Stuff You Should Know - How PCP Works

Episode Date: July 13, 2023

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?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too. This is Stuff You Should Know about PCP. And yes, we're talking about the PCP you think we're talking about. The one from the, if you were a child of the 70s and 80s where you heard that your friends, friends cousin did it and they carved their face off with a butcher knife and then jumped off the building so they thought they could fly. Yes, as a matter of fact, that's exactly the PCP we're talking about.

Yeah. Um, which stands for, by the way, I'm going to attempt this chemical name. You ready? This one's easy. No pressure. Okay. I don't know how to say the ones. So I'm just going to say, I just ignored that part.

No, 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, phenyl cyclohexyl piperdine. And those in the know. Piperdine? Piperdine, piperdine, probably piperdine.

I think it's piperdine. Those in the know who don't smoke PCP, but still get it wrong. Piperidine. Oh, I actually took out a syllable this time. Oh, man, this is gold. So the people who study it call it fencyclydine. Oh, okay.

With a pH because it's fat. Yeah, and if you're wondering like, oh, I don't know why do people even study this old street drug from the 70s? It's because it wasn't always that. wondering like, oh, I don't know, people even study this old street drug from the 70s, it's because it wasn't always that. It was kind of the precursor to ketamine in a lot of ways, which we'll talk about here and there.

And if you think, well, people study ketamine, the party drug, well, that's true too, because both PCP and ketamine had legitimate uses and were created for legitimate uses, like many drugs, recreational drugs. The Germans gave us both heroin and PCP. I think in 1926 German chemists created PCP. I'm not sure what they were creating it for. I think this is a time of experimentation and chemistry where you just put stuff together and saw what happened. Sure. So it sat on the shelf for almost 30 years before Park Davis, 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 gangbusters tranquilizer, sedative, something.

Let's forget what to do with this, because I just smoked some outback, and I feel like a million bucks. Yeah, I gotta tell you, we should use this stuff. So they looked at it as an anesthetic at first, and I think it first came to market in the mid-50s, and by 1965, they had removed it from the market. 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.

Yeah, we should have led with that. Sure. Like what if someone heard the first, what is this four minutes of the episode? It turned it off. They're like, I gotta go try PCP. 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 80s. You're going to jump off the building because you think you can fly kind of thing. It's just not a drug you want to do. Like you said, uses, well, I don't think we've even said it yet. Uses really dropped off over the years. It was a very much a bigger deal in the 1970s and 80s. I think stats that the grabster found for us saw that between 76 and 77 use among high school students doubled. And in 1979 study, 7% of high school seniors reported having used PCP in the last year, uh, in 2013, that was

down to less than 1% and then in 2020, though the, the stats are a little bit different. Um, I think it went down to like 0.002% of the country, not just high school students. So of adults. Yeah, like 52,000 people, um, well, adults, it says 12 and over. Hey, you're old enough to smoke PCP, you're old enough to be considered an adult. That's right, but you can't vote. No, you said that. It doesn't matter what age you are. If you smoke a lot of PCP, you probably shouldn't vote anyway. Right. Oh, I thought you were going to say that you've earned the right to vote. No, no, I think the opposite, maybe. I don't know. So all that to say, it used to be a pretty frequent 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 largely the same thing and that became, I guess, the trendier drug to use. Yes, but it has remained in fashion in certain pockets, especially deep in the inner cities of Washington, D.C. Kansas City. I believe, what's a town in Connecticut? Oh, what's a town in Connecticut? Hartford? I don't know if it's Hartford, but there's at least two towns in Connecticut that have a lot of PCP use.

And they think I read this really great article and vice about why America's the only country in the world, basically literally, where people use PCP. Still or ever? Ever. Like every day. Well, ever. Ever. Like, ever do. As well, ever.

Yeah, never really made it out of America. It was written by Max daily in Sam Irravanis. 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, Academy and Replace it is because the people who do use it tend to be marginalized,

unemployed, black, inner city, men, ages, mid 20s to mid 50s, or 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 is how they put it. And that will come up later too, because some of the myths around it seem to be tied to the people who use it. And that will come up later too because some of the myths around it seem to be tied to the people who use it. Now, I'm not a very smart person, but 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? 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, crypts, floods. Because we're then, how does it get to these two weird specific places in Connecticut? Right. Those cities that still do, and have always smoked PCP, it's always been around. Our cities that have like, clearly some, somewhere or another very deep ties to those same LA street gangs because it's really hard to distribute PCP. They're interesting. Really hard.

So for it to show up in Connecticut from LA, there's some, there's like somebody's cousin lives there and is controlling the PCP market and they're getting it directly from somebody in LA who knows a chemist who will go out into the desert and make them PCP all day long. Oh, that makes sense because I just, I don't know, it seems like there would be like a Walter Whites and Connecticut or something, but they're still out in the desert. Yes, supposedly it's all coming out from LA. And 78 is when the United States government said, all right, this thing is officially a schedule to control substance, which means, you know, a lot of things we've talked about, the different drug schedules, but it means that it's prevalence of abuse is a big deal 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 covered all those before. Yeah and in fact it shares a precursor drug pyrodean with crystal meth but it's not that. No it is not and it actually does have an aesthetic effects like one of the side effects of ingesting PCP one way or another is like not only do you not really feel pain, 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 you can't ban him. Sure.

Yeah. You have to add the essentially though. No. Sure. Yeah. You have to add the essentially though. No. Common essentially. Sure. But one of the reasons why PCP 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 anything like that. So it really made a ketamine in particular, found a great use as a battlefield sedative for surgery in Vietnam, where somebody might have lost a lot of blood. They couldn't handle a traditional sedative or anesthesia. So they gave them ketamine and it did the same trick without dropping their blood pressure even

further. Yeah. 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 sure sure, it's gotta be somewhere, right? If it isn't, it's coming back soon because the 90s are so hot right now. Yeah, somebody's out there raving with their big, they're not bell bottoms even.

What were the, did those have a name? It's just the pants. It's just like the pants that have like two foot. What's it called there at the bottom? What's the bottom of your pants like called? The cuff? The bottom? You were those big pants?

Yeah, they didn't, but the whole leg was like that, essentially, it was just the waist that was a generally normal size. The legs were huge, believe me buddy, I had more than one pair of those. I thought they flared, oh, I had to do anything to see you in a pair of those. I had some cool ones too, but I also had some uncool ones. We used to, when we lived in these

warehouses in the west end of Atlanta in 99, 2000, and this was, there was a big rave loft over there. Like people would drive from different states to go to these things, thousands of kids, and we just just sit around and play pavement and laugh and make fun of those fans. And they were doing ketamine, ketamine, ketamine, and you're like, like, a those losers. Probably, but what I was going with all this was, I guess it makes sense why 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. No, and and in fact it can actually increase your heart rate and do all sorts of other weird stuff to you and the what's what's really odd about 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'll become apparent. What do you think? Yeah, let's do it. So it's considered a N-methal-D-aspertate antagonist, NMDA antagonist. And NMDA receptors are really important as far as things like memory formation, neuroplasticity, very important stuff. But what they're triggered by glutamate and what PCP does is it prevents those NDMA 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 as what it is. A whole host of other stuff happens, like dopamine, and norepinephrine get released. Those two anceratonein, their reuptake is inhibited, so they're floating around in your brain even longer. So that's all the good feely stuff. Right. Your opioid receptors are stimulated as a result. your receptors are stimulated as a result, your nicotinic receptors, which control things like your neuromuscular activity, rapid neural transmission essentially, and then your muscarinic activity, which includes breathing, your pupil, 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 nuts and effect it has on your brain so that you can cycle between like other sedation to the point of kettonia and between that and serious agitation where like you see videos of people who are being arrested and they're not like hitting the ground even though they're getting sprayed and 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 fact that it affects your ability to receive glutamate in your NMDA receptors. Yeah. And we'll talk a bit more about that sort of reputation as like a superhuman strength.

Like, you know, takes 12 cops to subdue someone on PCP thing in a little bit. What were those people on those videos that you sent me? Academy. Was it? Okay, so Josh sent me some videos and people, I guess, the next day or whatever on ketamine. All right, I assume it was the next day. I think it was hours later.

It was like so much. It was like so much, typically. Yeah, and they were almost all of them when they were walking like down the sidewalk or whatever had this backward lean Mm-hmm as if they were walking up like a very very steep hill, but it was on solid ground Mm-hmm. 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, he had a hard time.

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 stupid around in the daylight when people are going to work in stuff. 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 can tell they suspect that they might be.

So it's kind of funny in a way, but it's really not when you really think about it. Well, watching them play it off or try to play it off and just fail utterly at it, that's that's objectively funny to see. Well, and it doesn't help that they did the stay in alive Bee Gees song. Yeah. Cut to it. There was my friend and college used to call, not on drugs, but if you were drunk and you were trying to play it off,

like you were a super sober and walking around, he called that sugar foot and, like you're not just like, oh, I'm just gonna walk down the street, you're thinking left foot, right foot. Everything's fine. Exactly. It called it sugar foot,

in which I always thought was kind of funny. Yeah, there's a term for that, a medical term for it. Corio 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 like, if you're also doing like you're also just like If you're dancing, it says you'll leave it though you don't mean to and you're trying really hard not to yeah exactly 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 know a little bit more about it. Yeah, and we'll talk about the association with marijuana too, in a little bit. But why don't we take a break, yeah? Yep.

All right, we'll put on stayin' alive and we'll stumble up the sidewalk and we'll be right back. From I Heart Podcasts, everyone has their limits. I never confronted a situation like this. I just thought it was just a really terrible moral thing. A line they won't cross. I was stunned and I just said, no.

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on the iHeart Radio app Apple Podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, so we talked a little bit about what PCP does to you in the brain and also how you can sugar foot up the street. But it's not like, even though it's used as an anesthetic that association with sleepiness isn't accurate, right? No, it's not. And like I said, you can go ketotonic with your eyes open, but you're still able to like move around and do things

that you just shouldn't be doing. Like I saw that people will frequently like try to get off the stretcher even though they're ketotonic. Yeah. And the reason why it's a dissociative and you feel not connected to your body. Your senses are coming in hot and weird

and not making any sense to you. You know, it removes ego boundaries. So you're 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. Right, I've heard dream like from, I, well to be honest, I've known people have done this and they've said Dreamlike. I can, I could imagine that. And then also one of the other things I saw

that I thought was just fascinating is that 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 now. Right. The whole time, time jump thing, right? Yeah, isn't that nuts? Yeah. And then of course, because it's a hypnotic sedative that affects your NMDA receptors that are involved in memory formation, you frequently black out.

Even though you're walking around doing stuff and even in reacting, you probably aren't gonna remember most of it. Yeah, big memory impacts. And the stuff comes on very quickly too, which is one of the, I think, historically, 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 i just overlooked it is how long it lasts uh... it can last for twenty four hours right it's 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 was thought that crack was some long-term thing but was shocked to learn it was just like a super quick high yet and i think this be, but it depends on how you take it, right? Should we talk about that? Yeah, there's different ways you can take it. So let's talk about that. Yeah, it used to be in the earlier days, it was like a liquid PCP, a lot of times that

you would take early, but very quickly, the most recreational users used it, like it came in like a crystalline powder, and they would typically smoke it or snort it, like a heroin or a cocaine, I guess. That became sort of the main way aside from, and again, as I said earlier, we were going to talk about the marijuana association. There was dipping a marijuana joint, or just a cigarettegae cigarette in liquid

PCP has You can do that with a lot of drugs are called wet drugs and it's a thing and There was some confusion about the names Because I heard I knew what shirm was Because I'd heard that in the movie from Tarantina movie which one was that really yeah, I think it was The one he wrote only was it true romance, huh? Or maybe it was pulp fiction it was Sam Jackson and he wasn't in true. No, I don't believe he was

That was Gary anyway you smoke enough shirm 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 it kind of like a prison drug a lot of times, because that was something that you could get apparently easier than regular part drugs. And 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 in PCP. 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 in bombing fluid as well. So what I found from my research is that, so this is a big thing in like the mid 90s to the early 2000s. Oh, really? Yeah, and that if you were smoking in bombing fluid and you got high, it's because there was PCP

in that in bombing fluid. Oh, so it was mixed. And that it was, yes, and that it was a, I've read from somebody, a medical examiner who said, like, 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 high. Gotcha. And it might not even be embalming fluid in the first place, because PCP has kind of a very distinct, chemically smell and taste. And you could easily pass it off as involving 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 media or something. The slang term for PCP embalming fluid came to be accepted as, oh, teenagers are now smoking embalming fluid by the L7s. It ended up in the media and the, it became self perpetuating. I think some kind of particularly low intelligent drug dealers were like, oh we can sell embalming fluid, we're going to start robbing funeral homes and then actually started selling embalming fluid. And it was all just a comedy of errors. 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. Yeah, there's not really any drug ever. Crack used to come close in the 80s. 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 that urban legend becomes fact because the media reports it, 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, but it's exactly what you said is exactly right. There's so much disinformation on PCP is you just end up having to guess here there about what's true and what's not. 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 70s 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, you if you do PCP, there's a very good chance that you'll end up dead and not from like overdosing on PCP, but because you've done something crazy, like, you know, tried to bake yourself 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 legends about some friend of a friend or some friend's cousin who they know for sure did this and they fought 15 cops and of some kid who at a hockey game fought like 20 cops or something. And it's just so funny how those things proliferate. And we're not saying like in PCP it 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 is say we suspected they were on PCP and they had crazy look in their eyes and they were super strong. I mean, Rodney King was supposedly on PCP. You heard some cops yelling out the word dust at the beginning of that video. He's dusted. 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. Yeah, and in cop speak, he's dusted is raising the alarm that this person is going to try to kill all of us in possible 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 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. Just the fact that PCP gives people superhuman strength. They 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 if you strip away that argument,

like these police officers were led off for beating a man in a circle, 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. 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. Yeah, two out of like hundreds. 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, for what I saw, it amplifies your personality 20 times, I think is what one person put it. So if you want to beat up people anyway, and you're aggressive, anyway, then it might, yeah.

Then yes, that might be a problem. But you're not going to have superhuman strength. Potentially 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. Will stay in a lifeline. No, I had it on mute, So it's possible it was. Okay.

But he kept getting tased repeatedly and nothing. Yeah. He didn't have superhuman strength. He was just disassociated from his senses. Right. So he wasn't experiencing pain. So you will not move away from noxious stimuli, stimuli like bear spray or tasers because it's not coming through. That's not superhuman strength. That is not superhuman strength. There's also a really, really wide spread idea that at least one person on PCP is snapped perfectly good handcuffs because of the superhuman strength.

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 just a myth and it has been used it's been argued to target those marginalized communities who use pcp and use 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 not exist until the cops started being criticized for using excessive force. And they had the decision to either use their police baton, their night stick, or their gun. That's all they had.

And when they encountered PCP users, they needed another option. So that's why we have that stuff. That's why we have that stuff. That is why to subdue PCP users. That's why that whole industry exists. That's why it began. Is that why I have bear spray hanging up at my camp on the wall? That's right, because of PCP users in Washington, D.C. In any costume. I don't want to spray a bear, even. I don't, I think you're okay. If a bear's coming at you, you can spray that bear. I mean, I would.

And that's why it's there. I just said I don't want to. Like my first line of defense at camp is, I have an air horn. That's good. I so Annoying my friends drive away the bear drive away my friends air horns for the words. Yeah, Sunday morning Yeah, and then the bear spray would be the last resort. I'll tell you what you do chuck this what you do You got a bear coming at you. Mm-hmm. What is it, prostrate when you're face down? I don't remember. Let's say it is.

Okay. Yeah, I think it is, 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 thing, but with bear spray. It's a great idea. I think so too. I think we should go try it.

Elizabeth Banks should have made PCP bear instead of cocaine bear. I know we disagree about that. Yes, we do. 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 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. It's a mystery still like they've never had fully, oh nice. The person. Yeah. Okay. Well, they dosed, uh, some shoulder with PCP and dosed everyone who ate that

child, which was a lot or most of the crew. And, um, it really happened. And I think, um, uh, different stories come out of that, you know, I think some people had a really hard time. Some people probably loved it. Yeah, apparently there was a conga 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. Jim Cameron said that one of the crew members, I think he said a PA stabbed him in the face of the pen. Oh, wow.

He said he was just laughing, laughing, laughing about it. Like James Cameron was laughing about having been stabbed in the face of the pen. Uh, he, the PA said, this is for Avatar that hasn't even happened yet. Right. But this is, I think the, the biggest star that got it was Bill Paxton because they were shooting those current day shots in like Nova Scotia or something. Oh boy, I hope the old lady, old Rose didn't have it. She was at a restaurant, she did not. Man, could you imagine? No, that would be really bad. We don't want our senior friends taking PCP, especially not accidentally.

Her acting might have improved. You never know. I thought she did so, so she wouldn't worry about it in my opinion. So you want to take a break? Sure. Let's take a break and we'll come back and talk about some problems with getting high on PCP. From I Heart Podcasts, what in the hell is going on in here? Everyone has their limits. I had never confronted a situation like this. I just thought it was just a really terrible moral thing. Aligned they won't cross. I was stunned and I just said, no. We're killing people.

You may never have to face that decision. When you find yourself at that line, thoughts, racing, hearts, racing. And somebody needs to just for once give everybody the whole truth. Like, this is evil. And the only person who can sound the alarm is you. I wasn't just going to sit silently by.

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We're all crossing the line together. Listen to the Pimp House podcast on Wolfarel's Big Money Players Network players network on the iHeart Radio app Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. And, sincerely, your new Pimp House Daniel Van Kirk and Rory Skowler. Check one of the things about PCP that makes it so vexing 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 5 and 10 milligrams. I saw as low as 1. Yeah.

But after about 10 milligrams or maybe even at 10 milligrams, you might start exhibiting the exact same symptoms of somebody in the throes of a schizophrenic episode. Yeah. And we'll talk about them 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 shurn 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. No, but I read that you can control it much more easily. You just take a hit and wait a couple minutes and then if you start to come down, you take another hit and I saw it. Like an old cop say, you could, you know, if you smoke it, you know, with intent, I guess, you can stay high for 24 hours just from one, oneirm 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, I'm sure that's happened, but I kind of lump that in with that 80s hysteria of like, you know, you might come across a cigarette that's been laced with PCP that you don't know about, or by a marijuana joint, this laced with PCP, I'm sure that really didn't happen

very much. So no, it does not happen very much. Those stories are, they abound, but they're also really, really rare, but there, there, there are stories of people who have done horrific things on PCP. Sure. The, the qualifier is though that they already had pre-existing mental disorders.

And the PCP does 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've argued 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. Yeah, that's the one I've seen more often than anything else is it 100% will exacerbate something like that, but it can also, why can't we think of the word install?

Instill deliver produce produce produce produce gets a for any 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 skits of for any and you know how those two are related in humans yeah that's a big silver line they give PCP to primates and study what happens it to and how those two are related in humans. So that's a big muscle reliance. 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 with a lack of glutamate. Remember PCP inhibits glutamate and Alzheimer's results from, they think, an overabundance of glutamate in the brain. And so PCP has both of those effects. It can induce schizophrenia. It could treat Alzheimer's conceivably. So I think the fact that it has so many terrible myths around it has really made people cautious about suggesting doing research using PCP. Yeah, it's not like researching microdosing mushrooms or something like that.

No, but there is a whole thread of inquiry into it to say like, okay, there's this is doing some stuff to the brain that we should be studying. Yeah, it can also induce seizures. It can really ramp up your heart rate. It can produce rapid and voluntary eye movement. It's called nice stagmus. 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 cartoon style. Yes, exactly. Yeah. 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. Yes, exactly.

That's what I was saying earlier, where you can just vacillate between extreme agitation and ketotonia 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 you probably have some really strange beliefs about yourself and your place in the universe. One of the big things that comes out of it, 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 God's do. 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 invinci- 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 do whatever I want. Again, not suggesting that it's like a motivational tool or something like that. But it's just one of the things that can happen. And then, conversely, if you are feeling like say socially anxious, you're probably going to experience profound paranoia. It'll amplify it one way or another. It's the same thing with LSD, that whole set and setting thing.

Right. So, um, what else is there, Chuck? Well, if you, um, become addicted to PCP, there isn't like a sort of a straight-ahead pharmaceutical treatment. It's going to, you know, you're going to have to wean yourself out of it through therapy. And treatment basically, I think Ed did find that chloroprot, here I go, chlor promazine, chlorpromazine, which is a drug, it can help reverse the effects if you're like overdosing on PCP, but it's not like the kind of thing you use to break an addiction. No, and you can get addicted. It does have a high incidence of dependence because it's quite scheduled to. Exactly. Not everything

scheduled to is actually addictive, but in this case, it's actually correct. It stimulates your reward center so much that produces you for you that you want it again, but also it can physically alter 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. So it's harder to feel good, even at a normal basis. And in turn, you end up having to ingest more and more amounts of CCP to get high. And that's a classic hallmark of dependency.

Yeah, classic hallmark of many drugs because you use more and more and then that just becomes more and more dangerous. Yeah, and market of many drugs because you use more and more and then that just becomes more and more dangerous. Yeah, and the withdrawal symptoms are really bad too. You can very frequently fall into major depression that can last weeks. Yeah. 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. Yeah. And it's not the 70s anyway.

What do you do on a PCP these days? Did you see that Saturday Night Live skit with Tracy Morgan and Will Ferrell and Matthew Broderick? No. Is that what you sent? Yes. My that that that link took me straight to a clip of the ladies man. Oh, right.

That's why I gave you the timestamp at the end. It's like at the end of that whole episode. All right, I missed that. I was like, what is a Ladies Man going to do with this? I was like, I love The Ladies Man bit, but- Right, no, he had nothing to do with it. So what was it? It was basically like inside the actor studio kind of type thing, but for comedy.

So it was real high brow Matthew Broderick's the host. Right. 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? It's a. It was Tracy Morgan. Yeah, Tracy Morgan was Zach or whatever. Will Farrell was orbit. And they played little clips from their record, their hit records from the 70s. And it's just them like screaming about how there's snakes in the toilet and shooting the toilet with a shotgun. It's really funny.

Even if the stuff is mythical, it's just so easy to make really hilarious jokes off of PCP. I mean, that's what comedy is. No one's going to come along and say, like, actually, this is not what PCP does. Right, exactly. That's good stuff. Yep. And then one other thing, if you want, maybe a less than accurate depiction of PCP, you

can check out the movie from 1982 called Desperate Lives. Was that the Helen Hunt? Yes. A teenage Helen Hunt smokes PCPP jumps out of a second story window in her high school and becomes paralyzed as a result. Yeah, was that an actual after school special? Or was it a... I don't know, it's possible. It had that stank. Yeah, definitely. It was definitely made for TV anti-drug movie, but I'm not sure if it came on after school or not. I remember, a very vivid memories of that one. And then I know I mentioned it before,

probably in one of the marijuana episodes. The Chachi in charge is the guy. Scott Beo. Scott Beo was in one of marijuana. And I remember that's the first time I heard a bong because he smoked out of a bong. And I had that bubbling and it's like, what is that? It sounds like rice crispies or 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. It's got Beo and Helen Hunt You should get those two together. Yeah, apparently Helen Hunt was in two anti PCP Oh, okay. I thought that one was an LSD one two PCPs. Yep good for her Yeah, that's how her career started. Yeah, and then she went on the star in the show Mad about PCP. That's right.

And then she did it guest spot with Orbit and Zach. Oh man, I gotta watch that. Yeah, it's at the very end, I think it's the last gig. All right, I'm gonna cue it up. All right, well, well Chuck's cue ited up, everybody. That means it's time for listener mail. Oh wait, so I can's cue it it up, everybody. That means it's time for listener mail. Oh, wait. So I can't watch it right now?

Sure, oh, wait. 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. Let me find them. Boy, is there anyone funny here than Tracy Morgan? I don't think so. I love that guy.

So this is about manners. Hey guys, it's been a million years that your old Canadian pal Amanda here, 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 11, Chuck sent me an email response that encouraged Grant

to read more. And he did. Thanks for that. He's 27 now. Oh, goodness. And a carpenter living in Calgary who read your book. We are still avid listeners, and you guys kept them 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 grandmother was a stickler for good manners as were my parents. I passed that on to Grant and we've often been told how good manners make situation so much easier. I was recently asking 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 a social lubricant.

It always gets a laugh, and then once considered, a nod, and a, oh, that's right. And then everybody has a sandwich, and goes their separate ways. The dining table, if someone forgets their napkin on their lap, or cuts their food, all at once, instead of eating it bite-by-byte, my partner and I will say, what 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 laps though and the food is cut properly. 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, that was Amanda. That was Amanda.

Managers are free though. I like that. I don't know if the social loop lubricant part might lose. Because Managers are free. It's just so succinct. Yeah. 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?

Sure. 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 your elbows are on the table or not makes you more aware of everything.

You're surrounding people with you, the food you're eating. It just makes you focus more. So I'm kind of dealing with 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 can put them in somebody else's space. But because it makes you more mindful. Don't dip your elbows in your partner's soup. But I do want to say there's a couple of elbows on the table methods though.

If you're in the middle of eating and you've got your elbow on the table and you're 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 elbows on the table and pat your hands together in a pinch of way while you think of something smart and funny. Like that's a whole different deal. Yeah, well that's elegant. So I've been training myself by putting a 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. It's working really well. That poop stays on your elbows very well.

That was from Amanda. What was her son's name? The one you inspired? Grant, who has been listening since 11 and is now 60. That's awesome. Thanks for listening to us, Amanda and Grant. And thank you for listening to this episode. And if you want to get in touch with us,

like Amanda did and Grant by proxy, you can send us an email to stuffpodcast.itihartradio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the I Heart Radio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. From iHeart Podcasts, these are the whistleblowers. I wasn't just gonna sit silently by. Somebody needs to just give everybody the whole truth. You take your question in black self and get it on up out of my facility. If you speak out, you won't pay. If you speak out, you won't pay. He should be prosecuted.

When power corrupts, conscience is the last line of defense. I'm Miles Taylor. Listen to the whistleblowers every Thursday on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello. This is Leverend Cox. I'm an actress, producer, and host at the Leverend Cox Shop. Do you like your tea with lemon or honey?

History-making Broadway performer Alex Newell. When I sing the Holy Ghost shows up, that's my ministry and I know that well about me. That's the tea honey. Whoever it is, you can bet we get into it. My guest and I, we go there every single time. I can't help it. Listen to the LeVern Cog Show on the I Heart Radio app Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcast.

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