More Bath Salts

[Forever_frost]

DENVER – Seven months later, life has changed dramatically for Carmen Tisch.

“I was a pill popper, heroin addict. I was in the methadone clinic for while,” Tisch said. “And when I got off the methadone that`s when I started drinking a lot. That`s when I was doing the bath salt.”

Tisch blames dangerous bath salts for the day last November when she walked into the Clyfford Still Museum, approached a painting valued at around $30 million and urinated while leaning up against it.

Surveillance cameras rolled.

“They actually measured my pee puddle,” Tisch said. “I Don`t know why. Evidence, I guess."

“I'm kind of scared to watch it just to see myself like that. Friends were telling me that it looked like I had something in my hand hitting and scratching it, or whatever.”

Tisch doesn’t remember any of that. She finally “came to” hours later in jail.

After police told her what she had done, amazingly, her first thought was how lucky she was.

“I was in shock,” Tisch said. “I was ashamed and also a little relieved that I didn`t murder somebody.”

Tisch has since spent time in jail, two psychiatric wards and is now on intensive probation.

She is tested for drugs and alcohol every week but says there are only two things she needs to inspire her sobriety. She has a tattoo on her right ankle to remind her what they are.

“I got God, and I also have a daughter,” Tisch said. “My daughter, she comes in my mind every time now.”

That, and the reminder of the most painful day in her life.

“I'm an artist myself,” Tisch said. “I`m sorry. I`m ashamed about what happened.”

http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/health/2012/06/22/bath-salts-lead-woman-to-urinate-on-30-million-painting/?intcmp=obinsite

[Shorty]

no me gusta

[Junioropolous07]

Oh God, somr more front page news... Again

[71chevellejohn]

She could have just called it art.

[Randy]

She could have just called it abstract art.

^fixed

[Frank]

what is with all the sudden hype about "bath salts" lately? Is it actually bath salts or is it just a slang term?

[YALE]

what is with all the sudden hype about "bath salts" lately? Is it actually bath salts or is it just a slang term?

They're alkyl nitrites. They've been around forever.

[CJ]

funny, she looks exactly like i pictured her.

[Strychnine]

what is with all the sudden hype about "bath salts" lately? Is it actually bath salts or is it just a slang term?

http://www.forbes.com/sites/melaniehaiken/2012/06/04/bath-salts-a-deadly-new-drug-with-a-deceptively-innocent-name/

So what are “Bath Salts” – and how did the drug get this ridiculously misleading name?

Like Ecstasy and methamphetamine, the drug known as “bath salts” is a designer drug, which means it’s synthetic, concocted in a lab. (On the street, it’s also sometimes called “bath powder,” “herbal incense,” or “plant food.”) What makes the term “bath salts” more confusing, though, is that name is used for a surprisingly large number of different chemical combinations.

To understand what the drug does, think of “bath salts” as a cross between meth and acid. Well, sort of. Like cocaine, meth, and speed, bath salts work by stimulating the central nervous system, kicking it into overdrive, if you will. But the drug also apparently causes paranoid delusions and/or hallucinations. Experts are saying it’s psychoactive, rather than hallucinogenic like acid, but the end result appears to be similar: delusional beliefs acted upon in violent ways.

The key ingredients that go into bath salts are the synthetic compounds MDPV (3,4-Methylenedioxypyrovalerone), mephedrone, pyrovalerone, and methylone. But there are many other ingredients used in addition to these, or in place of them. For example, many of the “bath salts” seized have been found to contain extremely high levels of caffeine.

MDPV and mephedrone, the most common bath salts, originated as synthetic versions of a natural ingredient found in Khat (Catha edulis), a hallucinogenic plant found in eastern Africa. Cathinone, the active ingredient in khat, is a Schedule 1 controlled substance, meaning illegal. However, MDPV and mephedrone were legal until Fall 2011 when the FDA banned them, but underground chemists keep skirting the law by slightly altering the chemical compounds to come up with new versions that are technically legal. The FDA now refers to bath salts as a “designer drug of the phenethylamine class.” Slang names for mephedrone include “meph,” “drone”, and MCAT.

Yikes! Where did bath salts come from?

Currently, the chemicals we call “bath salts” are most frequently manufactured and imported from China and Europe, but drug officials say it’s only a matter of time before American drug-cookers begin making them. The history of bath salts is both fascinating and frightening. The drug was actually first formulated in France in the 1920s, but disappeared until it was rediscovered from the obscurity of academia by an underground chemist. He published the recipe on a website known as called the Hive, which was shut down in 2004 for sharing waaayyyy too much info about illegal substances. But the word was out, and the drug became extremely popular all over Europe.

It might be interesting to those in the pharmaceutical and chemical fields to note that bath salts were legal in Israel starting around 2004, sold under the name hagigat. Once declared illegal, the cathinone was modified and another Israeli company, Neorganics, sold the drug as pills and liquids under several names, including Neodoves, until the Israeli government specifically made mephedrone illegal in 2008.