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Psychedelics & Orange Juice

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garrick92

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I hadn't heard this for ages, but today (during an email exchange about shrooms) a correspondent told me that orange juice could (quote) "stop a trip dead in its tracks".

I have always been hugely suspicious of this notion, and indeed a cursory google turns up claim and counterclaim on the subject.

Anyone got the skinny on this?
 
I seem to remember reading, in Tom Wolfe's, The Electric Koolaid Acid Test, that vitamin C, or orange juice was a preferred treatment for bad trips, by the Merry Pranksters, back in the early to mid-Sixties. But, it's been a long time since I read it. Most references I've just checked seem to agree that there is some calming effect, but it may just be a placebo.

http://addictions.about.com/od/designerdrugs/tp/The-Truth-About-Acid.htm
 
We used to use it for that purpose, yes. Don't know if its effect was more than psychological - but if you are tripping psychological effects are maybe all you need to divert a bad one.

I only had one really bad trip, but it was enough to stop me messing with the stuff.
 
I was a volunteer with multiple drug hotline / intervention centers back in the early 1970's, so I had substantial engagement with lore ranging from street legends to medical advice / training from professionals.

There is nothing so effective as to "stop a trip dead in its tracks". This much has been known since the 1960's, and it's the reason professional medical guidance has always emphasized simply letting the patient ride it out in a non-threatening / calming environment. More specific responses are prescribed for secondary effects of a trip (e.g., tachycardia), but none are presumed to counteract the drug's basic effects. The only demonstrably effective medical response is to sedate an unusually freaked out patient until the trip runs its course.

LSD is very rapidly absorbed, so detox / purging tactics can only be effective in the first 30 - 60 minutes (at best). Beyond this point, the roller coaster ride must run its course.

Having said that ... Yes - there were a number of folk tales about effective ways to mitigate or counteract LSD back in the Olde Daze. I don't recall orange juice being one of the commonly-recommended interventions. However, OJ was a very common treat offered to walk-in trippers at clinics, emergency rooms, intervention centers, etc., and the association of free OJ with a seemingly effective clinic visit might explain the origin of this particular tale.

The only such folk remedy I knew to have been used in professional medical responses was large dosages of B-vitamins. Street lore claimed that B-vitamins would restore something-something that the LSD had knocked out of balance, and this would ameliorate / shorten the trippy effects. This apparently made enough sense(?) that emergency rooms sometimes gave massive B-vitamin injections to tripping patients. Back in the day I talked with a handful of LSD users who reported having received such injections, and I confirmed their usage with two members of emergency room staff at two different hospitals. As I recall, the lore claimed niacin was the most effective B-vitamin for this purpose.

Having said that ... The 1985 study described in this abstract:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2868 ... t=Abstract

... seemed to indicate PRE-treatment of cats with ascorbic acid (vitamin C) interfered with or reduced the effects of subsequent LSD ingestion.

This 1985 result is consistent with the claims made in this MAPS (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies) forum posting:

http://www.maps.org/old_forum/1999/msg00425.html

... that pre-(LSD)-ingestion of significant amounts of vitamin C had been demonstrated to smooth or soften (but not dramatically terminate) LSD effects as early as the 1970's.
 
Interaction between LSD and ascorbic acid was reported as early as 1959 ...

"Hoffer (1959) treated several subjects on a number of days with ascorbic acid (4 g.p.p.) before administering LSD (there is no declaration of the design of the study, dose, or method of application). Another group received ascorbic acid when the LSD effects had reached a maximum. The author described that not the intensity, but the quality of the symptoms appeared to be changed. There was no reduction in the degree of changes in perception, but the subjects were able to concentrate better and apparently developed fewer paranoid thoughts. Twenty-four hours after the combined administration of LSD and ascorbic acid the subjects exhibited less fatigue and tension."

SOURCE: A. Hintzen and T. Passie (2010). The Pharmacology of LSD: A Critical Review. Oxford University Press, p. 113.

The citation for this Hoffer study is given as:

Hoffer, A. (1959). In Gibbs, F.A. (ed.), Molecules and Mental Health. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
 
EnolaGaia said:
The only such folk remedy I knew to have been used in professional medical responses was large dosages of B-vitamins. Street lore claimed that B-vitamins would restore something-something that the LSD had knocked out of balance, and this would ameliorate / shorten the trippy effects. This apparently made enough sense(?) that emergency rooms sometimes gave massive B-vitamin injections to tripping patients. Back in the day I talked with a handful of LSD users who reported having received such injections, and I confirmed their usage with two members of emergency room staff at two different hospitals. As I recall, the lore claimed niacin was the most effective B-vitamin for this purpose.

Could the 'orange juice stopping a trip' be a placebo then? Since trips are often influenced by your surroundings/mental state, obviously the more agitated you are the worse things will be. Then if someone gives you orange juice, tells you it will make you better, and you genuinely believe that, would it help calm you down and make the trip less terrible?

I have no idea if placebos work when you're tripping balls. I'm so straight-laced the strongest thing I've ever had were antihistamines :p
 
Yes - orange juice can't serve as anything more than a placebo once the LSD is ingested and metabolized (which only takes circa 30 minutes). LSD acts all at once to mess with serotonin receptors in the nervous system, so the bulk of the trip (typically 6 to 8 hours or so) is experienced after the LSD has come and gone.

LSD is metabolized in the liver and the residues are excreted renally (i.e., via urine). I suppose if you drank a *lot* of OJ, you might hasten the flushing of the residues from your body. Even then, I don't believe this would do much to ameliorate the tripping experience.

Anything that calms the tripper (placebos, distractions, having a cup of tea in silence) 'works' to help him / her ride out the trip.

I've personally witnessed two cases in which people experienced with LSD and in the midst of tripping claimed the trip's effects had stopped dead - both involving stress and adrenalin:

(1) One of two people tripping (same acid; same schedule) disturbed a wasp nest and got a handful of stings. He claimed he'd become stone cold "sober" after the stinging, whereas his trip-mate remained a virtual vegetable for several hours. The behaviors of the stingee and his companion were entirely consistent with the storyline. This was at a party event I attended, and I can attest that the stingee was noticeably wasted up until he got stung.

(2) Only a block from one of the hotline / intervention centers where I volunteered, I (and about 15 - 20 others) witnessed a car hit a boy on a bicycle and send the kid hurtling to a hard impact on a traffic island. Everybody froze, except for 2 hippie guys who immediately rushed to the boy, calmed him, carefully repositioned him, administered first aid for bleeding and pretty obvious fractures, yelled someone out of their shock to call for an ambulance, surveyed his injuries, and gave a detailed account of his injuries and status to the police and medics when they arrived only a few minutes later. Everyone else just stood there.

The police officer and medics all congratulated these (otherwise reviled-on-sight-in-that-particular-time-and-place) hippies ("Great work, guys!" "Thanks!"), the ambulance raced off, and the crowd dissipated. The two hippie types were still standing on the traffic island, splotched with the kid's blood, looking lost and bewildered. I walked over to them and asked if they were OK. They said they were 'peaking' on some very heavy acid, and needed help getting out of such a public position. A third person (their non-participating companion) was obviously tripped-out to the extreme. I asked them how they'd reacted so efficiently and effectively to the injured kid, and they both said the shock of seeing him get hit had rendered them stone cold straight during their emergency response. They both claimed they didn't feel trippy again until it was over and they were left standing there, covered in blood in the middle of a busy intersection at rush hour.


So far as I know, orange juice was not involved in either incident. :twisted:
 
It's an odd thing, but when I was really quite mentally ill and having an episode where I felt really very out of it, orange juice seemed to be quite handy to bring me round.

I wondered sometimes if it wasn;t actually anything chemical that was going on so much that the zingyness helps snap your attention back to the here and now?
 
Thanks Enola for some interesting input on the subject. From what you've said, it seems that the energy drink "V" might be most useful, containing as it does large amounts of sugar and B-vitamins. The two hippies story was especially interesting.

I can only speak from personal experience, but at some point in spring 1992 I was tripping my nits off in a student house when our street appeared on the TV news because there was an escaped convict in our area. We were buzzed by a helicopter with searchlights and had to answer our front door to policemen making inquiries. We were so stressed out that we completely forgot we were tripping, and it wasn't until much later that the weirdness of it began to sink in (at which point we got very paranoid -- I don't remember whether the convict was ever caught though).

I've not watched the tripping cats video yet, but am saving it for later.
 
OneWingedBird said:
It's an odd thing, but when I was really quite mentally ill and having an episode where I felt really very out of it, orange juice seemed to be quite handy to bring me round.

I wondered sometimes if it wasn;t actually anything chemical that was going on so much that the zingyness helps snap your attention back to the here and now?

That's a good point about the 'zingy' taste being a prompt that brings one back from distraction. Orange juice provides vitamin C, natural sugars to get the blood sugar level up without the shock of a processed sugar rush, and a decent amount of potassium. I've been told by medical professionals that the sugar aspect is the reason OJ was the standard beverage offered to blood donors.

Personally, I've found vegetable juice (e.g., the V8 blend) to be as good or better at picking me up when my nerves, mood, etc., get too frayed. Unlike orange juice, vegetable juices have substantial B vitamin content.
 
I was told way back in the late 1990's that you should only take LSD with OJ. Taking it any other way would be too harsh on the system and make you go mad! :roll: Of course I believed it at the time!

Also, I'm not sure if it's a UL or just a sad truth, but I'm sure about the same time I heard people were cutting heroin with powdered vitamin C. Is that something that would happen??

I agree with Onewingedbird - when going thru some pretty nasty downs on the bi-polar express I've found sharp/sour flavours often help. Oj with lemon in it does seem to ease something within at those awful, nightmareish times.
 
cherrybomb said:
I was told way back in the late 1990's that you should only take LSD with OJ. Taking it any other way would be too harsh on the system and make you go mad! :roll: Of course I believed it at the time!

Also, I'm not sure if it's a UL or just a sad truth, but I'm sure about the same time I heard people were cutting heroin with powdered vitamin C. Is that something that would happen?? ...

The late 1990's were 'way back'?!? :shock:

In that case, I can attest that back in the comparatively Paleozoic era of the late 1960's / early 1970's neither of those bits of drug folklore were widely circulating in the USA.

Back then the only folklore involving LSD and OJ was the scare story of the tripper who went mad believing he'd become an orange or a glass of orange juice ...

http://www.snopes.com/horrors/drugs/orange.asp
 
We knew about the OJ 'cure' in the mid 70's. My last trip was in 1980 so I can date it pretty accurately.
 
EnolaGaia said:
cherrybomb said:
I was told way back in the late 1990's that you should only take LSD with OJ. Taking it any other way would be too harsh on the system and make you go mad! :roll: Of course I believed it at the time!

Also, I'm not sure if it's a UL or just a sad truth, but I'm sure about the same time I heard people were cutting heroin with powdered vitamin C. Is that something that would happen?? ...

The late 1990's were 'way back'?!? :shock:

Just a little joke ;)
 
cherrybomb said:
Also, I'm not sure if it's a UL or just a sad truth, but I'm sure about the same time I heard people were cutting heroin with powdered vitamin C. Is that something that would happen?? ...

Compared to some of the things that heroin gets cut with, vit c would be positively benign. (But heroin is brown, and powdered vit c is white, which would make it more suitable to be cut with cocaine, surely?)
 
garrick92 said:
cherrybomb said:
Also, I'm not sure if it's a UL or just a sad truth, but I'm sure about the same time I heard people were cutting heroin with powdered vitamin C. Is that something that would happen?? ...

Compared to some of the things that heroin gets cut with, vit c would be positively benign. (But heroin is brown, and powdered vit c is white, which would make it more suitable to be cut with cocaine, surely?)
Have you not heard of China White? Pulp Fiction?
 
Monstrosa said:
Have you not heard of China White? Pulp Fiction?

Yet another gaping hole exposed in my ramshackle facade of being 'down wit da yoof'...
 
I would have thought if anything was going to bring you down from a bad trip, heroin is probably a good bet.
 
The most common way to treat a bad trip today is Benzodiazpam aka valium. It won't "end" the trip per se. It will counteract the stress causing the bad trip. In the olden days Thorazine (which is way overkill) was used. Most people won't have Thorazine at home, requiring a nightmarish trip to hospital. Barney on the Simpsons just crushed the monsters with his beer induced pink elephant.
I used to hear the rumour you shouldn't drink OJ before or during trip as it will kill your trip. Or was a trip enhancer and you should drink it, i really can't remember, thats an old one though.
LSD is so powerful that its the only drug in 2013 that has more legends surrounding it that it did 30 years ago. People no longer think it has rat poison in it or it will build up in your spine or it made some kid stare at the sun. People will still say stuff like the acid was "speedy" which it cant be because speed wont fit on a blotter. They say its "dirty" or "clean" which is also all in their mind, its impossible to tell street acid from Sandoz labs acid made by Albert Hoffman. People also believe the world supply is made by a hippie mafia called the family, despite the lack of any evidence this group even exists today. When you mention that anyone who made acid in 1969 is now a great grandparent or dead they get mad.
Large, in fact massive numbers, of people online believe LSD today is somehow different than it "used to be". They think its either a variant of LSD or a different chemical altogether, this despite the fact that people in Netherlands where drug testing is legal have tested hundreds of hits and rarely ever find anything not acid. As soon as you show these results to people they of course say that is Europe, in North America or Aus its all fake. Its this crazy debate loop you cant escape.
What has really flamed the fires of debate is the 5 or 6 people worldwide in the last year who have suddenly died after taking acid. Since it was invented no one ever died, now a few all at once is fuelling paranoia, i am waiting for toxicology tests though before deciding. It can only be a few things though. Either its not acid and some other chemical, or its badly made batch with some sort of toxic side product, or those people just happened to die while on acid.
I will be taking some this week I am so buying some OJ!
 
I actually thought this thread was going to be about the old UL where someone was committed to a mental hospital after a bad trip where they believed they were a glass of OJ, and were terrified of being drunk and/or spilled. :lol:
 
Apropos to LSD.
In the 60's, in Australia we didn't know about orange juice, but If we came across some really good acid and enjoyed it immensely - to start peaking again during the 'space-out', we would have a cone of nutmeg. It worked everytime. the Moody Blues came off the turntable, needless to say, and it was a toss-up between Hawkwind or UmmaGumma.
 
You can trip on nutmeg by itself.

Not a good idea though as it's hugely toxic in the amounts that you need.

Also, as you know, cutting a whole nutmeg into pieces then crunching them up in your mouth is pretty yakky.
 
OWB, all we needed at the time was enough powder to cover the head of a drawing pin. And yes, it was foul, but we didn't mind at the time.
 
Also, I'm not sure if it's a UL or just a sad truth, but I'm sure about the same time I heard people were cutting heroin with powdered vitamin C. Is that something that would happen??

Non-pharmaceutical Heroin doesn't dissolve well in water, users cook it up using Citric acid, Vit C (ascorbic acid), vinegar or sometimes lemon juice. If anything, Vit C is the least harmful way of getting it into an injectable form.


I dunno about OJ and Acid, but I remember many years ago that we believed drinking OJ would "sober" you up when you'd smoked so much hash you were FUBAR...
 
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