

It’s hard to say the confusion is diffuse.Īs a result of these uncertainties, cigarettes, and spliffs soaked in actual embalming fluid are sold on the street as “fry,” “wet,” and “death sticks.” More data is needed to be sure of what is going on, but either way, it’s easy to understand how our brain thief, like many others before him, got confused. Or the new name might simply be a marketing scheme to aid in sales.

Or it might suggest that PCP is dissolved in the embalming fluid. Our now-incarcerated friend was not the first person to think that he could get punch up his high by soaking his drugs in “embalming fluid.” Which brings us to the question: What is embalming fluid, anyway? For the usual corpse-preserving purposes, it’s a solution of several toxic chemicals, including methanol, ethanol, and, of course, the aforementioned formaldehyde, all of which are potent intoxicants.īut according to the experts at the drug database Erowid, it’s possible that the term “embalming fluid” actually doubles as street slang for the drug PCP, a hat-tip for the similar effects the two compounds have on the body. But let’s cut the brain thief some slack: The history of formaldehyde highs is rife with semantic confusion that even the sober among us would find difficult to parse. It’s toxic stuff, CDC-certified as cancerous, and generally not a thing you want inside you if your heart is still beating. Here’s the short answer: Smoking formaldehyde is, unsurprisingly, a bad move. Was this a dumb idea? Do preserved corpses rot? And most importantly, does embalming fluid actually help intensify drug potency? In mid-July, a central Pennsylvanian man and all-around doofus named Joshua Lee Long was arrested after stealing a preserved human brain he later named Freddy - just so he could soak his weed in its embalming fluid. Formaldehyde has undergone quite the image makeover.īest known as the heady, sickly sweet-smelling chemical commonly used to bathe the recently deceased in high school biology labs and funeral homes has gained notoriety as a potent drug hack.
