"Bath salts" will make you chew someone's face off

JESUS FUCKING CHRIST WHAT THE FUCK I DON'T EVEN

So what in the holy hell is this new PCP-like fucking monster-creation substance? Some shit I never heard of before:

They just call them "bath salts" so they can market them without having to claim they're not going to fucking KILL YOU IF YOU EAT THEM. Designer drugs: just say no!

The hideous irony here is that this shit is much, much, MUCH worse for you than various other "designer drugs" that have already been outlawed. But this shit is not really outlawable yet as the technology hasn't caught up. Result: the most easily available designer drugs are rapidly becoming much more toxic and psychosis-inducing. Fucking hell, this drug war sucks.

This is all so horrible I couldn't bring myself to post it in any forum other than this one.

...And yes I see this was already posted elsewhere on Broken, but let's face it, it belongs here. AAAH GOD I JUST MADE A DISGUSTING INADVERTENT PUN

Heh, I'm not sure if I should be more disturbed about the act itself, or the fact that my only reaction to this is one of dull surprise (should clarify, though, that I'm horrified at the whole 'face-eating' thing... just not too surprised).

Then again, I know about bath salts and how they'll fuck you up, as they've been a common topic (as has Florida, oddly enough) on a show I watch that chronicles humanity's commitment to sparkle motion each week. While the particular act is new, the general batshit crazy isn't.

In summary: Bath salts are bad, m'kay?

I don't understand the allure of such a drug. If it makes your body temp spike, makes you aggressive, etc., what is it about that experience that's attractive? GOTTA GET ME SUMMA THAT SHIT SO I CAN EAT A DUDE'S FACE.

First off, face-eater guy story doesn't have anything very convincing in the way of evidence - the wire stories are quoting a policeman and an ER person both basically saying "it could've been new LSD" or "it could have been bath salts," and given that bath salts are the latest OMG FREAK OUT PCP terror drug du jour, that's not saying much.

That isn't to say that it might not well have been drugs that caused psychotic/dissociative effects, but this is just spitballing from what I've read. And kind of amusingly old-fashioned spitballing; if it'd been a few decades before I'm sure the policeman might have mentioned that it could've been marihuana cigarettes.

The appeal of "bath salts," as far as I know, is that they're a stimulant, so, same reasons people take cocaine or amphetamines. As for why that and not one of the less unpredictable ones, who knows. Cost, availability, some subjective preference that makes sense to the user?

Word, Jason T. I'd like to remind everybody that LSD was supposed to make everybody jump out of windows and reefer was supposed to make you and your delinquent friends rob banks. And that's before we even get to the rough stuff like comic books and rock music.

Agitated Psychosis would be a great name for a band.

Yeah, it was "bath salts", not the beginning of the zombie plague. Nothing to worry about! Just some crazy kids and their wacky drugs, never know what they're cooking up in those basement labs ha-ha ha-ha go get the shotgun and don't ask any questions movemovemove

I saw the story of that guy a day or two ago but didn't actually read it because it was on the way to reading my ever-so-important emails about which of my friends have birthdays this week, so I didn't have any context for this and my first thought was that the crazy guy was legitimately trying to claim he ate some actual bath salts and they made him do it.

So that was interesting.

Just because the drug warriors made bullshit claims about the toxicity/psychoactivity of pot and LSD doesn't mean that their claims about pyrovalerones are bogus. PCP really does fuck you up psychotically and dissociatively, so there's no a priori reason to believe that pyrovalerones don't. Wikipedia certainly doesn't much disagree with Mr. WebMD's characterization.

And yes, the reason people take these is because they are currently street-legal. They are sold in head shops and online stores. Just like "spice," bullshit "synthetic THC" with serious lung-damaging qualities, this crap is being synthesized into new brain-fucking derivatives every week, as the chemists try to stay ahead of the cops and their testing technology. That's what I meant above: this crap is quite possibly worse for you than cocaine or ecstasy, yet it is much more available because it's nominally legal.

I'm not saying that there aren't drugs that can be more dangerous than others, although for the record I've done PCP and didn't turn psychotic. What I am saying is that the media will often wildly overstate these claims, especially when a new drug shows up.

MDPV and Mephedrone are both illegal in the US.

Debatable!

Same here. I first thought was it must be PCP, then I saw bath salts. Bath salts, really? And here I was thinking lavender was meant to be soothing.

Before he took PCP, he was simply known as "kevin".

Scratch that off the bucket list.

Radio Dead Air, I assume?

I know that video, I think I watched it on TV as a kid, but I can't remember what it's from. And the boy was from On Golden Pond (oh, the shame that I know that).

Yep. IIRC, Nash outright refused to run this story, too. Totally understandable, considering.

And Marijuana makes you go crazy and jump out of windows. I.E. do not believe what the government says about drugs, ever.

One for the forum subtitle rotation.

That sounds pretty alluring, I'll grant you, but take my word for it: eating a dude's face is not as much fun as you might think.

Yeah! Even his forum handle says so.

it's spreading.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/ma...dismemberment-follow-20120531,0,4066697.story

http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/05/31/zombie-alert-man-throws-his-own-intestines-at-police/

This is exactly how the early stages of a zombie outbreak would be covered by the media. Take from that what you will.

The news says that there's nothing to worry about. If they go off the air four hours from now, it's probably just technical difficulties.

Anyone else going to buy a gun and lots of bullets after work?

I'm keeping my machete in an easily-reachable location, just in case.

Swords don't need reloading.

As a counterpoint to the 'bath salts' thing, face-nommer's girlfriend has a different view on what caused him to go nuts: Voodoo!

http://now.msn.com/now/0531-zombie-salts-curse.aspx

Here's a snippet from the MSN article, though the article itself's pretty short...

So yeah! A more plausable theory, or total bullshit? I'm leaning towards the latter, but hey. You decide!

All I know is, it's suddenly become hilarious that I just bought Yakuza: Dead Souls two days ago...

EDIT: Oh, preemptive warning... the comments on that article are just... yeah. I recommend avoiding them like the (zombie) plague.

Amateurs. I have a wrench and a flash light.

I have a wriggling alien spider-like thing that is SO CUTE, especially when it bounces over and jumps on your head.

Ten days later and still no evidence the guy was on bath salts, btw. Loving the media's hysterical panic over their bath salt zombie epidemic, though.

If it wasn't bath salts, it must have been either salvia or jenkum.

It's totally scramp, man. Fucking kids are scramping constantly now.

Nuke.