This story originally appeared on Cracked.com.
Fueled by the opioid crisis, illegal drugs are killing more people than ever before. But lethal drug abuse isn’t just limited to heroin. Sometimes, dealers and users get creative to get high.
6. People Are Abusing Their Pets' Medication (And Their Pets)
It was only a matter of time before addicts figured out that if animal medication is good enough to knock out a Great Dane, it will probably also get them plenty high.
Unsurprisingly, most animal drugs aren't much different than the stuff hospitals prescribe. Heavy-duty pain relievers (like Tramadol), Valium, and even ketamine are generally available to ailing animals. The main difference between human and animal medication seems to be that one of them is a lot harder to obtain. Most human medication are controlled substances, which means they're carefully tracked. That's not the case for animal meds, though.
But until legislation is put into place to stop these druggie pet owners, some states have started educating vets on how to deal with addicts coming into their practice to get high off their cat's supply. They're mainly taught to recognize suspicious behavior, like when owners try to get refills early, or ask for medication by name,
But if pets are too healthy to exploit, it can lead to horrific abuse.
In 2002, one owner was caught having trained his dog to cough on command just so he could get his hands on cough medicine. But that takes a lot of work, so some addicts just resort to intentionally hurting their pets to get a fix.
In Kentucky, Heather Pereira was discovered to have cut her dog with razor blades as an excuse to keep getting her paws on his pain medication. She was sentenced to four years in prison. But that's small potatoes compared to one small drug ring in Oregon, who used a puppy mill as a front to amass over 100,000 Tramadol pills, neglecting the puppies to the point that their crates had been flooded with their own feces.
5. Drinking Russian Bath Lotions
In December 2016, over 100 people from the Siberian city of Irkutsk were rushed to the hospital due to alcohol-related poisoning. Their drink of choice? A strong beverage that will not only put hair on your chest, but also keep that hair silky and clean.
At this point it needs to be made very clear that this tragic incident didn't happen because people started drinking bath lotion, but because they started drinking counterfeit bath lotion. This means some criminal ring thought it more profitable to make fake bath lotion than fake vodka. And they weren't wrong. Today, over 12 million Russians drink surrogate alcohol, including perfume, after-shave, antifreeze, and window cleaner.
The reason for these soapy binges is mainly due to Vladimir Putin's government, which has been steadily raising the tax on alcohol for years in order to curb excessive drinking and fill its coffers with booze money. This has left many Russians too poor to support their habit, turning to their shower caddies for sweet relief. Putin has promised to lower taxes in the future and divert the government's attention to catching alcohol counterfeiters. Until then, Russians will just have to take pride in having the most fragrant alcoholics in the world.
4. Molly Usually Isn't MDMA (But Something Way Crazier)
Molly is a variant of ecstasy, a designer drug endorsed by paragons of cool like Jay-Z and Miley Cyrus. That must mean it's safe as houses, right? Not quite.
However, what many drug users buy when they think they’re purchasing molly isn't molly.
So what are these party people ingesting instead of their expensive designer drugs? It could be anything, really, from variants of meth to cannabinoids to even bath salts. All they have in common is that they're definitely not molly and they're definitely made by lazy manufacturers. Most of them are too new to have a unique name (or their makers couldn't come up with a catchy one), so they just slid into the molly brand. Sometimes, users are sold substances like Bromo-Dragonfly, which is pretty much LSD but with "effects that can last for up to three days."
A much more common narcotic cuckoo egg is benzylpiperazine, or BZP, the poster child for why this fake molly trend is so dangerous. BZP is incredibly easy to make, but takes a lot of cleanup to remove all of the toxins, which prevents massive kidney and liver damage -- among many other terrible side effects. But often, dealers don’t take the time to make it safe for sale.
Molly has become just another brand, a marketing slogan with about as much truth in advertising as "9 out of 10 dentists agree." Its umbrella status has become such an issue that many molly-centric venues like EDM concerts and raves have started setting up testing booths to make sure people know what's in their entertainment for the evening. The result is quite staggering, with only typically a quarter of pills tested containing only MDMA -- and just as many containing no MDMA whatsoever.
Meanwhile, out of all the molly the DEA seized and tested between 2009 and 2013, only as few as 13 percent of the pills showed any trace of MDMA. Users about as likely to get high on MDMA from some molly bought in a warehouse loft as they would from buying Flintstones vitamins in a drugstore.
