Sometimes cops don’t want you to have a well kept lawn

April 21, 2012 9:50 AM

Do Anything Stoned with Marty Adams presents: How To Mow Your Yard on PCP. [SLYT]
posted by quin (59 comments total)

Does this notion of PCP turning people into maniacs who feel no pain come from 70s and 80s afterschool specials and isolated incidents? Speaking completely anecdotally, my experience is that smoking PCP leads to vegging out to Black Sabbath and forgetting what time it is more than anything else.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 9:57 AM on April 21, 2012 [2 favorites]

Detaining naked people is tricky.
posted by carsonb at 9:57 AM on April 21, 2012

When he starts out for gas, he's got just a bit of the high-stepping moonwalk thing going on. He could have played up the over-extended over-intentional movements a little more. And maybe a couple of drooling, shaking little seizures.
posted by StickyCarpet at 10:04 AM on April 21, 2012 [1 favorite]

Marisa: this is more anecdote than anything else but my father, who is an emergency room doctor, has said more than once that as far as he's concerned PCP is the nastiest drug he's encountered. He has definitely mentioned patients who have broken limbs without noticing, who have been violent and difficult to restrain without causing them to hurt themselves. I have no reason to believe that my father was lying to me for the sake of trying to scare me straight or anything like that, so I imagine it must happen at least some of the time.
posted by Scientist at 10:05 AM on April 21, 2012 [4 favorites]

Whenever I want to do a little gardening on PCP, I prefer a little light weeding and edge trimming.
posted by jimmythefish at 10:06 AM on April 21, 2012 [3 favorites]

Also, I have to say that I didn't really find that video particularly funny. It kinda squicked me out a bit, not just because of the police and the yelling and the toes, but also because someone who is actually having an experience like that should probably be helped, rather than laughed at.
posted by Scientist at 10:11 AM on April 21, 2012 [3 favorites]

I have no reason to believe that my father was lying to me for the sake of trying to scare me straight or anything like that, so I imagine it must happen at least some of the time.

Thanks, I'm glad to get that sort of cross-section on it. Even if he'd be more likely to see people who do not take well to PCP, as hippybear pointed out, disassociatives most certainly will affect people in different ways. I can totally see how feeling no pain combined with not differentiating between real and unreal would lead to bad results in some people.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 10:12 AM on April 21, 2012

Don't most people who use PCP use it in conjunction with other drugs? Or am I just confusing gritty crime dramas with reality again.
posted by Brocktoon at 10:17 AM on April 21, 2012

Does this notion of PCP turning people into maniacs who feel no pain come from 70s and 80s afterschool specials and isolated incidents?

The pharmacodynamics of dissocsiative anesthetics like phencyclidine (PCP) are pretty fascinating and not easily quantifiable. This is pretty interesting read and covers the various behavioral and physical effects of PCP.

I didn't find that video was all that funny or entertaining. Meh.
posted by OsoMeaty at 10:18 AM on April 21, 2012 [3 favorites]

I believe you scientist, but how many drunk people do doctors deal with who have similar symptomes? I have a hard time believing that heavy alcohol use is less destructive
posted by WhitenoisE at 10:21 AM on April 21, 2012

You're going to hold it in for about 20 seconds, or until your vision begins to vibrate. At that point, you can start your car and you'll be good to go.
posted by aconcagua at 10:23 AM on April 21, 2012 [20 favorites]

FAKE.
posted by chavenet at 10:26 AM on April 21, 2012 [3 favorites]

Most of the horrible experiences I've heard about from friends came from their use of PCP. I'm amazed anybody would ever consider using it.

But I think Marty Adams is funny.
posted by mrhappy at 10:28 AM on April 21, 2012

how many drunk people do doctors deal with who have similar symptomes?

What, of breaking their arms while fighting against restraints, biting through their tongues, thrashing and screaming abuses? Not many, I imagine. I mean, my dad has certainly seen his share of people who as having a bad time with all kinds of drugs and combinations thereof, alcohol being probably the most common, and he definitely reports PCP as being in a league of its own as far as how scary and unpleasant it can get from an observer's perspective.

That doesn't mean that PCP will always cause that reaction, or that it will cause a bad reaction more often than any other drug you might choose to name, or that other drugs (e.g. alcohol) don't also give people a bad time sometimes, or that other drugs might feel worse to those experiencing them than PCP even if those suffering under their effects appear calmer on the outside. All I'm saying is that in the opinion of one particular person who has seen pretty much all the bad stuff that drugs have to offer many times over, the bad times that people sometimes have on PCP appear to be worse than those for any other drug.

I realize that that's not exactly strong evidence in support of "PCP is the worst drug" or anything like that, which is why I disclaimed it as anecdote. However my father's descriptions of the negative effects that can happen to people who use that particular drug have stuck with me over the years, and have caused me to make a personal decision to place PCP on my mental list of Drugs to Avoid along with methamphetamines, datura, crack cocaine, heroin, and ketamine.
posted by Scientist at 10:37 AM on April 21, 2012 [4 favorites]

When I was young and adventurous, I smoked a cigarette that was laced with angel dust. It was given to me by a pot dealer in Washington Square park. But just like the phony pot they sell, the "Sherm" wasn't any good either! Honestly, I don't think I tried any real drugs until I moved out to California in my mid-20s.
posted by cazoo at 10:45 AM on April 21, 2012 [2 favorites]

Don't most people who use PCP use it in conjunction with other drugs? Or am I just confusing gritty crime dramas with reality again.

Well, they might, but PCP will fuck you up all by itself. Where I grew up in the 70's/80's, the common method of intake was to dip cigarettes into liquid PCP and smoke them. (This led to many news stories of toddlers being poisoned by eating "dips".)

It was sort of considered a blue-collar/Hell's Angel's/cholo drug, and since the only way you could get it was by dealing with relatively insular groups of people, I've only personally known one person who has ever experienced it and he was dosed without his knowledge. Not that I've ever had any interest in trying it myself, but I didn't know anyone who wanted to cultivate friendships with serious gangbangers just to check out angel dust.
posted by oneirodynia at 10:48 AM on April 21, 2012 [1 favorite]

From OsoMeaty's pharmacological link:

PCP has reinforcing effects in all animal species in which it has been studied...
posted by StickyCarpet at 10:54 AM on April 21, 2012

Scientist, and his father, are right. I ran a large emergency psychiatric service for 20+ years. PCP is not a drug od choice for people who want to remain intact and functional. Sure, alcohol is by far the most abused but you get to have a lot of practice before it completes its work ( unless you are driving, carrying a gun or thinking that mixing drugs will be even more fun).
posted by rmhsinc at 11:07 AM on April 21, 2012 [2 favorites]

PCP is a hell of a drug. Dr. Zoidberg at 0:30 in the second video.
posted by thewalrus at 11:18 AM on April 21, 2012 [1 favorite]

I won't argue with the emergency room stats, just offer my own experience.

I did PCP twice (by mistake, I was told it was mescaline) and didn't go fucking crazy. First time, it was a strictly indoor adventure which consisted of sitting for a long time, talking, then standing up (it felt like riding a glass elevator up a fifty floor building), walking across the room (it felt like a nine hour journey), looking into a mirror for a while with a friend who was also high (we concluded it would make a great album cover), then walking back across the room (another long journey) and sitting down again. Then I drove home and didn't crash.

Second time was during daylight hours. We (myself and two friends) decided we needed to check out the outside world. We walked around the block and though things were decidedly strange (like being stuck in a 60s European art film), none of us attacked any pregnant mothers or otherwise did anything overtly INSANE. Except one guy was getting a bit paranoid.

Final thought. Listening to music didn't really work, particularly if there was a lot of rhythm involved. It just sort of fell apart, became noise. Which was my number one takeaway from the experiences. "Fuck mescaline. It makes music suck." Which is what twigged another friend's curiosity about it. He asked a few questions about the nature of the high, then laughed. "Man, that wasn't mescaline. You got dusted."
posted by philip-random at 11:19 AM on April 21, 2012

Things like how PCP has these kinds of non-intuitive, unpredictable, and variable effects that users don't see until its already to late but that ER doctors like Scientist's father do constantly are why I get SO FUCKING MAD when our medical and scientific infrastructure are co-opted for political purposes to lie to us and our children.

I went to a magnet High School and just about every time I was sat down for 'presentations' about the effects of drugs it either became quickly apparent that either we knew more than the presenter as we ran circles around them tearing them apart, or that they were current drug users happy to deviate from the script and just beg us to stay out of jail. We were perfectly aware of the congressional mandate to only fund research questions related to currently illegal drugs that are likely to show harm, and how that would naturally defund any researchers who failed to do so; scientific inquiry be damned. We recognized the long discredited studies from the 70s that were being cited to show harms that didn't make any logical sense. We knew we were being lied to, we knew not to trust a damn thing we were told, and so we were never actually educated about the real and often fucked up effects that many drugs genuinely have.

For fucks sake right here we are a forum full of intelligent adults with the world's libraries at our fingertips and still we are reduced to trading anecdotes for lack of trustworthy and accessible information about trivially verifiable effects of an important and common compound. Fuck that noise. Drug abuse is a public health problem that fundamentally cannot be addressed with the dishonesty that currently dominates the public sphere. It is almost as if we are addicted to that classically Puritan fear of someone somewhere having fun, as well as the virulent racism inherent in the drug war and the convenient excuse of how the poor are poor because their drugs are so much more immoral than those of the rich.
posted by Blasdelb at 11:33 AM on April 21, 2012 [28 favorites]

Hey, you know what's cute and charming and whimsical? My Drunk Kitchen.

You know what's not? And, additionally, is derivative and joyless?
posted by gurple at 11:34 AM on April 21, 2012 [4 favorites]

As a paramedic, I can tell you - anecdotally - that yes, people who smoke PCP sometimes do go on insane, naked rampages, storming down the street covered in blood, punching out every car window they come across. There's a lot of bullshit scaremongering about drugs, but let's not pretend that they are actually unreservedly good.
posted by Tiresias at 11:36 AM on April 21, 2012 [5 favorites]

Don't think anyone's pretending PCP is unreseveredly good.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 11:47 AM on April 21, 2012 [2 favorites]

Are there any statistics out there on PCP usage in the US over the years? I did a bit of googling but couldn't find anything current.
posted by sciencegeek at 11:48 AM on April 21, 2012

Or unreservedly good, either.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 11:48 AM on April 21, 2012

I do wonder why meth is mentioned so much in US media but I have never seen it mentioned in Dutch or European media.
posted by joost de vries at 12:15 PM on April 21, 2012

PCP is a hell of a drug.

The first guy sounded familiar, now I remember why.
posted by Blue Meanie at 12:24 PM on April 21, 2012

Obligatory: Last week, I wrestled the Brooklyn Bridge!
posted by graftole at 12:27 PM on April 21, 2012

I do wonder why meth is mentioned so much in US media but I have never seen it mentioned in Dutch or European media.

Joost, meth started getting US news coverage once it became a huge problem in US rural areas. It had been mostly under the radar as a California and biker drug for decades, but once it spread to the midwest usage exploded because it can be made with chemicals commonly used for farming and there are lots of out of the way places to make it there.
posted by Blue Meanie at 12:40 PM on April 21, 2012

No, THIS is obligatory: Gardening on Salvia.
posted by norm at 1:11 PM on April 21, 2012 [5 favorites]

PCP is not the worst drug. If there is such a thing as a worst drug then that dubious honor goes to Krokodil. Don't look it up if you don't want you day ruined.
posted by Hairy Lobster at 1:13 PM on April 21, 2012 [4 favorites]

In "Angel Dust: an Ethnographic Study of the PCP Users" Feldman, Agar and Beschner dispel the myth of intrinsic violence in PCP users, and show that most people's experiences with PCP are non-violent and are enjoyable (as one might expect if not making unreasonable assumptions that illicit drug use is intrinsically self-harm or self-hate); this is what leads people to take PCP voluntarily.

For one sincerely interested in an equitable look at the reality of PCP use and not just street legends and propaganda, I can hardly recommend a better source. Perhaps needless to say: I found this video unfunny, trite and boring.
posted by Matt Oneiros at 1:23 PM on April 21, 2012 [1 favorite]

Krokodil. Don't look it up if you don't want you day ruined.

And especially don't look at any pictures associated with the drug.... really.
posted by Huck500 at 1:29 PM on April 21, 2012 [1 favorite]

That would have been a lot more funny if he'd really been on PCP.
posted by dunkadunc at 1:47 PM on April 21, 2012 [2 favorites]

I can only comment out of personal experience with dextromethorphan hydrobromide (DXM) as mentioned by hippybear earlier. At one point in my life I managed to get a hold of some pure DXM. At the time I was in a really confused state life-wise and it greatly helped me question some of my most closely held thoughts and beliefs. Those experiences stick with me to this day and I am incredibly grateful to them for making me a better person. Maybe one day I'll try LSD and become a super-person! :-P

Also, the best things to watch while doing disassociatives are Baraka and Koyaanisqatsi.
posted by pyrex at 1:51 PM on April 21, 2012

I wonder how much of the PCP-makes-you-a-homicidal-maniac thing comes from this guy.

Almost entirely off-topic, but according to the first version of the story that I heard, whoever reported him to the police had found him naked, standing in the middle of the street, covered in blood, and staring at the moon with a sad and confused look on his face. Something about that last bit has always struck me as unbearably poetic, though I've never found any evidence that it wasn't just a weird melancholy embellishment that got tacked on as the story was being passed around urban-legend-style.
posted by nebulawindphone at 1:59 PM on April 21, 2012 [2 favorites]

Honestly the only reports of someone violent on PCP that I've seen on tape is a segment I caught on some episode of "Cops", and this .GIF where a guy punches through a fence.. because LOL BLACK PEOPLE AND FRIED CHICKEN AMIRITE.

Sadly, I think that about sums up the general public's understanding of most drugs.
posted by pyrex at 2:17 PM on April 21, 2012

fantastic, so true to life. i have personally seen this play out in real life. my compliments to the documentarian.
posted by goutytophus at 2:22 PM on April 21, 2012 [1 favorite]

PCP is invaluable as a lawn-care tool.

Here's how:

1. Administer an appropriate dose of PCP to your rampaging bull elephant.

2. When the beast is tranquil, yoke it to a reel mower.

3. Ride elephant around yard.

Don't forget to wear sunscreen!
posted by BitterOldPunk at 2:30 PM on April 21, 2012 [1 favorite]

Alonzo Harris: Didn't know you liked to get wet, dog.
Jake Hoyt: What's "wet"?
Alonzo Harris: Butt-naked. Ill. Sherms. Dust. PCP. Primos. P-Dog. That's what you had. That's what you were smoking, you couldn't taste it?
posted by porn in the woods at 2:30 PM on April 21, 2012

This is your lawn.
(patchy overgrown backyard)
This is your lawn on drugs.
(naked man carrying lawn mower down street while screaming)

This was funny. Thanks for the link.
posted by spoobnooble II: electric bugaboo at 2:52 PM on April 21, 2012

someone who is actually having an experience like that should probably be helped, rather than laughed at.

Isn't that the case with most things that are funny?
posted by Saxon Kane at 2:55 PM on April 21, 2012

"Isn't that the case with most things that are funny?

Because LOLLLLLLlllllllll.....
posted by pyrex at 3:08 PM on April 21, 2012

I don't have any experience with pcp, but I've seen people do scary shit on both K and DXM. I've got no doubt that any of them could lead to scarily violent behavior.

It gets scary usually when people do a huge amount of it but have enough tolerance that they're still up and moving around when most people would be laid out on the couch.
posted by empath at 3:11 PM on April 21, 2012 [1 favorite]

someone who is actually having an experience like that should probably be helped, rather than laughed at.

Isn't that the case with most things that are funny?

I just laughed at your comment. Does that mean you need help?
posted by philip-random at 3:16 PM on April 21, 2012

Empath, I'd love to heard more about what your fellow peeps did on DXM? Mostly because I am someone who had gained a great amount of knowledge through said chemical and loved every second of it.
posted by pyrex at 3:26 PM on April 21, 2012

Mostly just being wildly incoherent, stumbling around, being really hard to calm down, etc. We had to physically restrain one of my friends to stop him from hurting himself.

But keep in mind I'm talking about people doing huge amounts of it.

Just because you had a good experience on a drug doesn't mean you always will.
posted by empath at 3:41 PM on April 21, 2012 [1 favorite]

That video was hilarious!

But, just to add to the PCP anecdotes, I haven't been shy about trying a lot of hard drugs (once, in controlled situations, with people I trust) and it remains the one drug I won't touch based on friends' experiences. A good friend of mine in high school bummed a cigarette off an older student in the school smoking pit, only to have the guy run up to him when he was half way through smoking it and tell him to butt it out immediately. Turned out it was one of those liquid-dipped creations oneirodynia describes up above. He wound up hallucinating and freaking out in class, and being sent to the hospital. But it was the flashback stories that really scared me (this was a guy who hadn't even smoked pot in his life). He said up to six months later, he would experience incidents like sitting at home on the computer, only to look down and watch his leg melt down, then reform slowly back upwards. Still makes my skin crawl to this day.
posted by mannequito at 4:29 PM on April 21, 2012

I would think the image of PCP stems from a combination of truth and that time keyboard cat played Helen Hunt off.
posted by drjimmy11 at 4:42 PM on April 21, 2012

Metafilter: a combination of truth, PCP and keyboard cat
posted by rainy at 5:22 PM on April 21, 2012

He said up to six months later, he would experience incidents like sitting at home on the computer, only to look down and watch his leg melt down, then reform slowly back upwards.

You friend was pulling your leg.
posted by empath at 6:12 PM on April 21, 2012 [3 favorites]

You friend was pulling your leg.

Yes, thank you. Not to play Drugs Olympics here, but "flashbacks" are, if not completely urban myth, the result of repeated and prolonged, chronic use of a hallucinogen where you have literally trained your brain's visual cortex to be able to reorganize your ocular information into something entirely different, if for only a few seconds. "I took a few drags off a dusted cigarette and still get flashbacks" is Scott-Baio-in-a-rowboat-killing-his-friend-with-an-oar ridiculous.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 6:32 PM on April 21, 2012 [1 favorite]

I did a tour of duty as a psychedelic explorer and tried all of the usual party drugs along the way. PCP is definitely the last one I would ever do again (I'd sooner do a bump of crystal, at least you can look back 48 hours later and the house will be clean). PCP didn't make me get violent, but I did feel right on the edge of randomly acting out in a violent way the entire time.
There was a palpable urge to punch through something that I've never experienced before or since. It just seemed like a fun idea. My brain was not making much of a distinction between putting my fist through a glass window or someone's face, it just seemed fun. Really not sure how I resisted.
I experienced that high-step walk from the video, I always think of it as feeling like walking on marshmallows, but in the worst possible way. I was stuck at the bottom of a short staircase for an absurd period of time because handling 8 or 9 steps just seemed absolutely insurmountable.

In any case, the closest any anti-drug reefer madness type PSA has been to correct, in my experience, is regarding PCP. Do not recommend.
posted by FeralHat at 6:39 PM on April 21, 2012 [2 favorites]

. Not to play Drugs Olympics here, but "flashbacks" are, if not completely urban myth, the result of repeated and prolonged, chronic use of a hallucinogen where you have literally trained your brain's visual cortex to be able to reorganize your ocular information into something entirely different, if for only a few seconds.

So is this a proven fact? It's but one of many flashblack explanations I've heard over the years. The one that sounded the most realistic to me is that traces of a drug can be stored in fat cells, meaning 'flashbacks' are most likely to happen when a person hasn't eaten over a period of time and the body starts to eat into its reserves. But what do I know.
posted by mannequito at 7:58 PM on April 21, 2012

floam: "I'd like to see a 3D graph of all the drugs out there, with values plotted for their typical harm to the user, typical harm to others, and addiction potential, and even that probably isn't going to be all you need to really pick a worst drug."

Graph here.
posted by -->NMN.80.418 at 8:40 PM on April 21, 2012

The one that sounded the most realistic to me is that traces of a drug can be stored in fat cells, meaning 'flashbacks' are most likely to happen when a person hasn't eaten over a period of time and the body starts to eat into its reserves

Do you get drunk again if you don't eat for a while? Get a nicotine or a caffeine buzz?

Most likely explanation is a kind of PTSD. Drug states aren't entirely unlike some normal conscious states. People can daydream, get into trance like states, etc without any drugs at all, and I could see how a strong association of certain feelings with drugs could make people think they are experiencing the effect if a drug, even if they aren't. Tripping can be a surprisingly subtle thing. If you've ever bought fake acid, you've probably spent a couple hours genuinely unsure if you're actually high or not. I've had people swear to me the were tripping for hours before we agreed that what we had was fake.
posted by empath at 8:50 PM on April 21, 2012 [1 favorite]

It gets scary usually when people do a huge amount of it but have enough tolerance that they're still up and moving around when most people would be laid out on the couch.

Not unlike alcohol, really...
posted by en forme de poire at 12:00 AM on April 22, 2012

I've experienced LSD "flashbacks", but they only last for a few seconds - just a spooky sensation of turning to jelly, usually triggered by some trippy musical effect, so it could just be a PTSD type thing
posted by moorooka at 3:07 PM on April 22, 2012