a stinted author:
US WA: 'Sherm' Infuses Many Users With Raging Paranoia
URL:
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v01/n1506/a06.html
Newshawk: Sledhead -
http://www.maximizingharm.com/
Pubdate: Thu, 16 Aug 2001
Source: Seattle Times (WA)
Copyright: 2001 The Seattle Times Company
Contact:
opinion@seattletimes.com
Website:
http://www.seattletimes.com/
Details:
http://www.mapinc.org/media/409
Author: Ian Ith
'SHERM' INFUSES MANY USERS WITH RAGING PARANOIA
They come disguised as ordinary brown cigarettes, or as sloppy marijuana joints stained brown from their plunge into noxious liquid meant for preserving human bodies for burial.
Doctors and cops say users smoke "Sherms" because they're a cheap trip, an accessible method of feeling omniscient, omnipowerful or just plain removed from reality.
They also say smoking Sherms can turn a person violent and paranoid. Seattle police say 20-year-old Devon Jackson was on a Sherm binge before he killed a man and a toddler in South Seattle on Monday and beat a 6-year-old girl with his pistol. Jackson was shot and mortally wounded by police.
Doctors disagree on whether Sherms are a unique form of formaldehyde- soaked smokes, or simply a newer name for a decades-old way to take PCP ( phencyclidine hydrochloride ). Either way, this week's deadly rampage by an armed, Sherm-smoking man is far from the first, and highlights an ongoing problem with the drug.
"Why anyone would want to take that drug, I don't know, because it doesn't really make you high, it gives you a really bum trip," said Lawrence Halpern, an associate professor of pharmacology at the University of Washington.
"A lot of people say they think it's fun. It's not fun. It makes people do things they regret later, when they're being put to death or locked up in jail for life."
Both the Seattle police chief and friends of Jackson agreed he had been smoking Sherms nonstop for days before he fatally shot his friend, 20-year-old Dante Coleman, then pistol-whipped 2-year-old Tre Vaugn Ford Spruel and 6-year-old Samunique Wilson at a Rainier Beach triplex. Tre Vaugn died. Samunique was still in serious condition at Harborview Medical Center yesterday.
Police said they had no choice but to shoot Jackson after he fled the apartment with his pistol in his hand and refused to surrender.
Although no toxicology tests have yet been returned on Jackson's blood, police and doctors say his behavior is consistent with typical Sherm reactions.
"The worst-case scenario is you go bonkers and you kill people, and then the cops get you," Halpern said.
The term "Sherm" comes from a brand of cigarettes, Nat Sherman, which have brown paper that can disguise the fact that cigarettes have been dipped. In other parts of the country, names for the laced cigarettes vary. They are also called "wetstick" or "smoking wet," though users have to allow the cigarettes to dry before lighting up.
Users have been dipping cigarettes and marijuana into PCP solutions for decades, Halpern said.
Within the past 10 years or so, he said, users discovered that formaldehyde, commonly found in embalming fluid, was good for dissolving PCP for dipping.
And cops soon started learning the term "Sherm" in connection with violence.
In 1994 in Tacoma, police tied a string of slayings to Sherm smoking, including an execution-style triple murder by a man who police said was paranoid from days of smoking Sherms. Then in 1997, a Tacoma man, Albert Spears, shot and killed an elderly man on a bus, then later testified that he'd been smoking Sherms and thought rap-music lyrics ordered him to kill people.
Seattle police say they haven't seen an increase in Sherm use lately, though they know the drug is out on the street and that popular rap recordings sometimes mention Sherms in the lyrics.
"We run into it very infrequently," said Capt. Jim Pryor, who heads the Police Department's narcotics squad. "Our common understanding is that `Sherms' and `embalming fluid' are just slang terms for PCP, and it carries all the side effects of PCP."
But Dr. Michael Copass, director of emergency services at Harborview Medical Center, said the hospital treats someone for Sherm-related problems every three days or so. And often, he said, users aren't getting high from PCP but simply from the mix of chemicals in embalming fluid. And regardless, the effects are relatively the same. People take the drug for a "Superman" effect, he said, but often end up having extreme trouble breathing or launch into incapacitating paranoia.
So the debate over whether Sherms have to contain PCP to be dangerous isn't so much the issue, Copass said.
"It's a lethal drug,' he said. "It's a drug that shortens your life and makes you do things you'd be horribly ashamed of if you were cognizant of it."
" TRIPPIN ".
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