^ Yeah I've almost given up, but through reason I'm trying to show how unlikely it is that formaldehyde is a recreational substance.
Motrin I think we've won on....
To me, trying to "win" seems like a strange approach. Aren't we trying to figure out what's really going on, finding the most relevant information and drawing conclusions, rather than picking an answer ahead of time and trying to defend it? I guess "winning" for me would be learning as much as I could about the issue.
I chimed in -- I was already considering starting a thread on this topic anyway -- because I knew of this controversy: Is "embalming fluid" itself an intoxicant when cigarettes (or joints, etc.) are dipped in it and smoked? Is it simply a slang term for PCP? Did the slang term lead misinformed dealers/users to begin selling/smoking the substance, despite its lack of pychoactive effects? I don't particularly care what the answer is, as I've said, but I'd like to learn more if there is relevant information I'm unaware of. Sometimes, though, the information simply hasn't been produced.
I see people saying it's absurd to think embalming fluid &/or formaldehyde could get someone high. But I don't see why it's aburd to consider the possibility. (Just like in the lopermaide threads: Lots of people claim loperamide can't possibly do anything more than stop diarrhea, right in the face of numerous self-reports that it can actually stop withdrawaI; admittedly this is different because it's a street drug so you can't read the ingredients on the box).
Here's an interesting piece of relevant trivia: An article in the
Journal of Ethnicity in Substance Abuse (Singer et al, 2005, "When the Drug of Choice Is a Drug of Confusion"), quotes the website Erowid.org at length on the possible self-fulfilling prophecy of "embalming fluid."
The slang term for PCP may have been around for decades, and some users and dealers came to believe that formaldehyde alone or in combination with PCP had psychoactive properties. Thus, a demand for actual embalming fluid was fostered, and some dealers, whether or not they believed it worked as a drug, may have begun selling it.
"Perception is reality," as somone said a few posts above. I do agree that there is no especially strong evidence that embalming fluid alone does get you high. After all, it's hard to imagine researchers conducting experiments on humans in which they would smoke formaldehyde cigarettes or placebo. It could conceivably be done with animals, but I find no such research.
There are a few case reports in medical journals describing patients suffering various forms of misery after smoking marijuana laced with formaldehyde, but the authors fail to report how they concluded formaldehyde poisoning was responsible (e.g. Hawkins et al. 1994, "Abuse of formaldehyde-laced marijuana..."
Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences).
One researcher, whom I mentioned in a previous post, analyzed a small number of street samples; she concluded PCP was present in addition to formaldehyde (Holland, 1998, "Embalming fluid-soaked marijuana: new high or new guise for PCP?"
Journal of Psychoactive Drugs). As she reports in the same article, since there is no centralized agency for gathering data, additional information could only be collected from scattered local health officials, professional toxicologists, and emergency room physicians. Their findings were variable: Some could find no other intoxicants than embalming fluid ("acute anoxic encephalopathy due to formaldehyde affecting lung parenchyma," whatever that means, or "formaldehyde intoxication proper") -- but as mentioned above, they could not have checked for all PCP analogs; others found that most patients did test positive for PCP.
According to a team of researchers in Hartford, CT (Singer et al. 2005, "Dust in the wind..."
Substance Use & Misuse), users believed that the drug sometimes contained PCP in addition to formaldehyde. The following is an interview excerpt with a user, regarding the smell:
Q: Everybody talks about the chemical smell.
A: Yeah, it is horrible . . . I don’t know, it smells like something
they put in dead people . . . You can smell it on you if you smoke it.
Another participant told us:
[Wet] comes in a little glass bottle. My friend used it to dip [blunt
cigars]. It stinks when you smoke it.
They claimed embalming fluid was regularly stolen from local mortuaries or ordered off the internet. In the area of this research, youth claimed "embalming fluid" was one of the most readily available intoxicants. However, the researchers made no attempt to validate the ingredients in the drug since, they claimed, GC/MS, the standard laboratory test, cannot detect formaldehyde.
One of that article's main claims is that hardly anyone knows what's in the drug (the users themselves, many of the dealers, police and other criminal justice agents, hospital staff and other treatment providers). The same is true on a larger scale: No one, it seems, really knows.
Why would anyone use it, then? For the sheer enjoyment of experiences like this, of course(!), haha:
Q: So what kind of things did you see?
A: Like, the grim reaper and I seen like different color cats just
running past . . . it makes your pupils dilate real big and you just
see a whole bunch of things and you can’t really walk.
See here:
http://pdfserve.informaworld.com.proxy2.library.uiuc.edu/283615_783359347_902986281.pdf
Almost all of the relevant evidence I can find of is of these types:
- Self-reports of users, taken by researchers, law enforcement, or medical professionals. Such reports are of low quality as evidence re: the chemicals consumed.
- Blood and urine tests of self-reported or suspected users, taken by medical staff in the course of treatment or at the behest of law enforcement. As far as I know, samples are not tested for embalming fluid. Some of those who report smoking embalming fluid also test positive for PCP, some do not. But as dcramer... and robatussin said, they may have smoked analogs or ketamine or some such.
- Chemical analysis of samples of street drugs collected by law enforcement. These analyses show that the cigarettes have, indeed, often been dipped in embalming fluid. So people are smoking it, if only because dealers believe it is a product in demand, and/or users take the term "embalming fluid" literally.
This doesn't mean that formaldehyde gets people high. It simply means that (a) people do smoke formaldehyde, alone or in combination with PCP, whether or not it gets them high; (b) serious, educated professionals consider it possible that formaldehyde is an intoxicant; and (c) no one really knows whether it is true or false.
The moral of the story? As Singer and company point out, neither users, dealers, nor researchers are sure whether the drug is "real":
There remains considerable uncertainty, both among users and among researchers,
about the nature of substances sold as embalming fluid mixtures. Additionally, it is unclear whether smoking embalming fluid actually produces pharmacological effects and health consequences, or whether user reported effects are a consequence of PCP or some other substance in the embalming fluid mixture.