Speaking as someone who used to do drugs…not anymore. And I did fun ones. But I was just as watching a show, one of, many about somebody on PCP going into convultions, hurting people, ending up in the hospital. What’s the attaction?
People, so inclined, will do whatever drug is available. They’ll do straight-up poison - shoe polish, gasoline, cleaning chemicals, glue - if they can’t find or afford anything better.
Argent nailed it. Poison. The best high comes from that poison which almost kills you … but doesn’t.
Factor in the drug-buddy thing … “I’m not scared to take it!” … “you take it then…” “Oh Betenoir is afraid …”
A very ugly slippery slope. 
Well, to get high, of course! I did a little googling so i wouldn’t be talking completely out of my ass, and it looks like it has an anesthetic effect (in fact, that’s what it was originally used for before it was decided the negative side effects out-weighed the usefulness and it was banned) as well as being hallucinogenic. But instead of LSD-type “Look at the colors!” trips, it produces full-on schizophrenic hallucinations. I guess some people must find that exciting. And I’m guessing not every trip ends with the user running naked down the street smashing store windows. Still, it doesn’t appear to be a very popular drug, and, if what I’m reading is to be trusted, sometimes people aren’t even aware they’re taking it. It’s substituted for or combined with other drugs. Which I’m assuming makes for a bad trip when the unexpected starts happening.
I find PCP kind of morbidly fascinating. Like, it really does do what your high school health teacher would have you believe every drug does, y’know? That’s what I’m assuming, anyway, I’m not about to find out for myself.
It would be interesting to hear from any Dopers with firsthand experience, though, if there are any.
Being high is the body’s reaction to a toxin, or at least an outside agent of some kind. People will huff paint fumes or sniff dry erase markers habitually for little perks.
It’s the nature of the beast.
Ever notice how, if you tell somoene that it’s “the nature of the beast”, that person tends to be much more accepting of the situation?
I’ve tried it twice, in the mid 70’s when I was experimenting. The first time it was on marijuana, and the experience was very strange but not uncomfortable. In particular, I became about two feet tall, but no smaller in the other dimensions, and I could lean forward and backward by pivoting at the ankles to the point where I could touch the ground in front of me or behind me with the palms of my hands. I did this for what seemed like hours just because it was so odd. The second time, I did PCP by itself, and the experience was just horribly weird and disorienting (though nothing regrettable happened). The next morning I realized that this was just an evil force, and I never wanted to do it again. That said, I value the experience, because it set a new milepost regarding what it means to believe something - as in, “If you experienced such-and-such yourself, wouldn’t you believe it then?” Well, maybe not - I still believe I’m 5’8" tall.
I’ve done it a couple of times, and enjoyed the high, but for me coming *down * from it was sufficiently horrible that the high wasn’t worth it. It’s interesting that Gr8Kat mentions that it was used as an anesthetic, because I’m one of those people who always comes out of general anethesia sobbing uncontrollably as though my heart is breaking, and coming down off the PCP was about the same.
As to “what’s the incentive”, yeah, it’s simply to get high. People do much weirder things. They put needles in their arms and lick toads ferchristsake. I think it was Denis Miller who said (let the paraphrasing begin) “You’ll never erase the human desire for release through altered consciousness. If you were able to get rid of all the drugs, people would spin around and around on their front lawns until they fell down and saw god.”
I tried it once in the 70’s as well.
I’ll never try it again, but I did come away from the experience with a profound realization:
Even if it means chopping down the tree that you are hiding in, I will do my level best to catch you and kill you with an axe, if you are among a group of imaginary elves who is taunting me.
Like I said, I’ll never try it again.
Enter the Flagon, drug-free since 1984.
I used it pretty frequently when I was 19, including a couple of weeks (I think; see below) where I used it more than once a day. I found it to be hallucinogenic, but not in the LSD way. It was more dissociative. The hallucinations had to do with the nature of time and space, and how you acted in them, if you understand what I mean. That and an overall feeling of , well not well-being, but something like it. The physical effects I’ve compared to the stuff the Orcs gave Merry and Pippin in The Two Towers. The after-school special stuff is mostly bullshit. You don’t get superpowers, and you don’t suddenly become a menace or anything. You just begin to resemble one of the people on The Cramps’ Bad Music For Bad People album cover.
I’ve never done PCP but I just took a pharm test that covered the psychotomimetic drugs such as PCP. Looking at my study materials PCP is listed as producing euphoria, depersonalization and hallucinations and was originally introduced as a dissociative anesthetic. So aside from the entertainment value that some people derive from hallucinations it just makes them feel good.
Hey, I’ve never done drugs for any stupid reason like peer pressure. I’ve only done them for the only good reason. For the hell of it.
Thanks for the information. It still doesn’t sound like much fun. The guy on the show was strapped to a gurney, twiching and bleeding. Of course any drug, including the legal ones, can get you there, but PCP seems to be taking the short road to get there.
My psychopharmacology mentor who I am pretty sure tried everything at least twice said that PCP is the one drug that you don’t want to screw with. That was good enough for me. I get the impression that it is the drug that lives up to its reputation in those urban-legend filled high school drug awareness lectures.
Most of the misinformation comes from the media, with the help of the police. They need PCP for police brutality actions. “Hey I had to use my club/ use my taser/ apply mace directly to her eyes with a dropper/ drop a safe on him. You never know who’s going to be high on PCP!”
A forrmer (now dead) acquaintence of mine said that PCP (he called it “dust” or “dingy dust”) was like sniffing glue, only it lasted a lot longer.
Hardly a recommendation in my book.
A relative told me a story about another relative that did PCP once back in the day (70s). He pretty much flipped his shit and got violent for a bit. Didn’t sound like any fun to me. I don’t know any of my peers that have done it though.
I hope you noticed my toungue-in-cheek attitude when calling you out. I think you are way too savvy to fall into that trap. 
There are some people who always try to get closer and closer to the edge yet live to tell about it. PCP appeals to that kind of person. I was close to some people in the 80’s who did it, but I was always too scared to try it. Especially after having to ‘babysit’ them a time or two.
I’ve never used PCP, though I definitely had my share of pot in the 1970s. Once in awhile I also had acid or mushrooms.
With regard to PCP it always seemed that the stories about it were similar to the stories that used to get bandied about regarding marijuana in the 1930s–murderous insanity, blacking out, violent behavior, delusions, the whole nine yards. Except for PCP, it seems to be true, sort of.
Slightly off-topic, but the last couple of employment-related drug tests I’ve taken have screened for PCP.
Huh?
Does anyone know anybody who does that stuff anymore? Hell, in the last ten years, I’ve only met couple of people who have even tried the stuff. I’ve certainly never had access to it.
Meanwhile, the very same drug tests neglected to screen for benzos, despite the fact that nearly everyone I’ve known has used them illegally. Those, and other mind-altering prescriptions have been the “in” drugs that younger people have been partial to for some time now (possibly because they don’t have the stigma of complete illegality attached to them).
Odd, that.
I remember reading about a man who was hit in the head by a fast moving train. When asked, at the hospital, why he was standing near the track, he replied “I wanted to see how close to the train I could stick my head.”
Well … he found out.