SYRUP SHOOTERS

You Don't Have To Be Sick To Indulge In Cough Syrup, But It Helps.

Editor's note: Salt Lake City Weekly does not recommend that anyone take
cough syrup other than as recommended by the product label or a physician.

The voice of my editor speaking through the receiver reminded me of my
friend, Ian, clucking like a chicken years ago.

"Do you know any people who use or abuse cough syrup on a recreational
basis? Would you like to write a cover story on the topic?" he asked.

I recalled a dewy morning in 1990 when Ian, I and a couple other guys went
AWOL from Granite High School in someone's Chevelle. Cutting class was new
to me, as I'd been scared straight before I was even crooked by the
pint-size fury I called mom. Skipping school, I'd long believed, got your
ass thrown in juvenile hall. Drinking, drugs or both in combination left
you dead or insane. As the Chevelle docked in the lot at Albertson's on 900
East and 3300 South, I wondered what abuse of cough syrup got you. An hour
later, after Ian guzzled about half the bottle of Robitussin, I found out:
It got you clucking like a chicken.

Ian called it "Robo-ing," and acted like I was nuts not to know what it
was. Being a rebel tenderfoot, I declined his offer to share. But I enjoyed
the show, the memory of which was still being interrupted by the editor's
voice.

"I honestly don't know if the scourge of cough syrup abuse has spiked or
not," Mr. Editor said. Neither did I. In fact, I had scarcely heard of it
in the 13 years since Ian's finger-lickin' good time. But cough syrup, the
editor continued, may be "the closest thing--after alcohol and
nicotine--that we have to a legal drug."

Mr. Editor was right. For an adventure in cough syrup, you don't even need
identification to score. I remembered Ian being inside Albertsons for no
more than five minutes. Ten minutes later he was screaming, "buh-gawk!"

"Either way," my editor continued, "this could be a fun, interesting story.
It doesn't have to be an expose about an epidemic, especially if it was
written from a sort of first-person, narrative account. And, possibly, you
could even down a bottle or two in adulthood to tell our readers what it's
like to revisit the experience."

Despite having revisited all I had to revisit, I took the assignment. It
didn't seem like such a big deal to drink cough syrup. In fact, I cared a
great deal for the grape flavor as a kid. I still remember the taste, and
how the cool, fruity anti-lava ran down my throat. It was the only pleasant
sensation I could recall, since I was too young to understand the blessing
of a good buzz, but just young enough for the recommended dose to deliver a
knockout punch.

But the cough syrup underground itself seemed a sucker's punch. For years,
the "syrup experience" has been the low-rent buzz of choice for people
without access to harder stuff. Usually that meant, like my friend, Ian,
high school kids. But if downing the stuff resulted in death, insanity or
birth defects, it seemed curious that someone in government or big media
hadn't made a story of it. Except for a few sundry Websites, message boards
and exotic tales here and there, I discovered that the cough syrup
underground was awfully hard to excavate, curate or even document. That
doesn't mean there aren't hidden dangers, however.

Of course, at roughly $2 per ounce, the over-the-counter stuff no longer
includes codeine in the mix. Cough syrup producers stopped that practice
long ago. The active ingredient, the chicken-clucker-catalyst I needed, was
"DXM"--dextromethorphan.

This, as I was about to learn, was a slippery ingredient indeed. Related to
opiates but not exactly an opiate itself, it affects dopamine in the brain,
in addition to other areas of the noggin called the "sigma receptor" and
"NMDA channel." Whatever. What really caught the eye were a few warnings:
Don't ingest DXM too soon before or after taking an antihistamine, never
mix it with certain drugs for depression, don't take it too often (usually
more than once per week) and don't take it if your liver or kidneys are out
of whack, or if you experience seizures. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency
has even warned that DXM can cause brain damage and even death when mixed
with other drugs. Oh yeah, it can also cause panic and screw up a drug test.

As a precursor to my research, I phoned my sister, who once worked for
Valley Mental Health as a case manager for substance abusers. She knew a
psychologist named Mike Sheffield, who treated patients who had abused
syrup. Reached on his cell phone, Sheffield said he'd been out of the game
a few years (he travels around doing "testing"), but he never really saw
DXM abuse as a scourge, not the way the media might portray it, anyway.

It's certainly abused, he told me, but the people he treated who abused DXM
almost always used other drugs, basically whatever they could get their
hands on. He also explained, like any good doctor would, the myriad adverse
effects. Then I posed the ultimate question.

"So, doc, say I got some," I told him. "And I wanted to sip it until I felt
something? How much would I have to take? How much can I take safely?"

"I don't want to put myself in the position of advocating the use of it in
any way," he said firmly. "There are dangers."

He did, however, throw me a bone.

"I know there are Websites where you can read about the highs," he said.

No specifics, but I knew where to go, and I knew what they said. Now, more
than ever, I didn't want to try it. How in the world was I going to pull
this off?

Lookin' for some 'Tuss

The Wal-Mart cough syrup aisle was abandoned. People walked by at either
end, but none entered. I could hear my wife and daughters debating dinner
plans-- "Carl's Jr! Wienerschnitzel!"--two aisles over as I read labels.

Robitussin, if I remembered correctly, modified its formula at one point to
make its syrup less recreationally appealing. The "DM" formula contained
DXM, but also another active ingredient, an expectorant called guaifenesin.
In fact, virtually every brand of cough syrup on the shelf had some other
active ingredient, which made matters confusing. I remembered a Denis Leary
stand-up show where he ranted of hallucinations brought on by the "green
death fuckin' flavor" formula of NyQuil. I headed home with a big bottle of
that, some cheap DVDs I didn't need, and an ugly stuffed bear won from the
impulse predator crane machine.

Never Do Anything a Fat Rapper Would Do

My drug resume is pretty pathetic, to be honest. I had sense enough not to
smoke, but the fear of pushin' up daisies or becoming a drooling mess
ensured I didn't drink until the age of 21. Beyond this, I quite enjoyed
some post-vasectomy Percocet and Lortab received for back pain. And once,
while I waited in a vacant apartment for a telephone technician, I tried
inhaling the smoke from a blown-out match to see if the "match hits" my
eighth-grade friends raved about were really all that. They weren't. I
passed, thanks to residue from the aforementioned irrational fear, on
psychedelic mushrooms the one time they were offered. I only took one pain
pill at a time and, against the recommendation of my friends, never mixed
them with beer. I've never seen cocaine, acid, ecstasy, ketamine, meth or
heroin. Of that list, I would only try acid. Maybe.

I never experimented heavily because of the fear my mother implanted in me,
and because of a dogma I'm close to adopting: Never do anything a fat
rapper would do. It doesn't completely suit me, as I still hold no qualms
about drinking 40-ounce beers. But it sounds good, so I'm trying to make it
work. The point is that Biggie lived the thug life--"kapow!"--and I don't
even wanna talk about the Fat Boys.

So when I came across an April 2002 report from Fox 13 News in Tampa Bay
about a syrup-happy rapper named Big Moe, the willies came fast and
furious. Moe, according to the report, extolled the virtues of "sippin' on
the syrup" on his albums City of Syrup and Purple World, which contains his
signature song "Purple Stuff." The report went on to detail the
death--death!--of another rap artist named DJ Screw, who met his end after
drinking too much prescription-strength syrup. I consoled myself with the
fact that Screw had imbibed $200-a-bottle codeine stuff. I, on the other
hand, would be tipping an over-the-counter cocktail. The worst that could
happen? I'd experience the sensation of a big blob of mercury rolling
around in my breadbasket, followed by grape upchuck.

"Perhaps you could just find some users to talk to?"

Uh-unh. I had already tried three people. They'd all decided they didn't
want to talk about it.

"Or maybe you could just sip it slowly, bit by bit, until you feel
something?" he offered.

Get thee hence, Evil Editor!

Actually, that sounded pretty reasonable, almost like what I'd heard about
S& . I could just yell "Mommy!" when I couldn't take it anymore. But how
much could I take? How much was enough? What if it was like certain strains
of cannabis, where the effects sneak up so slowly that you don't know it's
too late until you're well on your way to death, insanity, or both?

Now, more than ever, I didn't wanna try it. But before I had a chance to
kneel in abject failure before Mr. Editor, I confided in a good friend.

"Man, there's no way I'm gonna get a story out of this," I boobed. "Not
unless I drink some syrup, and I really don't want to do that."

"Brian," as he shall be called, came to the rescue. His drug resume was
much more impressive than mine. He'd tried pot, acid, mushrooms, a
veritable Captain's Platter of substances compared to my meager menu. I'd
seen him piss drunk, stoned immaculate, and I listened like a wide-eyed
child to his party stories. Like the time he took five extra hits of acid
because the first didn't seem to do anything, consequently embarking on a
really bad trip. Or how in 1995, he'd gone camping with some acid
aficionados and blacked out, only to wake up feeling like he'd committed a
social faux pas.

"I think I was taking my clothes off or something, because the girls I was
hanging out with were acting strange toward me," I remember him saying. He
was also a drinker of heroic proportions.

Not to worry, he said, chuckling. "I'll do it."

Discovery

I was to act as "Brian's" trip-sitter that coming Sunday night, something I
looked forward to with relief--and just a little shame at letting my friend
take the risk.

The sooner this was over, the better. But along the way I managed to talk
to another person with fond memories of his own over-the-counter encounter.
Grant Sperry was more than happy to speak of his syrup experience, and it
couldn't hurt to have more stories.

The Rev. Sperry's drug resume was even better than "Brian's." In addition
to cough syrup, he said, "I've tried peyote, LSD, pot, [smoked] toad
secretions, nitrous--while having sex, mushrooms, synthetic mescaline. ..."

He had a story for every drug, and almost all of them contained some
element of self-discovery. His virgin--and only--syrup trip is the least
remarkable, but still kinda interesting.

"I was in college, at the University of Utah," he begins. He and a buddy
were holed up in a room at a rented house. They'd each drained a 4-ounce
bottle of Robitussin DM. "It was fucking awful tasting shit," Sperry
remembers. He recalls floating through space and seeing the cosmic egg [a
chicken egg?], from which all life stemmed forth.

"I saw the yolk, which I realized was a folded piece of legal paper [that
held the answer to the universe]." He reached for it, and it was pulled
away from him. Tried again, denied again. Then it bloomed--only to reveal
it was blank. "There was no answer," Sperry said. "Or [the answer was that
the universe] could be anything you wanted it to be."

I met "Brian" in the Wal-Mart cough syrup aisle Sunday afternoon to select
a brand. It took about three minutes to settle on a 4-ounce bottle of Vicks
44, which contained 33 percent to 50 percent more DXM than other leading
brands and had no other active ingredients. "Brian" was hesitant. Vicks 44
contained alcohol, and "that will just make me tired." I bought it anyway,
but we agreed to adjourn until 9 p.m., at which point we'd peruse the syrup
selection at Smith's, which "Brian" insisted was more expansive. There, we
were confronted with the same selection. Fearless "Brian" said he had to
work overtime the next day and didn't want a hangover from the alcohol.
Thankfully, "Brian" reconsidered, offering a sip-and-see compromise. It was
better than nothing.

Twenty minutes later, "Brian" began sipping. The abridged version of the
night's events: He sipped. He got mellow. He sipped. His linear logic went
out the window. He got surly. When trying to tell me a story, and realizing
I didn't follow, he said, "Fuck! Are you paying attention?"

He sipped for the last time, and the bottle appeared half-empty. Then he
talked. And talked. I got a headache. I fell asleep. I got up and went to
bed. My last thought as I hit the pillow was that it would have to be me.
"Brian" may have been marginally interesting on syrup. But there was really
no way to describe his own vivid experience without getting into his head.
I would have to attempt my own vivid experience.

Facing Demons

It never seemed like platitudes such as "don't sweat the small stuff" or
"just do it" could apply to real life, but they do. A lot better, to be
sure, than "never do anything a fat rapper would do