Pubdate: Thu, 08 Jan 2004
Source: Salt Lake City Weekly (UT)
Copyright: 2004 Copperfield Publishing
Contact:  http://www.slweekly.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/382
Author: Randy Harward

SYRUP SHOOTERS

You Don't Have To Be Sick To Indulge In Cough Syrup, But It Helps.

Editor's note: Salt Lake City Weekly does not recommend that anyone take 
cough syrup other than as recommended by the product label or a physician.

The voice of my editor speaking through the receiver reminded me of my 
friend, Ian, clucking like a chicken years ago.

"Do you know any people who use or abuse cough syrup on a recreational 
basis? Would you like to write a cover story on the topic?" he asked.

I recalled a dewy morning in 1990 when Ian, I and a couple other guys went 
AWOL from Granite High School in someone's Chevelle. Cutting class was new 
to me, as I'd been scared straight before I was even crooked by the 
pint-size fury I called mom. Skipping school, I'd long believed, got your 
ass thrown in juvenile hall. Drinking, drugs or both in combination left 
you dead or insane. As the Chevelle docked in the lot at Albertson's on 900 
East and 3300 South, I wondered what abuse of cough syrup got you. An hour 
later, after Ian guzzled about half the bottle of Robitussin, I found out: 
It got you clucking like a chicken.

Ian called it "Robo-ing," and acted like I was nuts not to know what it 
was. Being a rebel tenderfoot, I declined his offer to share. But I enjoyed 
the show, the memory of which was still being interrupted by the editor's 
voice.

"I honestly don't know if the scourge of cough syrup abuse has spiked or 
not," Mr. Editor said. Neither did I. In fact, I had scarcely heard of it 
in the 13 years since Ian's finger-lickin' good time. But cough syrup, the 
editor continued, may be "the closest thing--after alcohol and 
nicotine--that we have to a legal drug."

Mr. Editor was right. For an adventure in cough syrup, you don't even need 
identification to score. I remembered Ian being inside Albertsons for no 
more than five minutes. Ten minutes later he was screaming, "buh-gawk!"

"Either way," my editor continued, "this could be a fun, interesting story. 
It doesn't have to be an expose about an epidemic, especially if it was 
written from a sort of first-person, narrative account. And, possibly, you 
could even down a bottle or two in adulthood to tell our readers what it's 
like to revisit the experience."

Despite having revisited all I had to revisit, I took the assignment. It 
didn't seem like such a big deal to drink cough syrup. In fact, I cared a 
great deal for the grape flavor as a kid. I still remember the taste, and 
how the cool, fruity anti-lava ran down my throat. It was the only pleasant 
sensation I could recall, since I was too young to understand the blessing 
of a good buzz, but just young enough for the recommended dose to deliver a 
knockout punch.

But the cough syrup underground itself seemed a sucker's punch. For years, 
the "syrup experience" has been the low-rent buzz of choice for people 
without access to harder stuff. Usually that meant, like my friend, Ian, 
high school kids. But if downing the stuff resulted in death, insanity or 
birth defects, it seemed curious that someone in government or big media 
hadn't made a story of it. Except for a few sundry Websites, message boards 
and exotic tales here and there, I discovered that the cough syrup 
underground was awfully hard to excavate, curate or even document. That 
doesn't mean there aren't hidden dangers, however.

Of course, at roughly $2 per ounce, the over-the-counter stuff no longer 
includes codeine in the mix. Cough syrup producers stopped that practice 
long ago. The active ingredient, the chicken-clucker-catalyst I needed, was 
"DXM"--dextromethorphan.

This, as I was about to learn, was a slippery ingredient indeed. Related to 
opiates but not exactly an opiate itself, it affects dopamine in the brain, 
in addition to other areas of the noggin called the "sigma receptor" and 
"NMDA channel." Whatever. What really caught the eye were a few warnings: 
Don't ingest DXM too soon before or after taking an antihistamine, never 
mix it with certain drugs for depression, don't take it too often (usually 
more than once per week) and don't take it if your liver or kidneys are out 
of whack, or if you experience seizures. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency 
has even warned that DXM can cause brain damage and even death when mixed 
with other drugs. Oh yeah, it can also cause panic and screw up a drug test.

As a precursor to my research, I phoned my sister, who once worked for 
Valley Mental Health as a case manager for substance abusers. She knew a 
psychologist named Mike Sheffield, who treated patients who had abused 
syrup. Reached on his cell phone, Sheffield said he'd been out of the game 
a few years (he travels around doing "testing"), but he never really saw 
DXM abuse as a scourge, not the way the media might portray it, anyway.

It's certainly abused, he told me, but the people he treated who abused DXM 
almost always used other drugs, basically whatever they could get their 
hands on. He also explained, like any good doctor would, the myriad adverse 
effects. Then I posed the ultimate question.

"So, doc, say I got some," I told him. "And I wanted to sip it until I felt 
something? How much would I have to take? How much can I take safely?"

"I don't want to put myself in the position of advocating the use of it in 
any way," he said firmly. "There are dangers."

He did, however, throw me a bone.

"I know there are Websites where you can read about the highs," he said.

No specifics, but I knew where to go, and I knew what they said. Now, more 
than ever, I didn't want to try it. How in the world was I going to pull 
this off?

Lookin' for some 'Tuss

The Wal-Mart cough syrup aisle was abandoned. People walked by at either 
end, but none entered. I could hear my wife and daughters debating dinner 
plans-- "Carl's Jr! Wienerschnitzel!"--two aisles over as I read labels.

Robitussin, if I remembered correctly, modified its formula at one point to 
make its syrup less recreationally appealing. The "DM" formula contained 
DXM, but also another active ingredient, an expectorant called guaifenesin. 
In fact, virtually every brand of cough syrup on the shelf had some other 
active ingredient, which made matters confusing. I remembered a Denis Leary 
stand-up show where he ranted of hallucinations brought on by the "green 
death fuckin' flavor" formula of NyQuil. I headed home with a big bottle of 
that, some cheap DVDs I didn't need, and an ugly stuffed bear won from the 
impulse predator crane machine.

Never Do Anything a Fat Rapper Would Do

My drug resume is pretty pathetic, to be honest. I had sense enough not to 
smoke, but the fear of pushin' up daisies or becoming a drooling mess 
ensured I didn't drink until the age of 21. Beyond this, I quite enjoyed 
some post-vasectomy Percocet and Lortab received for back pain. And once, 
while I waited in a vacant apartment for a telephone technician, I tried 
inhaling the smoke from a blown-out match to see if the "match hits" my 
eighth-grade friends raved about were really all that. They weren't. I 
passed, thanks to residue from the aforementioned irrational fear, on 
psychedelic mushrooms the one time they were offered. I only took one pain 
pill at a time and, against the recommendation of my friends, never mixed 
them with beer. I've never seen cocaine, acid, ecstasy, ketamine, meth or 
heroin. Of that list, I would only try acid. Maybe.

I never experimented heavily because of the fear my mother implanted in me, 
and because of a dogma I'm close to adopting: Never do anything a fat 
rapper would do. It doesn't completely suit me, as I still hold no qualms 
about drinking 40-ounce beers. But it sounds good, so I'm trying to make it 
work. The point is that Biggie lived the thug life--"kapow!"--and I don't 
even wanna talk about the Fat Boys.

So when I came across an April 2002 report from Fox 13 News in Tampa Bay 
about a syrup-happy rapper named Big Moe, the willies came fast and 
furious. Moe, according to the report, extolled the virtues of "sippin' on 
the syrup" on his albums City of Syrup and Purple World, which contains his 
signature song "Purple Stuff." The report went on to detail the 
death--death!--of another rap artist named DJ Screw, who met his end after 
drinking too much prescription-strength syrup. I consoled myself with the 
fact that Screw had imbibed $200-a-bottle codeine stuff. I, on the other 
hand, would be tipping an over-the-counter cocktail. The worst that could 
happen? I'd experience the sensation of a big blob of mercury rolling 
around in my breadbasket, followed by grape upchuck.

"Perhaps you could just find some users to talk to?"

Uh-unh. I had already tried three people. They'd all decided they didn't 
want to talk about it.

"Or maybe you could just sip it slowly, bit by bit, until you feel 
something?" he offered.

Get thee hence, Evil Editor!

Actually, that sounded pretty reasonable, almost like what I'd heard about 
S& . I could just yell "Mommy!" when I couldn't take it anymore. But how 
much could I take? How much was enough? What if it was like certain strains 
of cannabis, where the effects sneak up so slowly that you don't know it's 
too late until you're well on your way to death, insanity, or both?

Now, more than ever, I didn't wanna try it. But before I had a chance to 
kneel in abject failure before Mr. Editor, I confided in a good friend.

"Man, there's no way I'm gonna get a story out of this," I boobed. "Not 
unless I drink some syrup, and I really don't want to do that."

"Brian," as he shall be called, came to the rescue. His drug resume was 
much more impressive than mine. He'd tried pot, acid, mushrooms, a 
veritable Captain's Platter of substances compared to my meager menu. I'd 
seen him piss drunk, stoned immaculate, and I listened like a wide-eyed 
child to his party stories. Like the time he took five extra hits of acid 
because the first didn't seem to do anything, consequently embarking on a 
really bad trip. Or how in 1995, he'd gone camping with some acid 
aficionados and blacked out, only to wake up feeling like he'd committed a 
social faux pas.

"I think I was taking my clothes off or something, because the girls I was 
hanging out with were acting strange toward me," I remember him saying. He 
was also a drinker of heroic proportions.

Not to worry, he said, chuckling. "I'll do it."

Discovery

I was to act as "Brian's" trip-sitter that coming Sunday night, something I 
looked forward to with relief--and just a little shame at letting my friend 
take the risk.

The sooner this was over, the better. But along the way I managed to talk 
to another person with fond memories of his own over-the-counter encounter. 
Grant Sperry was more than happy to speak of his syrup experience, and it 
couldn't hurt to have more stories.

The Rev. Sperry's drug resume was even better than "Brian's." In addition 
to cough syrup, he said, "I've tried peyote, LSD, pot, [smoked] toad 
secretions, nitrous--while having sex, mushrooms, synthetic mescaline. ..."

He had a story for every drug, and almost all of them contained some 
element of self-discovery. His virgin--and only--syrup trip is the least 
remarkable, but still kinda interesting.

"I was in college, at the University of Utah," he begins. He and a buddy 
were holed up in a room at a rented house. They'd each drained a 4-ounce 
bottle of Robitussin DM. "It was fucking awful tasting shit," Sperry 
remembers. He recalls floating through space and seeing the cosmic egg [a 
chicken egg?], from which all life stemmed forth.

"I saw the yolk, which I realized was a folded piece of legal paper [that 
held the answer to the universe]." He reached for it, and it was pulled 
away from him. Tried again, denied again. Then it bloomed--only to reveal 
it was blank. "There was no answer," Sperry said. "Or [the answer was that 
the universe] could be anything you wanted it to be."

I met "Brian" in the Wal-Mart cough syrup aisle Sunday afternoon to select 
a brand. It took about three minutes to settle on a 4-ounce bottle of Vicks 
44, which contained 33 percent to 50 percent more DXM than other leading 
brands and had no other active ingredients. "Brian" was hesitant. Vicks 44 
contained alcohol, and "that will just make me tired." I bought it anyway, 
but we agreed to adjourn until 9 p.m., at which point we'd peruse the syrup 
selection at Smith's, which "Brian" insisted was more expansive. There, we 
were confronted with the same selection. Fearless "Brian" said he had to 
work overtime the next day and didn't want a hangover from the alcohol. 
Thankfully, "Brian" reconsidered, offering a sip-and-see compromise. It was 
better than nothing.

Twenty minutes later, "Brian" began sipping. The abridged version of the 
night's events: He sipped. He got mellow. He sipped. His linear logic went 
out the window. He got surly. When trying to tell me a story, and realizing 
I didn't follow, he said, "Fuck! Are you paying attention?"

He sipped for the last time, and the bottle appeared half-empty. Then he 
talked. And talked. I got a headache. I fell asleep. I got up and went to 
bed. My last thought as I hit the pillow was that it would have to be me. 
"Brian" may have been marginally interesting on syrup. But there was really 
no way to describe his own vivid experience without getting into his head. 
I would have to attempt my own vivid experience.

Facing Demons

It never seemed like platitudes such as "don't sweat the small stuff" or 
"just do it" could apply to real life, but they do. A lot better, to be 
sure, than "never do anything a fat rapper would do
- ---
MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom