Today In Overblown Parental Scares: Digital Drugs (Over One Million Youths Trolled)

If someone told you they were “high on music,” you’d just think they were slightly exaggerating the fact that they really enjoy music. After all, someone who says they’re “high on life” is actually explicitly saying they’re not intoxicated in any way. Well, now “high on music” could have a whole new meaning thanks to the advent of digital drugs. Or at least, that’s what a bunch of cleverer-than-they-appear high schoolers may want you to think.

In March, three high schoolers from Mustang High School in Oklahoma were sent to the principal’s office for apparently being high or drunk. Once in said office, they claimed that they were intoxicated on tunes, man. Digital drugs, man. They’re groovy.

NewsOK, an Oklahoman news organization, reports on the growing phenomenon of “i-dosing” with hilariously awkward technologically illiterate phrasing:

“Young people plug into i-dosers through putting on headphones and downloading music and tones that create a supposed drug-like euphoria.”

So apparently someone somewhere made up the phrase “plug into i-dosers” and now everyone has to define it? Weird. Here’s my awkward-slang-free (sorry, homies) description of the phenomenon: Some creepers wanted to make a lot of money and possibly also show how stupid our country’s youth are as a whole, so they made a website. Then they went into Garage Band and made a lot of nonsense, then uploaded it to their site. Then they let people download the utter crap for a fee, claiming that listening to it correctly could induce a drug-like euphoria or one of many other sensations via the high-tech science of binaural beats. And kids bought into it, because according to the site, digital drugs have been downloaded over a million times.

But all the research points out that at the most they may help you relax (in a perfectly normal way that any other music could), and at the very least they do absolutely nothing. And more signs are pointing toward nothing than relaxation. But parents are still worried, and not just because their children are stupid and letting themselves get ripped off by one of the most obvious scams of all time. From NewsOK:

“I think it’s very dangerous,” said Karina Forrest-Perkins, chief operating officer of Gateway to Prevention and Recovery in Shawnee. While there are no known neurological effects from digital drugs, they encourage kids to pursue mood altering substances, she said.

And here is the disclaimer from the Digital Drugs site:

DigitalDrugs.info does NOT condone the use of illegal drugs or the abuse of prescription drugs for any reason or purpose. The digital content that is available for download at DigitalDrugs.info is purely sound that has been manipulated to induce specific effects while providing a beneficial enhancement of brain wave activities. The mind states that can be experienced while listening to our products have no lasting or permanent effect.

Sure, any drug could technically be a gateway drug, and I’m sure there are “unofficial” recommendations to try real drugs splattered all over the site, but the whole point of digital drugs is that they’re a legal, safe alternative. You can’t say that the Digital Drugs site is legitimately suggesting illegal drug use. I mean, illegal drugs are their competitors, for goodness sake. That said, there are numerous links to sex toy sites all over the digital drugs page. But sex toys aren’t illegal, and might actually help people relax, unlike senseless tones downloaded from a sketchy pay site. The one thing that digital drugs and sex toys have in common, though, is that parents will FREAK OUT about them. And they’ll be encouraged to do so by mental health counselor Jed Shlackman:

“If a parent notices a child is sitting around all the time with headphones on, they should look into what stresses are happening in the child’s life … and deal with it in a constructive way,” Shlackman said.

Yes, headphones and sitting. Always a cry for help.

At least there’s one person who, after a lapse of judgment in which he or she purchased digital drugs, realized the whole thing is just a big trolling mechanism. From the digital drug comments, as reported by NewsOK: “I feel nothing. I’m starting to wonder if this is just a big ploy to get money from gullible customers.”

Ya think?

(Via NewsOK via Reddit, image via TranceParty)