Patrick Kennedy's Psychedelic Freak Out!
If you've ever ventured into the seamier sides of the Internet, you know there are plenty of websites devoted to detailing quasi-legal behavior, including prescription drug experimentation. On one of those sites, we found this comment, reprinted here. If you'll recall, Kennedy's excuse for the accident was taking Phenergan in combination with Ambien. He's not the first to mix that particular cocktail:
My wife is frequently prescribed phenergan (promethazine) for stomach problems. Through experimentation we have realized that Phenergan will potentiate nearly any drug with sedative properties(tranq, Op's, muscle relaxants), perhaps most pleasantly when mixed with opoids.
But the reason for my post is to explain what happens to me when I mix phenergan with Ambien or Sonata (zolpidem or zaleplon). I won't go into complete details, but I will say that in all my formative years as an avid LSD/mushroom user, never have I had such vivid hallucinations as the first night of this mix.
2 tabs of each = 50mg prometh. plus 20mg zolpidem, at a time when my tolerance to bzp's was low to moderate, left me in a state of total unreality. I was talking to people who were not there...apparitions sort of half in the floor, watching movies on a computer monitor that was turned off. (I mean REALLY seeing them, not just freedom from inhibition of bizarre behavior) yet this seemed to be perfectly normal to me. Whenever I would look away, someone, no, several someones, would whisper in my ear.
Shapeshifting and trails were comparable to a low level acid trip, while colorshifting and auditory hallucinations were beyond any psychedelic experience before or since.
Patrick Kennedy has chosen the "I was tripping balls" defense. But they were DOCTOR-PRESCRIBED BALLS. Do you think he's kicking himself over that yet? It's kinda like "someone slipped me a mickey" or "the hippies put LSD in my water."
We're conflicted here. We can't figure out if it's funnier for Kennedy to have been drunk or "in a state of total unreality" when he crashed.
In any event, we continue to salute the Capitol Police, for their vigilant work sending emails about suspicious substances and only recognizing members of Congress when they're tripping the light fantastic.
Zopiclone (Imovane) Review [sixthseal.com]