1,001 Facts That Will Scare the S#*t Out of You: The Ultimate Bathroom Reader (55 page)

401

FACT :
The U.S. has only 4 percent of the world’s population, but consumes
65 percent of its supply of hard drugs
.
Except when Amy Winehouse is in the country; then it jumps to 95 percent.

“Drugs: America’s Problem with Illicit Drugs,” Narconon,
www.stopaddiction.com
.

402

FACT :
The most abundant cash crop in the United States currently is marijuana.

Growers in California’s Mendocino County earn about
$1 billion in pot revenue each year.
Frito-Lay and Hostess do well there, too.

Nitya Venkataraman, “Marijuana Called Top U.S. Cash Crop,”
ABCNews.com
, December 18, 2006,
http://abcnews.go.com
.

“Raw Data,” Playboy, May 2009.

403

FACT :
Smoking is the number one preventable cause of premature death in America. Though a difficult habit to break, a recent study suggests
smokers are more apt to quit if you bribe them
. A test group who was given an incentive to stop smoking had a significantly higher rate of completion of a cessation program than the comparable “information only” group, and more of them quit smoking within six months of enrollment.
Never underestimate the power of donuts.

“A Randomized, Controlled Trial of Financial Incentives for Smoking Cessation,” New England Journal of Medicine, February 12, 2009,
www.content.nejm.org
.

404

FACT :
About
14 million Americans
fit the criteria for alcoholism or alcohol abuse.
Those criteria include dancing badly, believing you are hilarious, telling people how much you love them even though you don’t, screaming “show us your tits!” to female cops, and waking up face down in a puddle of your own vomit. In jail. Without pants.

Dennis M. Donovan and G. Alan Marlatt, Assessment of Addictive Behaviors, 2nd ed. (Guilford Press, 2007).

405

FACT :
In rare instances,
someone’s first use of cocaine can be fatal
. Deaths from cocaine often result from cardiac arrest or seizure followed by respiratory arrest.
That’s one way to avoid addiction, though.

“Cocaine,” Psychology Today,
www.psychologytoday.com
.

406

FACT : Regularly snorting cocaine can lead to nasal problems
, such as nosebleeds, loss of sense of smell, hoarseness, problems with swallowing, and septum irritation which leads to a chronically inflamed, runny nose.
It can also rot your nose until it falls off your face. That’s a nasal problem, too.

“Cocaine,” Psychology Today,
www.psychologytoday.com
.

407

FACT :
Binge cocaine use causes increased irritability, restlessness, and paranoia, and
can lead to full-blown paranoid psychosis
that causes the user to lose touch with reality.
This condition is also known as Republican Syndrome.

“Cocaine,” Psychology Today,
www.psychologytoday.com
.

”Cocaine: Facts,” Alcoholism and Drug Addiction Research Foundation,
www.xs4all.nl/~4david/cocaine.html
.

408

FACT :
Cocaine users who shoot the drug intravenously
may have allergic reactions to the drug or any of the additives
commonly found in street cocaine, which can result in death in severe cases. Users who inject the drug also risk acquiring HIV infection/AIDS and Hepatitis C if they share needles and injection equipment.
Sharing needles shows a serious lack of judgment. People who buy illicit drugs from strangers and shoot them directly into their veins should know better.