Reality Check: Mythbusting 7 Drug-Related Urban Legends

LSD trapped in spinal fluid, instant insanity after 7 blotters, bath salt-induced cannibalism, glass fragments in ecstasy, & other drug-related urban legends.

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May 06, 2024

You’ve likely heard a few of these drug-related urban legends on the playground growing up or in your high school hallways.

Perhaps your friend’s older brother wanted to scare you with a story of a friend of a friend of his who had acid stuck in his spine and ended up tripping forever — or maybe you recall your mom’s friend rushing into your house when you were a child with a flyer and a worried expression, after which you were mysteriously banned from using temporary tattoos.

Urban legends are weaved together by anecdotes, history, and common threads of popular culture prevailing at the time.

Some of these drug-related urban legends date back to the 70s and 80s and have endured generations of storytelling. Many originate from the War on Drugs and the general American anti-drug sentiment.

You might remember some of these, including a more recent one from Miami involving a “drug-crazed face-eating zombie…”

Let’s dive into the backstory behind seven drug-related myths and urban legends.

#1: LSD Gets Trapped in Spinal Fluid

This urban legend is the one that first comes to mind when I’m thinking of things I believed about drugs as a child.

Essentially, it boiled down to this: After taking LSD, it stays forever in your spinal fluid. If you cracked your back in just the right way (or wrong, depending on how you look at it), you'll release a fresh dose and find yourself tripping all over again (and again and again).

Now, hallucinogen persisting perception disorder (HPPD) is a real thing, and some people do suffer from it. It’s a non-psychotic disorder in which a person experiences apparent long-lasting visual hallucinations and disorders after taking psychedelic drugs.

To be fair, HPPD can’t always be blamed on psychedelics — some believe THC, SSRIs, and dissociatives might share some culpability.

It’s possible this LSD-in-the-spine urban legend surfaced from knowledge of this disorder, but it couldn’t be further from the truth.

After taking LSD, it travels through the bloodstream and is metabolized by the liver. It leaves your body completely within 24 hours — so there’s no chance of a bonus (or perma) high from our spinal fluid.

#2: If You Take LSD 7 Times, You'll Go Insane

Another common urban legend was that if you took LSD seven or more times, you could be declared legally insane.

This one went hand-in-hand with another rumor that if you took LSD more than X (an arbitrary number decided by whoever was telling the story) times, you’d be permanently disqualified from the military for being “legally insane.”

It’s entirely possible this rumor was started by would-be draft defectors.

Of course, neither of these rumors are true. Taking LSD seven times (or eight or ten) won't get you declared legally insane, and the USA doesn't consider people who have taken any psychedelics a certain amount legally insane by default.

The US Air Force, however, does have regulations and limitations on who they allow in and typically tries to avoid recruiting pre-service drug users.

Unfortunately, some people with latent psychosis can become triggered after taking psychedelics — but this is a different issue entirely.

Unfortunately, urban legends like this often become bigger than they are — in 1967, a TV police procedural program called Dragnet repeated a variation of this rumor in their episode “The LSD Story,” which took place before LSD was made illegal.

In the episode, a youth named Blue Boy was taking acid and selling it to people in Los Angeles. The script of the show described one pound of LSD as “enough to turn the entire population of Los Angeles into dangerous psychotics.”

The episode ended with Blue Boy hosting an acid party and eventually dying from an acid overdose (which is technically possible but requires a dose so high it's nearly functionally impossible to achieve).

The episode received widespread support and was seen as a reaction to the 60s counterculture.

“For some, this represented a hard hit back against the emerging counterculture ... Friday re-emerged as the rock-solid hero we needed in a time when everything was shifting,” — wrote TV critic Adam Graham of the episode.

#3: Bath Salts Cause Cannibalism

In 2012, a trove of headlines from Miami took the West by storm.

And how could they not? They were terrifying, ludicrous, and sensational:

So what actually happened?

In short, substituted cathinones, derived from an alkaloid found in the khat plant (Catha edulis), were sold online and on the street under the nickname “bath salts.” These compounds (of which there are many different types) were implicated as the cause of public freakouts and acts of cannibalism in Miami, Florida.

Most of the media coverage settled on one very high-profile case featuring one Rudy Eugene, who was later shot and killed by police after “chew[ing] on another man’s face.”

At the time of the attack, the Miami police “suspected” Eugene was on bath salts. At the time, a type of bath salts called “Flakka” (α-PVP) was taking the city by storm.

The media took the suspicion as fact and ran with the story. Eugene became the face of “bath salt psychosis.”

The truth is far less interesting, and "bath salts" were not the cause of this attack at all. In fact, they weren't even involved. Eugene was tested for drugs, and everything came up negative — except for a bit of cannabis.

#4: LSD-Infused Tattoos

This classic piece of scarelore, known as the "Blue Star Tattoo legend," can be traced all the way back to the 1980s.

An article in the Los Angeles Times from 1987 warns the public:

"[f]or the last several months, frightening notices have popped up in schools, day-care centers, and hospital emergency rooms throughout Southern California warning that the mind-altering drug LSD is being sold in the form of rub-on tattoos shaped like blue stars or cartoon characters."

Is this story realistic?

A spokesperson for the Orange County Sheriff’s Department said that the drug tattoos are real: “It does exist” — Olson said. "About a year ago, our deputies made an arrest (for narcotics) in south Orange County and found two of those (star/cartoon tattoo papers laced with LSD). But we haven't found any since then."

The New York Times ran a letter to the editor about the LSD tattoos hoax in 1988, where the author, renowed folklorist and a preeminent scholar on urban legends, Jan Harold Brunvand, claimed to have debunked it in his 1984 book on urban legends, The Choking Doberman, and also noted that the urban legend had legs. At the time, nearly identical warnings written in Spanish had started appearing in Lima, Peru.

Of course, no documented proof of LSD-soaked blue star or cartoon temporary tattoos being given to children has ever been found (although, conceptually, an acid tattoo does seem like a pretty cool idea for the modern-day tripper).

The rumor could have started from the way LSD is commonly sold — in the form of blotter paper, often with cartoon characters or psychedelic images on it.

In any case, LSD simply doesn’t work this way — It doesn’t permeate the skin enough to offer a reliable psychedelic experience (although, notably, the worry was children licking the tattoo paper before putting it on their skin).

#5: Crushing Glass In Ecstacy Makes it Stronger

There’s another terribly misinformed urban legend that claims Ecstasy (MDMA) pills can be intentionally laced with ground glass to make the high more intense.

The (alleged) rationale behind this is that the glass fragments make small cuts in the capillaries inside the mouth and nose, which helps the drug enter the bloodstream faster and more efficiently. The result is a faster onset of effects and stronger high.

This urban legend is completely false and extremely dangerous. Such an additive would cause significantly more harm to the body and would do virtually nothing to enhance the effects of the drug.

#6: Butthash, Bananadine, & Adrenochrome

We’ve covered the topic of fake drugs on Tripsitter in the past and feel like a few of them are relevant here, too.

These are some of my favorites:

Jenkem (Fermented Human Excrement)

Jenkem — AKA “Butthash” — is alleged to be a hallucinogenic inhalant made from fermented human waste. It was reported as a new street drug by the Collier County Sheriff's Office based on a single dubious email.

The story was debunked when the original poster admitted to fabricating it. There's no verifiable evidence that "jenkem" is used as a drug, and the idea likely stemmed from a misunderstood joke shared among children.

Bananadine (Banana Peels)

This compound is claimed to be a mild psychedelic found in banana peels, famously mentioned in "The Anarchists Cookbook." There's no scientific evidence supporting the existence of any psychoactive substance called "Musa Sapientum Bananadine" in banana peels.

The elaborate preparation process described (consuming 15 pounds of bananas, boiling peels, and smoking the residue) is widely considered a parody or hoax.

Adrenochrome

This substance is purported to be a powerful psychedelic substance formed from the oxidation of adrenaline, featured in "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" as more potent than mescaline.

Despite its depiction in movies, there is no scientific evidence to support any psychedelic properties of adrenochrome. It’s a real chemical compound that has been synthesized and tested many times. No published studies exist that elucidate these claims.

#7: Don’t Fall Asleep Under the Borrachero Tree

The borrachero tree (various species of Brugmansia) is a beautiful decorative tree native to South America — particularly Colombia. It’s famous for its large trumpet-shaped flowers that emit a powerful fragrance.

The borrachero tree contains scopolamine (called burandanga in Colombia) — a potent chemical known for its hallucinogenic and amnesiac effects. This substance is said to remove one's capacity for free will — making victims susceptible to manipulation and theft.

Once dosed with the drug, the robber can ask you to hand over your belongings or even pull out money from a local ATM. Entranced victims comply without resistance, and the amnesic effects ensure victims wake up the following morning without any memory of what happened.

Local urban legends in Colombia claim that simply sleeping under this tree can cause a person to fall into a vulnerable state where they can be manipulated and taken advantage of. It’s a story is often told to children.

While scopolamine can indeed be extracted from the borrachero tree and has been used criminally to incapacitate victims, the idea that the tree's effects can passively incapacitate someone just from sleeping under it is exaggerated and false.

Actual criminal use of scopolamine requires deliberate extraction and proper administration. It only works in a highly processed and concentrated form.

This urban legend likely stems from real fears and isolated incidents of scopolamine use by criminals in Colombian cities.

Where Do Urban Legends Come From?

According to Jan Harold Brunvand, the author of that letter to the editor of the New York Times in 1988, what makes an urban legend is "a strong basic story-appeal, a foundation in actual belief, and a meaningful message or 'moral.'"

For most of these stories, they’re decidedly believable. As scare tactics to frighten kids away from drug use, they can be particularly effective.

I was deeply affected by the LSD-in-the-spine story — I believed it wholeheartedly, having no other reason not to, and it scared me away from psychedelics as a whole as a child.

I don’t know when I stopped believing it; perhaps part of me thought it was true up into adulthood. I had little evidence to the contrary and never bothered to look up the facts.

"Life is so much more interesting with monsters in it," — says University of Wales folklorist Mikel J. Koven.

But that’s not all — while many urban legends can be equated to modern-day creepypastas. The Encylopedia Britannica says that “many folklorists believe urban legends reflect the anxieties and beliefs in modern society, such as fears related to technology or crime.”

Most of these drug-related urban legends spawned in a tumultuous time. The War on Drugs officially began in 1971, but anti-drug language and rhetoric had been pervading parts of America for over a century leading up to it. The 70s saw expanded drug measures, harsher prison sentences, and fear-mongering language from political leaders.

"The problem has assumed the dimensions of a national emergency. If we cannot destroy the drug menace in America, then it will surely, in time, destroy us" — claimed President Nixon.

These anti-drug sentiments were laced with worry and fear, and the average suburban families were picking up on it and beginning to worry that this drug problem was much bigger than they thought — and making its way into their neighborhoods.

While we’ll likely never know exactly who started these specific urban legends, we can trace a lot of them, especially the ones about LSD (which have proven to be particularly bizarre), back to the 60s and 70s.

We can assume that the drug’s popularity and the 70s reaction to it was a big part of where they came from.

Perhaps someone just made up a story, and it grew legs, or perhaps something adjacent to the urban legend actually happened, and the story was told, retold, and mutated over time in a generation-spaning game of broken telephone, resulting in the Frankenstein monster story that is it is today.

It’s likely future generations will hear some variations of these urban legends, too, and will always have to find the truth out for themselves.

People still believe some of these tales — after all, if you repeat something often enough, it sort of turns into fact. Right?

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