Bath Salts: Steer Clear

Although much of the media-fueled hysteria over the designer drug called bath salts has been utterly unfounded, especially when it comes to driving users to eating people's faces, you'll still want to pass on them. Learn why.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, Portland and Seattle, we are coming to see you
live next January. Yep. On January we're gonna be in
beautiful Seattle, Washington at the More Theater. And then on
January six, the next night, we're gonna be at Revolution
Hall in Portland. And we are super psyched for these right, Chuck,
that's right. These tickets are going fast. So for all
the deeds, go to our live home on the web

(00:22):
s y s K live dot com. Welcome to Stuff
you Should Know from how Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles
w Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry over there, and they are

(00:43):
both loaded on bath salts. No, you're not, like you
even need to say that. Everybody knows you're not on
bath salts. Yeah, and so c O a time. Uh,
this is about the drug bath salts. It's not just
about us chatting about how lovely it is to suak
in a tub. What do you remember how confusing it
was when these first came out being an old person

(01:05):
or they're like, is that a bad thing? Like are
they actually snorting bath salts? Uh? So, even though a
lot of this episode about the drug bath salts will
be about the incorrect hysteria surrounding bath salts, much like
the crack episode. Yeah, you should still not ever do
bath salts. Yeah, yeah, that's not an endorsement for going

(01:28):
and trying. There's anyway. Yeah, but but there is a
lot of interesting hysteria surrounding this, kind of like a
BCP and crack and all this stuff. Yeah, it's a
great it's a really great study in how the media
can really fuel drug hysteria, and not only how they can,
how every time a new drug comes out they do

(01:49):
because anytime the media scares everybody, people pay more attention
to the news, and the media makes more money, so
they have a reason to scare people. This is a
great example of it. But it is also an example
of reality coinciding with hysteria too. There was some really
messed up stuff that did happen. Um bath salts just

(02:13):
not nearly as widespread as people thought. Yeah, it's stay
off the bath salts. It's not exactly. Uh So, I
guess our story sort of starts in two thousand tennish
when this new drug appeared on the scene, and it
is a what they call a designer drug, meaning that

(02:35):
it is created by a person, um synthetically and in
this case it's rather than God. Yeah, in this case
is something called synthetic cathinone, which will we'll get into
all the chemical stuff in a bit, but um. And
I was shocked to learn that designer drugs there's like

(02:56):
several hundred a year. Is that what it said? Like
two hift something in Europe? So there's we We worked
also off of a Smithsonian article that was great called
no bath salts Won't turn you into a cannibal. And
the author mentions, um that there was Yeah, like I
think from two thousand nine till two thousand fourteen or fifteen,

(03:17):
there was like two D seventy nine new designer drugs
that hit them. Mark sure, yes. Um. The reason why, though,
is because designer drugs are easily tweaked, and the reason
that they tweak them just ever so slightly is because
governments tend to outlaw specific chemicals and they do that

(03:38):
by um, the chemical composition. Well, if you add like
a covalent bond here, or a hydrogen atom there or whatever.
I don't know, I'm not a chemist. But if you
alter it ever so slightly so it still has basically
the same effect, but it is a different chemical than
the one that's outlawed. You can then turn around and
sell that legally for a while until that chemical composition
gets outlawed. Yeah, it's uh in this article is rightfully

(04:01):
referred to as its cycle in a very tough cycle
to battle as far as drug enforcement goes, it's it's
a new day an age with a synthetic drug thing,
but it's it does seem like if the media gets
the nation on board, then the drug warriors can be
like it's outlawed now and everybody's like, okay, cool, alright,

(04:23):
So two thousand ten, what's going on two thousand ten?
Over in London? I believe a drug called metha drone
got kind of big method as an emmy p h. Yeah,
I'm not like listening like methodrone also known as miamio,
which is probably the greatest drug slang name of all time,

(04:43):
although there's another one in here that we'll get to
that maybe even better than miamo. But I think I'm
just gonna call everything miaw me out from now on. Yeah.
I just like the idea of someone like you know,
walking up to a guy on the street corner say hey, man,
you got Miami, right, so I got you looked up
the guys Like, you know, you could just say mea
all you know what you're talking about. He's like, no,
it's better to say it twice. He said, I can.

(05:03):
I can also hook up your kiddi with some yall mix. Right.
So this this stuff kind of hit the scene in
Europe and then in very very short order, um, it
made its way over to the US as well, and
it was really popular all of a sudden among club kids, ravers,
people who enjoy getting high on drugs really liked it

(05:24):
a lot and wearing pants with wide legs. Sure, yeah,
that's a big one still probably, although I think that's
like goths now, Like now ravers are called goth kids.
There's been a convergence. Yeah, it's weird, but they're all
like into florescent. It's it's it's a bizarre convergence that
happened somewhere in our rear view after after we kind

(05:46):
of moved out of that. I mean, I was post rave,
like I wasn't in that scene even I was too
old for that. I was peri rave. What does that mean? Like? Right?
And oh, you did you go to those things? Yeah,
I went to They might have told the story once,
but I lived in a warehouse in Atlanta one year
and actually it was right at the turn of two thousand,

(06:09):
and they had raves at these warehouses for a while,
and I went to one. Me and my buddies are like,
all right, let's do it, and uh yeah, what my scene.
But we had one friend our age that was really
into it, and he even wore the clothes. It's like, dude,
you're too old to be wearing. Come on, you shall

(06:29):
remain nameless. I know exactly who it is all bet, No,
you don't know who. Are you gonna say that. I'm
not gonna say now then, Okay, okay, you'll tell me
maybe so So anyway, uh two, long, long, long after
Chuck went to his rave and I went to my rave. Um,
this this new drug hit the scene. And the reason

(06:53):
one of the reasons it was so popular and became
very widespread, like out of nowhere, was because you could
go to a head shop. You could go to like
a Spencer's. Maybe, you could go to the mall. You
could go to a gas station, you could go to
like a skate shop and buy this stuff, and it
was called bath salts, and some of them they had

(07:15):
like brand names on some of the bath salts, like
a Loco, Motion, Vanilla s Guy, Zoom, Ocean Snow, like
every dumb name you can think of is what they
call them. But they were all generally lumped into the
this new drug bath salts. And it was totally legal.
And if you look down the label, it would say

(07:37):
I love that name. If you look down the label,
it would say not for human consumption, this is pond
cleaner or vacuum refreshing it right, um? Or plant food yeah,
plant food was another fertilized or something like that, right,
And then yes, you would buy this packet. I think
it was like fifty bucks for fifty milligrams or something

(07:59):
like that. I don't even know how much that is. Um.
I think they came in like a packet, okay, you know,
like pop rocks size packet. There you go put it
in something I can, right, Okay, So about a pop
rox amount was I think? Um? And yes, the people
would take the home and chop it up and snort
it or crazy crazy people would inject it. Um. Some

(08:22):
people smoked it, some people just ate it. But I
think the predominant way it was done with snorting it. Yeah,
And the reason I think we probably already said this,
but the reason it's called bath salts was because it
very much looked like the stuff that you put in
the bathtub to have a nice quiet soak, very relaxing

(08:42):
light of candle. Put in some bath salts in your tub,
which is very ironic because the drug is the opposite
of that experience. Yeah, especially if you do too much. Yeah,
by all accounts, bath salts will Actually I'm gonna just
go ahead and read this because it's so great. Is
this from the Smithsonian article? I think it's from our own,
but it really describes the experience such that why would

(09:04):
anyone want to try this out? The bodies of basalt
users experience of smortge sport of stress effects including rapid
heart rate, high blood pressure, chest pain's fever, sweating, nausea, vomiting,
no speeds, trimmor, seizures, muscle agitation. UH. These can lead
to muscle damage, kidney failure, heart attack, stroke, and death.
The brain boards an emotional perceptual roller coaster of agitation, airritability, dissneance, insomnia,

(09:27):
taking slowly of pills of anxiety and then diving into
valleys of depression concentration grows difficult. Uh, thoughts might take
a turn towards suicide or extreme paranoia fuel by delusions
and in some cases hallucinations, all of which can culminate
in panic attacks, hostility, or aggression. Sounds great, right, So
what that was describing, from what I understand was if

(09:49):
you are a chronic user in this stuff, we should
say was highly addictive. Yeah, worst worst case scenario type
of experience, right, But it wasn't like out of the
realm of possibility for about anybody to have this kind
of experience. But it's not like if you snorted your
first line of bath salts like you were immediately, you know,
you've gone nuts and you're having a horrible time. The

(10:11):
reason people tried bath salts is because usually UM at
a normal dose I guess, produced euphoria, talkativeness, sociability, um
energy like a sexy drive. Yeah, yeah, it would increase
your sex drive and a lot of people likened it
to a cross between cocaine and ecstasy. Right. And it

(10:31):
was cheap. Yeah, that was another thing too. Yeah, Like
you said again, the pop rocks thing I don't know
how much it took, but um, it was pretty cheap
compared to like the cocaine and the ecstasy. I think. So, um,
should we take a break, I guess so. All right,
well let's take a break and we'll come back and

(10:52):
uh well, hop into the bathtub again. All right, Chuck,

(11:21):
We're in the tub. We're soaking in it. It's very relaxing. Yeah.
I think it's starting to permeate through the skin. Is
that your foot? I sure, hope. So, yeah, this got
a lot here on that toe. Uh So, Here's here's
why bath salts begin to make the news is because
and this is where it gets into a little bit
of hysteria, because sometimes these people were in fact on

(11:44):
bath salts and did some extreme things, and sometimes people
were not on bath salts. But a cop on the
scene who talked to a reporter said, yeah, it sounds
like bath salts to me, and then all of a
sudden it's reported that way. Yeah. There's a very famous
case of that. Yeah, most infamously is the the zombie

(12:04):
cannibal Rudy Eugene. Yeah in Miami remember that you? Oh yeah,
I remember? Very disturbing. Yeah, Like, um, there was a
man named Rudy Eugene who completely out of the blue,
as he was walking around Miami one Saturday, just jumped
on a homeless man that he saw and over the

(12:25):
course of like eighteen minutes, ate his face. Eighteen minutes.
Ronald Peppo was the name of the man. And he's recovered,
actually has he doesn't have a face any longer, he
doesn't have eyes or anything like that. Yeah, but he's
taken the opportunity to learn the guitar again. Wow. Yeah,
he's actually seemed like he's in high spirits and everything now.

(12:48):
But he was not in high spirits while Rudy Eugene
was eating his face. And Eugene died on the scene.
He was killed by cops. Yeah who um I from
what I read, it took multiple rounds to to to
kill him. Um making animals sounds like. It was so
disturbing it immediately became a bath salt frenzy. But here's

(13:12):
the thing. He was not on bath salts. No. A
cop on the scene apparently said to a reporter, he's
definitely gotta be on bath salts, and the entire media,
the international media, took that and ran with it, like
you said. A month later, the Talks report came out
and the only thing they found in the system was marijuana.
And you and you don't hear. Uh, you don't hear

(13:34):
much about the follow up reporting usually no, you don't.
And as a matter of fact, as recently as I
think two thousand and sixteen, this Forbes article we found
um mentioned that CBS News was still reporting that the
that that episode was the result of a bath Bath
Salts overdose. It is so um the fact that that

(13:55):
happened in two thousand and twelve, right in the peak
of the kind of hysteria that had been building over
bath salts. Use um. It lent this this idea to
bath salts, that it turned you into a zombie cannibal
who was capable of like doing anything and and usually

(14:16):
would become very physically violent, was impervious to pain. Yep,
took like fifteen cops to take them down. And the
media was reporting on this without facts, and somebody would
do something crazy and somebody was suggested it was baths Salts,
and the media would report that the bath Salts did

(14:37):
this to this person. A month later, a Talk report
would come back there was no Bath Salts involved. But
it was too late. So bath salts And whether this
is like unfair or not, it doesn't matter. The point
is this the media was being extremely lazy and they
shaped public opinion over a drug in in ways that

(14:58):
should not have been shaped, and they should be taken
to task for that. Yeah, and like, uh, here's a
quote I think from that Smithsonian article said, the description
of basalts UH present in these broadcast media reports was
very different from the scientific literature on the topic, and
it does not appear that the media took this particular
source of information into account in reporting. Um. So basically

(15:22):
that's from that Forbes article that was at the Ford plant.
So basically like they were completely ignoring the science behind it,
and all this notion of super strength UH and psychosis,
which maybe could happen under the most extreme overdose addiction
cases was not. I mean, basically, like you said, it's

(15:46):
talkativeness energy euphoria. That's a long cry from super strong
zombie cannibal. The thing that that strikes me is like,
I want to know what why rude Eugene did that? Why? What? Why?
Where did that come from? It was like do you
remember many many years ago? I don't know ten fifteen

(16:07):
years ago there was a guy on a on a
bus on the Trans Canada Highway who out of nowhere
pulls out a knife and stabs the guy sitting next
to him, who he doesn't know and apparently hadn't even
spoken to on the bus ride. Stabs him to death
and then cuts his head off. And that guy is
supposedly had no history of violence. Um, and it came

(16:30):
out of nowhere. What makes somebody snap? What makes somebody
chew someone else's face off? That's what the media should
be finding out reporting on. Instead they're just parroting, or
in this case, they were parroting the supposition of one
police officer who was on the scene and never followed
up on the talks report. Right, Should we talk about

(16:51):
the history a little bit? Yeah, it's very interesting. I'm sorry,
Am I on a am I on a soapbox? Okay? Good? No,
like you're on a bar of soap, all right. I
can deal with that. It's very feel like I can
inch off the ground. I get so sick of myself sometimes,
you know, no, no, no no. Uh. So Bath salts
his historically and it is very surprising to learn, but

(17:12):
synthetic cathinonwes Um came about in France in the nineteen twenties,
which is a shock to me. It was a swinging
time for France. I bet it was, uh, and it was.
It didn't become like super popular and was all over
the place. It kind of went back underground until it
was published. The recipe was published on the web in

(17:32):
the mid two thousand's. Could you find who published it?
I couldn't find no. I mean some underground chemists from
published it. Yeah, and it was taken off the web,
or at least that website was shut down in two
thousand and four, but it was already out there. And
uh there there are some other drugs that we need
to mention that sort of are in the same category. Um.

(17:53):
One is called Hagga got, which was big in Israel,
and I believe hagga got was a synthetic version of
the natural plant cot k h a t yeah, and
cot um is. It's a leafy plant that grows in
I think the horn of Africa and parts of the

(18:13):
Middle East, and it's kind of popular in those areas.
Apparently it's just a part of everyday life, like if
you're a student cramming for tests. You're going to chew
cot leaves like you would chew tobacco if you're a
redneck here in the US, or like you might brew
a t from it um, which you would drink at
like social gatherings. Some people drink it in the morning.

(18:35):
It's it's often compared to coffee. I've seen that it
is far far stronger than coffee. But it produces giddiness, um, euphoria, uh,
something verging on anxiety. And so cot is the natural
version of what is it, the synthetic cathone? Okay, but
it's the natural version of the cathanone, and so everything

(18:57):
else is a synthetic version, include eoting bath salts right
in that Hagagat which was big in the Middle East.
So there were different There are a lot of different versions.
It's not like, um, it's not like there was one
bath salt recipe, like I think that it was continually
sort of changed in all of these synthetic drugs, like
we mentioned that cycle are constantly being tweaked and changed

(19:20):
and are sort of different versions of the same thing.
But so bath salts came about because, like I said
in two thousand ten, mephodrone made a big splash on
the UK club scene, and methodrone is kind of like
it's like a an even more synthetic version of m
D m A. Right. It produces similar effects, but it's

(19:40):
a why can't I say it? Yeah, I don't know, kathanone,
Kathon Kathy, Okay, I got it. It's a right. It's
a type of miamio, right, whereas m D M A
is something else. Um. But methodrone what it does is
it forces a release of dopamine and the neurotransmitter and

(20:02):
that's that's your happy feeling. That's part of the reward center,
the pleasure center in the brain, and it forces that. Well,
everybody loved methodrone, and they said, well, if you love
methrodrone also known as miamial, you're gonna love methodrone. Mixed
with a couple of other drugs. Yeah, one called meth alone,
which is another kath cathinone, another type of it does

(20:25):
get a little confusing, uh. And And basically from what
I can tell, the reason that they say it's like
cocaine and ecstasy is because of the combination of the things,
Like one is like ecstasy and one is like so
two of them are like ecstasy. Methodrone and meth alone
are like ecstasy, where both of those things go in
and say, hey, neurons release a bunch of dopamine, so

(20:46):
you've got more than usual, which is right, And then
you've got m d p V. And I'm gonna try
saying this out loud because I've practiced a couple of times.
Let me see if I can. I didn't even highlight
that word. Are you ready for this? Sure? Okay, Chuck.
M d p V it looks like the alphabet. It's
so long methylene dioxy pyro valerone. Who I told you

(21:12):
I practice that was take one everyone, just so you
know that was not the magic of editing. And m
d p V is I'm not sure if it's a
cathine own or not, but what it does is it
stimulates the release of nora ephron. It also prevents its reuptake,
but it also prevents the reuptake of dopamine. So you

(21:35):
have two drugs that are forcing your neurons to release
more dopamine and another drug that's stimulating your fight or
flight response and is preventing that dopamine that's being released
from being taken up. So it's just floating in your brain.
It's like a perfect storm, right brain activity. I guess

(21:57):
if you're a drug user, the right kind of brain activity. Right. So,
and these are three different drugs that people liked on
their own that somebody mixed together, like like m D
p V is supposedly produces feelings akin to cocaine, but
like ten times the impact of it. I've seen in
multiple sources um and they mixed these three things together.

(22:19):
That's what bath salts are. Correct. And so in two
thousand and ten UH in the UK, poison control centers
yielded um or fielded rather thirty four and seventy bath
salt calls just from January to June, which is about
ten times the previous year's total. By twleven, midnight states

(22:41):
here in the United States had banned bath salts, and
then finally in October, the d e A basically can
can do this thing where they're like emergency, we don't.
We're aint gonna go through all the rigamarole. We're just
gonna say this stuff is federally banned. Yeah, wolf Blitzer
said it was dangerous, so we're gonna ban it. Yeah,
or actually that that didn't ban it. It was October.

(23:04):
I'm sorry, July. That was a federal government right when
Obama signed a federal ban on a bunch of synthetic drugs.
Basalts make one of them. But like you said before,
that the d e A had the authority to be like,
this is outlawed. We're not even we're not going to
Congress the president, and we're outlawing it. And they did. Um.
So metho, drone, meth alone, and m DPV were all outlawed,

(23:26):
I think. And the head of the e A stood
in front of America and said, maa, maal, we just
we just gave out ma'amo the boot. Let's take another
break and then we'll come back and talk about all
the reasons why you should not try bass salts. Right
after that, so miamal um, what's that from super Troopers?

(24:15):
So people may have heard like, oh wow, ten times
greater than cocaine. I gotta try that. It's just like ecstasy,
but even more potent. I gotta try it. Don't try this, um,
and here all the reasons why you should not try it, right, So, yes,
it will produce feelings of euphoria. Um. Great, sensations in you. UM,
if you do a normal dose, you don't really know

(24:38):
what a normal dose is. One of the big problems
with this is that it was a designer drug, meaning
that it never never spent any time in a legitimate
pharmaceutical lab. There was no research, There was no R
and D, there was no testing whether I'm like jailed
inmates against their will or not. Nobody studied this stuff.

(25:00):
They just did things like, um, go over patents and
medical literature to find compounds that sounded like, oh, I
can work with that. I'm a chemist. Let me adjust
that a little bit and then give something to my
neighbor who I don't really care if they live or die,
and then see what happens, and if they get off
on it, I'm going to flood the British club market

(25:21):
with it, right, That's what That's how these drugs come out,
So no one knows. No one who has any any
idea what they're talking about, knows what an actual dose
should be. And the problem with with bath salts in
particular and with cathinones is that if you trapes into
the overdose territory, which you very easily can, you're in big,

(25:44):
big trouble. Yeah this, Um, I think it was the
Forbes article you sent. You know, all of those awful
uh side effects that I mentioned and before we took
that break. Um, you can happen upon that rather accidentally.
And it's said that quite often a bass salt user
will get way more than they bargained for thereafter the

(26:05):
little little sexy drive and hey, I'm up and I'm
talkative and I'm feeling like I'm the king of the world. Yeah,
and watch me tear my shirt in half, right, and
before you know it, you're you're clawing skin off your
arm and a like a psychotic break, right, So that
can happen if you overdose. It apparently also can happen,
um if you're a chronic user too, and apparently mean

(26:25):
like Dr Dre's chronic or you mean just right, sometimes
the two overlap. Um. But if you are, if you
abuse the drug and you use it frequently, um, it
can have all sorts of terrible effects on your your
you're it will addict you. And the reason why apparently
you see this kind of thing like any time a

(26:46):
new drug comes out and it's addictive, they'll say that
it's X number of times more addictive than the most
addictive drug that came out last, Like you thought that
was bad, right, So bath salts are frequently say it's
to be like multiple times more addictive than math or whatever.
No one knows if that's true or not, but the
point is this, it is highly addictive, and anyone who

(27:09):
knows about how it hijacks your brain can tell you, Yes,
that's how drugs addict you. And a release of dopamine
that that um stays in your system, in your in
your synapses longer than normal, is going to create cravings.
You're going to become addicted to whatever substance does that
to you. So it's really easy to get addicted to

(27:31):
the cathinones that are found in bath salts. Right. And
because of the prolonged effects that these um, these chemicals
have on your brain, um, the hangover is really really bad,
and so you may want to use more to get
back up again and again. When you use across and

(27:53):
use it U to a chronic degree, you're setting yourself
up for those really horrible side effects you can have.
Yeah that even without an overdose. Yeah, that's the vicious
cycle of most of the feel good drugs like that is, Uh,
your body adjusting gets a little more used to it,
you do more to get that same feeling. You're chasing
that initial rush or whatever that you get and then

(28:17):
before you know it, you're in bad shape as a person. Yeah,
very sad. So that's not like Nancy Reagan talk like
that's yeah, this is it's it's going to have terrible
effects on you and it can be very addictive. This
is your Uncle Josh and Chuck being real. But as
we said before and Pepper throughout the show, despite that, UM,

(28:41):
that doesn't change the fact that the media far exaggerated
the um sometimes the effects of assaults. But what they
really did was exaggerated how much it was going on,
Like like at a certain point, I think they even
found that CNN was reporting this massive up tip when
in fact it was actually going down in usage. Yeah.

(29:03):
I'm not quite sure if it was the d e
A outlawing the ingredients and it made it harder to get,
or if the kids who are using it and apparently
it was largely a drug of the younger generation, um
just said this is whack, done with this and stopped
using it. But they clearly peaked in two thousand and eleven,

(29:24):
and the usage was halved by two thousand twelve. Yes,
says here in two thousand eleven poison control calls. Uh,
and that should tell you how bad this thing is, right,
that's that's the proxy for use calls in twenty eleven
compared to fifty four and twelve. Um. And this is
while CNN and we're not picking on them, like a

(29:46):
bunch of news outlets were calling it an epidemic and
it never really was. It was always sort of a niche,
smallish time drug. Um. And one of the other things
though that they did was say like it will turn
you into this violent psychotic, will chew a face? So
um when the d A outlawed the constituent drugs of

(30:09):
bath salts, um, Yeah, yeah, I love that. Um. There
was actually supposedly there's a Chinese Walter White who was
sinless to life in prison, known only as Zang. But
he was a chemist who apparently traveled abroad to Europe
or somewhere overseas and found like there was a big
demand for mepha drone and uh he was like, oh,

(30:31):
I know how to make that. So he made like
four pounds of it and was selling it over the
internet via bitcoin before the Chinese caught him. Yeah, I
guess so, um and uh so guys like that, we're
guys like that who weren't arrested, I should say, went
back and said, okay, well let me alter this a

(30:52):
little bit. And now there's a second generation of bath
salts coming out that are again synthetic cathinones. Um there's
one called Alpha p VP, better known as Flacca. Oh
that is floca a k A. Yeah. When I saw that,
I was like, oh, finally I know what waka flocka means.

(31:12):
And I looked it up. I'm like, Nope, spelled differently,
has nothing to do with one another. It's still the
quest continues. But um, Flocca apparently, if you want to
see some whack stuff, look up people freaking out on
Flocca on YouTube. And there are plenty of like high
on bath salts videos on YouTube before Flaca seems like

(31:36):
it might actually be worse. Yeah, and one of these
friends saying, look at Timmy, I don't see we're going
to put this on YouTube. One I saw was this
lady I think in Miami who was in one of
the weirdest positions I've ever seen on the ground next
to a car, but was like had her her leg

(31:57):
up back against the car, was like screaming at somebody
to bring it on, even though she like couldn't move
on the ground, just under her own will, she couldn't move. Um.
And some guy, I guess he's just sitting there with
his phone like recording her. But you can't really blame
him because it's like in the middle sounds familiar. Yeah,
And somebody goes, are you on something? You think, yeah,

(32:21):
if it's just put like a perfect little period on that.
But if you if you see those videos and then
see like Batsalt videos, it seems like foka may even
be a little worse. Yeah. And I mean, we're we're
kind of laughing at this because that's we'd try to
lighten the mood about stuff. But obviously there's nothing funny
about someone under the ravages of a drug addiction. Um,

(32:43):
even if some some yokel films it on their phone
and throws it on YouTube for the world to laugh at.
It's very sad. Thank you for rescuing that story. I
just want to be clear, you know, it's it's super
sad um that these chemists, these chemists are the ones
doing the drugs for the most part, don't you think, Oh,

(33:06):
I guess probably not. You know, they're just creating something
in a lab to sell and make money off of
that destroys lives, you know. UM. Luckily, though, chuck with
flocca UM. The highest you get off of flocca is
by vaping it. Unfortunately, nobody vapes, so probably it's actually
supposedly falling to the wayside already. But that's another good

(33:29):
study on UM. On media hysteria as well, media started
to do the same thing. There was a kid in Florida,
Austin Haruf. Austin Haruf beat a couple to death. Didn't
know they He just happened to be walking past their
house and they think we're sitting in their garage. Such

(33:50):
a disturbing kid, and he walked up to him and
killed them. He chewed on one of their faces. He
was reported to be growling like an animal or whatever.
And the first thing everybod and he said was that
guy was on flocca. It was the sheriff on the scene,
like just like it always happens. So when stuck a
microphone in his face and he's like, looks like flocka
to me and then all of a sudden, Austin Haruf,

(34:11):
the nineteen year old Florida State pratt boy, Uh was
a flock of abuser who did this awful, awful thing.
But they found no flock in his system. No, he
did do that awful thing, and by all accounts it
was just a psychotic episode. Right again, he had not

(34:33):
been on flocca. The tox report showed no flocca in
his system, just like Rudy Eugene, just like that guy
on the bus in Canada. What what This is the
real question of the podcast. What happens to make somebody
do that? I don't know. I mean, these are the
cases where uh obviously, well, in Rudy Eugene's case, he died,

(34:57):
But there needs to be some way that there's an
automatic brain donation in cases like this, and so they
can study what the heck is going on. I guess
it's I guess you can kind of like let the
media off the hook a little bit, certainly let the
public off the hook, because you want to give explanation
to behavior like that. You don't want to think that

(35:18):
anybody could just be walking around and suddenly snap. You
want to think that they have to be on something
that overtakes their willpower, takes over their humanity and rids
them of it and turns them into a monster. Not
that we're all just taking time bombs. Yeah, I mean
when you when you read interviews, uh, like a year
later with that kid in Florida, like he said that

(35:42):
the demon was after him, and when you talk to
him today, he's like, I feel you know, I think
he literally said this sucks, like this thing happened. I
don't know why it happened. I feel fine now, um
so can you guys let me go. That's not quite outworks.
But and I'm not saying, like, have sympathy for this kid,

(36:02):
it's it's a weird. Well, if he had a psychotic break,
that's a weird he had like no control over. I
feel a tremendous amount of sympathy for him. I certainly
feel it for his victims and their families. Think if
this kid just like like lost his marvels and got
violent and he had no control over really honestly, then yeah,

(36:25):
of course. Yeah, it's one of those things where there
there are many victims and a tragedy on many fronts.
But by all accounts in his case, it wasn't even
like he was abused as a child. And uh, I
mean I think it literally, things happen sometimes with the brain,
and there's something physical that happens in the body, some

(36:45):
chemical something happens in the brain. We don't know what
it is, but that's the only explanation. So field of psychiatry,
stop sitting around congratulating yourselves and get to work figuring
out what happens. That's it on. And then lastly, um,
there's one more new bath salt out on the market
called four MBC. And this one is the only other

(37:08):
one that has a rival nickname to Miamo. It's called Shrimp.
You know, Emily sells bath salts in her store. I
remember this was like, okay, are those bath salts are right?
Bath salts? But she uh, I mean, it's not in
the news so much anymore. But it would be funny
if she had to have a sign up said bat salts,
not those bath salts. These are your mom's bath salts

(37:31):
instead of not your mother's bath salts. But if your
mom was on bath salts and they would be her
bath salts, it get confused. Yes, all right, well, if
you want to know more about bath salts, go read
about it. Don't go trying yourself. Okay. Uh. And since
we said that, it's time for listening mail, Alright, I'm
gonna call this a little one thousand episode congrats and

(37:53):
a little Simpsons part I love the Little Simpsons, Diddy. Hey, guys,
congratulations on a thousand episodes. Hope you now. I'm just
joined after you brought to all of us over that milestone.
As I tuned into The Simpsons Part two on Thursday,
I was on a flight in the Salt Lake City
to interview for a position and program pursuing my doctorate
or physical therapy, and he would say, the whole day
had an anxious I was anxious and I'm not knowing

(38:15):
what to expect for my first interview, and I had
a long day of traveling. It put me on edge.
But man, the two partter on The Simpsons soothed my
soul with med ease. Man, Comma, yeah, that's what I said.
My flight landed, got the rental card, d ode to
my hotel, starving, having missed dinner, had to settle for
some rama out of the venning machine. So that's delicious.

(38:40):
I sat down on the questionable Hotel comforter to eat
my dinner and watch some TV before grabbing some pillow.
Turned on the TV was almost creeped out to hear
the Simpsons theme song playing as a new episode was
beginning to play on whatever channel it just happened to
be on, which would be Fox, Destiny, Fate, chance, whatever

(39:00):
you call it. Joy instantly struck me and actually laughed
out loud to myself. The two part are really brought
back memories of childhood and trying to watch episodes of
The Simpsons sneakily without my parents knowing because my mom
thought it was the worst thing possible for my young
eyes and ears. It's quite comical to me that here
I was on the eve of what could be a
huge turning point for my career, and what is getting

(39:21):
me through the self doubt, anxiety and uncertainty was a
podcast by chance in an episode of the Simpsons. So
thanks for all your hard work. You guys brought so
much happiness to all your listeners. Have turned me into
the best dinner party fact nerd out there. Much love, Jerry,
thanks a lot, Jared, much appreciated. It's a good one. Yeah,
I hope you got your job, buddy. Yeah. Same here,

(39:43):
let us know, will you sure? Okay? Well, if you
want to get in touch of this, like Jared did,
you can hang out with us. I'm on Twitter at
josh um Clark. Hey. Also check out my website. It's
Are You Serious Clark dot com. Chuck's on Facebook dot com, slash,
Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Stuff you Should Know And

(40:04):
you can send all of us, including Jerry, and emails
is stuff podcast at how stuff Works dot com, and
then join us at our home on the web, the
official Stuff you Should Know dot com. For more on
this and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff
Works dot com.