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When I was a teenager and everyone started experimenting with drugs, pills weren't part of the regiment. Of course there were pills circulating the subcultures since forever, but for some reason, pills weren't part of the cocktail. We were more interested in getting a couple of beers, some pot, and the occasional psychedelic. But pills didn't come until later. Prozac was brand new, Ritalin had just been introduced and Adderall wouldn't come out until 2002, the year I moved to New York. Of course there was other pills to take in the 90's, but they were a rarity until 1998; at least with my friends and I. Although, I feel like if you were doing some graphing of recreational pill use, 1998 would be a point where the graph spikes sharply. I remember my last couple years as a Phish head (yes, I am fully recovered, thankfully) the scene changed so much that it was hard to score marijuana in the lot. Even mushrooms were gone and it was all replaced by pills, predominantly Ecstasy and Molly. But there were stories of kids easting a ton of Molly at night and then chasing it with mood stabilizers in the wee hours and in the morning. That would help you with the crash. These days, the Molly culture is shadier, because the pills come in capsules filled with powder that may or may not be Molly. When two kids overdosed and died at Randall's Island last summer, they thought they had taken Molly, but probably more likely took a pill that had all sorts of crap in it including Bath Salts. I'm not saying that taking pills from strangers back in the day wasn't as sketchy, I am merely saying that these days, there are more sophisticated designer drugs out there for you to take, and a lot of them are not the highest of quality (pun intended?).
In fact, when the Silk Road was busted and shut down late last year, some people saw that as a bad, and dangerous thing. The Silk Road is an online drug store, literally. You can buy anything from Weed to Coke to Heroin to Molly. The DEA shut it down in October 2013 and arrested a couple people involved, mostly because there had been vague posts on the site about being able to buy "hits" on people from the site. That information will come out during the trial, no doubt, but in the meantime, the Silk Road was up and operational a month after it was shut down. Some people feel that buying drugs from that site is safer than buying from strangers or small-time dealers. The reason is that it is a meritocracy for drugs, meaning if you are selling some Heroin on the site and it is bad, or weak, people will complain about it and give you a bad review. It's like Amazon for the drug world. So, in this instance, the drugs you buy from it are more pure, and safer because they come with instructions, almost like a real prescription drugs. There are recommended doses, purity levels, and even a doctor available online to ask questions about the products. Of course, doing drugs is dangerous no matter what the internet says, but everyone knows that dealers on the street are cutting their drugs to get the most for the money. That goes back as far as time itself.
Kids have always experimented with drugs, whether it was booze, or drinking a bottle of cough medicine, there has always been the interest in altering one's mind state. This probably dates back to when we were still hunting and gathering and every once and a while someone would ingest something that wouldn't necessarily kill them, but make them sick and vomit and then see some crazy stuff in the form of hallucinations. From there, they would remember that plant or mushroom and it became a spiritual thing. Nowadays, it's more about having a wild night and less about getting closer to some sort of god. And now it's more about pills than ever before. You can tell just by the commercials that play during the Super Bowl. When I was a kid, the anti-drug commercials were about pot and cocaine and "Just Say No" and all that. Now, they are about knowing what's in your medicine cabinet and keeping your adult pills away from your teenagers.
Of course, not everyone wants to experiment with drugs, as the prospect of doing so is sometimes kind of scary. You see Uma Thurman overdose in "Pulp Fiction" and drugs are the last thing you want to try for the first time. But I feel like some people are inherently drawn to drugs and alcohol from some deep code hidden in the genes. That, plus an adventurous, rebellious streak. However, a lot of kids are on drugs from a young age these days because of medical conditions. Asthma, Attention Deficit Disorder, Depression, Anxiety, dietary problems, all of these are conditions where kids as young as 10 are starting to take pills on a daily basis. When you are taking pills that sometimes drastically change your bodies chemistry, every day from the time you are ten, taking a couple Molly pills when you're a teenager is going to be easy.
In fact, when the Silk Road was busted and shut down late last year, some people saw that as a bad, and dangerous thing. The Silk Road is an online drug store, literally. You can buy anything from Weed to Coke to Heroin to Molly. The DEA shut it down in October 2013 and arrested a couple people involved, mostly because there had been vague posts on the site about being able to buy "hits" on people from the site. That information will come out during the trial, no doubt, but in the meantime, the Silk Road was up and operational a month after it was shut down. Some people feel that buying drugs from that site is safer than buying from strangers or small-time dealers. The reason is that it is a meritocracy for drugs, meaning if you are selling some Heroin on the site and it is bad, or weak, people will complain about it and give you a bad review. It's like Amazon for the drug world. So, in this instance, the drugs you buy from it are more pure, and safer because they come with instructions, almost like a real prescription drugs. There are recommended doses, purity levels, and even a doctor available online to ask questions about the products. Of course, doing drugs is dangerous no matter what the internet says, but everyone knows that dealers on the street are cutting their drugs to get the most for the money. That goes back as far as time itself.
Kids have always experimented with drugs, whether it was booze, or drinking a bottle of cough medicine, there has always been the interest in altering one's mind state. This probably dates back to when we were still hunting and gathering and every once and a while someone would ingest something that wouldn't necessarily kill them, but make them sick and vomit and then see some crazy stuff in the form of hallucinations. From there, they would remember that plant or mushroom and it became a spiritual thing. Nowadays, it's more about having a wild night and less about getting closer to some sort of god. And now it's more about pills than ever before. You can tell just by the commercials that play during the Super Bowl. When I was a kid, the anti-drug commercials were about pot and cocaine and "Just Say No" and all that. Now, they are about knowing what's in your medicine cabinet and keeping your adult pills away from your teenagers.
Of course, not everyone wants to experiment with drugs, as the prospect of doing so is sometimes kind of scary. You see Uma Thurman overdose in "Pulp Fiction" and drugs are the last thing you want to try for the first time. But I feel like some people are inherently drawn to drugs and alcohol from some deep code hidden in the genes. That, plus an adventurous, rebellious streak. However, a lot of kids are on drugs from a young age these days because of medical conditions. Asthma, Attention Deficit Disorder, Depression, Anxiety, dietary problems, all of these are conditions where kids as young as 10 are starting to take pills on a daily basis. When you are taking pills that sometimes drastically change your bodies chemistry, every day from the time you are ten, taking a couple Molly pills when you're a teenager is going to be easy.
