Hi everyone, I'm a crow.
While surfing the Internet these two days, I found a very outrageous thing.
What's going on? A number of mainstream media in the United States have successively released a very strange piece of content, calling on Americans not to lick toads.
Yes, "don't lick the toad", you read it right.
CNN warned the public on its official Twitter account that although the Sonoran desert toad looks "delicious", please do not lick it.
The New York Times and the National Public Broadcaster issued similar announcements, warning against licking the toad with their tongues.
Everyone may wonder who has nothing to lick this thing, not only look disgusting, but the most important thing is that this thing is poisonous.
The "five poisons" divided by the ancients on the mainland: centipedes, poisonous snakes, scorpions, geckos and toads, toads are prominently listed, and are ancient poisons with a murderous name.
But in the eyes of some Americans, this toad is good because of its poison.
The Sonoran desert toad mentioned above in the American media is one of the largest toads in North America, about 18 centimeters long, also known as the Colorado River toad. As a type of toad, the Sonoran desert toad naturally carries poisonous energy.
According to the test analysis of scientists, there are two types of toxins carried by Sonoran desert toads, namely toad poison tryptamine and 5-methoxydimethyltryptamine.
Among them, toad tryptamine is a universal toxin of the toad family, most toads carry the poison, its role is mainly to poison the enemy pain, so that it can no longer cause damage to the toad.
The 5-methoxydimethyltryptamine contained in Sonoran desert toad is a strong alkaloid hallucinogen, which is extremely toxic and harmful, and can make the central nervous system of humans or animals feel excited, which can last for about half an hour.
Because 5-methoxydimethyltryptamine is highly hallucinogenic, it has been classified as a first-class controlled drug by U.S. law, and it is not easy to buy it, and it is not cheap.
But the Sonoran desert toad can produce this agent at any time, which is usually released through the toad's eyes and near the chin, in a milky white secretion, which when sucked, triggers a "short but intense psychedelic experience" of about 30 minutes.
Speaking of which, everyone should understand why Americans lick toads, this thing is equivalent to wild free drugs.
The hallucinogenic method of licking toads is not a recent trend in the United States, this toad was popular with American hippies in the 1960s and 1970s, and in search of excitement, hippies would lick the toad's poison glands for pleasure and psychedelic sensations.
There are also many well-known American people who have also tried "licking toads".
Christina Harker, host of the HGTV show "Flip or Flop," wrote in her Instagram post about her experience of sucking toads: "I hired a mental coach and smoked toads (which basically reset my brain and eliminated years of anxiety in 15 minutes). ”
There is also Tyson, a boxing king who was once addicted to drugs and alcohol, who once said that he had taken toad venom many times, and said that this thing could make him feel better.
(Recently, the "ear biting combination" Tyson and Holyfield also teamed up to launch an ear-type cannabis edible)
Even Hunter Biden, the son of US President Joe Biden, has smoked this toad poison. In his memoir "Beautiful Things," he described toad poison as an "ointment," saying it would help him kick his crack cocaine addiction (replace one addiction with another, yours).
Comedian Chelsea Handler even openly discussed the thrilling experience of sucking toad venom on an HBO show: "I can't move... I thought: Oh, oh, oh, you're going to die today..."
To talk about licking toads, in addition to these celebrity "endorsements", even in some popular American dramas, there are often scenes of licking toads.
For example, in the American drama "The Simpsons", Homer Simpson licked an entire pet store of toads.
In the American drama "Family Guy", there is an episode in which licking toads once became the first choice for local high school students to use drugs, and one of the children sneaked into high school to become an undercover agent, and finally managed to convince all the children to stop licking toads.
It is said that art comes from life, and it can be seen that licking toads is not a rare phenomenon in the United States.
In recent years, under the spread of the publicity of these celebrities and film and television works, the audience of licking toads has also expanded. Coupled with the fact that the economic situation in the United States is not very optimistic, some addicts in order to save money have tried to use licking toads instead of smoking other drugs to obtain "pleasure", looking for cheap psychedelic experiences.
Therefore, the new form of drug use of "licking toads" has become more and more popular in the United States.
Many young Americans catch toads and lick them everywhere in the park, and some even catch toads at home to raise them.
However, let's not forget that toad venom is not only hallucinogenic, but also highly toxic. Once you overdose, you are likely to be life-threatening.
Just the year before, Spanish photographer José Luis Abad died accidentally licking a toad. At that time, in order to help him get rid of drugs, his friends took him to participate in a "mystery celebration" of licking toads, thinking that he could fight poison with poison, and finally killed Abad by overdose.
Therefore, when Americans licking toads became more and more crazy, the National Park Service had to issue a warning earlier this month, calling on everyone not to lick toads anymore, and then major mainstream US media also continued to follow up and issue warnings.
However, many Americans disagreed with the warnings of the above official institutions and mainstream media, and some people directly ridiculed in the comment section: "You are not my father", thinking that these media are too broad.
Other Americans thought that the content of these media outlets discouraged them: "I was going to lick the toad today, thank you for ruining my Sunday." ”
Some people even worry that such warnings may have a "counter-propaganda" effect: "Originally, people did not know that licking toads had this effect, but now many people must already be looking for such toads after reading the report." ”
The reason why licking toads are so popular with Americans, to put it bluntly, is because they don't want money, and they solve the drug use needs of these down-and-out addicts in the United States for free.
In fact, it is not only Americans, but also down-and-out addicts in countries around the world, their solutions to drug addiction, many people may not have heard of, which is eye-opening and ruined.
For example, one of the most popular drug addictions in Indonesia in recent years is to drink boiled aunt towel water.
Yes, you read that right, the raw material for drug use is indeed the aunt towel that girls use when they come for their menstrual holidays.
So some people may be curious, isn't this thing made of cotton and paper, how can it also have hallucinogenic effects?
The key is the chlorine in the aunt's towel. The Indonesian Consumer Foundation has done relevant tests, and the results show that many sanitary napkins in Indonesia are chlorine-contained, and this thing mainly plays a bleaching effect (it is necessary to plug in here, our nationally certified sanitary napkins are chlorine-free).
After boiling, this aunt towel will release the toxin chlorine, which can make the human birth "light fluttering hallucination, very close to the effect of drug use."
Regarding the dosage of her aunt's towel, a 14-year-old girl named Kujay in Indonesia said: "It takes about one to five tablets to 'get drunk' if you drink alone, and my friends and I have to have a drink in the morning, lunch and evening." ”
Therefore, as long as this aunt towel is boiled in boiling water for an hour, let it stand to cool, and then fish out the boiled aunt towel and drink the squeezed out water, the whole person will be hi.
Many young Indonesians drink a few sips of this boiled aunt's towel every day to spend the whole day.
Drinking water that has boiled an aunt's towel is enough to ruin people's views, but what is even more unimaginable is that many young Indonesians get aunt's towels not to buy them, but to go to the garbage heap to pick up the used ones of others!
This level of nausea can no longer be described in words, but speaking of the reason, it is still because of poverty, many poor people and adolescents with drug addiction have no money, and can only use this method to solve drug addiction.
Indonesian drug addicts who had previously drunk aunt towel water said in an investigation, "Although such aunt towel water is bitter to drink and a little disgusting to think about, it is not disgusting compared to the pain of drug addiction." It can be seen how far drug addiction can degenerate.
This way of "drug use" is obviously also harmful, and the direct intake of chlorine by the human body can affect the nervous system, and in severe cases, it can even cause cancer.
Indonesian authorities have also been stepping up their efforts to combat this undesirable phenomenon, and in 2018, Indonesian authorities arrested several young people in Jakarta, West Java and Central Java for drug abuse.
However, because sanitary napkins are too cheap and readily available as a raw material for poisoning, the government's crackdown has been ineffective.
It is reported that in Indonesia, more than 1 billion sanitary napkins are discarded every month, and these "drugs" are easily available to Indonesian youth.
Compared with Indonesian young people drinking aunt towel water, African young people drink cough syrup to detoxify addiction, which is relatively "clean and hygienic", but its harm is even greater.
In Africa, many countries have addiction to cough syrup.
The popular cough syrup in Africa is called BronCleer, compared with other cough syrups, it contains more alcohol and codeine, codeine is extracted from the "godfather" opium of the drug industry, which is a relatively mild opioid.
So codeine also has the properties of opium: addictive, hallucinogenic, exciting, etc. And because cough syrup also contains alcohol, after drinking a large amount of syrup, it will make people enter a state of drunkenness and high excitement.
A bottle of cough syrup sells for about $5, which is much cheaper than the price of regular drugs. Therefore, this cough syrup is popular among young Africans and is gradually becoming a trend.
But all drugs have side effects, and long-term consumption of this syrup can trigger respiratory diseases, low blood pressure, and permanent damage to the brain, heart and liver.
At the end of 2020, a documentary called "Zimbabwe, a country trapped in "cough syrup", revealed the alarming situation of cough syrup flooding Zimbabwe.
It can be seen in the documentary: on the streets of Zimbabwe, empty bottles of discarded cough syrup can be seen everywhere, and young people are addicted to drinking syrup, which has also become a national problem in Zimbabwe.
Official figures show that 50 percent of young people use this "soft drug."
These young people no longer have the mind to work, and all they want to drink syrup all day. A large number of young people gathered in the street, doing nothing, taking out the medicine bottle at any time and anywhere, skillfully unscrewing it, raising their heads, opening their mouths, and drinking it all in one go.
A bottle of 100ml cough syrup, the average young person drinks four or five bottles a day. After drinking it, they will feel like they are fluttering, as if the flesh no longer belongs to them.
Zimbabwe's economy has been in a state of chronic collapse, with 90 per cent of the population not formally working and the vast majority of families living in extreme poverty. In such an environment, young people drink poorer and poorer.
Faced with such a chaotic situation, the Zimbabwean government also had to intervene to control and introduce relevant regulations to prohibit sales. But even policy constraints have little effect, and with the huge benefits behind it, many private goods flow into the country.
The most important thing is that someone interviewed the "addict" on the side of the road, and the answer was: If the police come to arrest me, just hand the police two cough syrups, and the police will turn a blind eye.
And while cough syrup is spreading across African countries, a new type of "drug" is spreading among young people in the UAE.
In some parking lots and alleys in Dubai and Sharjah, young people with energy drinks and pipes in their hands are looking for a black ant called samsun.
After being caught, they will crush the ants, wrap them in tobacco leaves or put them in a pipe to smoke, because the inhaled ant smoke can cause audiovisual hallucinations similar to smoking marijuana, and many young people and children in the Middle East will look for this black ant to smoke all day in order to pursue this pleasure.
This kind of ants contain a high concentration of formic acid, they inhale this spicy smoke to get pleasure, but this behavior is actually very dangerous, formic acid after heating the toxic gas once inhaled by the human body, not only harmful to the nervous system, but also easy to lead to kidney failure.
Some people with allergies may even die if they inhale this ant smoke or are bitten by this ant.
In addition to the above "drugs" with relatively strong local characteristics, there is something that is easily addictive and widely spread among teenagers around the world, that is, superglue.
The essence of sucking superglue is to suck the volatile organic solvent (VOS) in superglue. Smoking such substances can cause a feeling of dizziness, drunken euphoria, similar to a psychedelic feeling. The act of putting superglue into a plastic bag and smoking it is called "smelling glue".
At the beginning, there will be a floating hallucination, and then a strong desire will be generated and repeated inhalation, which will turn into a state of chronic addiction dependence. And the state of the user after smoking is like taking drugs.
In many countries and regions abroad, a considerable number of teenagers are accustomed to indulging in the smell of superglue volatilization and like the pleasure brought by glue absorption.
(The American drama "Shameless" shows the whole process of absorbing superglue)
Superglue smoking is not only very common among young people in Europe, America and the Middle East, but also once popular in Southeast Asia and mainland Taiwan, especially among minors, and has become the leader of many young people into the drug circle.
The reason is that superglue is easy to obtain, cheap, easy to use, and not illegal to carry.
However, as a chemical agent, long-term smoking can cause various poisoning, damaging the user's nervous system and internal organs. At the same time, there are many cases of metal poisoning, mental disorders and sudden death caused by smoking organic solvents.
Data show that more teens die from glue use than from hard drugs.
The use of these items we mentioned above is often tied to poverty and teenagers, because this is the lowest threshold and lowest quality drugs, and those poor people who cannot afford to buy drugs, and ignorant teenagers who pursue novelty, are the best audience for these cheap soft drugs.
But speaking of this, the crow suddenly sighed a little, and sometimes he really had to admire the pioneering spirit of addicts, who could simply find a way to get pleasure from everything.
Poverty does not limit the imagination of addicts, but addiction is more difficult to quit than drug addiction.
Many of these addicts' favorite food products, everyone may feel more: this thing can also be addictive?
In fact, what can you suck toads, aunt towels, black ants and superglue? Gasoline, paint, shoe polish, mosquito repellent, disinfectant water, and even cow dung can be used as substitutes for drugs and become targets for addicts.
Even more terrible than physical addiction is psychological addiction, and when addicts discover that something can bring comfort to themselves and indulge in this comfort, they are not far from becoming addicted to this substance.
Resources:
Nypost：All the celebrities who ‘died’ from smoking toad venom: Mike Tyson, Chelsea Handler and more
The Washington Post: Please stop licking psychedelic toads, National Park Service warns
British newspaper sister: American young people are popular to lick toads! Smoking hallucinogenic toxins for pleasure, experts advise: stop licking