Of high schoolers use over-the-counter cough and cold medications to get high. 3
Getting High Without Drugs
Many understand the dangers of recreational drugs such as cannabis, alcohol, heroin, or prescription medications. Because of this, most parents watch their children for signs of substance abuse.
However, few know the dangers their kids face when getting high without drugs or alcohol. Many things inside your home can produce a dangerous high but are considered safe. Parents are usually unaware of the risks these items pose.
13 Ways to Get High Without Illicit Drugs or Alcohol
Did you know there are at least 13 ways to get high without alcohol or drugs? Many household items that produce a high can be easily accessible to your children.
If you’re not careful, these items can lead to drug addiction. These include:
1. Keyboard Cleaners/Aerosol Sprays
Using inhalants or huffing produces an immediate rush of euphoria, which leads to delusions or hallucinations. Whipped cream cans are the most commonly used product for getting high.
These products have chemicals and solvents like:
2. Gas
Inhaling fumes from gas is another way to get high. You may feel dizzy or light-headed after inhaling these fumes because they directly impact the central nervous system.
3. Paint Thinners
Similar to gas, fumes from paint thinners are inhaled to achieve intoxication. The two chemicals in paint thinners, toluene, and xylene, offer similar effects to those of alcohol. You may feel a euphoric high due to the dopamine rush in your system.
4. Nutmeg
When consumed in larger-than-normal amounts, nutmeg produces feelings of:
- Sedation
- Floating
- Delirium
- Hallucinations
You may experience some side effects when you eat too much nutmeg. These include vomiting and diarrhea.
5. Frogs
Licking the Bugo Alvarius toad or “DMT Frog” produces feelings of intoxication similar to using the drug DMT. In addition to the high, the other chemicals in the toad’s secretions can interfere with cardiovascular function.
6. Garden Seeds
Some garden seeds (morning glory flowers) can be soaked in water to create a psychoactive beverage and produce effects similar to what one would experience when using LSD.
7. Anti-diarrheal Medicine
Teens may take anti-diarrheal medicine to get high. However, taking large doses of this medication can send you to the ER or even kill you.
Side effects include:
- Dizziness
- Drowsiness
- Tiredness
- Constipation
- Nausea
- Vomiting
- Abdominal pain
- Uncomfortable fullness of the stomach
- Irregular heartbeat
- Fainting
8. Whipped Cream
Teens use canisters containing nitrous oxide to produce a high through inhaling. In addition to the high, teens misusing canisters experience:
- Nausea
- Vomiting
- Dizziness
- Shivering
- Fatigue
- Sweating
9. Choking
Teens will play the Choking Game or alter their breathing techniques to the point of passing out to produce a high. Choking can cause you to feel light-headed because of the lack of oxygen reaching your brain.
10. I-Dosing
Some videos or audio recordings on the internet claim to produce a “digital high.” These recordings include binaural beats created by playing different frequencies in each ear.
11. Caffeine Supplements
Misusing caffeine pills by taking too many or combining them with other substances can result in a high that also puts teens at risk for other health problems, including panic attacks.
12. Diet Pills
Diet pills are mixed with other substances to enhance or intensify a high. Some diet pills also contain Amphetamines, which are stimulants that can be highly addictive. Many teens who have eating disorders also abuse this substance.
13. Cough Syrup
Cough syrups containing dextromethorphan, or DXM, can produce a high that includes sedation and hallucinations. In addition to the high, this can lead to cardiovascular issues.
Using Alcohol to Get High
Another common way kids get high is by using/abusing alcohol. If you have alcohol in your home, ensure your child isn’t drinking from the bottle and refilling it with another liquid.
Kids might also vaporize alcohol and smoke it. They won’t smell like they’ve been drinking, but they’ll get intensely drunk quickly.
Getting Drunk Without Alcohol
Children don’t even need access to liquor to get high from alcohol. Items in your home that can produce a high or drunkenness include:
- Hand sanitizers
- Mouthwash
- Flavored extracts used for baking or cooking
These substances are dangerous to consume in large quantities due to ingredients other than alcohol. It can also increase the risk of alcohol poisoning and even death.
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Dangers of Getting High Without Drugs
Although the products that produce these at-home highs might be safe when used appropriately, many are dangerous to get high with.
Getting high without drugs can lead to some dangerous side effects including:
- Cognitive damage
- Poor academic performance
- Developmental delays
- Problems with mental health
- Relationship damage
- Long-term addiction struggles
Although it might seem like using household items to get high is not as dangerous as using drugs, even first-time experiences can result in brain damage.
Teen Drug Use Statistics
35
Of high schoolers have tried marijuana. 3
1 in 3
Have reported vaping in the last month. 3
2.8
Of high schoolers use over-the-counter cough and cold medications to get high. 3
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How to Get High Without Drugs?
Thankfully, you can do a few things to produce euphoric effects without drugs. Many people use different activities to achieve a healthy rush of dopamine or adrenaline, similar to a high.
Because of this, they don’t need a chemically-induced high. These activities can also improve your self-esteem and help you avoid using products that are bad for your health.
Here are a few ways to “get high” without drugs:
Exercise
Exercise releases endorphins that reduce pain and create pleasurable feelings, similar to a high. Although it can be hard to start exercising regularly, it is worth it. Exercising improves your overall health and confidence.
Volunteering
Practicing acts of kindness can help you feel a sense of pride and accomplishment. You’ll feel a natural sense of euphoria by doing good things for others and the community.
This can help boost your:
- Self-esteem
- Confidence
- Life satisfaction
- Sense of identity
Sleep
There are many benefits to getting good sleep. Aside from improving your mood, it can also improve other aspects of your health, including:
- Improved immune system
- Maintaining a healthy weight
- Lower risk of diabetes and heart disease
- Reduced stress
- Improved cognitive functions
- Improved decision making
- Reduces the risk of injury from accidents
Laughter
They say that laughter is the best medicine. Although it can cure all ailments, it does provide a sense of euphoria and pleasure. It does this by releasing endorphins in the brain.
Other benefits of a good sense of humor include:
- Stress relief
- Reduced tension
- Improved mood
- Increased personal satisfaction
- Improved immune system from neuropeptides
Meditation
Like exercises, meditation can release endorphins that make you feel better and improve mental health. Meditation helps you focus and feel good through relaxation and controlled movements. It can also increase serotonin, a powerful neurotransmitter that regulates feelings of pleasure.
Thrilling Activities
Engaging in thrilling activities can give you a rush of adrenaline, which is a powerful natural high. Some examples of these types of activities include:
- Extreme sports
- Cage diving
- Ziplining
- Bungee jumping
- Thrill rides like rollercoasters
Remember that these activities tend to come with a big risk of injury, so proceed with caution. If you are scared, these activities might not be for you.
Performance
Some people get a rush of adrenaline when they’re performing on a stage. If the idea of performing sounds appealing to you here are a few things you can do:
- Join a community theater
- Join a dance team
- Join a band or orchestra
- Perform stand-up comedy at an open mic
- Join a local church choir
For some, these activities can give them a sense of euphoria and pleasure. However, if you have stage fright, there might be other opportunities to get involved with the performance.
Finding a Hobby
Finding a hobby that you’re passionate about can provide a sense of pride and euphoria. It can even give you a sense of accomplishment once you complete or master the hobby.
Some examples include:
- Sports
- Video games
- Journaling
- Writing
- Art
- Camping or hiking
- Cooking
Spending Time with Loved Ones
Spending time with people you cherish can greatly improve your mood. You can get “drunk” off the atmosphere and feel euphoric when spending time with family members and friends. Doing simple things such as having a conversation or going for a walk can provide a natural high.
Eating Good Food
Having a good meal or eating your favorite food can give you a sense of satisfaction and pleasure. Eating alongside good company can also increase the feeling of pleasure. Savoring the meal can give you the most satisfaction from the mealtime experience.
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Treatment for Substance Use Disorder (SUD)
If your child suffers from substance abuse, contact a treatment center immediately. It’s important to understand that people respond to treatment differently, so speaking to a doctor is essential. They can recommend a treatment plan that caters to your needs.
Available treatment options for SUDs include:
- Medical detox: Medically supervised detox used to avoid harmful withdrawal symptoms
- Inpatient treatment: Involves checking yourself into a rehab facility for 24-hour medical supervision
- Outpatient treatment: A treatment program where you are freely allowed to leave the rehab facility
- Cognitive behavioral therapy: A short-term therapy technique explores the link between thought patterns and addiction
- Medication-assisted treatment: Involves using medication, counseling, and therapy to treat addiction
- Dual diagnosis treatment: A treatment program that addresses co-occurring mental health conditions alongside addiction
- Support groups: Groups like 12-step programs provide a much-needed community to help maintain sobriety after treatment
Summary
You can get high without drugs or alcohol by using household items. Most of these everyday items are easily accessible and are dangerous to children.
It’s possible to get drunk on mouthwash and hand sanitizers because they contain alcohol. Items like whipped cream cans, paint thinners, and cough syrup can also produce a dangerous high.
Getting high or drunk this way can lead to alcohol poisoning and dangerous side effects. If your child is suffering from substance abuse, seek professional help immediately.
What’s Next?
- What Is Rehab Like?
- Why Call an Addiction Hotline?
- How to Sober Up
- Tapering off of alcohol
- What is Considered an Alcoholic?
I Went on a Quest to Get High Without Drugs
Cacao, orgasms, breathwork, and other creative ways to elevate your consciousness without using psychedelics.
February 15, 2023, 3:27pm
Real information about using drugs and alcohol.
For about three years, I worked frequently with psychedelics. I used a variety of substances, including ayahuasca, iboga, and mushrooms, and I considered myself fortunate that all my experiences were positive. Around the three-year mark, though, I began having emotionally difficult trips that were exhausting and hard to recover from. As it turns out, this is fairly common.
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“For some individuals, repeated psychedelic use can alter the function of key nodes and networks in the brain so as to induce trip experiences that are atypical for those they’ve had in the past,” says James Giordano, professor of neurology and biochemistry at Georgetown University Medical Center. “If this occurs with regularity, it may somewhat colloquially be your body’s—and brain’s—signal to you to lay off the psychedelics for a while, in an attempt to let your brain’s node and network function settle down and return to some level of its prior normality.”
So, two years ago, I decided to take a hiatus from psychedelics and all other drugs. Since then, I’ve found some other creative ways to experience altered and elevated states of consciousness. Here are a few things I tried to get high without drugs, how they worked for me, and why it is that they might work the way they do.
Cacao
Many people just think of cacao as what goes into a chocolate bar, yet it’s also been a part of spiritual ceremonies dating back to the ancient Omlecs, Mayans, and Aztecs. Many of their descendants—and people from a variety of other cultures—use it to elevate their consciousness today. Over the course of my drug-free two years, I’ve attended several cacao ceremonies in Los Angeles and made cacao drinks myself from pastes and powders I bought online. (My favorites are Keith’s Cacao, Ora Cacao, and Zeal Superfoods Organic Cacao Powder.)
I find cacao to be mood-boosting, energizing, and sometimes even heart-opening. During one ceremony, I had a good cry; during another, I contemplated the Bible. During all of them, I felt more open to people and made new friends. When I drink cacao in the morning, I feel happier and more creatively inspired throughout the entire day.
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“In the old psychedelic literature from the 60s, the whole point of psychedelics was to induce this common bonding feeling of love and peace.” —James Giordano
Cacao contains a compound called phenethylamine, which is stimulating and may also release dopamine, leading to feelings of “friendliness, amorousness, bonding, togetherness, and affiliation,” said Giordano. “In the old psychedelic literature from the 60s, the whole point of psychedelics was to induce this common bonding feeling of love and peace.”
So, while it won’t induce hallucinations or anything of that sort, cacao can be a way to get some of the pleasure and connection psychedelics provide—and with few risks. I just try to avoid it at night because it does have some caffeine.
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Rapé
Rapé is a form of tobacco you can blow up your nose using an instrument with two tubes, one that you or someone else blows into and one that delivers it to your nose. It has traditionally been used in South American indigenous cultures and is believed to help you feel mentally sharper and connect with your body.
Of all the things I tried, rapé is the closest I got to feeling like I was on psychedelics. It gives me a sense of calm, presence, focus, and optimism—a feeling that things will work out. The acute effects only last a few minutes, but sometimes, I’ll feel it for hours. One night, I used rapé before a restorative yoga class, and during the class, I cried with my whole body as I realized how much more I needed to love myself. On another evening, my friend and I did it together and had a trippy conversation about sex and spirituality.
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“Rapé is a psychoactive chemical, and anything that’s psychoactive certainly has the potential to affect cognition, sensation, and perception and be mind-expanding,” says Giordano. Like cacao, rapé will not cause hallucinations but may provide other effects typical of a psychedelic experience, such as increased energy, relaxation, and clarity of thought. These effects actually stem from the nicotine in the rapé, which can be a double-edged sword: While not as addictive as cigarettes, rapé can be habit-forming if used in large quantities, says Giordano. So, it’s best to use it once in a while rather than daily.
Breathwork
Breathwork is the practice of breathing in a specific, directed manner to alter or improve one’s state of mind. A few common types of breathwork involve breathing a two-part inhale (puffing up your stomach and then your chest) followed by a powerful exhale or simply breathing in and out through your mouth rapidly and deeply. I have done breathwork in groups and one-on-one sessions, and it’s helped me process emotions psychedelics used to help me with.
Breathwork gives me the sense that a bright future is ahead of me. I feel more daring and inspired to do things like travel or reconnect with people I haven’t talked to in a while—a feeling that usually lasts an hour or two. This could be explained by the fact that breathwork is essentially intentional hyperventilation, which puts your brain in a hyper-oxygenated state, said Giordano. “When you hyperventilate, there are changes in carbon dioxide concentration, and people feel not only like they’re beginning to feel faint and woozy, but they have a change in their level of perceived consciousness.”
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Breathwork is generally safe but should be done under the guidance of a facilitator, as excessive hyperventilation can cause side effects like dizziness or tingling. Personally, I haven’t experienced any negative reactions and usually find that breathwork provides me with new insights and emotional releases.
Cervical Orgasms
About a year ago, I listened to a talk by psychologist and sex educator Dr. Jenny Martin, theorizing that cervical orgasms release DMT. While there hasn’t been research proving this, Martin explained to me in a separate conversation that people’s anecdotal descriptions of cervical orgasms often sound similar to descriptions of DMT trips, involving “this sense of ego dissolution and ego death”. In addition, DMT has been found in human placentas, bolstering speculations that the cervix can produce DMT.
To have a DMT-producing cervical orgasm, one needs to calm their mind, feel safe, and engage in lots of foreplay, according to Martin. “If you’ve just been on your smartphone before sex, you can’t just snap your fingers and start penetrating your cervix and expect to have a cervical orgasm,” she says.
“If you’ve just been on your smartphone before sex, you can’t just snap your fingers and expect to have a cervical orgasm.” —Jenny Martin
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After putting on sensual music, massaging myself, and providing myself with lots of clitoral stimulation, as Martin advised, I used a rose quartz dildo to attempt a cervical orgasm several times. Each time, I felt pleasure but nothing building up to an orgasm. Eventually, I became impatient and touched my clitoris to get myself over the edge.
While I did not experience a pure cervical orgasm, having a combined cervical/clitoral orgasm was nice; I could feel the orgasmic contractions more strongly and deeper in my pelvis than usual. I pretty much always feel refreshed and calm after sexual activity, but I cannot say I achieved a psychedelic state. Still, I’ll keep trying.
How to Go on an Ayahuasca Retreat
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Baths of Varying Sorts
Last year, I was invited to an event hosted by the psilocybin company Psilouette that took place in a spa. Guests were offered psilocybin gummies, but since I wasn’t up for that, they gave me CBD oil. After taking it, I went into a room with a sauna, an ice bath, and speakers. I put on a playlist that one of my ayahuasca leaders would play during ceremonies and alternated between the ice bath and sauna.
Wading in the ice bath just as “The Water Blessing Song” by Nalini Blossom played was magical. It felt as if the spirit of ayahuasca had come back to visit me and help me experience my wild essence as I swayed to the music and withstood the cold temperature. I continued dancing as I moved to the sauna with a profound sense of power and appreciation for my body.
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Another time, I mixed a drop of ayahuasca meant for microdosing into my bathtub. I felt once more like ayahuasca’s spirit was inhabiting my body. I started burping when I got out of the bath, a form of “purging” I used to experience when I actually took ayahuasca, and felt insights flow into me during a subsequent conversation with a friend over dinner.
It’s unlikely that someone could absorb ayahuasca through bath water unless there was a huge amount, according to Giordano, which there wasn’t. What’s more likely is that during both these experiences, a part of my brain that had previously turned on during ayahuasca ceremonies was reactivated due to the ayahuasca music and the presence of the substance.
It’s similar to the conditioning exhibited by Pavlov’s dogs, Giordano explains: “A response you had during the drug-induced psychedelesis that’s paired with music causes an affiliated response to the music. Your reflection on the experience itself can be enough to create a cognitive or perceptual rebound.” The ice bath may have also played a role, he says: “For some people, ice baths can release endogenous opioids, and that can obviously make you feel pretty good.”
A Frequency Machine
OK, now this is getting very new age, but there’s a machine called a Qi Coil that claims to emit the frequencies of ayahuasca, DMT, and other substances. Psychic Jusstine Kaye alerted me to the existence of this technology and was kind enough to let me try her own Qi Coil machine. It looks like an iPad, where you can select the frequencies you want, and you attach it to a stone that you hold to receive the frequencies.
On the rooftop of a swanky Hollywood club, I selected the ayahuasca setting and held onto the machine. Quickly, a euphoric feeling came over me—more like MDMA than ayahuasca. Although she wasn’t holding the stone herself, Kaye, who sat next to me, said she was experiencing the same effect just by being close by. I felt as if I could look at situations in my life more objectively, without my ego in the way. With the help of this mindset and Kaye’s intuitive abilities, we had a conversation examining various changes I needed to make in my life. For the rest of the night and even on the Uber ride back, insights continued hitting me.
While Giordano has heard accounts of people experiencing psychedelic states through frequency machines, he doesn’t know of peer-reviewed research on this. According to the inventor of the machine, David Wong, it “emulates the effects of psychedelics by stimulating the brain’s neural pathways using a combination of sound therapy and magnetic waves”. These sounds and waves “activate specific areas of the brain associated with psychedelic experiences,” he says. I don’t know if that’s what I experienced, but I definitely experienced something.
I still hope to one day return to psychedelics and experience the mental and physical health benefits they’ve brought me in the past. But in the meantime, I know I have plenty of healing and exploration available to me through non-psychedelic modalities alone. Things like breathwork, rapé, and even the Qi Coil can get intense, to the point of rivaling a psychedelic ceremony. Because psychedelics all carry risks, these often safer options are powerful alternatives, ones I’ll likely continue taking advantage of whether I use psychedelics again or not.
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