
Now that we’ve established an underground drug culture @ BJ, is there more support for letting the slackers who smoke and ingest cannabis enjoy a Federal brake?
aimai
@Hal:
Purple drank? Yah. I think this is more a southern/northern issue than a black/white one.
In re Randy P’s question–I don’t think it was cough syrup that went back to Prohibition but people definitely used to drink Colognes, which were alcohol based. There’s a marvellous scene in the memoire “The Endless Steppe” where the little polish girl gets off the train that has taken them to siberia and sees the guards bring out cologne, which she thinks will be used to refresh the prisoners, only to see them chug it for the alcohol.
SmallAxe
Robitussin is not Sizzurp, DXM vs. Codeine a world of difference. No opiates in tussin people.
Suffern ACE
@Trollhattan: I think we could use a thread about this guy. My guess is that he is going to be used as an excuse to derail immigration reform. But I’m still not certain why he is a radical.
TaMara (BHF)
@Imani Gandy (ABL): Ok, my virgin ears….
And what the hell, did all the FP-ers partake today, because it’s been like an ADD fest here today. Can’t get through one post before two more go up.
Feast or famine.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ben Franklin: Offhand, do you really think that there are a lot of people here who are opposed to, at a minimum, decriminalization?
Friend of Hermes
I had a cough syrup habit in the 60’s when syrup with codeine was sold over the counter. It’s a deadly habit that is hard to break. I felt terrible most of the time and I never thought I was a junkie.
nellcote
Prescription only Tussonex in the 70s. Tasted like apricots. Extremely mellow buzz. Yum.
Omnes Omnibus
@SmallAxe: A fair point. Nevertheless, both get used. Both get songs. And, as importantly, Cole is still shocked by it.
jamick6000
you can’t really appreciate DJ Screw without it.
MattF
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: FWIW,Tom Perez was on my local County Council before he went down the road to DC for a job. He’s a great guy. And now there’s more proof, if it was needed that Limbaugh will be lucky to go straight to Hell.
James Gary
FYI: Jim Carroll’s ur-hipster-teen NYC memoir “The Basketball Diaries”– written in the mid-1960s–contains a detailed description of his high-school self procuring cough syrup to get high. So (jazz musicians aside) the practice goes back at least that far.
Pooh
@ninjapornstar: Jamarcus Russell is how you know it.
JaneE
Fifty plus years ago, when Oklahoma was a dry state, they had a newspaper article about how people were drinking Aqua Velva aftershave to get drunk.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Ultraviolet Thunder
Lester Bangs was said to be a fan of codeine cough syrup. If this is untrue I apologize in advance.
ruemara
@SmallAxe: Philistine and even then, I do philistines a disservice. Sorrel, is gingery, floral, sweet and about 5% booze AND MADE FROM HIBISCUS FLOWERS. Also, Trinis, they have their names for things, we tolerate them. If this was about Cerasse tea, then there’d be agreement.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@JaneE:
Common antibacterial hand gel is 140 proof ethanol. It burns wildly when lit. It has a denaturing agent that is horridly bitter to keep people from ingesting it. Still….
NobodySpecial
Don’t forget your Dormin pills.
Ruckus
Just like all the wars on drugs, poverty, sex or whatever, you don’t win them. There is no real property to take and hold(although confiscation comes close), there are fewer resources on the authoritarian side because there is less profit there, there is no leader to kill to take down the structure. There are only people who will take anything to try and make life a little more palatable or a little more forgotten.
It really is cheaper and easier to let them have their little things in life.
Who after all is actually capable of deciding for someone else what constitutes a life well lived or how long it should last?
MikeJ
@Ultraviolet Thunder: Robert Quine said (of Lester):
Ben Franklin
@Omnes Omnibus:
Offhand, I’d say the majority don’t really GaS, unless there is a hot topic to get bothered about.
bemused
I remember being dosed with a green, iirc, cough syrup when a kid that was yummy. I loved it. That was a l-o-n-g time ago. I don’t think docs or anyone else then thought giving some narcotics in medicine to kids was anything unusual.
SmallAxe
@ruemara:
Ya my wife corrected me, Mauby is the tree bark one. Sorrel is still nasty esp. compared to cough syrup. What is it with the Trini vs. Jamaican rivalry too? Funny thing her mom growin up told her she could date anyone except a Jamaican, lots o hate there for sure. Don’t even get me started on the ox tail etc. I plead whitey on all the crap but I’m sure it’s a delicacy for you. The spices & roti I love though.
rodnchance
I tried Robutussin DM (dextromethorphan hydro-bromide) in 1970, only had to do it the one time to decide to never do it again.
I would call it Ro-boating in dangerous waters.
Ultraviolet Thunder
My parents used to give us Dramamine so we wouldn’t all puke in the car*. I recall being baked out of my gourd on the stuff. Dunno why that never became a thing. Because everything else ever discovered tha twill alter your frame of mind is now a recreational pastime.
*6 kids, big car.
MikeJ
@bemused: Paregoric was OTC until 1970.
newtons.third
@Brendan in NC: Um, Leaf was number 2 overall behind a guy named Manning. The Colts look good on that one.
Also, I sometimes have a prescription for codeine cough syrup, and even codeine pills when I have a cough bad enough to almost black out (from the coughing). It is the only thing that lets me, and my wife, sleep. But it messes me up if I take more than a little. I don’t ever use the max dosage on the prescription.
I can’t imagine drinking the stuff for fun. It just leaves me lethargic and not able to think quickly. Not fun.
ruemara
@SmallAxe: Not sure if there’s a true rivalry, but it’s pretty common in the West Indies to indulge in a little island smack talk. All in good fun. Even I have, *shudder* Trini and Bahamian relatives. But if you ever drank real Jamaican sorrel, you’d be a convert for life. Plus if you ate bulla bread.
ekeog
yeah townes van zandt was explicitly referring to it in the mid ’60s
Now I’m out of prison, I got me a friend at last
He don’t steal or cheat or drink or lie
His name’s codeine, he’s the nicest thing I’ve seen
Together we’re gonna wait around and die
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwR1n0p1V7U)
Higgs Boson's Mate
Surprise, surprise, surprise! Not. Back in the Sixties the alleys around Fillmore and Winterland were littered with empty Romilar CF bottles. Now the active ingredient is Dextromethorphan, overdosing on which can cause the interesting symptoms displayed by the rapper.
Samson141
Like a G6 …..
James Petzke
Kind of sad to think that this is the world we live in, where celebrities drink cough syrup and people flip out when they end up in the hospital.
Loneoak
Permanent Republican Majority.
Brendan in NC
@newtons.third: I actually meant first round bust – see he was so forgettable – I even forgot what position Leaf got drafted in..Oy!
Omnes Omnibus
@Comrade Jake: Different buzz.
Birthmarker
I am old enough to have been raised on paragoric. Mom mixed it with honey and lemon, and it put you to sleep…good stuff.
And the apricot cough syrup was the bomb!
My kids filled me in on Lil Wayne’s propensity for Drank many many years ago…I don’t think it’s a Southern thing at all. Maybe a N’Orleans thing?
JWL
A very few years ago, the Oakland Raiders inadvertently spent a first round pick and $35 million (guaranteed) to keep Louisiana QB standout Ja Marcus Russell floating in The Syrup.
It’s old news.
White Trash Liberal
http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1437883/codeine-drugs-killed-dj-screw.jhtml
Cough syrup with codeine was the central drug behind the Houston sound in hip hop that sprang up in the 90s.
In other news: KIDS THESE DAYS ARE SNORTING WHIP CREAM CANISTER FUMES ZOMG
Amanda in the South Bay
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
Nope, you can also buy syrup ( or capsules) that just contain DXM. And yes, I’ve done a bit of robo tripping in the past…
Amanda in the South Bay
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
Nope, you can also buy syrup ( or capsules) that just contain DXM. And yes, I’ve done a bit of robo tripping in the past…
Bob In Portland
I’m over sixty and cough syrup has been abused as long as I can remember. For those who need educating on the subject I suggest Let it Blurt by Jim Derogatis, a biography of Lester Bangs. Not only drinking cough medicine, but he also used to break open menthol inhalers and swallow those cotton things in them. And who can forget turpin hydrate? Back in the sixties before they changed their formulation, my friend and I took lots of Contac, which at the time was made with belladonna (aka deadly nightshade), the stuff of witches’ brew. Now that was a bizarre trip. Went down to Asbury Park and watched the waves turn to lava. I tried sniffing glue once, and it worked but I could tell that I’d never get into Mensa if I kept that up. The worst attempt to get high was a kid from my high school who drank Listerine to get drunk. Still, there are poor kids in the Third World who huff turds to get high off the methane.
dance around in your bones
My husband used to tell me about back in the day (East Coast) the kids would line up around the block to buy codeine cough syrup from the Farmacies (avoiding moderation) willing to sell it to anybody.
They had a blast going to concerts all blasted on the codeine. Whatcha gonna do? Humans have always wanted to alter their consciousness, regardless of the substance.
kuvasz
Never trust a drug addict.
steve
Li’l Wayne recruited by DEA to use up all the drugs in mexico
The Moar You Know
AKA: “robo” or the more recent “purple drank”.
Joel (Macho Man Randy Savage)
This is purple drank, a.k.a. Jamarcus Russell’s PED of choice, right?
I think drinking cough syrup that has codeine in it is at least somewhat more respectable than trying to load up on OTC meds.
Sgaile-beairt
i heard it was a popular cheap high in the air force during the 70s….figured it was over in this age of easy weed, & ecstasy, but i guess some classics never go out of style….
Birthmarker
This thread reminds me that back in the 70’s there was a dry shampoo product called Pssssst! Someone in our community killed themselves in the parking lot of the K-Mart while huffing it.
dance around in your bones
@White Trash Liberal:
I remember sucking up the nitrous in whipped cream cans in grocery stores! Not to mention Whippets, and other delivery methods I cannot talk about today.
But it was fun as hell (plus committed in de Nederlands).
Another Halocene Human
Two white cups and I got that drank
Might be purple
Might be pink
“Robo-chuggin'” was popular in Boston when I was a teenager. Among teens of a certain social class, if you get my drift.
Another Halocene Human
@schrodinger’s cat: The last time I bought cough syrup at a CVS I had to show my driver’s license.
Wow, when I worked at CVS they used to bring in the enormous CVS brand value bottles (never used that much cough syrup in one year even when I had bronchitis) every year and sell them for cheep and they would fly off the shelves and CVS didn’t care who bought them, cha-ching, cha-ling-a-ching. We all knew kids and adults chugged that shit to get high.
We carded the shit out of tobacco but we had a 35-card law and knew that the local constabulary liked to send 18yo officers in plainclothes to bust joints and fine them.
Of course now that you can get DM+guaifenesin as a slow-release pill, there’s no longer the plausible deniability of buying huge quantities of patent medicine.
dance around in your bones
I remember when you could buy it in one or two ounce bottles across the counter. It was supposedly to rub across the gums of teething babies.
We just chugged the stuff.
Another Halocene Human
@Birthmarker: My sister and her friends used to play the “pass out game” where they would depress something in the neck and sit in an odd position and get dizzy and pass out. You can’t stop teenagers from being idjits.
Another Halocene Human
@Samson141: Like a G6 …..
Please enlighten me–I thought that song was about a car/girl.
In fact, I clearly remember dancing like a fool to that song in the club making miming driving motions.
Another Halocene Human
@Ultraviolet Thunder: If dramamine is a histamine blocker like Benadryl then everyone will react to it differently.
For example, Benadryl makes me pass out quick but I know someone who stays alert and gets elevated heartrate with it. Like, weird.
Another Halocene Human
@SmallAxe: shut yo’ face, oxtails are delicious. Not cheap, either. and I’m Irish, so like, blinding white
vagabundoloco
I learned a new word today, and that word is SIZZURP.
Congrats – and welcome to the year 2000.
Another Halocene Human
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): I had not a clue, but the dissociative stuff wouldn’t appeal to me. What will kill your liver tripping or sizzurping is all the acetaminophen you’d consume doing that. There’s an OTC drug that probably shouldn’t be.
The FDA is pushing to take it out of combo remedies because of the overdose danger. At one time the FDA thought the presence of tylenol would deter crushing up pills and snorting them, but they were wrong….
For people with serious pain, acetaminophen seems to enhance the analgesic effect of opiates.
It’s also much safer in low doses for most people than NSAIDs. The exception are alcoholics who have just dried out. They can suffer serious liver injury. This is a special risk in hospitals where Tylenol is the drug of choice.
Another Halocene Human
@Randy P: Doesn’t drinking cough syrup go back to Prohibition?
Well before. Issues with opiate addiction were part of the push behind the Pure Food and Drug Act. The other issue was manufacturers putting cocaine and mercury in medicine for children and lying about the ingredients.
Concerned Citizen
“purple drank, ima grip and sip”
I know Grimmace likes it:
http://pugetsoundoff.org/image/3247
kindness
Growing up in the 70s it was legal to buy a bottle of the codeine Robitusin every other day in New Jersey. There was a crew from my high school that would make the 20 mile trip every day. I did it a couple times. Didn’t really like the codeine high and hated the syrup on my stomach. Preferred the ganja & drinking. They were junkies after a bit. I’m lucky I wasn’t into it.
gchic5
really? Ghetto Kool-Aid has been around for awhile now, stop trying to pretend like this is new,please!!
Liquid
A friend of mine has a younger brother who’s in his early twenties that likes to smoke pills. They call it ‘beaning’ or some such.
Good God I’ll stick with my pot thanks, especially since I live in Seattle.
fuckwit
Yep, been around for a while, associated with, IIRC, the crunk music scene, Southern hip-hop.
Kids, especially poor kids, will get high on whatever they can.
People in general will find a way to get high. Even people in prison. I assume you’ve heard of Pruno.
Steve Finlay
Robo’ing — good lord, I can barely force myself to get one teaspoon of that stuff down, no matter how sick I am.
I recently found out that rather than drinking cough syrup to get high, I can use illegal drugs to get the effect of cough syrup. Many years ago, if I had a nasty dry cough, I would drink Breathe Easy herbal tea. It worked beautifully, loosening up the cough and making it what the docs call “productive”. Then the Canadian government got all nannyish about ephedra (ma huang) making some tiny percentage of people sick, and banned it. So Breathe Easy had to switch to a new formula, which doesn’t work.
Well, two weeks ago I found that half a joint is just about as good an expectorant as ephedra was. So what little bit of pot I have, I’m saving for the next time I have a rotten miserable dry cough.
Anne Laurie
@Birthmarker:
Heck, as late as 1965, it was sold OTC as a cure for diarrhea — in infants! (I was ten, the youngest sibs were newborns, and it shocked me that the pediatrician would casually tell my mother to use a product I associated with the slum-dwellers in Dickens novels.)
And for completeness:
moderateindy
When are they gonna finally ban all drugs and just start spraying the masses with Soma? Brave New World style.
I always thought it odd that a major pharmaceutical company named a drug (a muscle relaxant) Soma. Not just because of the use of it in Huxley’s novel, but also because it is some kind of drug that goes back to ancient India where it was a drink that was used for various spiritual reasons, including making you immortal. It was also the name of one of their gods.
low-tech cyclist
Texas tea? Man, I wouldn’t want to drink that!
henqiguai
@Top
Well into a dead thread, don’t know if this has been mentioned, and fresh off of moving a lot of heavy snow, let me just point out that doing cough syrup for the buzz was a thing, to my knowledge, back in the ’60s. Had a cousin come home on break from NC A&T raving about that crap; called it “doing ‘bo”. He would go to the pharmacy to buy the little bottles of Robitussin by the case then do shots by the bottle. Then they removed the codeine.
CRA
IMO, codeine cough syrup is the most effective kind for coughs, with fewer nasty side effects. At cough-suppressing levels, I don’t find the opiate high to be disabling or unpleasant. On the other hand, I’m always tempted to drink too much, or finish the bottle after the cough’s gone. (I have only had a scrip for it a few times.)
Samson141
@Another Halocene Human:
the hook:
poppin bottles one the ice like a blizzard
When we drnk, we do it right gettin slizzard
sippin sizzurp in my ride like a three six
Now I’m feelin so fly like a G6
A G6 is a plane, fwiw.
Graham
You had to sign for the good stuff…so all the junkies would would start early in the day and go and get their bottle. I would go in and sign…the kindly doc once told me, nope, can’t do it. I say, huh? He told me Thomas Jefferson had already signed for his one bottle today.
Walk out, come back in, and sign Aaron Burr….