I-dosed and Confused

So have you heard about the new teen craze that’s all the talk among the high school halls these days?   No?  Oh, well excuuuse me.  I didn’t realize you were too cool to be hanging around the high schools, Mr. Sophisticated.  Nah, but anyway, have you seen the news reports about this new thing that the kids are doing?  It’s called i-dosing, and besides besides being a hilarious and terrible name, apparently it’s the latest fad on the internet that the parents are freaking out about.   It seems the youths of today are downloading “digital drugs,” audio files that, when listened to loudly in headphones, are supposed to get the kids high.  I think that’s how it works anyway.  Audio files.  Or maybe it’s both audio and video.  I don’t really know.  I haven’t paid much attention, but… hell, here, take a look.  I googled it for you:  http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504464_162-20011389-504464.html .

So yeah, the kids are getting high off digital noise.  I don’t know how effective this i-dosing is, cause when you’re 35 years old and can afford to drink at bars, “wiggin” with your laptop seems a bit unnecessary.  But nevertheless, the kids are i-dosing and the parents aren’t liking it one bit.  They fear it’s a gateway to the harder stuff.   Kind of like how digital porn turned all our offices into mass brothels, I guess.  Like most things in the world today, I’m not so sure how I feel about this new phenomenon.  I mean, sure, any time we talk about teens getting “high,” it feels like this can’t be a good thing.  But then again, isn’t getting high off audio better than getting high off just about anything else?   But then again, I don’t like teens at all, and I share almost no empathy with them, so my opinion about i-dosing tends to lean somewhere towards immense apathy.

It’s like I always say,  “i-Dosing:  i-Do it or i-Don’t do it, whatever.  Just stay out of my yard, you rascals!!!”

I was listening to them talk about i-dosing on the radio this morning and it brought back memories of my own youth.  We didn’t have i-dosing when I was a teen.  We didn’t even have the internet, really.   Not like today anyway.  We had Prodigy and we had online bulletin boards and, sure, there were ample places for people to get their creep on, but back then you had to really look for it.  Not like now, where you can google “I-dosing,” and be tripping e-balls, man, in minutes.

It probably would have been better if we did have i-dosing when I was a teen.  This is what I was thinking about when listening to the radio this morning.  Yeah, probably would have been better.   Cause just like the teens of today, we teens of the past were just as interested in finding a way to get our cheap thrills.  But we didn’t have the help of the internet, and so we had to get creative.  And stupid.

You know what we did back in the day? It didn’t have a cool name like “i-dosing.”  It was called “Making yourself pass out. ” Remember that?  Ahh, the good ole’ days,  when you would bend over and inhale and exhale as quickly and heavily as you could, and once you were completely out of breath and light-headed, your buddy would wrap his hands around your neck and squeeze, cutting off the oxygen to your brain.  And if you were “lucky”, you’d pass out.  One moment, you’d be staring at your buddy as he, well, essentially, almost murdered you, and then the next moment you’d be dreaming, and then the next moment, you’d be fully conscious again. Only now you were sprawled out on the floor.   You ever do this?  This was quite possibly one of the dumbest things a kid could do for a cheap high.  I mean, shit, what about this doesn’t sound like a terrible idea?   Hyperventilate, and then have your buddy strangle you.  It’s another one of those experiences that I think back on and wonder how none of us died.  Today, someone would have died, for sure.  And it’d be all over the news.  Or at the very least, reports on “Making yourself pass out” would spread over the AP wire, and the first poor bastard who accidentally even touched the neck of another student would be expelled.  But back then, we were doing this crap during high school lunch.

Digital noise seems a bit less desperate.   Less desperate, yes.  Still silly and lame?  Absolutely.

And then there were Whippits.  Remember those?  They’d sell them at all the cheesy head shops in Spring Break.  Yes, they’d actually sell these things.  Do they still sell them?  Man, I’d assume not, but it’s been a long time since I was binge-drinking underage in Panama City, FLA, so what do I know?  Anyway, for the uneducated, a whippit was (is?) a small cartridge of nitrous oxide that you crack open and allow the released gas to fill up in a balloon.  You would then put the balloon to your lips and let it deflate, sucking the NO2 that would expel from it into your lungs.  You would then experience a brief moment of faux euphoria, which was really just dizziness, temporary confusion, and a feeling that you were speaking in slow motion…

“Whooooooaaaaaaa….   Thiiiiiiiissss…. iiiiisssss…. aweeeeeeeeesooooome…”

And then you would snap back to reality, an empty cartridge in one hand and a limp balloon in the other.   And then your friend would greedily grab the balloon from your hand so he could have his turn temporarily freezing his brain.  Again, how was this legal?  The idea of kids being able to purchase small amounts of gas that would temporarily dry up their gray matter sounds extraordinarily irresponsible.  And kids didn’t even have to cross the GA-FLA border with these things hidden in their spare tire shaft.  No, we just had to peruse the head shops, making our way past the tie-died Jimmi Hendrix shirts (when are these going to stop being produced?) and skull bongs and shell necklaces until we found the whippits.  And then we bought them.  Legally!  That’s ridiculous.

Again, i-dosing seems a bit less severe.  Just as lame, though.  Let’s not forget that part.

What else was there?  There was huffing paint, huffing gas, sucking the fumes out of whip cream canisters (which was essentially a grocery store-purchased whippit), drinking Robatussin… none of which I ever partook in.  It all seemed a bit too rebellious and dangerous for me. I might have tried smoking a banana peel once, though.   I seem to remember doing this.  I also seem to remember that it had about the same effect as smoking an actual banana would.  In other words, nothing happened, but you smelled like burnt banana.  Oh, I also once tried smoking one of those big fake cigars that they would sell at the amusement park kiosks.  Remember those?  A big fat exaggerated cigar that they couldn’t possibly sell in today’s society, for fear that it might encourage real smoking.  But remember, back when we were kids, you could buy candy cigarettes. You could buy shredded bubble gum in fake Skoal cans.  Society was all about getting the youth excited about their exciting future of tobacco abuse.  Anyway, in case you had any doubts, nope, the big fake cigar did not contain even a hint of tobacco. And when we fired up that big ole’ blunt in my buddy’s parents’ basement, we were much too young and naive to realize that the rancid smell of rotten eggs that permeated from the smoldering end of that prop stogie might have been a clue that we weren’t actually doing anything rebellious.  Well, other than stinking up my buddies’ parents’ house.  We definitely weren’t smoking a cigar though.

So, where am I going with this?  Nowhere really.  Forgive me, I’m just high, man, from way too much late night i-dosing.   And now I’ve got the munchies.  I think I’ll google some Doritos.

Ahh, i-dosing.  What a hilarious and stupid thing, is it not?   But it did lead me to a nice trip down memory lane,  back to those days when we all were young and dumb and had too much time on our hands.   Too much idle time, but no internet.  And so instead, we strangled each other and froze our brains with gas.