July 13, 2023 • 49 mins
There is probably no drug more mythologized than PCP. It drives users insane and has the unfortunate side effect of bestowing superhuman strength thus sending them on a rampage. But does it though?
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everyone, Josh and Chuck here to remind you that
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Speaker 1 (00:16):
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tickets right there. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's
Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is Stuff you
should Know about PCP.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
And yes, we're talking about the PCP. You think we're.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Talking the one from the if you were a child
of the seventies and eighties, where you heard that your
friend's friend's cousin did it and they carve their face
off with a butcher knife and then jumped off a
building so they thought they could fly.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Yes, as a matter of fact, that's exactly the PCP
we're talking about, Yeah, which stands for By the way,
I'm gonna attempt this chemical name.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
You're ready, This one's easy, no pressure.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Okay, I don't know how to say the ones. So
I'm just gonna that's I think it's kind of important
chemically speaking. I think they didn't just put part of
it in parentheses for nothing. But I'm just gonna call
it one one fennel cyclo hexel, pepper dye and those
in the number dye pipper dye, piper dye, probably piper dyne.
(01:34):
I think it's those in the know who don't smoke PCP.
But oh, I actually took out a syllable this time.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
Oh man, this is gold.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
So the people who study it call it fen cyclodine, okay,
with a pH because it's fat.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
Yeah. And if you if you're wondering, like, oh, why
do people even study this old street drug from the seventies,
it's because it wasn't always that. It was kind of
the precursor to the ketamine in a lot of ways,
which we'll talk about here and there. And if you
think people study ketamine the party drug, well that's true too,
(02:16):
because both PCP and ketamine had legitimate uses and were
created for legitimate uses like mini drugs, yeah, recreational drugs.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
The Germans gave us both heroin and PCP. I think
in nineteen twenty six, German chemists created PCP. I'm not
sure what they were creating it for. I think this
is a time of experimentation in chemistry where you just
put stuff together and saw what happened. Sure, So it
sat on the shelf for almost thirty years before Park Davis,
(02:50):
a pharmaceutical company from the United States which is now
part of Pfizer. I believe they came along and they said, Hey,
this would be a gangbuster's tranquilizer sedative something. Let's forget
out what to do with this because I just smoke
some out back and I feel like a million bucks.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Yeah, I gotta tell you, we should use this stuff.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
So they looked at it as an anesthetic at first,
and I think it first came to market in like
the mid fifties, and by nineteen sixty five they had
removed it.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
From the market.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
The reason they removed it from the market is one
it showed very quickly it had a high potential for abuse,
because the hippies in San Francisco started smoking it before
there was even hippies in San Francisco. Yeah, and it
had a slew of side effects that you just really
don't want, which is one of the reasons why we'll
say you probably shouldn't do PCP.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
Yeah, we should have led with that. Sure, Like what
if someone heard the first what is this four minutes
of the episode.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
It turned it out, they're like, I gotta go try PCP.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
Yeah, because Josh and Chuck said it exists, right, Yeah,
don't do PCP, everybody, you shouldn't do that. And this
is not, you know, coming as a sort of satanic,
panicky eighties you're gonna jump off a building because you
think you can fly kind of thing. It's just not
a drug you want to do. So, like you said,
(04:14):
you know, uses, well, I don't think we've even said it. Yes,
uses really dropped off over the years. It was a
very much a bigger deal in the nineteen seventies and eighties.
I think stats that the Grabster found for US saw
that between seventy six and seventy seven, use among high
school students doubled. In a nineteen seventy nine study, seven
(04:36):
percent of high school seniors reported having used PCP in
the last year. In twenty thirteen that was down to
less than one percent, and then in twenty twenty. Though
the stats are a little bit different. I think it
went down to like point zero zero zero two percent
of the country, not just high school students.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
So of adults.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
Yeah, like fifty two thousand people. Well, adults, it's just
twelve and over.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
Hey, you're old enough to smoke PCP. You're old enough
to be considered an adult.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
That's right. But you can't vote.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
It doesn't matter what age you are. If you smoke
a lot of PCP, you probably shouldn't vote anyway.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
Right. Oh, I thought you're gonna say, then you've earned
the right to vote.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
No, No, I think the opposite.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Maybe.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
So all that to say, it used to be a pretty,
you know, frequent recreation, recreational street drug, and it has
really really gone out of fashion, in large part because
ketamine is not the same exact thing, but it's it's
largely the same thing, and that became I guess, the
trendier drug to use.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
Yes, but it has remained in fashion in certain pockets,
especially like deep in the inner cities of Washington, d C.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
Oh, yeah, Kansas City, Okay.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
I believe it's a town in Connecticut, Hartford.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
I don't know if it's Hartford, but there's at least
two towns in Connecticut that have interesting a lot of
PCP use and they think I read this really great
article and vice about why America is the only country
in the world basically literally where people use PCP still
or ever ever, but it's still as well. Ever, yeah,
(06:24):
it never really made it out of America. It was
written by Max Daley and sam Irravani. It's definitely worth
a read. But they say, one of the reasons why
it's so overlooked and one of the reasons why it's
not that studied, and one of the reasons why you're
just like, yeah, ketamine replace it is because the people
who do use it tend to be marginalized. Unemployed, black
inner city men ages mid twenties to mid fifties are
(06:47):
typically the people who get busted for PCP. So it's
kind of like this viewed as this drug that like
a drug of inequality, I think.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
Is how they put it.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
And that'll come up late too, because some of the
myths around it seem to be tied to the people
who use it.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
Now, I'm not a very smart person, but if if
there are like two towns or two cities in Connecticut
that are known for PCP, still doesn't that just mean
there's someone in two towns in Connecticut that are making PCP.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
So no, almost all of the PCP in the world,
because it's almost all of the PCP in the United
States are still controlled and made by black street gangs
in LA, like crips, bloods.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
It's weird.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
Then, how does it get to these two weird specific
places in Connecticut right now?
Speaker 2 (07:36):
Those cities that still do and have always smoked PCP
it's always been around, are cities that have like clearly
some way or another, very deep ties to those same
LA street gangs. Because it's really hard to distribute PC,
really hard, So for it to show up in Connecticut
from LA, there's some there's like somebody's cousin lives there
(07:57):
and is controlling the PCP market.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
They're getting it to actually from.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Somebody in LA who knows a chemist who will go
out into the desert and make hm PCP all day long.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
Oh oh, that makes sense because I just I don't know.
It seems like there would be like a Walter Whitton
Connecticut or something, but they're still out in the desert.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
Yes, supposedly it's all coming out from LA.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
All right. Well, in seventy eight is when the United
States government said, all right, this thing is officially a
scheduled to controlled substance, which means, you know a lot
of things we've talked about the different drug schedules, but
it means that its prevalence of abuse is a big deal,
(08:36):
and that it can be addictive, and you know, it's
ranked right up there with cocaine and crystal meth and
stuff like that, which I think we've covered all those before.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
Yeah, and in fact, it shares a precursor drug, pyrad dene,
with crystal meth. But it's not that, No, it is not,
and it actually does have anesthetic effects. Like one of
the side effects of in ingesting PCP one way or
another is like, not only do you not really feel pain,
(09:06):
you don't experience pain because you're disassociated from your body.
It's a disassociative, hypnotic sedative essentially, and one of the
reasons why, sure, you have to add the essentially though
comma essentially sure, but one of the reasons why PCP
(09:27):
and ketamine were first brought to market was because they
produce sedative effects, like you don't really know what's going
on after a certain dose. You're not really with it.
You actually can fall into a coma with your eyes open,
but it doesn't slow your heart rate or pulse or.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
Anything like that.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
So it really made a Ketamine in particular, found a
great use as a battlefield sedative for surgery in like Vietnam,
where somebody might have lost a lot of blood. They
couldn't hand a traditional sedative or anesthesia, so they gave
them ketamine and it did the same trick without dropping
(10:08):
their blood pressure even further.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
Yeah, and and what's good for the battlefield is good
for the rave. But it makes total sense, you know
because if you were like, as far as the rave
culture goes or went, I don't think is that still
a thing? Even I it's got to be somewhere.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
It isn't.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
It's it's coming back soon because the nineties are so
hot right now.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
Yeah, somebody's out there raven with their big they're not
bell bottoms. Even did this have a name? No, it
was just like the pants that had like like two
foot what's it called there at the bottom with what's
the bottom of your pants, like called the cuff cuff.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
The bottom of those big pants.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
Yeah, they didn't, but the whole leg was like that. Essentially,
it was just the waste that was a generally normal size.
The legs were huge. Believe me, buddy, I had more
than one pair of those.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
I thought they flared. Anything to see you in a
pair of those.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
I had some cool ones too, but I also had
some uncool ones.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
We used to when we lived in these warehouses in
the West end of Atlanta and ninety nine two thousand
would and this is that was a big rave loft
over there, Like people would drive from different states to
go to these things, thousands of kids, and we used
to just sit around and play pavement and laugh and
make fun of them in those pants.
Speaker 3 (11:26):
And they were doing ketamine, ketamine, ketamine, and you're.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
Like, like those losers probably, But where I was going
with all this was I guess it makes sense why
the PCP and ketamine and that kind of thing would
have been because you know, you feel funky, but it
doesn't like slow you down, essentially.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
No, And in fact, it can actually increase your heart
rate and do all sorts of other weird stuff to you.
Speaker 3 (11:46):
And what's really odd about.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
It is that it has a lot of paradoxical effects
on humans. I say, we talk a little bit about
how it impacts the brain, and I think that it'll
become apparent.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
What do you think, Yeah, let's do it.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
So it's it's considered a N methyl d aspirate antagonist.
NMDA antagonists and NMDA receptors are really important as far
as things like memory formation, neuroplasticity, very important stuff. But
what they they're triggered by glutamate. And what PCP does
(12:27):
is it prevents those ndm A receptors from accepting glutamate
and hence firing. And because there's either more glutamate or
less glutamate in your body, I think less glutamate floating
around is what it is. A Whole host of other
stuff happens, like dopamine and nourep and ephyrin get released,
(12:48):
those two and serotonin their reuptake is inhibited, so they're
floating around in your your brain even longer.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
So that's all the good feely stuff, right.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
Your opioid receptors are stimulated as a result, your nicotinic receptors,
which control things like your neural muscular activity rapid neural
transmission essentially, and then your muscarinic activity, which includes like breathing,
(13:18):
your pupil's salivation. All these things are going haywire. And
then what else is weird about it is that your
central nervous system can be both depressed and excited by
this same drug. This is how this is how nuts
and effect it has on your brain, so that you
can cycle between like utter sedation to the point of catatonia,
(13:41):
and between that and serious agitation where like you see
you know, videos of people who are being arrested and
they're not like hitting the ground even though they're getting
sprayed in the face of bear spray because they're so
on like a rant. So it has like all these
really crazy effects, but it all comes down to the
(14:03):
fact that it affects your ability to receive glue tomate
in your NMDA receptors.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
Yeah, and we'll talk a bit more about that sort
of reputation as like a superhuman strength, like you know,
takes twelve cops to subdue someone on PCP thing. And
a little bit what were those people on those videos
that you sent me? Okay, so Josh sent me some
videos and people I guess the next day or whatever
(14:31):
on ketamine or I assume it was the next.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
I think it was hours later. It was like hours afterwards.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
Yeah, yeah, And they were almost all of them when
they were walking like down the sidewalk or whatever, had
this backward lean as if they were walking up like
a very very steep hill, but it was on solid ground.
And then the one guy if it was a very
slight incline on the sidewalk and he would take a
few steps up and then take a few back, and yeah,
(14:59):
he had. They were all having a hard time, and
it was just I don't know, it's just sad to
see someone in that sort of a stupor around in
the daylight when people are going to work and stuff.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
Right, Well, the thing that really kind of makes it
worth watching is they're with it enough to know that
they shouldn't be walking weird in public, and they need
to tell they suspect that they might be.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
So it's kind of funny in a way, but it's
really not when you really think about it.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
You know, well, watching.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
Them play it off or try to play it off
and just fail utterly at it, that's that's objectively funny
to see it.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
Well, And it doesn't help that they did the Staying
Alive Beg's song cut to it. We used to there
was my friend in college used to call not on drugs,
but if you were drunk and you were trying to
like play it off like you were super sober and
walking around. He called that sugarfooting, like you're just you're
(15:57):
not just like, oh, I'm just gonna walk down the
street thinking left foot, right foot, everything's fine, exactly. You
called it sugarfoot in, which always thought was kind funny.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
Yeah, there's a term for that, a medical term for it,
choreo something. I'm sure I'll turn it up at some point,
But basically, it's unwanted muscle movement. So you're trying to
just walk, but you're also doing like you're also just
just like you're dancing, says, even though you don't mean
(16:27):
to and you're trying really hard not to.
Speaker 3 (16:29):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
So one of the that's one of the side effects
of it, is these unwanted muscle movements. And then also
for that reason, in San Francisco, when it first started
being abused on the street, the hippies called it wobble weed. Oh, yeah,
which makes a lot more sense now that you you
know a little bit more about it.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
Yeah, And we'll talk about the association with marijuana too, uh,
in a little bit. But why don't we take a break? Yeah, yep,
all right, we'll put on staying alive and we'll stumble
up the sidewalk and we'll you right back, all right.
(17:25):
So we talked a little bit about what PCP does
to you and sort of in the brain, and also
how you can sugar foot up the street. But it's
not like, uh, even though it was used as an anesthetic,
that that association with sleepiness isn't accurate.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
Right, No, it's not.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
And like I said, you can go catatonic with your
eyes open, but you're still able to move around and
do things that you just shouldn't be doing. Like I
saw that people will frequently, like try to get off
a stretcher even though they're catatonic.
Speaker 3 (17:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
And the reason why it's it's a dissociate and you
feel not connected to your body. Your senses are coming
in hot and weird and not making any.
Speaker 3 (18:09):
Sense to you. You know.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
It removes ego boundaries, so your feeling of self and
the distinction between you and other people and the rest
of the world around you and the supernatural has kind
of blurred or fallen away.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
Right. I've heard dreamlike from well, to be honest, I've
known people have done this and they've said dream like.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
I can I could imagine that.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
And then also, one of the other things I saw
that I thought it was just fascinating is that it's
it makes it difficult to tell whether an event has
already happened in the past, is going to happen in
the future, or is happening.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
Now right, the whole time time jump thing, right, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:45):
Isn't that nuts?
Speaker 1 (18:46):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (18:46):
And then of course, because it's a hypnotic sedative that
affects your your NMDA receptors that are involved in memory formation,
you you frequently black out even though you're walking around
doing stuff and even interacting, you probably aren't going to.
Speaker 3 (19:03):
Remember most of it.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
Yeah, big memory impacts. And the stuff comes on very
quickly too, which is one of the I think the historically,
like the most addictive kind of recreational street drugs are
ones that are really fast acting, and PCP is definitely
one of those. What I didn't see, or maybe I
just overlooked it is how long it lasts.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
It can last for twenty four hours.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
Right, it's a long lasting deal. Okay, that's right. I
did read that because I remember, like when we did
the crack episode. I think I always thought that crack
was some long term thing, but was shocked to learn
it was just like a super quick high.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
Yeah, and I think this can be, but it depends
on how.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
You take it, right, Should we talk about that?
Speaker 2 (19:48):
Yeah, there's different ways you can take it, So let's
talk about that.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
Yeah, it used to be in the earlier days it
was like a liquid PCP a lot of times that
you would take orally, but very quickly. The most recreational
use users used it like it came in like a
crystalline powder, and they would typically smoke it or snort
it like a heroine or a cocaine, I guess, And
(20:12):
that became sort of the main way aside from and
again I said earlier we were going to talk about
the Marijuana Association, that was dipping a marijuana joint or
just a regular cigarette, and liquid PCP has you can
do that with a lot of drugs are called wet drugs,
and it's it's a thing. And there was some confusion
(20:34):
about the names because I heard I knew what SHRM
was because I'd heard that in a movie from Tuarantina movie,
which one was that really yeah movie. I think it
was the one he wrote, only was it true romance
(20:55):
or maybe it was pulp fiction. It was Sam Jackson,
and he wasn't introu or.
Speaker 3 (20:58):
No, I don't believe he was scared anyway.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
You smoke enough sherms something something something was the line.
And that's the first time I had heard that word.
But that's a cigarette that was dipped in embalming chemicals
and I think kind of like a prison drug a
lot of times, because that was something that you could
get apparently easier than you know, regular hard drugs. And
(21:22):
I think for a time that was like PCP was
sometimes mixed with embalming fluid. Sometimes the just names were
used interchangeably. There was a lot of confusion in the
media about embalming fluid and PCP. Yeah, and I think,
I mean, I read a lot about it today, and
where I landed was sometimes it might have been mixed
with PCP, but sometimes people were smoking inbalming fluid as well.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
So what I found from my research is that so
this is a big thing in like the mid nineties
to the early two thousands. Oh really yeah, And that
if you were smoking embalming fluid and you got high.
Speaker 3 (21:58):
It's because there was PCP in that embalming fluid. Oh,
so it was mixed, and that it.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
Was yes, and that it was a that I read
from somebody, a medical examiner, who said, like, there's there.
You don't get high at all from embalming fluid. He's like,
I used to mix it myself, and if anybody would
have gotten high from it, I've spent more time around
it than most people. Never got even the slightest buzz.
So it's the PCP that's making you highcha. And it
(22:24):
might not even be embalming fluid in the first place,
because PCP has kind of a very distinct chemically smell
and taste, and it you could easily pass it off
as embalming fluid to somebody who'd never smoked PCP before.
The thing that I kind of landed on was that
it was mistaken either among like recovery people or the
(22:48):
GA or something. The slang term for PCP embalming fluid
came to be accepted as Oh, teenagers are now smoking
embalming fluid. By the L seven's, it ended up in
the and it became self perpetuating. I think some kind
of particularly low intelligent drug dealers were like, oh, we
(23:10):
can sell embalming fluid. We're gonna start robbing funeral homes
and then actually started selling embalming fluid and it was
all just a comedy of errors.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
Yeah, that makes sense of why it's so hard to
separate fact from fiction online today, because it's all over
the place once you start looking into that thing.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
Yeah, there's not really any drug ever. Crack used to
come close in the eighties. People were hysterical about crack,
Crack baby super Predators. Yeah, it was really bad. But
as like for duration of like the hysterical moral panic
over it, PCP has every other drug beat by a
mile because not only is it like urban legend, but
(23:52):
that urban legend becomes fact because the media reports it. Yeah,
drug abuse organizations say the same thing, the cops say
the same thing. Everybody's saying these same things, like if
you'll have superhuman strength, for example, that is not true.
You don't get superhuman strength. We'll talk a little more
about that. I don't want to get ahead of ourselves,
(24:13):
but it's exactly what you said, is exactly right. There's
so much disinformation on PCPs you just end up having
to guess here or there about what's true and what's not.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
Well, I mean, we can go ahead and talk about it.
Some that was, you know, I invoked the Satanic panic.
It was sort of around those same times when we
were kids in the late seventies where I mean, I
remember PCP was like the scariest sounding thing on the planet,
and it was sort of made out to be like,
if you do PCP, there's a very good chance that
(24:47):
you'll end up dead, and not from like overdosing on PCP,
but because you've done something crazy, like you know, try
to bake yourself in an oven or something because you
thought you were a cake. And every school, every region,
every town had some story or set of stories that
were passed around urban legend style. Well, there were urban
(25:10):
legends about some friend of a friend or some friend's
cousin who who they know for sure did this and
they fought fifteen cops and ed used an example of
some kid who at a hockey game fought like twenty
cops or something. And it's just so funny how those
things proliferate. And we're not saying like in PCP, it
(25:31):
was just great. There was no problem with it, but
it wasn't what it was made out to be, which
was this a lot of times an excuse for cops
to beat down a person because all they have to
do afterward to say, we suspected they were on PCP
and they had crazy look in their eyes and they
were super strong. Ye, I mean Rodney King was supposedly
(25:52):
on PCP. You heard some cops yelling out the word
dust at the beginning of that video. Yeah, he's dusted,
And that happens and happened all the time. I don't
think it's quite as common now, but it was a
very prominent thing back then.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
Yeah, and then cops speak, he's dusted, is raising the
alarm that this person is going to try to kill
all of us and possibly could so go ahead and
use excessive force, And it was used as a defense
in the Rodney King trial. He didn't have any PCP
in his system, by the way, but that fear, just
the very fact that cops are scared of superhuman strength
(26:30):
brought on by PCP is one of the things that
got those officers off the hook in the Rodney King trial,
the Rodney King beating trial. But just the fact that
PCP gives people superhuman strength. Yeah, he didn't know he
wasn't on PCP. Ergo, they're not really guilty of using
excessive force because he could have been on PCP. And
(26:51):
if you strip away that argument, like these police officers
were let off for beating a man in a circle, Yeah,
because they were afraid he was on PCP, because PCP
gives you superhuman strength. Even though that doesn't actually happen.
It's just a total myth that's perpetuated still today.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
Oh yeah, it's still around. I think you found this
meta analysis from a legal paper that really did some
scouring and found two cases where PCP was the sole cause,
the sole cause of like a violent behavior or violent episode.
Speaker 3 (27:30):
Two out of like hundreds.
Speaker 1 (27:32):
Yeah, and we're not saying that, you know, people do crazy,
all kinds of crazy things and all kinds of drugs,
So we're not saying no one's ever been violent because
and had PCP in their system. But the key is
did PCP trigger and cause that thing to happen? And
the evidence just says that that's just not the case. No.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
From what I saw, it amplifies your personality twenty times,
I think, is what one person put it.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
If you want to beat up people anyway aggressive anyway,
then it might.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
Then yes, that might be a problem, but you're not
going to have superhuman strength. Potentially, the one the one
explanation for that, because I did see videos of a
dude on PCP who was getting bear sprayed in the
face multiple times and just kind of wiped his eyes
and kept walking around.
Speaker 1 (28:20):
Was stay alive wing No, I had it on.
Speaker 2 (28:23):
Mute, so as possible, it was, but he kept getting
tased repeatedly and nothing. He didn't have superhuman strength. He
was just disassociated from his senses, so he wasn't experiencing pain.
So you will not move away from noxious stimulized stimuli
like bear spray or tasers because it's not coming through.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
And finally, not superhuman strength.
Speaker 3 (28:48):
That is not superhuman strength.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
And there's also a really really like widespread idea that
at least one person on PCP is snapped perfectly good.
Speaker 3 (29:00):
Handcuffs because of those superhuman strength.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
Yeah, it's just probably not the case that that ever
actually happened. So there's a lot of myths around this.
And again it's like you kind of hinted at like
we're not defending PCP. We're not saying like guys. PCP's
got such a bad rap. There's a lot of really
bad stuff that can come out of ingestion PCP. It's
just that superhuman strength is not one of them. That's
(29:26):
just a myth. And it has been used. It's been
argued to target those marginalized communities who use PCP and used.
It's been used to justify excessive force. So much so
I saw that the non or no less than lethal
weapon industry, tasers, bear spray, all that stuff that did
(29:51):
not exist until the cops started being criticized for using
excessive force and they had the the decision to either
use their police baton, their nightstick or their gun. That's
all they had, and they they when they encountered PCP users,
they needed another option.
Speaker 3 (30:11):
So that's that's why we have that.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
Yes, that is why to subdue PCP users. That's why
that whole industry exists.
Speaker 3 (30:19):
That's why it began.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
Is that why I have bear spray hanging up at
my camp on the wall.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
That's right, because of PCP users in Washington, d C.
In anatomy.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
I don't want to spray a bear, even I don't.
Speaker 3 (30:32):
I think you're okay if a bear's coming at you.
You can. You can spray that bear.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
I mean I would, and that's why it's there. I
just said I don't want to.
Speaker 4 (30:41):
Like.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
My first line of defense at at camp is I
have an air horn. Good so annoying my friends, drive
away the bear, drive away my friends on Sunday morning. Yeah,
and then the bear spray would be the last resort.
Speaker 3 (30:58):
I'll tell you what you do. Chuck this way. Do
you got a bear coming at you? You lay down?
What is it prostrate when you're face down?
Speaker 1 (31:07):
I don't remember.
Speaker 3 (31:08):
Let's say it is. Okay, yeah, I think it is.
Speaker 2 (31:11):
I don't remember. But you're laying face down, pretending you're dead.
Wait till the bear comes over and kind of moves
you with its paw and you roll over and spray
it in the face with the bear spray. Kind of
like that whole trope where you roll somebody over and
they're holding like a bunch of grenades with the pins
pulled out, same.
Speaker 3 (31:31):
Thing, but with bear spray.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
That's a great idea.
Speaker 3 (31:34):
I think so too. I think we should go try it.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
That Elizabeth Banks should have made PCP Bear instead of
Cocaine Bear. I know we disagree about that, Yes, we do.
But what we can agree is that the story about
the crew of the Titanic movie, not the boat itself,
but when James Cameron was making Titanic. This sounds so
(31:56):
much like an urban legend, but it's actually true that
at some I think it was another crew member that part.
I don't know, but I'm pretty sure it was another
crew member.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
The mystery still like they've never fully.
Speaker 1 (32:10):
Okay, Well, they dosed some chowder with PCP and dosed
everyone who ate that chowder, which was a lot or
most of the crew, and it really happened, and I
think different stories come out of that.
Speaker 4 (32:25):
You know.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
I think some people had a really hard time. Some
people probably loved it.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
Yeah they apparently there was a congo line and wheelchair
racing in the er at the local hospital. But then
other people, yeah, we're not having a good time at all.
Jinks Cameron said that one of the crew members, I
think he said a PA stabbed him in the face
of a pen and oh wow, he said.
Speaker 3 (32:47):
He was just.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
Laughing, laughing, laughing about it, like like James Cameron was
laughing about having been stabbed in the face of a pen.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
The PA said this is for Avatar that hasn't even
happened yet.
Speaker 2 (32:58):
Right, But this is I think the the biggest star
that got it was Bill Paxton because they were shooting
those current day shots and like Nova Scotia or something.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
Boy, I hope that that old lady Old Rose didn't happen.
Speaker 3 (33:12):
Was at a restaurant.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
She did not, Man, could you imagine?
Speaker 2 (33:17):
No, that would be really bad. We don't want our
senior friends taking PCP, especially not accidentally.
Speaker 4 (33:24):
Her acting might have improved, you never know. I thought
she did so, so she wouldn't very good in my opinion.
So you want to take a break, Sure, let's take
a break, and then we'll come back and talk about
some problems with getting high on PCP, Chuck. One of
(34:02):
the things about PCP that makes it so vexing, yeah,
is that the symptoms that it can produce are really undesirable,
and an overdose threshold is not very high at all.
It basically dances along the top end of a normal dose.
So a normal dose is between five and ten milligrams.
(34:23):
I saw as low as one, yeah, but after.
Speaker 2 (34:25):
About ten milligrams, or maybe even at ten milligrams, you
might start exhibiting the exact same symptoms of somebody in
the throes of a schizophrenic episode.
Speaker 1 (34:36):
Yeah, and we'll talk about that in a second. But
part of the problem there, I mean, that's a problem period.
But part of the problem is the dosage, especially if
you're smoking fry or churm or something like that. Is
I'm sure the dosage isn't that accurate when you're dipping
a joint or a cigarette and liquid, it's probably hard
to tell how much is on there.
Speaker 2 (34:56):
No, but I read that you can control it much
more easily. You just take it hit and wait a
couple minutes, and then sure if you if you start
to come down, you take another hit. And I saw
it like an old cop say, you can you know
if you smoke it, you know with intent, I guess
you can stay high for twenty four hours just from
one one shurm.
Speaker 1 (35:17):
Stick, right, Which means if you're if this is something
that you know to do and recreationally do often, then
you probably know what you're doing. But if someone's like, here,
try this thing and then ed, you know, use the
example of of you know, someone who like finds the
joint on the street or something, and I'm sure that's happened.
(35:38):
But I kind of lump that in with that that
eighties hysteria of like, you know, you might come across
a cigarette that's been laced with PCP that you don't
know about, or or buy a marijuana joints laced with PCP.
I'm sure that really didn't happen very.
Speaker 2 (35:53):
Much there, So, No, it does not happen very much.
Those stories are, they abound, but they're also really really rare.
But there are stories of people who have done horrific
things on PCP. Sure the qualifier is though, that they
already had pre existing mental disorders, and the PCP does
(36:18):
not do any favors for you if you have a
pre existing mental condition, even if it hasn't come out
yet or emerged yet, it'll make it emerge. And they
argue that it's possible that even if you didn't have
one that was going to come out eventually, PCP could conceivably,
especially after prolonged use, essentially infect you with schizophrenia.
Speaker 1 (36:44):
Yeah, that's the one I've seen more often than anything else.
Is it will exacerbate something like that, but it can
also Why cann't we think of the word install.
Speaker 3 (36:57):
And still delivered, still produced.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
Induce, produce produce schizophrenia. And you know, a little bit
of a silver lining on that is they actually can
use PCP now and do use PCP as far as
studying schizophrenia, and you know how those two are related
in humans.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
Yeah, that's a big They give PCP to primates and
study what happens to study schizophrenia, and then weirdly, they're
also looking at PCP as a way to study or
produce drugs that treat Alzheimer's because schizophrenia apparently is associated
(37:37):
with a lack of glutamate. Remember, PCP inhibits glutamate and
Alzheimer's results from they think an overabundance of glutamate in
the in the brain. And so PCP has both of
those effects that can induce schizophrenia. It could treat Alzheimer's conceivably.
So I think the fact that it has so many
(37:59):
terrible myths around it has really made people cautious about
suggesting doing research using PCP.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
Yeah, it's not like researching microdosing mushrooms or something like
that now.
Speaker 2 (38:11):
But there is a there is a whole thread of
inquiry into it to say like okay, there's there's this
is doing some stuff to the brain that we should
be studying.
Speaker 1 (38:21):
Yeah. It can also induce seizures. It can really ramp
up your heart rate. It can it can produce rapid
involuntary eye movement. It's called nice stagmus.
Speaker 2 (38:33):
Yeah, not just like side to side or up and down,
but in rotary fashion is one of the ways. So
your eyes are just going in a.
Speaker 1 (38:41):
Cartoon style, yes exactly. Yeah. Uh. And it just seems
to be sort of all over the map as far
like a very unpredictable drug as far as its sedative qualities,
and then it's sort of amping you up qualities.
Speaker 3 (38:54):
Yes exactly.
Speaker 2 (38:55):
That's what I was saying earlier, where you kind you
can just vacillate between extremely digitation and catatonia essentially, and
on the same trip over and over again. Really interesting,
It is extremely interesting. One of the other big problems
with it, And this is why I said you probably
shouldn't vote if you are a frequent PCP user, not
because you're a member of a marginal community, but because
(39:19):
you probably have some really strange beliefs about yourself and
your place.
Speaker 3 (39:24):
In the universe.
Speaker 1 (39:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (39:26):
One of the big.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
Things that comes out of it is especially prolonged use
and chronic use is a shift in your spiritual and
religious beliefs. And typically it kind of comes down to, Oh,
I'm a god, and I need to just be hanging
out and not doing much because that's what gods do.
Speaker 1 (39:46):
Yeah, And that's also kind of ties back into the
even though it's not superhuman strength, just a feeling of invincibility.
But I've also seen that it's not so much an invincive.
Usually it's not an invincibility of like I can take
anyone on who wants to fight me. It's more of
like I'm invincible in a good way, like I can
(40:06):
do whatever I want. Again, not suggesting that it's like
a motivational tool or something like that, sure, but it's
just one of the things that can happen.
Speaker 2 (40:14):
And then conversely, if you are feeling, like say, socially anxious,
you're probably going to experience profound paranoia. It will amplify
it one way or another. It's the same thing with
LSD that wholes set and setting thing right.
Speaker 3 (40:29):
So what else is there, Chuck, Well, if.
Speaker 1 (40:33):
You become addicted to PCP, there isn't like a sort
of a straight ahead pharmaceutical treatment. It's gonna you know
you're gonna have to wean yourself off of it through
therapy and treatment. Basically, I think ed did find that
chre prout here. I go chlor promozine core promisine, which
(40:56):
is a drug. It can help reverse the effects if
you're like like overdosing on PCP, but it's not like
the kind of thing you used to break an addiction.
Speaker 3 (41:05):
No, and you can get addicted.
Speaker 2 (41:06):
It does have a high incidence of dependence because it's
schedule too exactly. Not everything schedule two is actually addictive,
But in this case it's actually correct that it stimulates
your reward center so much it produces euph you that
you want it again. But also it can physically alter
(41:27):
your brain, not just to make you believe that you
are a god or something on earth, but also to
make that threshold for your reward system higher.
Speaker 3 (41:39):
So it's harder to.
Speaker 2 (41:42):
Feel good even a normal on a normal basis, and
in turn, you end up having to ingest more and
more amounts of PCP to get high. And that's a
classic hall mark of dependency.
Speaker 1 (41:55):
Yep, classic hall mark of many drugs, because you use
more and more and then that's just becomes more and
more dangerous.
Speaker 2 (42:01):
Again, the withdrawal symptoms are really bad too. You can
you can very frequently fall into major depression that can
last weeks.
Speaker 3 (42:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:09):
Uh, sometimes some of the symptoms don't ever go away,
like you might have trouble talking or speaking. It's just
not it's not a good thing to get into, especially
long term.
Speaker 1 (42:20):
Yeah, and it's not the seventies anyway. What are you
doing with PCP these days?
Speaker 2 (42:23):
Did you see that Saturday Night Live skit with Tracy
Morgan and Will Ferrell and Matthew Broderick.
Speaker 1 (42:29):
No, is that what you said? Yes, that that link
took me straight to a clip of The Ladies Man.
Speaker 2 (42:36):
Oh right, That's why I gave you the timestamp at
the end. It's like at the end of the whole episode.
Speaker 1 (42:41):
All right, I missed that. I was like, what has
the Ladies Man got to do with this? I was like,
I love the Ladies Man bit, but right.
Speaker 3 (42:46):
No, it had nothing to do with it.
Speaker 2 (42:48):
Although it was it was basically like, uh, inside the
Actors Studio kind of type thing, but for comedy, so
it was real highbrow. Matthew Broderick's the host, and he
was focusing on drug based comedy that had been inspired
by Cheech and Chong, and he featured Orbit and zach
or something like that. Who did PCP comedy. Yeah, Tracy
(43:12):
Morgan was zach or or whatever, and Will Ferrell was Orbit,
and they played little clips from their record, their hit
records from the seventies, and it's just them like screaming
about how there's snakes in the toilet and shooting the
toilet with the shotgun. It's it's really funny, even if
this stuffed mythical, it's it's just so easy to make
(43:35):
really hilarious jokes off of PCP.
Speaker 1 (43:38):
I mean, that's what comedy is. No one's going to
come along and say, like, actually, and that's not what
PCP does.
Speaker 3 (43:42):
Right, exactly.
Speaker 1 (43:43):
That's good stuff.
Speaker 3 (43:44):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (43:45):
And then one other thing, if you want maybe a
less than accurate depiction of PCP, you can check out
the movie from nineteen eighty two called.
Speaker 1 (43:52):
Desperate Lives that the hell Hunt.
Speaker 2 (43:55):
Yes, a teenage Helen Hunt smokes PCP, jumps out of
a second story window in her high school and becomes
paralyzed as a result.
Speaker 1 (44:02):
Yeah, that was Was that an actual after school special
or it's possible it had that stink?
Speaker 2 (44:08):
Yeah, definitely it was definitely a made for TV anti
drug movie, but I'm not sure if it came on
after school or not.
Speaker 1 (44:15):
I remember very vivid memories of that one, and then
I know I mentioned it before, probably in one of
the marijuana episodes the uh Chachi in Charge.
Speaker 3 (44:25):
Who's the guy Scott Bayo.
Speaker 1 (44:27):
Scott bo was in one on marijuana and I remember
that's the first time I heard a bong because he
smoked out of a bomb and had that bubbling and
it's like, what is that? It was like it sounds
like like rice crispies or something, and I was a
little kid. I was just like, I've never heard anything
like that. Yeah, So there you have it. Scott Bo
and Helen Hunt, the kid, those two together.
Speaker 3 (44:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (44:49):
Apparently Helen Hunt was in two anti PCP.
Speaker 1 (44:55):
Okay, I thought that one was an LSD one two PCPs.
Good for her.
Speaker 3 (44:59):
Yeah, that's how her career started.
Speaker 1 (45:02):
Yeah, and then she went on to star in the
show Matt about PCP.
Speaker 2 (45:04):
That's right, and then she did at a guest spot with
Orbit and Zach Manta.
Speaker 1 (45:10):
I gotta watch that.
Speaker 2 (45:10):
Yeah, it's at the very end. I think it's the
less Kid.
Speaker 1 (45:13):
All right, let me cue it up.
Speaker 2 (45:14):
All right, well, well Chuck's queuing it up everybody. That
means it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 1 (45:20):
Oh wait, so I can't watch it right now?
Speaker 2 (45:23):
Sure we'll wait. Okay, it's pretty funny, but you can't
turn it up. You have to put it on your
headphones because we can't pay for the copyright usage.
Speaker 1 (45:31):
Let me find me boys here, anyone funnier than Tracy.
Speaker 3 (45:33):
Morgan, I don't think so.
Speaker 1 (45:35):
I love that guy. So this is about manners. Hey, guys,
it's been a million years at your old Canadian Palamanda Hear,
who missed the Toronto Live show. So Amanda says, I
remember Amanda many moons ago when stuff you should know
was new, and my boy Grant was about eleven. Chuck
sent me an email response that encouraged Grant to read more,
(45:57):
and he did. Thanks for that. He's twenty seven and now,
oh goodness, and a carpenter living in Calgary who read
your book. We are still avid listeners, and you guys
kept the company on his recent drive from Toronto. You're
the best companions on drives and while doing household chores,
while doing so many other things. Anyway, about manners. My
(46:18):
grandmother was a stickler for good manners, as were my parents.
I passed out on to Grant and we have often
been told how good manners make situations so much easier.
I was recently asking in a professional development setting what
the best advice for life I ever received was, and
obviously I responded with what I told my kid and
now stepkids. Manners are free and they're a social lubricant.
(46:41):
It always gets a laugh and then once considered a
nod and oh, that's right.
Speaker 2 (46:45):
And then everybody has a sandwich and goes their separate.
Speaker 1 (46:49):
Wings the dining table. If someone forgets their napkin on
their lap or cuts their food all at once instead
of eating it bite by bite, my partner and I
will say if you were invited to dine with the queen,
And it always gets a big eye roll and giggle
at the table and make sure that the napkins are
also in lapse though, and the food is cut properly.
(47:09):
It's a fun game for all. I hope you have
a marvelous day. Can't wait to hear the next episode
after all these years. Stuff you should know is rock
and roll nice?
Speaker 3 (47:19):
That was Amanda, That was Amanda.
Speaker 1 (47:21):
Manners are free, though, I like that. I don't know
so much. The social lubricant part I might lose because
manners are free is just so succinct.
Speaker 2 (47:29):
So I kind of like that, you know, I was thinking, Remember,
I was kind of railing about elbows on the table
just being so dated and unnecessary. I've been thinking about
it since then, and while I still agree that it's
a great example of people being overly uptight about manners,
as if their identity is associated with it, and if
you violate it, you're somehow insulting them, I disagree with
that part. But I realized that being aware of whether
(47:53):
your elbows are on the table or not makes you
more aware of everything you're surrounding, the people with you,
the food you're eating.
Speaker 1 (48:00):
Yeah, it just makes you.
Speaker 2 (48:03):
So I'm kind of done with you keeping your elbows
up the table, not because somebody told you to, because
you can do whatever you want as far as your
elbows are concerned, as long as you don't put them
in somebody else's space, but because it makes you more mindful.
Speaker 1 (48:16):
Don't dip your elbows in your partner soup. But I
do want to say there's a couple of elbows on
the table methods though, if you're if you're in the
middle of eating and you've got like your elbow on
the table and your hunch forward and you're eating with
the other hand. I think that's kind of the rule.
But like, if you're eating and you're done and you're
having conversation, to push the plate away and put both
(48:39):
elbows on the table and pat your hands together in
a pensive way while you think of something smart and funny. Like,
that's a whole different deal.
Speaker 3 (48:45):
Yeah, well that's elegant.
Speaker 2 (48:47):
So I've been training myself by putting the little dab
of Momo's poop on each of my elbows right before
dinner to make sure that I don't put them on
the dinner table.
Speaker 3 (48:57):
It's working really well.
Speaker 1 (48:58):
That poop stays on your elbows belongs.
Speaker 2 (49:01):
That was from Amanda, what was your son's name? The
one you inspired.
Speaker 1 (49:05):
Grant who has been listening since eleven and is now
you know, sixty.
Speaker 3 (49:09):
That's awesome.
Speaker 2 (49:09):
Thanks for listening to us, Amanda and Grant, and thank
you for listening to this episode.
Speaker 3 (49:13):
And if you want to get in touch with us.
Speaker 2 (49:15):
Like Amanda did and Grant by proxy, you can send
us an email to Stuff Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1 (49:25):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, everyone, Josh and Chuck here to remind you that
our last three shows of the year. Boy, this is
a good show this year are taking place very soon
and tickets are still available.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Yeah, so get in the saddle and come out and
see us partners in Orlando, Atlanta, and Nashville.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Just go to stuff youshould know dot com and click
on the tour link and you can get all your
tickets right there. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's
Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is Stuff you
should Know about PCP.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
And yes, we're talking about the PCP. You think we're.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Talking the one from the if you were a child
of the seventies and eighties, where you heard that your
friend's friend's cousin did it and they carve their face
off with a butcher knife and then jumped off a
building so they thought they could fly.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Yes, as a matter of fact, that's exactly the PCP
we're talking about, Yeah, which stands for By the way,
I'm gonna attempt this chemical name.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
You're ready, This one's easy, no pressure.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Okay, I don't know how to say the ones. So
I'm just gonna that's I think it's kind of important
chemically speaking. I think they didn't just put part of
it in parentheses for nothing. But I'm just gonna call
it one one fennel cyclo hexel, pepper dye and those
in the number dye pipper dye, piper dye, probably piper dyne.
(01:34):
I think it's those in the know who don't smoke PCP.
But oh, I actually took out a syllable this time.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
Oh man, this is gold.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
So the people who study it call it fen cyclodine, okay,
with a pH because it's fat.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
Yeah. And if you if you're wondering, like, oh, why
do people even study this old street drug from the seventies,
it's because it wasn't always that. It was kind of
the precursor to the ketamine in a lot of ways,
which we'll talk about here and there. And if you
think people study ketamine the party drug, well that's true too,
(02:16):
because both PCP and ketamine had legitimate uses and were
created for legitimate uses like mini drugs, yeah, recreational drugs.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
The Germans gave us both heroin and PCP. I think
in nineteen twenty six, German chemists created PCP. I'm not
sure what they were creating it for. I think this
is a time of experimentation in chemistry where you just
put stuff together and saw what happened. Sure, So it
sat on the shelf for almost thirty years before Park Davis,
(02:50):
a pharmaceutical company from the United States which is now
part of Pfizer. I believe they came along and they said, Hey,
this would be a gangbuster's tranquilizer sedative something. Let's forget
out what to do with this because I just smoke
some out back and I feel like a million bucks.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Yeah, I gotta tell you, we should use this stuff.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
So they looked at it as an anesthetic at first,
and I think it first came to market in like
the mid fifties, and by nineteen sixty five they had
removed it.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
From the market.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
The reason they removed it from the market is one
it showed very quickly it had a high potential for abuse,
because the hippies in San Francisco started smoking it before
there was even hippies in San Francisco. Yeah, and it
had a slew of side effects that you just really
don't want, which is one of the reasons why we'll
say you probably shouldn't do PCP.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
Yeah, we should have led with that. Sure, Like what
if someone heard the first what is this four minutes
of the episode.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
It turned it out, they're like, I gotta go try PCP.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
Yeah, because Josh and Chuck said it exists, right, Yeah,
don't do PCP, everybody, you shouldn't do that. And this
is not, you know, coming as a sort of satanic,
panicky eighties you're gonna jump off a building because you
think you can fly kind of thing. It's just not
a drug you want to do. So, like you said,
(04:14):
you know, uses, well, I don't think we've even said it. Yes,
uses really dropped off over the years. It was a
very much a bigger deal in the nineteen seventies and eighties.
I think stats that the Grabster found for US saw
that between seventy six and seventy seven, use among high
school students doubled. In a nineteen seventy nine study, seven
(04:36):
percent of high school seniors reported having used PCP in
the last year. In twenty thirteen that was down to
less than one percent, and then in twenty twenty. Though
the stats are a little bit different. I think it
went down to like point zero zero zero two percent
of the country, not just high school students.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
So of adults.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
Yeah, like fifty two thousand people. Well, adults, it's just
twelve and over.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
Hey, you're old enough to smoke PCP. You're old enough
to be considered an adult.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
That's right. But you can't vote.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
It doesn't matter what age you are. If you smoke
a lot of PCP, you probably shouldn't vote anyway.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
Right. Oh, I thought you're gonna say, then you've earned
the right to vote.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
No, No, I think the opposite.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Maybe.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
So all that to say, it used to be a pretty,
you know, frequent recreation, recreational street drug, and it has
really really gone out of fashion, in large part because
ketamine is not the same exact thing, but it's it's
largely the same thing, and that became I guess, the
trendier drug to use.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
Yes, but it has remained in fashion in certain pockets,
especially like deep in the inner cities of Washington, d C.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
Oh, yeah, Kansas City, Okay.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
I believe it's a town in Connecticut, Hartford.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
I don't know if it's Hartford, but there's at least
two towns in Connecticut that have interesting a lot of
PCP use and they think I read this really great
article and vice about why America is the only country
in the world basically literally where people use PCP still
or ever ever, but it's still as well. Ever, yeah,
(06:24):
it never really made it out of America. It was
written by Max Daley and sam Irravani. It's definitely worth
a read. But they say, one of the reasons why
it's so overlooked and one of the reasons why it's
not that studied, and one of the reasons why you're
just like, yeah, ketamine replace it is because the people
who do use it tend to be marginalized. Unemployed, black
inner city men ages mid twenties to mid fifties are
(06:47):
typically the people who get busted for PCP. So it's
kind of like this viewed as this drug that like
a drug of inequality, I think.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
Is how they put it.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
And that'll come up late too, because some of the
myths around it seem to be tied to the people
who use it.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
Now, I'm not a very smart person, but if if
there are like two towns or two cities in Connecticut
that are known for PCP, still doesn't that just mean
there's someone in two towns in Connecticut that are making PCP.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
So no, almost all of the PCP in the world,
because it's almost all of the PCP in the United
States are still controlled and made by black street gangs
in LA, like crips, bloods.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
It's weird.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
Then, how does it get to these two weird specific
places in Connecticut right now?
Speaker 2 (07:36):
Those cities that still do and have always smoked PCP
it's always been around, are cities that have like clearly
some way or another, very deep ties to those same
LA street gangs. Because it's really hard to distribute PC,
really hard, So for it to show up in Connecticut
from LA, there's some there's like somebody's cousin lives there
(07:57):
and is controlling the PCP market.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
They're getting it to actually from.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Somebody in LA who knows a chemist who will go
out into the desert and make hm PCP all day long.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
Oh oh, that makes sense because I just I don't know.
It seems like there would be like a Walter Whitton
Connecticut or something, but they're still out in the desert.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
Yes, supposedly it's all coming out from LA.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
All right. Well, in seventy eight is when the United
States government said, all right, this thing is officially a
scheduled to controlled substance, which means, you know a lot
of things we've talked about the different drug schedules, but
it means that its prevalence of abuse is a big deal,
(08:36):
and that it can be addictive, and you know, it's
ranked right up there with cocaine and crystal meth and
stuff like that, which I think we've covered all those before.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
Yeah, and in fact, it shares a precursor drug, pyrad dene,
with crystal meth. But it's not that, No, it is not,
and it actually does have anesthetic effects. Like one of
the side effects of in ingesting PCP one way or
another is like, not only do you not really feel pain,
(09:06):
you don't experience pain because you're disassociated from your body.
It's a disassociative, hypnotic sedative essentially, and one of the
reasons why, sure, you have to add the essentially though
comma essentially sure, but one of the reasons why PCP
(09:27):
and ketamine were first brought to market was because they
produce sedative effects, like you don't really know what's going
on after a certain dose. You're not really with it.
You actually can fall into a coma with your eyes open,
but it doesn't slow your heart rate or pulse or.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
Anything like that.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
So it really made a Ketamine in particular, found a
great use as a battlefield sedative for surgery in like Vietnam,
where somebody might have lost a lot of blood. They
couldn't hand a traditional sedative or anesthesia, so they gave
them ketamine and it did the same trick without dropping
(10:08):
their blood pressure even further.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
Yeah, and and what's good for the battlefield is good
for the rave. But it makes total sense, you know
because if you were like, as far as the rave
culture goes or went, I don't think is that still
a thing? Even I it's got to be somewhere.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
It isn't.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
It's it's coming back soon because the nineties are so
hot right now.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
Yeah, somebody's out there raven with their big they're not
bell bottoms. Even did this have a name? No, it
was just like the pants that had like like two
foot what's it called there at the bottom with what's
the bottom of your pants, like called the cuff cuff.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
The bottom of those big pants.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
Yeah, they didn't, but the whole leg was like that. Essentially,
it was just the waste that was a generally normal size.
The legs were huge. Believe me, buddy, I had more
than one pair of those.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
I thought they flared. Anything to see you in a
pair of those.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
I had some cool ones too, but I also had
some uncool ones.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
We used to when we lived in these warehouses in
the West end of Atlanta and ninety nine two thousand
would and this is that was a big rave loft
over there, Like people would drive from different states to
go to these things, thousands of kids, and we used
to just sit around and play pavement and laugh and
make fun of them in those pants.
Speaker 3 (11:26):
And they were doing ketamine, ketamine, ketamine, and you're.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
Like, like those losers probably, But where I was going
with all this was I guess it makes sense why
the PCP and ketamine and that kind of thing would
have been because you know, you feel funky, but it
doesn't like slow you down, essentially.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
No, And in fact, it can actually increase your heart
rate and do all sorts of other weird stuff to you.
Speaker 3 (11:46):
And what's really odd about.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
It is that it has a lot of paradoxical effects
on humans. I say, we talk a little bit about
how it impacts the brain, and I think that it'll
become apparent.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
What do you think, Yeah, let's do it.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
So it's it's considered a N methyl d aspirate antagonist.
NMDA antagonists and NMDA receptors are really important as far
as things like memory formation, neuroplasticity, very important stuff. But
what they they're triggered by glutamate. And what PCP does
(12:27):
is it prevents those ndm A receptors from accepting glutamate
and hence firing. And because there's either more glutamate or
less glutamate in your body, I think less glutamate floating
around is what it is. A Whole host of other
stuff happens, like dopamine and nourep and ephyrin get released,
(12:48):
those two and serotonin their reuptake is inhibited, so they're
floating around in your your brain even longer.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
So that's all the good feely stuff, right.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
Your opioid receptors are stimulated as a result, your nicotinic receptors,
which control things like your neural muscular activity rapid neural
transmission essentially, and then your muscarinic activity, which includes like breathing,
(13:18):
your pupil's salivation. All these things are going haywire. And
then what else is weird about it is that your
central nervous system can be both depressed and excited by
this same drug. This is how this is how nuts
and effect it has on your brain, so that you
can cycle between like utter sedation to the point of catatonia,
(13:41):
and between that and serious agitation where like you see
you know, videos of people who are being arrested and
they're not like hitting the ground even though they're getting
sprayed in the face of bear spray because they're so
on like a rant. So it has like all these
really crazy effects, but it all comes down to the
(14:03):
fact that it affects your ability to receive glue tomate
in your NMDA receptors.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
Yeah, and we'll talk a bit more about that sort
of reputation as like a superhuman strength, like you know,
takes twelve cops to subdue someone on PCP thing. And
a little bit what were those people on those videos
that you sent me? Okay, so Josh sent me some
videos and people I guess the next day or whatever
(14:31):
on ketamine or I assume it was the next.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
I think it was hours later. It was like hours afterwards.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
Yeah, yeah, And they were almost all of them when
they were walking like down the sidewalk or whatever, had
this backward lean as if they were walking up like
a very very steep hill, but it was on solid ground.
And then the one guy if it was a very
slight incline on the sidewalk and he would take a
few steps up and then take a few back, and yeah,
(14:59):
he had. They were all having a hard time, and
it was just I don't know, it's just sad to
see someone in that sort of a stupor around in
the daylight when people are going to work and stuff.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
Right, Well, the thing that really kind of makes it
worth watching is they're with it enough to know that
they shouldn't be walking weird in public, and they need
to tell they suspect that they might be.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
So it's kind of funny in a way, but it's
really not when you really think about it.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
You know, well, watching.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
Them play it off or try to play it off
and just fail utterly at it, that's that's objectively funny
to see it.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
Well, And it doesn't help that they did the Staying
Alive Beg's song cut to it. We used to there
was my friend in college used to call not on drugs,
but if you were drunk and you were trying to
like play it off like you were super sober and
walking around. He called that sugarfooting, like you're just you're
(15:57):
not just like, oh, I'm just gonna walk down the
street thinking left foot, right foot, everything's fine, exactly. You
called it sugarfoot in, which always thought was kind funny.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
Yeah, there's a term for that, a medical term for it,
choreo something. I'm sure I'll turn it up at some point,
But basically, it's unwanted muscle movement. So you're trying to
just walk, but you're also doing like you're also just
just like you're dancing, says, even though you don't mean
(16:27):
to and you're trying really hard not to.
Speaker 3 (16:29):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
So one of the that's one of the side effects
of it, is these unwanted muscle movements. And then also
for that reason, in San Francisco, when it first started
being abused on the street, the hippies called it wobble weed. Oh, yeah,
which makes a lot more sense now that you you
know a little bit more about it.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
Yeah, And we'll talk about the association with marijuana too, uh,
in a little bit. But why don't we take a break? Yeah, yep,
all right, we'll put on staying alive and we'll stumble
up the sidewalk and we'll you right back, all right.
(17:25):
So we talked a little bit about what PCP does
to you and sort of in the brain, and also
how you can sugar foot up the street. But it's
not like, uh, even though it was used as an anesthetic,
that that association with sleepiness isn't accurate.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
Right, No, it's not.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
And like I said, you can go catatonic with your
eyes open, but you're still able to move around and
do things that you just shouldn't be doing. Like I
saw that people will frequently, like try to get off
a stretcher even though they're catatonic.
Speaker 3 (17:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
And the reason why it's it's a dissociate and you
feel not connected to your body. Your senses are coming
in hot and weird and not making any.
Speaker 3 (18:09):
Sense to you. You know.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
It removes ego boundaries, so your feeling of self and
the distinction between you and other people and the rest
of the world around you and the supernatural has kind
of blurred or fallen away.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
Right. I've heard dreamlike from well, to be honest, I've
known people have done this and they've said dream like.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
I can I could imagine that.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
And then also, one of the other things I saw
that I thought it was just fascinating is that it's
it makes it difficult to tell whether an event has
already happened in the past, is going to happen in
the future, or is happening.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
Now right, the whole time time jump thing, right, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:45):
Isn't that nuts?
Speaker 1 (18:46):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (18:46):
And then of course, because it's a hypnotic sedative that
affects your your NMDA receptors that are involved in memory formation,
you you frequently black out even though you're walking around
doing stuff and even interacting, you probably aren't going to.
Speaker 3 (19:03):
Remember most of it.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
Yeah, big memory impacts. And the stuff comes on very
quickly too, which is one of the I think the historically,
like the most addictive kind of recreational street drugs are
ones that are really fast acting, and PCP is definitely
one of those. What I didn't see, or maybe I
just overlooked it is how long it lasts.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
It can last for twenty four hours.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
Right, it's a long lasting deal. Okay, that's right. I
did read that because I remember, like when we did
the crack episode. I think I always thought that crack
was some long term thing, but was shocked to learn
it was just like a super quick high.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
Yeah, and I think this can be, but it depends
on how.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
You take it, right, Should we talk about that?
Speaker 2 (19:48):
Yeah, there's different ways you can take it, So let's
talk about that.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
Yeah, it used to be in the earlier days it
was like a liquid PCP a lot of times that
you would take orally, but very quickly. The most recreational
use users used it like it came in like a
crystalline powder, and they would typically smoke it or snort
it like a heroine or a cocaine, I guess, And
(20:12):
that became sort of the main way aside from and
again I said earlier we were going to talk about
the Marijuana Association, that was dipping a marijuana joint or
just a regular cigarette, and liquid PCP has you can
do that with a lot of drugs are called wet drugs,
and it's it's a thing. And there was some confusion
(20:34):
about the names because I heard I knew what SHRM
was because I'd heard that in a movie from Tuarantina movie,
which one was that really yeah movie. I think it
was the one he wrote, only was it true romance
(20:55):
or maybe it was pulp fiction. It was Sam Jackson,
and he wasn't introu or.
Speaker 3 (20:58):
No, I don't believe he was scared anyway.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
You smoke enough sherms something something something was the line.
And that's the first time I had heard that word.
But that's a cigarette that was dipped in embalming chemicals
and I think kind of like a prison drug a
lot of times, because that was something that you could
get apparently easier than you know, regular hard drugs. And
(21:22):
I think for a time that was like PCP was
sometimes mixed with embalming fluid. Sometimes the just names were
used interchangeably. There was a lot of confusion in the
media about embalming fluid and PCP. Yeah, and I think,
I mean, I read a lot about it today, and
where I landed was sometimes it might have been mixed
with PCP, but sometimes people were smoking inbalming fluid as well.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
So what I found from my research is that so
this is a big thing in like the mid nineties
to the early two thousands. Oh really yeah, And that
if you were smoking embalming fluid and you got high.
Speaker 3 (21:58):
It's because there was PCP in that embalming fluid. Oh,
so it was mixed, and that it.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
Was yes, and that it was a that I read
from somebody, a medical examiner, who said, like, there's there.
You don't get high at all from embalming fluid. He's like,
I used to mix it myself, and if anybody would
have gotten high from it, I've spent more time around
it than most people. Never got even the slightest buzz.
So it's the PCP that's making you highcha. And it
(22:24):
might not even be embalming fluid in the first place,
because PCP has kind of a very distinct chemically smell
and taste, and it you could easily pass it off
as embalming fluid to somebody who'd never smoked PCP before.
The thing that I kind of landed on was that
it was mistaken either among like recovery people or the
(22:48):
GA or something. The slang term for PCP embalming fluid
came to be accepted as Oh, teenagers are now smoking
embalming fluid. By the L seven's, it ended up in
the and it became self perpetuating. I think some kind
of particularly low intelligent drug dealers were like, oh, we
(23:10):
can sell embalming fluid. We're gonna start robbing funeral homes
and then actually started selling embalming fluid and it was
all just a comedy of errors.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
Yeah, that makes sense of why it's so hard to
separate fact from fiction online today, because it's all over
the place once you start looking into that thing.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
Yeah, there's not really any drug ever. Crack used to
come close in the eighties. People were hysterical about crack,
Crack baby super Predators. Yeah, it was really bad. But
as like for duration of like the hysterical moral panic
over it, PCP has every other drug beat by a
mile because not only is it like urban legend, but
(23:52):
that urban legend becomes fact because the media reports it. Yeah,
drug abuse organizations say the same thing, the cops say
the same thing. Everybody's saying these same things, like if
you'll have superhuman strength, for example, that is not true.
You don't get superhuman strength. We'll talk a little more
about that. I don't want to get ahead of ourselves,
(24:13):
but it's exactly what you said, is exactly right. There's
so much disinformation on PCPs you just end up having
to guess here or there about what's true and what's not.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
Well, I mean, we can go ahead and talk about it.
Some that was, you know, I invoked the Satanic panic.
It was sort of around those same times when we
were kids in the late seventies where I mean, I
remember PCP was like the scariest sounding thing on the planet,
and it was sort of made out to be like,
if you do PCP, there's a very good chance that
(24:47):
you'll end up dead, and not from like overdosing on PCP,
but because you've done something crazy, like you know, try
to bake yourself in an oven or something because you
thought you were a cake. And every school, every region,
every town had some story or set of stories that
were passed around urban legend style. Well, there were urban
(25:10):
legends about some friend of a friend or some friend's
cousin who who they know for sure did this and
they fought fifteen cops and ed used an example of
some kid who at a hockey game fought like twenty
cops or something. And it's just so funny how those
things proliferate. And we're not saying like in PCP, it
(25:31):
was just great. There was no problem with it, but
it wasn't what it was made out to be, which
was this a lot of times an excuse for cops
to beat down a person because all they have to
do afterward to say, we suspected they were on PCP
and they had crazy look in their eyes and they
were super strong. Ye, I mean Rodney King was supposedly
(25:52):
on PCP. You heard some cops yelling out the word
dust at the beginning of that video. Yeah, he's dusted,
And that happens and happened all the time. I don't
think it's quite as common now, but it was a
very prominent thing back then.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
Yeah, and then cops speak, he's dusted, is raising the
alarm that this person is going to try to kill
all of us and possibly could so go ahead and
use excessive force, And it was used as a defense
in the Rodney King trial. He didn't have any PCP
in his system, by the way, but that fear, just
the very fact that cops are scared of superhuman strength
(26:30):
brought on by PCP is one of the things that
got those officers off the hook in the Rodney King trial,
the Rodney King beating trial. But just the fact that
PCP gives people superhuman strength. Yeah, he didn't know he
wasn't on PCP. Ergo, they're not really guilty of using
excessive force because he could have been on PCP. And
(26:51):
if you strip away that argument, like these police officers
were let off for beating a man in a circle, Yeah,
because they were afraid he was on PCP, because PCP
gives you superhuman strength. Even though that doesn't actually happen.
It's just a total myth that's perpetuated still today.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
Oh yeah, it's still around. I think you found this
meta analysis from a legal paper that really did some
scouring and found two cases where PCP was the sole cause,
the sole cause of like a violent behavior or violent episode.
Speaker 3 (27:30):
Two out of like hundreds.
Speaker 1 (27:32):
Yeah, and we're not saying that, you know, people do crazy,
all kinds of crazy things and all kinds of drugs,
So we're not saying no one's ever been violent because
and had PCP in their system. But the key is
did PCP trigger and cause that thing to happen? And
the evidence just says that that's just not the case. No.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
From what I saw, it amplifies your personality twenty times,
I think, is what one person put it.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
If you want to beat up people anyway aggressive anyway,
then it might.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
Then yes, that might be a problem, but you're not
going to have superhuman strength. Potentially, the one the one
explanation for that, because I did see videos of a
dude on PCP who was getting bear sprayed in the
face multiple times and just kind of wiped his eyes
and kept walking around.
Speaker 1 (28:20):
Was stay alive wing No, I had it on.
Speaker 2 (28:23):
Mute, so as possible, it was, but he kept getting
tased repeatedly and nothing. He didn't have superhuman strength. He
was just disassociated from his senses, so he wasn't experiencing pain.
So you will not move away from noxious stimulized stimuli
like bear spray or tasers because it's not coming through.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
And finally, not superhuman strength.
Speaker 3 (28:48):
That is not superhuman strength.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
And there's also a really really like widespread idea that
at least one person on PCP is snapped perfectly good.
Speaker 3 (29:00):
Handcuffs because of those superhuman strength.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
Yeah, it's just probably not the case that that ever
actually happened. So there's a lot of myths around this.
And again it's like you kind of hinted at like
we're not defending PCP. We're not saying like guys. PCP's
got such a bad rap. There's a lot of really
bad stuff that can come out of ingestion PCP. It's
just that superhuman strength is not one of them. That's
(29:26):
just a myth. And it has been used. It's been
argued to target those marginalized communities who use PCP and used.
It's been used to justify excessive force. So much so
I saw that the non or no less than lethal
weapon industry, tasers, bear spray, all that stuff that did
(29:51):
not exist until the cops started being criticized for using
excessive force and they had the the decision to either
use their police baton, their nightstick or their gun. That's
all they had, and they they when they encountered PCP users,
they needed another option.
Speaker 3 (30:11):
So that's that's why we have that.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
Yes, that is why to subdue PCP users. That's why
that whole industry exists.
Speaker 3 (30:19):
That's why it began.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
Is that why I have bear spray hanging up at
my camp on the wall.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
That's right, because of PCP users in Washington, d C.
In anatomy.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
I don't want to spray a bear, even I don't.
Speaker 3 (30:32):
I think you're okay if a bear's coming at you.
You can. You can spray that bear.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
I mean I would, and that's why it's there. I
just said I don't want to.
Speaker 4 (30:41):
Like.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
My first line of defense at at camp is I
have an air horn. Good so annoying my friends, drive
away the bear, drive away my friends on Sunday morning. Yeah,
and then the bear spray would be the last resort.
Speaker 3 (30:58):
I'll tell you what you do. Chuck this way. Do
you got a bear coming at you? You lay down?
What is it prostrate when you're face down?
Speaker 1 (31:07):
I don't remember.
Speaker 3 (31:08):
Let's say it is. Okay, yeah, I think it is.
Speaker 2 (31:11):
I don't remember. But you're laying face down, pretending you're dead.
Wait till the bear comes over and kind of moves
you with its paw and you roll over and spray
it in the face with the bear spray. Kind of
like that whole trope where you roll somebody over and
they're holding like a bunch of grenades with the pins
pulled out, same.
Speaker 3 (31:31):
Thing, but with bear spray.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
That's a great idea.
Speaker 3 (31:34):
I think so too. I think we should go try it.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
That Elizabeth Banks should have made PCP Bear instead of
Cocaine Bear. I know we disagree about that, Yes, we do.
But what we can agree is that the story about
the crew of the Titanic movie, not the boat itself,
but when James Cameron was making Titanic. This sounds so
(31:56):
much like an urban legend, but it's actually true that
at some I think it was another crew member that part.
I don't know, but I'm pretty sure it was another
crew member.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
The mystery still like they've never fully.
Speaker 1 (32:10):
Okay, Well, they dosed some chowder with PCP and dosed
everyone who ate that chowder, which was a lot or
most of the crew, and it really happened, and I
think different stories come out of that.
Speaker 4 (32:25):
You know.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
I think some people had a really hard time. Some
people probably loved it.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
Yeah they apparently there was a congo line and wheelchair
racing in the er at the local hospital. But then
other people, yeah, we're not having a good time at all.
Jinks Cameron said that one of the crew members, I
think he said a PA stabbed him in the face
of a pen and oh wow, he said.
Speaker 3 (32:47):
He was just.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
Laughing, laughing, laughing about it, like like James Cameron was
laughing about having been stabbed in the face of a pen.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
The PA said this is for Avatar that hasn't even
happened yet.
Speaker 2 (32:58):
Right, But this is I think the the biggest star
that got it was Bill Paxton because they were shooting
those current day shots and like Nova Scotia or something.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
Boy, I hope that that old lady Old Rose didn't happen.
Speaker 3 (33:12):
Was at a restaurant.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
She did not, Man, could you imagine?
Speaker 2 (33:17):
No, that would be really bad. We don't want our
senior friends taking PCP, especially not accidentally.
Speaker 4 (33:24):
Her acting might have improved, you never know. I thought
she did so, so she wouldn't very good in my opinion.
So you want to take a break, Sure, let's take
a break, and then we'll come back and talk about
some problems with getting high on PCP, Chuck. One of
(34:02):
the things about PCP that makes it so vexing, yeah,
is that the symptoms that it can produce are really undesirable,
and an overdose threshold is not very high at all.
It basically dances along the top end of a normal dose.
So a normal dose is between five and ten milligrams.
(34:23):
I saw as low as one, yeah, but after.
Speaker 2 (34:25):
About ten milligrams, or maybe even at ten milligrams, you
might start exhibiting the exact same symptoms of somebody in
the throes of a schizophrenic episode.
Speaker 1 (34:36):
Yeah, and we'll talk about that in a second. But
part of the problem there, I mean, that's a problem period.
But part of the problem is the dosage, especially if
you're smoking fry or churm or something like that. Is
I'm sure the dosage isn't that accurate when you're dipping
a joint or a cigarette and liquid, it's probably hard
to tell how much is on there.
Speaker 2 (34:56):
No, but I read that you can control it much
more easily. You just take it hit and wait a
couple minutes, and then sure if you if you start
to come down, you take another hit. And I saw
it like an old cop say, you can you know
if you smoke it, you know with intent, I guess
you can stay high for twenty four hours just from
one one shurm.
Speaker 1 (35:17):
Stick, right, Which means if you're if this is something
that you know to do and recreationally do often, then
you probably know what you're doing. But if someone's like, here,
try this thing and then ed, you know, use the
example of of you know, someone who like finds the
joint on the street or something, and I'm sure that's happened.
(35:38):
But I kind of lump that in with that that
eighties hysteria of like, you know, you might come across
a cigarette that's been laced with PCP that you don't
know about, or or buy a marijuana joints laced with PCP.
I'm sure that really didn't happen very.
Speaker 2 (35:53):
Much there, So, No, it does not happen very much.
Those stories are, they abound, but they're also really really rare.
But there are stories of people who have done horrific
things on PCP. Sure the qualifier is though, that they
already had pre existing mental disorders, and the PCP does
(36:18):
not do any favors for you if you have a
pre existing mental condition, even if it hasn't come out
yet or emerged yet, it'll make it emerge. And they
argue that it's possible that even if you didn't have
one that was going to come out eventually, PCP could conceivably,
especially after prolonged use, essentially infect you with schizophrenia.
Speaker 1 (36:44):
Yeah, that's the one I've seen more often than anything else.
Is it will exacerbate something like that, but it can
also Why cann't we think of the word install.
Speaker 3 (36:57):
And still delivered, still produced.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
Induce, produce produce schizophrenia. And you know, a little bit
of a silver lining on that is they actually can
use PCP now and do use PCP as far as
studying schizophrenia, and you know how those two are related
in humans.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
Yeah, that's a big They give PCP to primates and
study what happens to study schizophrenia, and then weirdly, they're
also looking at PCP as a way to study or
produce drugs that treat Alzheimer's because schizophrenia apparently is associated
(37:37):
with a lack of glutamate. Remember, PCP inhibits glutamate and
Alzheimer's results from they think an overabundance of glutamate in
the in the brain. And so PCP has both of
those effects that can induce schizophrenia. It could treat Alzheimer's conceivably.
So I think the fact that it has so many
(37:59):
terrible myths around it has really made people cautious about
suggesting doing research using PCP.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
Yeah, it's not like researching microdosing mushrooms or something like
that now.
Speaker 2 (38:11):
But there is a there is a whole thread of
inquiry into it to say like okay, there's there's this
is doing some stuff to the brain that we should
be studying.
Speaker 1 (38:21):
Yeah. It can also induce seizures. It can really ramp
up your heart rate. It can it can produce rapid
involuntary eye movement. It's called nice stagmus.
Speaker 2 (38:33):
Yeah, not just like side to side or up and down,
but in rotary fashion is one of the ways. So
your eyes are just going in a.
Speaker 1 (38:41):
Cartoon style, yes exactly. Yeah. Uh. And it just seems
to be sort of all over the map as far
like a very unpredictable drug as far as its sedative qualities,
and then it's sort of amping you up qualities.
Speaker 3 (38:54):
Yes exactly.
Speaker 2 (38:55):
That's what I was saying earlier, where you kind you
can just vacillate between extremely digitation and catatonia essentially, and
on the same trip over and over again. Really interesting,
It is extremely interesting. One of the other big problems
with it, And this is why I said you probably
shouldn't vote if you are a frequent PCP user, not
because you're a member of a marginal community, but because
(39:19):
you probably have some really strange beliefs about yourself and
your place.
Speaker 3 (39:24):
In the universe.
Speaker 1 (39:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (39:26):
One of the big.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
Things that comes out of it is especially prolonged use
and chronic use is a shift in your spiritual and
religious beliefs. And typically it kind of comes down to, Oh,
I'm a god, and I need to just be hanging
out and not doing much because that's what gods do.
Speaker 1 (39:46):
Yeah, And that's also kind of ties back into the
even though it's not superhuman strength, just a feeling of invincibility.
But I've also seen that it's not so much an invincive.
Usually it's not an invincibility of like I can take
anyone on who wants to fight me. It's more of
like I'm invincible in a good way, like I can
(40:06):
do whatever I want. Again, not suggesting that it's like
a motivational tool or something like that, sure, but it's
just one of the things that can happen.
Speaker 2 (40:14):
And then conversely, if you are feeling, like say, socially anxious,
you're probably going to experience profound paranoia. It will amplify
it one way or another. It's the same thing with
LSD that wholes set and setting thing right.
Speaker 3 (40:29):
So what else is there, Chuck, Well, if.
Speaker 1 (40:33):
You become addicted to PCP, there isn't like a sort
of a straight ahead pharmaceutical treatment. It's gonna you know
you're gonna have to wean yourself off of it through
therapy and treatment. Basically, I think ed did find that
chre prout here. I go chlor promozine core promisine, which
(40:56):
is a drug. It can help reverse the effects if
you're like like overdosing on PCP, but it's not like
the kind of thing you used to break an addiction.
Speaker 3 (41:05):
No, and you can get addicted.
Speaker 2 (41:06):
It does have a high incidence of dependence because it's
schedule too exactly. Not everything schedule two is actually addictive,
But in this case it's actually correct that it stimulates
your reward center so much it produces euph you that
you want it again. But also it can physically alter
(41:27):
your brain, not just to make you believe that you
are a god or something on earth, but also to
make that threshold for your reward system higher.
Speaker 3 (41:39):
So it's harder to.
Speaker 2 (41:42):
Feel good even a normal on a normal basis, and
in turn, you end up having to ingest more and
more amounts of PCP to get high. And that's a
classic hall mark of dependency.
Speaker 1 (41:55):
Yep, classic hall mark of many drugs, because you use
more and more and then that's just becomes more and
more dangerous.
Speaker 2 (42:01):
Again, the withdrawal symptoms are really bad too. You can
you can very frequently fall into major depression that can
last weeks.
Speaker 3 (42:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:09):
Uh, sometimes some of the symptoms don't ever go away,
like you might have trouble talking or speaking. It's just
not it's not a good thing to get into, especially
long term.
Speaker 1 (42:20):
Yeah, and it's not the seventies anyway. What are you
doing with PCP these days?
Speaker 2 (42:23):
Did you see that Saturday Night Live skit with Tracy
Morgan and Will Ferrell and Matthew Broderick.
Speaker 1 (42:29):
No, is that what you said? Yes, that that link
took me straight to a clip of The Ladies Man.
Speaker 2 (42:36):
Oh right, That's why I gave you the timestamp at
the end. It's like at the end of the whole episode.
Speaker 1 (42:41):
All right, I missed that. I was like, what has
the Ladies Man got to do with this? I was like,
I love the Ladies Man bit, but right.
Speaker 3 (42:46):
No, it had nothing to do with it.
Speaker 2 (42:48):
Although it was it was basically like, uh, inside the
Actors Studio kind of type thing, but for comedy, so
it was real highbrow. Matthew Broderick's the host, and he
was focusing on drug based comedy that had been inspired
by Cheech and Chong, and he featured Orbit and zach
or something like that. Who did PCP comedy. Yeah, Tracy
(43:12):
Morgan was zach or or whatever, and Will Ferrell was Orbit,
and they played little clips from their record, their hit
records from the seventies, and it's just them like screaming
about how there's snakes in the toilet and shooting the
toilet with the shotgun. It's it's really funny, even if
this stuffed mythical, it's it's just so easy to make
(43:35):
really hilarious jokes off of PCP.
Speaker 1 (43:38):
I mean, that's what comedy is. No one's going to
come along and say, like, actually, and that's not what
PCP does.
Speaker 3 (43:42):
Right, exactly.
Speaker 1 (43:43):
That's good stuff.
Speaker 3 (43:44):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (43:45):
And then one other thing, if you want maybe a
less than accurate depiction of PCP, you can check out
the movie from nineteen eighty two called.
Speaker 1 (43:52):
Desperate Lives that the hell Hunt.
Speaker 2 (43:55):
Yes, a teenage Helen Hunt smokes PCP, jumps out of
a second story window in her high school and becomes
paralyzed as a result.
Speaker 1 (44:02):
Yeah, that was Was that an actual after school special
or it's possible it had that stink?
Speaker 2 (44:08):
Yeah, definitely it was definitely a made for TV anti
drug movie, but I'm not sure if it came on
after school or not.
Speaker 1 (44:15):
I remember very vivid memories of that one, and then
I know I mentioned it before, probably in one of
the marijuana episodes the uh Chachi in Charge.
Speaker 3 (44:25):
Who's the guy Scott Bayo.
Speaker 1 (44:27):
Scott bo was in one on marijuana and I remember
that's the first time I heard a bong because he
smoked out of a bomb and had that bubbling and
it's like, what is that? It was like it sounds
like like rice crispies or something, and I was a
little kid. I was just like, I've never heard anything
like that. Yeah, So there you have it. Scott Bo
and Helen Hunt, the kid, those two together.
Speaker 3 (44:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (44:49):
Apparently Helen Hunt was in two anti PCP.
Speaker 1 (44:55):
Okay, I thought that one was an LSD one two PCPs.
Good for her.
Speaker 3 (44:59):
Yeah, that's how her career started.
Speaker 1 (45:02):
Yeah, and then she went on to star in the
show Matt about PCP.
Speaker 2 (45:04):
That's right, and then she did at a guest spot with
Orbit and Zach Manta.
Speaker 1 (45:10):
I gotta watch that.
Speaker 2 (45:10):
Yeah, it's at the very end. I think it's the
less Kid.
Speaker 1 (45:13):
All right, let me cue it up.
Speaker 2 (45:14):
All right, well, well Chuck's queuing it up everybody. That
means it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 1 (45:20):
Oh wait, so I can't watch it right now?
Speaker 2 (45:23):
Sure we'll wait. Okay, it's pretty funny, but you can't
turn it up. You have to put it on your
headphones because we can't pay for the copyright usage.
Speaker 1 (45:31):
Let me find me boys here, anyone funnier than Tracy.
Speaker 3 (45:33):
Morgan, I don't think so.
Speaker 1 (45:35):
I love that guy. So this is about manners. Hey, guys,
it's been a million years at your old Canadian Palamanda Hear,
who missed the Toronto Live show. So Amanda says, I
remember Amanda many moons ago when stuff you should know
was new, and my boy Grant was about eleven. Chuck
sent me an email response that encouraged Grant to read more,
(45:57):
and he did. Thanks for that. He's twenty seven and now,
oh goodness, and a carpenter living in Calgary who read
your book. We are still avid listeners, and you guys
kept the company on his recent drive from Toronto. You're
the best companions on drives and while doing household chores,
while doing so many other things. Anyway, about manners. My
(46:18):
grandmother was a stickler for good manners, as were my parents.
I passed out on to Grant and we have often
been told how good manners make situations so much easier.
I was recently asking in a professional development setting what
the best advice for life I ever received was, and
obviously I responded with what I told my kid and
now stepkids. Manners are free and they're a social lubricant.
(46:41):
It always gets a laugh and then once considered a
nod and oh, that's right.
Speaker 2 (46:45):
And then everybody has a sandwich and goes their separate.
Speaker 1 (46:49):
Wings the dining table. If someone forgets their napkin on
their lap or cuts their food all at once instead
of eating it bite by bite, my partner and I
will say if you were invited to dine with the queen,
And it always gets a big eye roll and giggle
at the table and make sure that the napkins are
also in lapse though, and the food is cut properly.
(47:09):
It's a fun game for all. I hope you have
a marvelous day. Can't wait to hear the next episode
after all these years. Stuff you should know is rock
and roll nice?
Speaker 3 (47:19):
That was Amanda, That was Amanda.
Speaker 1 (47:21):
Manners are free, though, I like that. I don't know
so much. The social lubricant part I might lose because
manners are free is just so succinct.
Speaker 2 (47:29):
So I kind of like that, you know, I was thinking, Remember,
I was kind of railing about elbows on the table
just being so dated and unnecessary. I've been thinking about
it since then, and while I still agree that it's
a great example of people being overly uptight about manners,
as if their identity is associated with it, and if
you violate it, you're somehow insulting them, I disagree with
that part. But I realized that being aware of whether
(47:53):
your elbows are on the table or not makes you
more aware of everything you're surrounding, the people with you,
the food you're eating.
Speaker 1 (48:00):
Yeah, it just makes you.
Speaker 2 (48:03):
So I'm kind of done with you keeping your elbows
up the table, not because somebody told you to, because
you can do whatever you want as far as your
elbows are concerned, as long as you don't put them
in somebody else's space, but because it makes you more mindful.
Speaker 1 (48:16):
Don't dip your elbows in your partner soup. But I
do want to say there's a couple of elbows on
the table methods though, if you're if you're in the
middle of eating and you've got like your elbow on
the table and your hunch forward and you're eating with
the other hand. I think that's kind of the rule.
But like, if you're eating and you're done and you're
having conversation, to push the plate away and put both
(48:39):
elbows on the table and pat your hands together in
a pensive way while you think of something smart and funny. Like,
that's a whole different deal.
Speaker 3 (48:45):
Yeah, well that's elegant.
Speaker 2 (48:47):
So I've been training myself by putting the little dab
of Momo's poop on each of my elbows right before
dinner to make sure that I don't put them on
the dinner table.
Speaker 3 (48:57):
It's working really well.
Speaker 1 (48:58):
That poop stays on your elbows belongs.
Speaker 2 (49:01):
That was from Amanda, what was your son's name? The
one you inspired.
Speaker 1 (49:05):
Grant who has been listening since eleven and is now
you know, sixty.
Speaker 3 (49:09):
That's awesome.
Speaker 2 (49:09):
Thanks for listening to us, Amanda and Grant, and thank
you for listening to this episode.
Speaker 3 (49:13):
And if you want to get in touch with us.
Speaker 2 (49:15):
Like Amanda did and Grant by proxy, you can send
us an email to Stuff Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1 (49:25):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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