39 Heath Leger died, some speculate from a drug OD. From here:
Six prescription drugs were found, including Ambien, Valium, anti-depressant Zoloft, Xanax, Zoplicone [sic] and Donormyl
So, this is The Chem Blog and not Variety and I don’t care too much about Leger’s death, but it’s curious that people jumped to drug overdose without asking anyone if it was really easy to OD on any of these drugs. The answer is that no, it’s painfully difficult to have a fatal OD on any of those drugs.There’s some inherent danger in Ambien, Zopiclone (both nonbenzodiazepine sleeping aids), Valium and Xanax, (both benzodiazepines), but you could down an entire bottle without dying.* Unless mixed with alcohol, they’re difficult to fatally OD on. As for the other two, I can’t say there are any known cases of a fatal ODs with Zoloft or Donormyl (aka Doxylamine aka Nyquil).
Of course, Ambien, Valium, Xanax and Zopiclone all act on the same receptors in the brain (them benzo receptors). Taking ALL of them may well fucking kill you. I don’t know. That’s a lot of fuckin’ with GABAA receptors.
*I say without dying but I refer only to, like, sudden death, which can actually happen, it’s just not easy to do or common. But they say you can drown in a thimble of water… who knows. I just know it’s really, really hard to kill yourself with these drugs alone… but that being said:
Let your good buddy Kyle educate you by sharing a “life moment”. In my rather limited experience, Ambien is horribly dangerous and should never, under any circumstances, be used by people who are unaccompanied by someone capable of restraining them. During undergrad, I had some an awful sunburn and was unable to sleep, so I got a script for Ambien (all legit, I’m sXe and all). The next morning I woke up, face down in my livingroom with my (very nice and expensive) cashmere overcoat lying in a melted pint of ice cream… I did not have a pint of ice cream in my house before I took the Ambien… I’ve never figured out where it came from. Fucked up shit. Bad juju. Avoid at all costs.
So, I’d say that it was not an OD. But if he was drinking a lot, all bets are off. Benzos can be quite dangerous in combination with other CNS depressants. But I mix shit in flasks and run them through finely powdered sand. What do I know?
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You could afford cashmere as an undergrad? Sheesh.
Well… no. The coat was a gift.
You KNEW someone who could afford cashmere for a gift as an undergrad? Sheesh!
People have gotten laid from Ambien and didn’t even know it.
Mitch
Mitch, you can’t say something like that and not divulge. Kyle’s case is yet another example of Ambien-induced sleep eating (and possibly sleep driving.) I have yet to hear about sleep sex.
Katz a director at the FDA has said it: http://www.washingtonpost.com/.....01472.html
There are also a lot of anecdotal stories from all over about it on the net.
Mitch
I think Kyles zombie-walking brain was trying to get something to eat and cool the body – Kyle mentions getting the Ambien after a painful sunburn that kept him awake at night.
There is easy experiment to find out where the ice cream came from. 1) Kyle skips his lunch and dinner 2) Kyle straps on a GPS -tracking collar 3) then he takes Ambien and goes to bed 4) His friends publish the findings in National Geographics – on migratory patterns of Kyle
are you a teetotaler?
hahaha. fuck no.
-1,000,000 points for mentioning sXe. Straightedge people suck and so does their stupid music.
-2,000,000 for even knowing what straightedge is.
Mitch
Don’t steal my schtick, jackass.
I thought your schtick was “Ronbot conservative.” Believe me, I wouldn’t steal THAT.
Ho-Dang!
Ronbot? Minus infinity points. Ew.
http://www.thechemblog.com/?p=749#comment-9228
yeah, cause fark didn’t do that first.
Hi all,
Sorry to hijack the thread. Kyle, maybe you want to make this a post. I am going to put on a chemistry magic show soon and I was wondering what people think are good demonstrations for the public. Below is my current list of tricks I have done. If you have any other good ones, please share. Feel free to elaborate on modifications of tricks in my list.
1. slime (polyvinyl alcohol + sodium borate)
2. fireworks (excited metal ions)
3. thermite
4. polyurethane mushroom
5. color clock (iodine clock or ferroine + MnSO4, ethyl acetoacetate, and something else?)
6. lycopodium
7. Halloween (orange to black)
8. layers of immiscible liquids
9. water/wine/milk/beer
10. black foam (sugar + sulfuric acid)
11. elephant toothpaste (H2O2, soap and KI)
12. luminol
13. KMnO4 + glycerol =spontaneous combustion
14. Na2O2 + cotton + water= spontaneous combustion
15. H2 and O2 in a balloon and light it
16. dry ice + universal indicator
17. KNO3 on paper and light it
18. disappearing beaker
19. gin and tonic +UV light (quinine)
20. NI3
21. gun cotton
22. glowing pickle
23. burning money after dipping it in MeOH and water
A CHEMIST and a MAGICIAN? What single man in this world could possibly hold both talents? I say it would be a feat of unpossibility!
It will be reported to the Department of Homeland Security immediately.
OK: fill a large transparent plastic bag with oxygen from tank. Place it on a bench far from anything flammable. Lit a small piece of Mg turning. As it burns, ask kiddies to step back. Then drop the burning magnesium onto the oxygen bag. The bag disappears with a puff in a white ball of fire. Lesson: oxygen supports fire. (I heard about a chemistry teacher who did this with a large glass jar filler with O2 and threw a big chunk of burning Mg rod – the jar promptly disintegrated all over the classroom)
Urea peroxide (the peroxide tablets from hair color treatment)mixed with solid sodium dithionite burst into a column of stinky sulfurous smoke when initiated by drop of water or shock (spontaneous combustion)
Na2S2O3.5H2O melts in its crystal water around 50C and makes supersaturated solution. Get a kilo size amount of of thiosulfate, melt it on hot bath then let it slowly cool to room temp undisturbed and covered (to prevent dust from inoculation it). Then with a propper side-illumination seed the liquid with a tiniest crystal and watch the accelerated movie-like action. You can also take a crystal and tie it on a long hair, then dip it and pull it up like one gigantic crystal.
Vanad chameleon: dissolve some ammonium vanadate in diluted sulfuric acid, place it on a stirrer, add some zinc powder and close with a septa or stopper with a long tiny needle as a gas outlet. Watch the numerous color transition as vanadium goes from V(5+) gradually to V(2+)
Fake gold: Prepare hot diluted solution of Pb(OAc)2 and (separately) hot solution of diluted KI. Mix the two together and let cool covered – orange-golden shiny flakes of PbI2 precipitate.
The famous explosion was April 24 1957 at Indiana University at High School Night . About 225 students, parents teachers and the like witnessed a spectacular powdered aluminum-liquid oxygen demonstration that hospitalized five students and hurt ten others. One student lost an eye and another had a crushed arm. There were some severe cuts that required plastic surgery.
This has become part of chemistry folklore . The incident was written up in J.Chem.Ed. 36, 54-57, 1959, according to Harry G. Day’s book about IU’s chem dept. history.
Speaking of folklore, there was this story about a Brit postdoc who was shot while at a waterfountain by his girlfriend after being chased around a famous chemistry dept. Does anybody know anything about this famous story?
You can ask your question here: http://www.chemicalforums.com/index.php?board=24.0 , we get similar questions like that, so you might want to search around the forum too.
Mitch
Maybe you can use the Briggs-Rauscher reaction. It’s cheap to set up and has pretty colours. Search for it on google for a procedure and on YouTube for videos. I would have posted direct links, but the TCB SpamFighter(TM) blocked my previous attempt to post this reply.
Iodine clock timed to music.
the 1812 overture is pretty effective (time it to the cannon blasts). We did a “holiday” one in high school, a couple of more femininely-persuaded students in my class did a really good job timing it to the frilly-sounding arpeggii in “dance of the sugar plum faeries”. I think they nailed 8 out of the 9 color change beakers.
However, as they discovered, the only way to get it perfect is to make up your solutions from one batch, and very precisely, and do a calibration run just beforehand, to account from batch-to-batch variations, run a quick spreadsheet calculation against known timings on the CD and the calibration timings, and then pray that you didn’t screw up. The longer timings will mess up more than the shorter timings (for obvious reasons).
Mg combusts in anaerobic conditions: take two blocks of dry ice, scoop out a small hole in one. Place burning Mg ribbon in hole, place other dry ice block on top. Mg still burns. Very, very pretty effect (glowing block!) and it shows that Mg will even remove the oxygen from CO2 to continue burning.
The Halloween one is easy. Just take anything I’ve done in the past week… instablack!
Heath Leger = evolution in action.
Leger needed a woman who could suck-start a Harley. Uncle Al recommends a National Mental Healthcare Initiative. Barnard, Bryn Mawr, Mount Holyoke, Radcliffe, Smith, Wellesley, and Vassar outputs can be good for something.
Uncle Al you are a total douche bag. I would tell you I wish horrible things on you but you’re probably living a lonely and miserable life already, so instead I will say I hope you live forever.
I’ve also had quite enough of your Vassar-bashing, young lady. Or old racist. Whichever.
Hahaha…the Simpsons.
I had a similar experience with Ambien as an undergrad. And I think that mine may have been more dangerous. My roommate decided to have a party on a Thursday night, and I was grumpy and needed to sleep. So she gave me two of the lower dose Ambiens. I woke up the next morning with a half-eaten plate of nachos on my desk and keyboard, and apparently, a a full glass of vodka in my belly. I was seen by some party-goers pouring a full glass of cheap vodka and drinking it like it was water.
That scared the crap out of me.
Oh, and I wet the bed.
At least you did not wet it with the cheap vodka.
haha and you wet the bed, that topped it! yeah ambien can mess you up. i was told i was talking to a shoe at one point, at which point i began to stock pile the pills from good ole mom. oh to go back 12 or so years…ppl weren’t scared of lsd then. the kids nowadays have been wussified, as i suspect estronaut is. i got your back uncle al
When you’re at the point where pharmacologically induced, bizarre changes in cognition and perception = fun, -you’re in a bad state of mind. You stockpiled Ambien After talking to a shoe???? Find a pshrink!!! I think LSD lost its remaining popularity after the last Grateful Dead tour with Gerry Garcia.
A nurse told me that one alcohol drink + one dose Valium has roughly the same CNS effects as 6 drinks alone, (or 6 benzos – take you’re pick!) That seems like a very dangerous combination. Anyone have more specific information?
I think that may be a bit of a stretch. But it’s different for everyone.