Very Misdirected Creativity

In this past semester, we talked some about toxicology and therapeutic drug monitoring.  When we were learning about toxicology, we also had to memorize all the common drugs of abuse, their trade name, generic name and their street names.  It was in this task that I learned that druggies have a lot of creativity.  Marijuana is also called "Mary Jane," "skunk" and "sinsemilla."  Hashish (which is different than marijuana, believe it or not) can be called "boom."  At that's just the cannabinoids.  When you get to the crazier stuff, the names get crazier.  If you're on the street, no one is going to ask you for some heroin.  They want some "smack" or some "horse." Or if they're not quite to the smack, maybe just some "Big O" or some "black stuff," both names for opium.  Some come off the name, like "C" or "Charlie" (cocaine),  or "Vitamin K" (ketamine), or "mesc" (mescaline which is peyote), and some come from what they do, like "speed," "uppers" and "truck drivers" (all types of amphetamines).   Some of them describe how they make you feel, such as "fire" (methamphetamine), or "ecstasy" (MDMA),  or "forget-me" (rohypnol).  And then some describe the look of the drug like "Christmas trees" (some barbiturates), "yellow jackets" (also certain barbs),  "magic mint" (Salvia), "angel dust" (PCP), crystal (methamphetamine), or "snow" (cocaine).  Some of them are racist, such as "Mexican crack" (methamphetamine), "Chinese tobacco" (opium), "China girl" (Fentanyl) and "Mexican valium" (rohypnol). And some are just flat-out creative or poetic, like "brown sugar" (heroin), "crosses" (amphetamines), "Adam and Eve" (MDMA), "Georgia Homeboy" (GHB), "Maria Pastora" (Salvia), "yellow sunshine" and "blue heaven" and "pearly gates" (all names for LSD), and "purple passion" (psychedelic mushrooms).  Some even sound kind of cute such as "buttons" (mescaline).  

Sometimes they give them names that you wonder why anyone would ever start them.  Notable examples include the fact that crack is called "hell," "devil drug" and "kryptonite" on the street. Fentanyl is commonly called "poison." 

But the thing that never changes is that so much is lost.  I could go on and on about the names they've come up with.  And if one ounce of this creativity went somewhere worthwhile, there's a lot we would get.