I-dosage cock ‘n’ bull.

By Hitest, George and Mike

We at Renegade House have been toying with the idea of a drugs story for a while. Drugs are edgy. They’re indicative of underground subcultures. We like edginess, and underground subcultures. Also, they’re controversial, -they get you noticed. But that’s the problem, -they’re too perfect a subject matter, -too pat.

Well, here’s some drugs that I’ve tried for the sake of a story that could never be described as edgy, or cool. -Because calling them drugs is a massive stretch. You download about ten minutes of white noise, and listen to it through headphones, and supposedly you get high. Better yet, there’s different noises that simulate different drugs (I am so not making this shit up). It’s called I-dosing.

I read this book a few years ago that makes the argument that getting out of it is one of the urges that’s natural to humans and most animals, just after eating, sleeping, and reproducing. That explains why teenagers will pretty much do anything if told that it will get them high.

So here they are, well five of them anyway.

Ecstasy: maybe a drugs try-out story is a little redundant, for the reason that if I were high on something when I wrote half of everything that’s ever appeared on Renegade House, I doubt you’d notice the difference. I’ve just listened to ten minutes of white noise that’s meant to simulate the effects of ecstasy, and while saying that it didn’t work is easy to say, how would I know? I know that it hasn’t simulated the effects of ecstasy, but how do I know that it hasn’t had some other effect (I am typing worse than usual).

Perhaps that’s just a random, meaningless musing, since it really makes no difference: as long as I’m clear-headed enough to form cogent thoughts, the difference between being not high, and not high enough to notice is academic.

You’ve probably noticed that that was just a way of filling space, while saying that I feel nothing.

Cocaine: Cocaine sounds a bit like water, -that came as a surprise. It’s making me want to pee, the definition of a drug is, I believe, “a substance that causes physiological changes in the body”; does making you want to pee count? If so, then Aural cocaine is definitely a drug.

But by golly is that the only standard by which it can be classed as a drug. That was quite an anti-climax. I don’t even feel sick.

Orgasm: Last time I checked, an orgasm wasn’t a drug. While I can imagine that drugs might be difficult to obtain for a teenager (let’s not beat around the bush, this is for teenagers), the teenager who cannot reach orgasm by themself should probably seek medical attention.

Not only that, but isn’t ANY other method of reaching orgasm is surely preferable to ten minutes of white noise. This one seems like the most fabulously redundant.

There is no way that that could’ve just worked in any way, but it did something. Maybe it’s the cumulative effects of all three together, but i’m feeling something. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like it’s something big, there’s no wet patches on the front of my trousers. -maybe the increased heart-rate that of thirds of a good cup of coffee in terms of buzzes, but it’s something.

Off course, the “orgasm” is finished, during those ten minutes, there was some freaky stuff. I was running through my head, what I would write about it, and as I was, my internal monologue took on another voice, -a sort of a deep, androgynous drone, with an echo like in that Phil Collins song. Deep-voiced, androgynous Phil Collins repeated everything that my thoughts said, but only when

I wasn’t paying attention to him/her. she/he’d disappear whenever I tried to locate him/her.

Also, for about two minutes, after the sound stopped, I kept checking Itunes, because I could swear that it was still going.

Peyote: That’s been the strangest thing about these: SOMETIMES they have effects, but apart from the mild illusion that you can still hear them, they’re gone as soon as the noise stops. You blink, and whatever mildly weird feelings you’ve been having are gone.

This one had effects too, but they were more logical. It was a smooth, repetitive undulating sound; as a result, your internal monologue began repeating itself. Once I got the song Young Girl by Gary Puckett & The Union Gap

became stuck in my head, it was the phrase “Young Girl”, that went on loop for about half the time; which was crepy, but then I think I fell asleep.

Marijuana: Okay, I am officially calling bullshit. “Marijuana” helpfully came with a picture of a marijuana leaf for the “album artwork” window in your Itunes. When I saw this, I immediately smelled that sweet, heady smelling smoke. Conclusion: I am a very suggestible person; please disregard any suggestion that I’ve made that this might actually work.

Marijuana is the wussiest of all illegal drugs (you can’t even die from it), and accordingly, audio marijuana is the wimpiest sound .-It’s not even uncomfortable (quite pleasant actually), not too loud, or intrusive, and only slightly weird. “Marijuana” could be mistaken for a one of Brian Eno’s ambient music compositions...

...Man, I’m hungry...

Just kidding. “Marijuana” was another damp squib. But the ambient music analogy is particularly fitting, as it even comes in three movements. If only it worked, then you could tell people that it was the unreleased fifth side of Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music, and get all the Lou Reed fans in the world high, and stop them taking themselves so seriously. -Give them their first giggle in decades. If only.

Next week, I bust the myth that sneezing eight times while drinking Coke with Neurofen in it will give you an orgasm.