The biggest drug myths

Over the years I’ve been asked numerous questions about which substances will get people high. To reduce some harm I though I’d list the biggest myths I’ve come across below. If you know of others, post a comment below and I’ll update the list.

The myths

1. Banana skins have a hallucinogenic effect

The most details description of this myth I’ve come across involves boiling up banana peels until they have a consistency of paste, then spreading that paste onto cookie sheets for further cooking in the oven. This allegedly creates a fine black powder that can be smoked.

I’m yet to meet a person who has gotten any effect from this and even a cursory review of online discussion sites will show it up for the myth it is.

2. There’s flavoured versions of Crystal Meth

We’ve covered this one previously – there seems to be endless questions about crystal meth that tastes like strawberry pop rocks, chocolate, peanut butter, cola, cherry, grape and orange.

Essentially, any colourations are due to impurities and there’s been no documented cases to date of such substances being flavoured to increase desirability. And anyway, to use an analogy, strawberry flavoured dog excrement will still taste like dog excrement – flavouring never fully disguises what’s underneath.

3. I can get high from peanut shells

I’ve seen this one float around the internet a bit: shell some raw peanuts, grind up the shells and smoke them. Zero reports of this doing anything other than making an interesting smell.

4. Yeast extracts / spreads as hallucinogenic agent

I’ve had direct exposure to this myth as far back as the early 1990’s. Apparently ‘some people’ were creating grazes or deeper lacerations and then rubbing an iconic Australian yeast extract into the area to get high. The result? A lovely infection and nothing else from everything I’ve seen.

6 thoughts on “The biggest drug myths

  1. Paul

    G’day James,

    In relation to your “yeast extracts” myth, a related urban myth is that “junkies will inject anything, even vegemite.” For several years I assumed this was just the sort of misinformed myth that prejudice often produces. However I have since met two individuals who (out of desperation) had attempted injecting vegemite. In both cases they reported doing so not for any hallucinogenic effect, but rather in an attempt to get a “vitamin B rush.”

    Whether the myth came first and these guys thought it was real, or whether they came up with the idea independantly (“One of the worlds richest sources of vitamin B” is on the label) both reported no psychoactive effect and both developed serious abscess at the injection site.

    Vitamin B is quickly destroyed by heat. Injecting vegemite will not get you high or produce a rush. It is very likely to cause injury and infection. Just say no to injecting yeast extract!

    Paul.

  2. weez

    Damn, so much for getting off my face this weekend smoking peanut butter/banana/vegemite sammiches and strawberry shortcake. 😆

  3. Andrew Innes

    Hi
    I think the yeast extract myth probably stems from people confusing their cooties, in terms of yeast & fungus. I remember seeing a show on tv where a guy was tripping because he’d ingested some bread or similar that had been contaminated with ergotamine or similar, a fungal growth that affects grains. Good old wikipedia provides the answer – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergotism

  4. hunt

    You do not smoke the peanut shells, you smoke the brown skins around the nuts. they have to be raw.
    i don’t know if this works but im trying it this weekend

  5. jackie

    Hi im a long term sufferer of injecting vegemite. My mates dieced to do it.I said no they decided to go ahead. i was so convinced that something was goin to go wrong so i went first i was fine it just made me sick.one of my friends got a pain in the chest and my other from died she was asthmatic and had a heart attact she was in a coma for 3 days and they turned the machine off and she died please dont do it please u just dont know wat is goin to happen…. i can never get thru the day. and i see it every where please people think b4 u do these crazy things. i have never been the same…

  6. JB

    When I was a kid a friend and I were chatting about drugs and discussed the whole banana peel and the other crazy myths, I mentioned about injecting vegemite and then the conversation drifted onto other things.
    3 or 4 years later when he was about 19 or 20, he injected vegemite and immediately went into a complete system failure, I was not there but did see him in intensive care, but he was brain dead by then with a shaved head that was swollen, he looked like a completely different person. He was taken off life support about a week later.
    I regret telling him that story years before. Please don’t try this, it destroyed my friends family and was my first experience of loss. I really hope this saves someones child.

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