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Legal Ways to Get High: Energy drinks, Coffee, and Cough Syrup

It seems the newest trend in getting high is legal drugs. When I was a teen, we gravitated towards booze and pot when we wanted to get sh*t-faced, but today’s youth seems intent on finding the best legal way to get high. We had to wait outside the gas station to bribe a bum to buy us booze. Kids today, however, can walk in and get these “legal” drugs at gas stations, pharmacies, and on the internet with ease. As an added bonus, most of the legal ways to get high will not show up on a drug test.

Legal Ways to Get High: Energy drinks and Coffee

While energy drinks have been around since “Jolt” came out in the mid-80’s, they didn’t get really popular until the early 2000’s. Today, energy drinks are a 10 billion dollar market, and they are mostly marketed to young people.

Energy drinks and coffee both contain the same “high”-inducing chemical-caffeine. However, energy drinks often contain ingredients that enhance the caffeine in the drink. Or they contain guarana, which is a source of caffeine itself.

People don’t usually think of caffeine as a dangerous drug, but some energy drinks contain well over the recommended dose. In fact, the FDA recently confirmed reports that 5-hour energy could be responsible for as many as 13 deaths last year.

This legal way to get high can induce euphoria, but it can also cause nervousness, irritability, insomnia, abnormal heart rhythms and agitation. You can become dependent on energy drinks and coffee, and withdrawal can be a real bummer. So yes, caffeine is one of the legal ways to get high, but the mild euphoria you may feel isn’t really worth it.

Legal Ways to Get High: Cough Syrup

The first time I met someone in rehab who told me he was “in” for cough syrup, I seriously thought he was joking. I was still shaking, coming off of heroin, and totally irritable.

“Is that a real thing?” I asked, rolling my eyes.

Yes. It was real enough to land him in a 30 day treatment center, anyway.

Cough syrup contains dextromethorphan, aka DXM. If you take it in sufficient quantities, you can hallucinate. I’ve heard you will also likely vomit, but I guess that’s the price you pay for this legal way to get high.

Of course, I always wondered why these people didn’t just take acid or shrooms, but cough syrup is legal, so it’s probably easier to get. I can understand using DXM once, out of curiosity or out of desperation, but I could not believe it would be someone’s drug of choice.

Between the puking, diarrhea, and muscle spasms, this doesn’t sound like a very fun legal way to get high, but to each his own, I guess. And according to experts, the addiction to DXM is psychological, not physical. Keep in mind, however, you have to take a ton of cough syrup to get high: DXM only becomes a hallucinogen at 12.5 to 75 times the recommended therapeutic dose.

If you need help with your addiction give us a call now at 1-800-984-4003.

Four Loko

Four Loko

Four Loko is an alcoholic beverage that is part energy drink. The “Four” in the name “Four Loko” refers to the four main ingredients in Four Loko, namely alcohol, caffeine, taurine, and guarana. In 2010, the company that manufactures Four Loko, announced that the drink would be reformulated, removing the caffeine, taurine, and guarana, in response to the drink being banned in several states and an FDA directive.

What is the danger of Four Loko?

The Food and Drug Administration launched a year-long investigation into caffeine-containing alcoholic beverages like Four Loko. At its completion, the FDA determined that Four Loko, and seven other drinks were “unsafe.” They gave the manufacturers fifteen days to change the formula or pull their products from the market.

The investigation into Four Loko began after being involved in a rash of incidents in months in which people were hospitalized or died. Doctors say that caffeine-containing drinks like Four Loco mask the effects of alcohol, leading people to drink more than they normally would.

What is blacking out?

Drinkers of Four Loko have nicknamed the drink “blackout in can,” because of the frequency of overindulgence with caffeinated alcoholic drinks. Four Loco produces a “wide-awake drunk,” so drinkers continue to drink when they would have normally passed out. Then the effects of the caffeine and other stimulants wear off before the effects of the alcohol, producing a blackout.

Binge drinking alcohol can cause memory loss similar to amnesia. These periods of alcohol-related amnesia are generally referred to as blackouts. Blackouts are periods of time when the drinker is completely conscious, having conversations and performing sometimes amazing feats, but later they have absolutely no memory of the events that transpired.

Though repeated episodes of blacking out will lead to permanent changes in the brain, blackouts are more psychosocially damaging than physically damaging. Many people report engaging in high-risk behavior during a blackout. They drive while intoxicated, get into fights, or engage in unprotected sex. During a blackout, normal restraint of emotions, impulses, and desires is impaired and that may result in enormous harm to self and others. Blackouts inhibit your ability to control your impulses. This can be very dangerous.

How much alcohol does a can of Four Loko contain?

Four Loko (before it was reformulated) contained 12 percent alcohol and have something in the range of 200mg of caffeine. This is equivalent to five or six beers and four or five colas in one can. An averaged sized woman who drinks one can of Four Loko will have a Blood Alcohol Content (BAC) twice the legal limit. Four Loko’s have kept the alcohol content, but removed all the stimulants.

Some criticize the brightly colored packaging and sweet flavor of Four Loko because they claim that its marketing is geared towards underage consumers. The drink is also relatively cheap, and available at most convenience stores. The manufacturers of Four Loko deny that they are trying to market to underage drinkers, but there is a lot of anecdotal evidence that the drink is most popular among kids in their teens and early twenties.