Drug info - PCP Basics

[RoboCop]

Please post info and questions on the basics of PCP use here. Ways of use, Dosage, Background, toxicity, etc...

[dogcow]

Original names were Sernylan (veternary marketing) and Serynl (for human use). Marketed by Parker Davis & Co in the 1950s & 1960s. It is no longer manufactured for legitmate use in any country.


-dc

[Dr.Ganesha]

Can anybody tell me more about PCP?

[raven3davis]

PCP is active in very small doses. 5mg is enough for a good trip and 8-10 and beyond is a powerful experience. SWIM has only tried it once in the form of sherm which is a cigarette dipped in liquid pcp. The exact dose was unknown so SWIM said he only took a few hits because he did not want to over do it for his first time. He felt very stoned and slightly dissociated. Very lightheaded and wierd depth perception. Definitely just a low dose somewhere around 3mg.

SWIM said he only did it once and would like to try it again and take a few more hits off of the sherm so he can reach to the next level. It felt dirty though not a clean trip.

You can also inject it or snort it, but remember the dose is very small. 5mg of PCP would be a very small amount of powder and an accurate +1mg scale would be strongly advised. SWIM does not know if volumetric measuring will work with PCP, but by any means possible you need to weight the dose very accurately it seems. You really cannot eyeball such small amounts of PCP. Ketamine is different because you can do small bumps and lines and find what dose you like. With PCP you really need to be able to weigh it out because the dose response curve is very steep.

PCP seems to be a very powerful drug. There is a lot of media hype and some of it may be .001% true but PCP is a powerful drug. If someone were to do way too much they might lose control. It is a powerful dissociatiave and some even report a P hole with small simmilarities to the k hole in the sence that you are in a completely different world.

SWIM said all this when he was drunk so some might not make sence but edits will be made when he sobers up off the lean :0 peace all and stay safe with dat PCP!

[Dr.Ganesha]

What are some other common ways of taking PCP, other than dipping a cigarette in it?

Can you explain "dirty high" a little?

[JewishNazi]

It can be taken via all routes: orally, insufflated, injected (IM and IV) rectaly, and ofcourse, smoked.

oth smoked and snorted are unpredictable, whereas oral and injection sohuld be easy to determine how much substance will deliver what

[george13]

My freind got some weed laced with PCP....
it was pretty kool...what i can remember is....
thangs kept changing shades of colors...like you were looking out of a colored glass bubble or somethin...like you would look at somethin red and then look away and everything was tinted red....it was pretty sweet...

[tonymontana]

swim used to get pcp as tea or mint leaves that were dipped in the liquid pcp. or, as cigs dipped in it. we called them dippys, and, swim usually ended up hating the experience. it is a very dirty, sickly trip and although you get completely plucked from reality when you do enough of it, your body definately feels the pain afterwards. swims homegirl once did too many 20 bags of the flake and ended up spouting off some random gibberish for 2 days. she was completely incoherent, but, she did come back to reality after awhile. i say, stay away from dust. its definately not worth the hassles. get some good acid instead.

[Nagognog2]

There was a lot of PCP loose back in the 1970's - around the time the move The Exorcist came out. Due to the "spouting off some random gibberish for 2 days. she was completely incoherent" effects of doing too large an amount, many a mother called their family priest to come perform an exorcism on little Suzy/Joey.

Those were the day! LOL!

[darkglobe]

I guess PCP is scarce nowadays, then?

I've read a little about it, in William White's hugely out of date DXM FAQ, but as it wasn't the focus of the paper, it wasn't described in-depth.

Anyone know if the reports of extreme violence surrounding the substance are purely media hype or based on truths?

[darkglobe]

Originally Posted by tonymontana

its definately not worth the hassles. get some good acid instead.

I don't mean to be an arse, but LSD is not in the same league as PCP as far as effects. LSD is not a dissociative drug, whereas PCP is. Those looking for an experience similar in tone to a PCP trip should investigate DXM, Ketamine and possibly Nitrous Oxide (for a shorter experience, good as an intro to dissociatives).

~Dark

[Salvinorin A]

How do people get to the extremem dissociation effects? Is that on the come down?

Basically SWIM hears (and has seen) these stories where people do superhuman activities and break most of the bones in their bodies.

IE: An officer once told SWIM about a man on PCP....jumped off of 2 story building, broke both legs and kept running. When they cuffed him, he breaks both of rists and actually snaps the metal cuffs. Eventually 8 men subdue him.

The one that SWIM has seen.....A man was fighting two officers. One of them took the night stick, and swung at the man's knee. His bone went out the back of his leg, but amazingly the guy still fought the officers for another good 5 mins.

SWIM has plenty more stories liek these, he's just wondering at what point in the PCP trip (and at what dose) does this happen?

[Freak_]

Does PCP turn people into cannibals?

Dear Cecil:

What's up with PCP turning people into cannibals? --Jim, New York

Cecil replies:

Now, Jim. It's not like cannibalism is a frequent consequence of PCP use. Only one case has turned up that I know of, involving Antron Singleton, a would-be rapper using the stage name Big Lurch. In 2002, after he was found walking around Los Angeles naked and covered with blood, his roommate Tynisha Ysais, 21, was discovered dead on the floor of their apartment with her chest slashed open and her internal organs exposed. Pieces of her right lung, which had been removed from her body, appeared chewed and torn, and there were teeth marks on her face. Singleton's lawyer claimed his client had tucked into Ysais after a five-day PCP binge had made him psychotic. An insanity plea was rejected, and Singleton was sentenced to life in prison without parole; a similar incident soon found its way into an episode of CSI.

Huh, you say. Sounds like PCP isn't the drug of choice when you're looking to get mellow. Maybe not, but PCP, known technically as phencyclidine and on the street as angel dust, horse tranquilizer, etc, has its defenders, or at least apologists, who say tales of homicidal rage are exaggerated and recall the hysteria surrounding cocaine, LSD, and marijuana in earlier eras. A riffle through the clippings offers evidence for both sides of the argument:

Houston, a 21-year-old rising R & B star said to have been battling PCP use and mental problems, went to his hotel room while on tour in London in late January, ostensibly to read the Bible, and gouged out one of his eyes. His publicist denied reports that he had earlier attempted to jump from a 13th-floor window. PCP isn't mentioned in later accounts of the incident and the guy definitely had other issues, so this one can't be confidently pinned on the drug.
According to the New York Daily News, in 2002 a 30-year-old Brooklyn mother killed her 7-year-old daughter while high on PCP, stabbing her more than 35 times and also repeatedly stabbing a neighbor who tried to intervene.


In a 1980 special issue on PCP, the Journal of Psychedelic Drugs reported that, on the one hand, (1) some stories about PCP-induced dementia were demonstrably embroidered or otherwise unreliable--for example, Baltimore college dropout Charles Innes blinded himself while in jail after swallowing a canister of drugs, but there was no proof the stuff was PCP; (2) the vast majority of PCP experiences were nonviolent; (3) you could find eye gougings, superhuman strength, and whatnot attributed to drugs ranging from LSD to ergot; (4) PCP users took gobs of other drugs too; and (5) the one recreational drug indisputably linked to crime was alcohol. On the other hand, the Journal's contributors went on to say, PCP had played a role in plenty of stunningly senseless violence: (1) a 17-year-old boy made a sexual advance on a 14-year-old girl after both had smoked "superweed" (here meaning marijuana dosed with PCP); when she resisted, he concluded he was being attacked by a wild animal and strangled her; (2) a man cut off one of his partner's testicles at the latter's request while both were high on PCP; (3) one chronic PCP user "branded himself by burning a cross on his chest"; (4) a 38-year-old man smoked superweed, cut off the head of his dog, and attacked a stranger on the street with a razor; (5) high on PCP, a man waved down a car, shot and killed a passenger, then frolicked on the freeway firing in the air before being subdued; and (6) a 29-year-old man smoked a PCP "crystal joint," entered a pregnant woman's home, stabbed her, killing the fetus, killed her two-year-old child, and when found was running down the street with a knife, naked and bloody, yelling, "Hallelujah, I'm Jesus!"
PCP was studied in the 1950s as a human anesthetic but after reports of delusions, psychosis, and other side effects was restricted to veterinary use and eventually discontinued. It surfaced briefly as a recreational drug in San Francisco in 1967, reappeared in the 70s, and during the 80s became popular in urban black neighborhoods. The drug lost favor during the 90s but some reports indicate it surged with the new century, finding a market among a segment of clubgoers and ravers. It's described as dissociative, meaning users are more or less aware but feel oddly detached. Is PCP inherently dangerous? Given the continuing litany of horror stories after 40 years of street use, it seems clear this stuff is in a different league from LSD and other drugs with which it's often compared. The argument can be made that it unleashes violent outbursts mainly in people who were unstable to start with. But let's face it, much the same can be said of a gun.

MORE ON CHARLES INNES

We've heard from an acquaintance of Charles Innes who claims to have spoken with him about the blinding incident mentioned above. The acquaintance says the drug involved was definitely PCP. Although we were not able to speak to Innes directly, we did talk to reporter Van Smith of the Baltimore City Paper, who has known Innes since the mid-1990s and has discussed the incident with him. According to Smith, Innes denies that the drug he ingested was PCP. The Journal of Psychedelic Drugs article ("The Dusting of America: The Image of Phencyclidine [PCP] in the Popular Media," July-December 1980, p. 201), says Innes "claimed the drug was PCPA (parachlorphenylalanine). This agent, which . . . is unrelated to PCP, was claimed to be available on the street in the late 1960s and early 1970s but there is no proof that it was ever available." The article says no tests for PCP were carried out, and one may surmise that Innes himself does not know for certain what the stuff was. According to Smith, Innes was in a drug-induced psychotic state for several days prior to blinding himself. While PCP is widely reported to cause temporary psychosis, whether it was the drug Innes took is not known and probably not knowable.

--CECIL ADAMS

[zera]

Originally Posted by darkglobe

I guess PCP is scarce nowadays, then?

I've read a little about it, in William White's hugely out of date DXM FAQ, but as it wasn't the focus of the paper, it wasn't described in-depth.

Anyone know if the reports of extreme violence surrounding the substance are purely media hype or based on truths?

The extreme violence is mostly media hype. Sometime around the late 70s anytime a truly crazy violent guy was around the cops would always conclude that he simply must be on angel dust. Consequently a lot of the behaviour from anti-social psychopaths, schizophrenics, and just plain angry drunks got blamed on angel dust. However PCP is likely to make one do stupid shit, including becoming violent due to the fact that its a simultaneous NMDA antagonist and dopamine reuptake inhibitor. The NMDA antagonism causes a state of profound confusion and impairment (the dissacosiatives are much more confusing than the psychedelics in swims opinion), but normally with dissacosiatives this NMDA antagonism simply causes one to sit back and not even be able to move. However with PCP the sudden surge of dopamine gives the person a rush of energy allowing them to get and move about while in this very fucked up state.

This isnt to say that this will lead to violence, only a very tiny minority of PCP users will ever become violent, people that have a violent history to begin with. During the Parker trials with PCP not a single incidence of violence had ever occured, and this was out of hundreds of trials. You have to remember the main constituency of PCP users are those who live in under-developed urban areas where violent crime tends to be high to begin with. PCP will make Andre the gang-banger turn into (more of) a monster, but it certainly wont suddenly turn Bob, the mild-mannered accountant, into a uncontrollable psychopath.

[zera]

Originally Posted by darkglobe

I don't mean to be an arse, but LSD is not in the same league as PCP as far as effects. LSD is not a dissociative drug, whereas PCP is. Those looking for an experience similar in tone to a PCP trip should investigate DXM, Ketamine and possibly Nitrous Oxide (for a shorter experience, good as an intro to dissociatives).

~Dark

Among people who have tried both PCP and Ketamine it is almost always concluded that Ketamine is far superior to PCP, mainly because one gets all the dissasociation of the PCP trip (if not more) without any of the side effects or dirty feeling. That is to say the positive aspects of the high are all there with ketamine, so why not use it instead of dirty PCP.

Swim speculates that the feeling of a dirty high almost always stems from multiple receptor activity, both PCP and DXM are all over the board with this one, having as much as five different neuro-pharmacological effects. Ketamine on the other hand is nothing but an NMDA antagonist. Also the reason that XTC tablets feel dirtier than MDMA powder, because the tablets are mixed with meth or something else that has different receptor activity than MDMA.

[Pino]

SWIM also read pcp could induce brain hemorrhage, but for some reason can't find many sources, who are confirming that. Even wikipedia doesn't say anything about it, how much of that is true? SWIM thought PCP was a really dangerous drugs with all kind of nasty side effects.

[zera]

Originally Posted by Pino

SWIM also read pcp could induce brain hemorrhage, but for some reason can't find many sources, who are confirming that. Even wikipedia doesn't say anything about it, how much of that is true? SWIM thought PCP was a really dangerous drugs with all kind of nasty side effects.

I have been unable to find any reputable journals which have made this link. PCP was originally developed as an anaesthetic and underwent rigorous FDA testing, the reason it was discontinued on humans had nothing to do with any physical side effects, but rather due to hallucinations which most patients considered unpleasant. In fact PCP was considered much safer than conventional anaesthetic agents and was commonly used in animals (who cant complain about being dusted) until the development of ketamine.

If brain hemmorhaging occured with any frequency in the animal trials PCP would not have been approved for humans. Nor is there record in the medical literature about human medical patients experiencing brain hemmorhaging. Now one thing to be aware of is that this refers to single or infrequent usage of medical grade PCP, in the street PCP is often found with other analogs from the home synthesis process, like PCC and TCP whose medical properties are not studied. In addition frequently getting dusted changes the rules as well. No one really knows if the problems recorded with illicit PCP users are due to the adulterants in the synthesis, the high frequency of use or the general lower socio-economic status of the typical users, or maybe some combination of the above.

I believe the brain hemmorhaging meme comes from studies that indicate that illicit drug users appear more likely to suffer strokes or burst blood vessels than non users, though once again the statistical methods are circumspect. In addition the drugs causing this are vascoconstrictors, most frequently cocaine, of which PCP is not. The literature provides a much stronger link between brain hemmorhaging and cocaine and amphetamines than PCP.

[Pondlife]

Thinking about the reporting of PCP in the '70s, I think that there were some racist overtones, and it was also used as an excuse for police brutality on occasion.

In the UK, PCP was seen as a ghetto drug, a bit like crack is now. The stereotype user was a poor black guy smoking a PCP laced pin joint. When taken together with all the hype about how dangerous it was, the overall message seemed to be "only crazy n*****s use that stuff".

I also remember a few stories about how a group of four or five police officers had to beat the crap out of someone because they were on PCP and "had the strength of ten men". Now I don't have any first-hand experience of PCP, but I think that a lot of that was down to the police being a little over zealous with the fist/boot/truncheon. I don't doubt that people can get violent on drugs (alcohol especially), but I think that a group of cops should be able to restrain someone without resorting to excessive violence.

[Nagognog2]

Odd, but the average PCP user I recall from the 1970's was a white kid from the 'burbs. They even had a song to rally around: "White Punks On Dope." - by The Tubes. Which naturally turned into "White Dopes On Punk" as the decade changed and Angel Dust crawled back under the rock it had escaped from.

One of the common themes of a PCP trip, with a high dose, is the knowledge that you are dying. And that you have died. Right down to seeing the lid of your coffin closing over you. There was no doubt. You KNEW you were DEAD, DEAD, DEAD! This happened with most people who took a decent amount of this molecule. And I imagine this effect contributed to it's being withdrawn from use in human medicine!

There were also many cases of people hurting themselves in truly awful ways while under it's influence. This was not some government bullshit. This was really happening. Kids biting off their fingers and gouging out their eyeballs. For real. I was there.

Many of the hippies and heads breathed a sigh of relief when PCP vanished from the market.

[Salvinorin A]

Yeah, definitely glad this stuff isn't around anymore (in as high as a number as it used to be).

Can you believe this stuff was originally used to sedate rhinos?? That must have been the scariest job once they woke up.

[Pino]

Originally Posted by Nagognog2

here were also many cases of people hurting themselves in truly awful ways while under it's influence. This was not some government bullshit. This was really happening. Kids biting off their fingers and gouging out their eyeballs. For real. I was there.

That is a nasty side effect. SWIM is not going to try this one. SWIM read it at a project in the Netherlands called kennis(means: knowledge)net, which has as goal to offer clean information to secundary school pupils. The information is removed now. Following the text it happened because pcp did rise the blood pressure significantly. But I think the suggestion that brain haemorrhage is more likely to occur in drugs users hits the spot. SWIM can't find anything relevant on pubmed.

[God_Albino]

uh dudes pcps really cheap and easy to find in big cities. its dirty as hell, but its nowhere near extinct.

theres no 'it MIGHT cause some brain damage' with dust. my moms fried from it, and she didnt even do it a ton. years of panic attacks, severe depression afterwards, not to mention the fried aspect

stick to moderate k or dex, dudes

[khrma]

If you like being intelligent, clear of mental illnesses, or just like to be able to remember things; stay the f#%k away from PCP. You will get brain damage with in the first 2-3 uses. It does not "go away". PCP = bad.

[RaverHippie]

is there any documentation of damaging effects aside from anecdotal evidence?

[Paracelsus]

LOTS. Try PubMed.com.