5 Real Ways to Get High Straight Out of Science Fiction

5 Real Ways to Get High Straight Out of Science Fiction
Eventually technological advancement comes to every profession– even if that profession is just burn-out, hippy, or full-time junkie. It’s been a long time coming, but apparently science has finally gotten the message and realized that even drug abuse can be made better, faster, and stronger. With that in mind, here are some new, readily available drugs that seem more like science fiction than pharmaceutical fact. Disclaimer: Now, we want to be clear here; we’re not condoning illegal drug use in any way. That would be incredibly irresponsible, even for a website that sends death letters to pre-teens, actively tries to fuck the vice presidential candidate, and vandalizes Mexican newspapers with cocks employs DOB. We’re not saying you should do drugs, we’re just saying: Drugs. Like, totally drugs.

Intelligence Boosters

Modafinil is a drug commonly prescribed for Narcoleptics
, and it helps maintain wakefulness over long periods of time without adversely affecting your mental state. It lets you stay up for about 48 hours at a stretch with none of the feelings of tiredness or mental decline that are typically associated with sleep deprivation, and no “sleep debt” to pay off. After two days awake, you get your eight hours and you’re good to go again. There are no amphetamine-like feelings, jitteriness or agitation. You just don’t get tired. It works entirely differently from stimulants like caffeine, the computer nerd’s drug of choice, or cocaine, the pornstar/Cracked Head Editor’s drug of choice.

"You're so fired." It’s known as a ‘Eugeroic,’ which translates to ‘good arousal’ in Greek, probably because it stimulates an entirely healthy state of wakefulness, and not because it gives you a mental boner. But it gets better; Modafinil has other, unintended effects too. It reduces impulsiveness, increases mental focus, and boosts the ability to recall numbers as well. All of these combine to generally improve your problem solving abilities, and because of this fact it’s quickly becoming the drug of choice for professors, academics, and chess-players alike. It makes you more intelligent, more alert, and more calculating. It’s like the mindset of a supervillain in pill form. The Pros The alertness isn’t described as unavoidable or stimulated; it’s just alert. If you want to go to sleep on Modafinil, it’s just as easy as ever. There are supposedly no side effects for coming down off of it, it just stops working. Also, the brand name for Modafinil is Provigil, which probably is not short for Professional Vigilante, but you can tell people that if you like. The Cons I don’t have any of it, and if you don’t fall asleep in front of subway trains – you’re probably don’t, either.

Brain-altering Sounds

Binaural Beats are illusory sounds
created when two tones of differing frequencies are played simultaneously, one in each of your ears, through stereo headphones. Your mind then perceives a low beating sound, when in fact there is no such thing. This is most likely caused by your brain being tricked into trying to pinpoint sounds in 3-D, which is great fun for anybody interested in new and novel sensations, or just people that love to be total dicks to brains.

"You gonna cry, fag?" Neurologists are interested in Binaural Beats in order to further study human hearing, experimental musicians are interested in them for creating new and experimental music, and hippies are interested in them because they could get you some kind of high off of music, which is pretty much all that they’ve been yammering about since the Grateful Dead popularized the six hour shitty jam session. Depending on the frequency range, Binaural Beats are purported to do everything from increasing your alertness and problem solving capabilities, to putting you to sleep, to invoking euphoric feelings and out of body experiences. There are any number of sound files being distributed throughout the internet that are meant to cause these specific effects, and you can google them your damn selves because this untested ‘miracle drug’ of questionable validity that you have to download onto your computer is like an internet scammer’s wet dream; most of them are probably spam or viruses that pop-up gaping anuses on your screen. The Pros They’re free, widely available and, if you believe the hype, they basically fix everything in your life by punking your mindgrapes. What’s not to love? The Cons All of the ‘miracle effects’ are probably bullshit. Sorry, hippies, your reputability went out the window somewhere around the time you stopped bathing and started advocating white-guy dreads.

Non-chemical Hallucinogens

The Ganzfeld Experiments were initially developed as Parapsychological tests meant to prove the existence of ESP, and have been proven to induce vivid, detailed hallucinations. The subject places halved ping pong balls over the eyes which diffuse light, but not block it, and then noise-cancelling headphones playing white noise are placed over their ears. After a few minutes of ‘active sensory deprivation,’ many report incredibly life-like, often symbolic, meaning-filled visions. Essentially, it’s akin to going on a quick vision quest - like the stereotypical Native Americans do in Hollywood movies. The chief differences here being that you can do it from the comfort of home in the time it takes to not watch Two and a Half men, rather than ten hours inside a sweat lodge, and you don’t have to be robbed of your land and have genocide performed on your people. Bonus!

"Psh, what am I supposed to be, impressed? I can do that with a ping-pong ball and an iPod." Because of shady research practices, skewed results and questionable subjects, the Ganzfeld Experiments did nothing to advance the theory of ESP, but if you really feel like tripping balls, and not so much like eating fungus picked out of cow-shit and then staying up for five hours past the point when it stops being fun, Ganzfeld might do a little something for you. The Pros It doesn’t alter your blood chemistry, it can be stopped at any point, it’s practically free, and it seems like something out of a Buck Rogers episode. The Cons You look like a total and complete tool.

Confidence Drugs

Propanolol is a form of beta blocker
, which have long been used for their calming effects by pretty much anybody with nerves. Musicians, athletes, lawyers and teachers all swear by them for maintaining your cool when a shit ton of people are looking at you for extended periods of time and you think your fly might be down. It’s most often prescribed for circulatory disorders like hypertension, because it affects blood flow. However, it’s most often abused for it’s suppression of the physical effects of your fight or flight reflex. If, say, a horse-mounted lion leapt out at you, roaring and neighing it’s terrifying battle cry, your body would shoot adrenalin throughout your system, allowing you to react faster and hopefully get away.

This is a handy instinct for actual fight or flight scenarios, but these signals frequently get crossed, and come in quite a bit less handy when you’re trying to tell a girl how beautiful her eyes are and your body is essentially still screaming “HOLY SHIT! LION! RUN!”

"JESUS CHRIST IT'S A WOMAN! GET IN THE CAR!" In short, it’s artificial confidence in pill form. It does not muddle your thoughts or change your personality in any noticeable way, it just suppresses nerves. Finally allowing you to deliver lines like “do you have colon cancer? ‘Cause that ass is killer!” without your voice shaking like a pubescent Parkinson’s patient. The Pros Sure, other drugs like alcohol inspire a sort of artificial confidence – but that’s really more like reduced judgment that comes along with mental impairment. So while liquor may give you the confidence to use your best lines on pretty girls, you’re also more likely to screw them up and end up saying something more along the lines of “do you have colon cancer? ‘Cause it looks like a tumor. YOU’RE NOT BETTER THAN ME!” Propanolol gives you booze-nerves without the retardation. The Cons Among the side-effects are nightmares, confusion, and hallucinations. So to further elaborate on this example, you may well have the mental acuity and confidence to pick up on a pretty girl, but she may only exist slightly between this plane of light and the next and have tits made out of snakes and fire.

Consequence-Free Drugs

There are two ways to progress technologically, you can invent entirely new and innovative products, or you can just improve on existing ones. They’re both valid approaches; somebody invents cold fusion reactors, for example, and somebody else puts a clock in them and makes them syncable with your iPod. Acomplia is more along the lines of the latter approach. Initially used to treat marijuana and heroin addiction
(although, come on, marijuana addiction? You ever sucked dick for weed?)

"The answer is yes." Acomplia was later found to have other effects when the heroin addicts ordered to detox on Acomplia (surprise!) still took a shit-ton of heroin anyway. They found that, when taken with certain other drugs (pot and smack, mostly, but limited effects have also been observed with nicotine, hence its common prescription to quitting smokers,) Acomplia, rather than neutralizing the intoxicant effects of other drugs, instead drastically reduces their side-effects. In other words, instead of preventing heroin addicts from enjoying heroin, it just removed all of the unpleasant consequences. Now, its uses for heroin are clear enough – coming down off the Old Tijuana Waterslide (Editor's note: That's not actually a nickname for heroin) is a hellish experience full of delirium, cold sweats and nausea. But it also reportedly eliminates side-effects for weed as well. Which begs the question: What side effects? Does it rid you of the desperate need for convenience store nachos and the sudden desire to converse in-depth about religion? The Pros Acomplia is also prescribed and has been proven rather effective as an anti-obesity drug. So to recap, it reduces the negative side-effects of recreational drugs, helps you quit smoking, and gives you kickin’ abs. It’s the kickin’ abs that really sends this one over the believability edge, and straight into sci-fi territory. That’s just slightly too good to be real. It’s like an infomercial promising that their device slices, dices, reunites you with your estranged father, makes julienne fries, and brings you to earth-shattering orgasm with every use. The Cons It works by messing with the Endocannabiniod system, which is a pretty scary thing to fuck with. It controls pleasure, pain tolerance, and relaxation. So, considering one side effect seen was crippling depression, and another was the resurgence of dominant Multiple Sclerosis in one patient, maybe you should just deal with the beer gut, hangovers, Funyuns cravings and lengthy arguments about whether or not god is really like, this green and pink ball of light that you saw one time in the parking lot of the Circle K.

Read more from Robert at his own site, I Fight Robots, where you can be assured that there will never, ever be a discussion about spirituality versus religion or the importance of vegan shoes.
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