Tuesday, June 14, 2005
Cocaine: it's a helluva drug
Seriously, anybody who hasn't seen it yet really needs to get Chapelle's Show Season 2 and watch episode 4, "Charlie Murphy's True Hollywood Stories," which has got to be the funniest shit ever - no qualifications necessary.
And now, let's launch into a series of non-sequitur stories...
I was sitting at a table in the break-room at work about a week ago, talking to my friend T, and this annoying but tolerable 18 year old girl that he is vaguely associated with. She pulls a script bottle from her purse and pops a pill, which naturally peaks my interest, and so I ask her what it is. She tells me it's penicillin, so naturally I ask her if she's got "VD." Responding in a pointedly chilly tone, this girl tells me that she has strep throat, and I let the subject drop.
A few days later we're all sitting around again, and somehow (I wonder) the subject of crack comes up, and this girl asks what "crack" is. Being a naturally generous person I took it upon myself to provide this naive youngster with at least a basic education in the fundamentals of rock cocaine.
And it goes a little something like this...
In chemistry an "acid" is something that gives up hydrogen atoms, and a "base" is something that takes hydrogen atoms. Cocaine HCl (the shit you put up your nose) is a "salt" - the product of a base and an acid. Free-base (i.e. crack), is the "free" base (cocaine without the Cl atom) form of cocaine HCl. The reason that you need to reduce Cocaine HCl to free-base before smoking it is that ionic bonds (like the one between the cocaine molecule and the Cl atom) are strong enough that the heat required to break them is greater than the melting point of the cocaine molecule, so if you try to smoke Cocaine HCl, the cocaine molecule will break down before the whole thing vaporizes, and all your left with is a lung full of acrid - and likely carcenogenic - smoke. Thank god for Arm & Hammer.
After reciting this spiel in front of a wall of glazed eyes, I paused, and this girl asked me, "so have you ever smoked crack?"
My friend T started laughing immediately, and I wasn't far behind.
"Yeah, a couple of times," I replied, "but I wouldn't recommend it."
"Why would you do that?" she asked me.
Shit - I don't know - "why not?"
A few days later, I was talking to my friend T, and he was complaining about how sick he was. At the time, he though he had caught strep throat, probably in the process of exchanging bodily fluids with our mutual co-worker. To say the least, I was unsympathetic. In fact, I was laughing my ass off.
"Fucking ironic, isn't it," I said, "you hook up with this nice respectable girl, and get dog sick, and I'm involved with all manner of degenerate whores, and I'm healthy as a horse."
"That's what you get," I continued, "for fucking with a girl that's got penicillin in her medicine cabinet - that just isn't a good idea."
That and Valtrex.
And now, let's launch into a series of non-sequitur stories...
I was sitting at a table in the break-room at work about a week ago, talking to my friend T, and this annoying but tolerable 18 year old girl that he is vaguely associated with. She pulls a script bottle from her purse and pops a pill, which naturally peaks my interest, and so I ask her what it is. She tells me it's penicillin, so naturally I ask her if she's got "VD." Responding in a pointedly chilly tone, this girl tells me that she has strep throat, and I let the subject drop.
A few days later we're all sitting around again, and somehow (I wonder) the subject of crack comes up, and this girl asks what "crack" is. Being a naturally generous person I took it upon myself to provide this naive youngster with at least a basic education in the fundamentals of rock cocaine.
And it goes a little something like this...
In chemistry an "acid" is something that gives up hydrogen atoms, and a "base" is something that takes hydrogen atoms. Cocaine HCl (the shit you put up your nose) is a "salt" - the product of a base and an acid. Free-base (i.e. crack), is the "free" base (cocaine without the Cl atom) form of cocaine HCl. The reason that you need to reduce Cocaine HCl to free-base before smoking it is that ionic bonds (like the one between the cocaine molecule and the Cl atom) are strong enough that the heat required to break them is greater than the melting point of the cocaine molecule, so if you try to smoke Cocaine HCl, the cocaine molecule will break down before the whole thing vaporizes, and all your left with is a lung full of acrid - and likely carcenogenic - smoke. Thank god for Arm & Hammer.
After reciting this spiel in front of a wall of glazed eyes, I paused, and this girl asked me, "so have you ever smoked crack?"
My friend T started laughing immediately, and I wasn't far behind.
"Yeah, a couple of times," I replied, "but I wouldn't recommend it."
"Why would you do that?" she asked me.
Shit - I don't know - "why not?"
A few days later, I was talking to my friend T, and he was complaining about how sick he was. At the time, he though he had caught strep throat, probably in the process of exchanging bodily fluids with our mutual co-worker. To say the least, I was unsympathetic. In fact, I was laughing my ass off.
"Fucking ironic, isn't it," I said, "you hook up with this nice respectable girl, and get dog sick, and I'm involved with all manner of degenerate whores, and I'm healthy as a horse."
"That's what you get," I continued, "for fucking with a girl that's got penicillin in her medicine cabinet - that just isn't a good idea."
That and Valtrex.
