The 5 Greatest Things Ever Accomplished While High
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Any dreadlocked white guys finding this article after Googling "Drugs Rule" should know that we've given this list about drugs a rule. To make the cut, an accomplishment has to be considered great by people who could pass a field sobriety test. So no Grateful Dead music. We're sure someone somewhere has enjoyed the Dead perfectly sober, just as there are probably non-Christians who listen to Christian Rock. But we're just as sure that in the grand scheme of things, those people don't count. In fact, because we're masochists, we gave ourselves a strict no music policy, leaving us with ... well, not a whole lot actually. Turns out most great things were accomplished by people who just said no, at least immediately prior to accomplishing them. Except for these five. #5.
Francis Crick Discovers DNA Thanks to LSD
The Accomplishment: For the few Cracked readers not versed in the history of human genetics, Francis Crick is the closest that field gets to a rock star, which is pretty fucking close as it turns out. In 1953 in Cambridge, Crick burst through the front door of his home spouting what his wife Odile originally thought was crazy jibberish about two spirals twisting in opposite directions from one another. Like all great rock star's wives, Odile was an artist, and drew exactly what her husband described. Then the pair and research partner James Watson all went out to a pub and got drunk.
Odile had no idea what they were celebrating. "Francis was always saying things like that." If so she probably should have drawn every word because those twisty spirals went on to become one of the most reproduced drawing in the history of science, a first draft of the double helix structure of DNA that scientists today still describe as "balls on." The Drug: LSD. Yes, when not discovering the key to life, and winning the Nobel Prize for it, Crick spent the 50s and 60s throwing all night parties famous for featuring that era's favorite party favors: LSD and nudity. Crick never made it a secret that he experimented with the drug, and in 2006, the London paper The Mail on Sunday reported that Crick had told many colleagues that he was experimenting with LSD when he figured out the double helix structure.
Why It Makes Sense: The double helix is essentially the Sgt. Peppers of scientific models, a ladder that's been melted and twirled by a pasta fork, or the two snakes from the caduceus if one of them was fucking the other with 100 dicks (depending on whether the artist ate the good or bad acid). Now obviously scientists don't arrive at models by doodling on their trapper keeper and picking out the shape that looks the coolest. To do what Crick did required an insane amount of analytical, theoretical, and spatial thinking. It's not like Crick dropped out of high school and then used acid to turn himself into a supergenius.
Crick was a fan of Aldous Huxley's The Doors of Perception, a study of the human mind which was undertaken like all good studies, while driving around LA on mescaline. Huxley wrote that the sober mind has a series of filters on it that basically prevent abstract thought (evolution put them there for the sake of survival, since having daydreams about the nature of the universe while driving can cause you to plow into a semi). But Huxley and Crick thought drugs like mescaline and LSD could temporarily remove those filters. So rather than melting his mind into a lava lamp of trippy shapes, Crick probably used LSD to get unfiltered access to a part of his brain most normal people rarely use.
Before You Go Trying It... The long term effects of acid aren't so great. While Crick never officially rocked a tinfoil hat, he was known to argue that life was seeded on Earth by a race of prehistoric aliens, a theory that has yet to gain widespread acceptance among the scientific community, or really anyone who isn't a character on the X Files or L Ron Hubbard. #4.
Freud and Cocaine Invent Psychoanalysis
The Accomplishment: Freudian psychoanalysis is one of the most influential and controversial theories of the 20th Century. While you can argue its merits all day (though we wouldn't recommend it) you can't deny that it created an entire branch of medicine, and more importantly, gave us the two best seasons of The Sopranos. The Drug: Cocaine. The first ten years of Sigmund Freud's career were like a roving cocaine pep rally. He prescribed cocaine to his friends for headaches, nasal ailments or just to "give (their) cheeks a red color." After all, why whore yourself up with makeup when you can get the same effect with a little cocaine?
Freud wrote unintentionally hilarious letters to his wife promising to show her what happens to a woman in the hands of a "wild man with cocaine in his blood." Oh, and he wrote an entire book called On Cocaine that's basic thesis was: Cocaine is fucking awesome. You should really think about trying some. After one of his friends died from the drug, Freud quietly folded up his cocaine pom-poms and sweater skirt combo, and went on to found the theory that was named after him. But a respected Freud biographer seems to think the drug played a huge role in the less embarrassing, second act of his career. Why It Makes Sense: In those letters to his wife bragging that he was a cocaine fueled sex machine, the man who created the talking cure said he most relied on the drug to untie his tongue. Louise Breger, who is something called a professor emeritus of Psychoanalytics Studies at the California Institute of Technology, suggests that before Freud experimented with the drug, he was an emotionally sterile, socially awkward guy in a lab coat. Cocaine not only untied his tongue, it turned him into the chatty Cathy that wanted to discuss how you felt about your mother.
This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who's been around people on the drug or at least seen the movie Boogie Nights. Cocaine bestows its takers with a preternatural enthusiasm for talking about themselves, often to the great irritation of the people around them. Berger specifically points to a series of all night cocaine benders in which Freud and his friend Fleischel discussed their "profoundest despair," as he referred to it. From those sessions Freud came up with the whole idea of the patient pouring out his feelings on a couch while the therapist nodded and took notes.
Before You Go Trying It... Fleischel, the friend who sent Freud on the path toward psychoanalysis was the same guy the drug ended up killing. #3.
A Coke Addict Makes a Coke-Flavored Cola and Calls it Coke
The Accomplishment: The invention of Coca-Cola might not seem to belong on a list next to things like DNA. After all, way more people drink Coke than have heard of the double helix. Coca-Cola is simply the most well known brand in the history of the world. Sure, it's mostly just soda water and sugar. But they sell about 400 billion cans of the stuff a year to about 200 countries, an average of more than 60 cans to every single human being on the planet. Pretty impressive for a drink that routinely gets beat in taste tests by Pepsi. The Drug:
Coke has it right there in the name. When Coca Cola was created in the summer of 1885, the market was even more crowded with sodas than it is today. In addition to Coke, Pharmacists were selling thousands of sodas, including Dr. Pepper, which got its name from the Texas doctor who marketed it as a cure for impotence. The belief that effervescent water contained health benefits goes back to the Romans, and given the state of mainstream medicine in the 1890s, customers were more than happy to believe Dr. Pepper got your dick up just as well as an old fashioned leech bleeding. Coca Cola was able to stand out in the crowded market because it's purported health benefits weren't total and utter bullshit.
But surely he wouldn't go so far as to stake the claim of his fledgling business on an unproven drug, right? Why It Makes Sense: Like Freud, Pemberton practiced what he preached. In fact, when he said he was convinced from "actual experiments that coca is the very best substitute for opium addicts," he was speaking from personal experience, since he was a himself a morphine addict. But whereas Freud retired his cocaine megaphone once doctors sounded the "shit kills you" alarm, Pemberton chose to put it in his soda, plug his ears, and hum loudly.
In his history of the beverage, Mark Pendergrast claims there was about 8.45 milligrams of cocaine in each serving, which is about 1/4th of what people put up their nose to get high these days. But fans of the drink were known to chug up to five at a sitting, or to drink it with five times the syrup called for in the recipe. When combined with the sugar and caffeine, that brings the drug to right around street level. So it's not surprising that by the time cocaine was removed from the drink in the early 20th century, people were ordering Cokes by asking for "a dope." Before You Go Trying It... If that story makes you think cocaine is cool, you should check out the Russell Crowe smoking commercial The Insider. |
John Pemberton, the Atlanta pharmacist that invented Coca Cola, claimed that the ingredient it was named after, the Coca leaf, cured everything from depression and nervousness to morphine addiction. If those purported effects sound familiar, congratulations, you could beat a chimpanzee in a game of memory. Coca is the leaf that produces cocaine, and like Freud, John Pemberton was incredibly enthusiastic about its "health benefits." 
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yeah, i can't believe how inaccurate number 1 is, I mean you would think it was comedy site, and was he was trying to make a joke or something
I'm glad weed isn't on here, but kinda sad opiates aren't either. I don't understand why everyone loves weed so much when its contributed nothing compared to the Heavenly powder that is coke.
I think you religous advocates are being way to sensitive. The point of cracked is to entertain and and make fun of s**t. This article was entertaining and they made fun of s**t, including moses. Why is Moses off limits but scientology, Sigmund Freued and everything else not? Why don't we see psychologists getting one here defending Freud, quoting obscure lines from his articles of work.
Cracked.com is a website for entertainment, it's hypocritical to say well i find the articles making fun of scientology hilarious but your not allowed to make fun of jesus or moses because i happen to be Christian. If your willing to give it you have to be able to take it as well.
(disclaimer i think scientology is hilarious and deserves to be made fun of at EVERY opportunity.
holy balls. what's wrong with you losers? i got fred phelps over here talking about Cracked's religous agenda and rambo censoring the word b**ch but not f**k (peaceman6969, you asstard, im talking to you). its just an article. its funny. they're on a deadline. jebus chrizzle you guys need a hobby. am i the only one who reads this s**t to get AWAY from the world im currently occupying? so, to comment on the article, funny stuff. my balls didn't explode but i enjoyed it regardless.
Your mind turning into a trippy lava lamp and getting "unfiltered access to a part of [your] brain most normal people rarely use" are one in the same. Omg, writing that took me sooo long. s**t, i was thinking all these crazy things to write in the middle of typing it and i couldn't focus. It feels like I'm going through 5 minutes of time every 2 seconds. That's how intense everything is. ok, maybe i'm exaggerating; still, -- it's a state of mind, a perception of reality, that really seems to open your mind to the world around you. I'm high on some fire crip weed right now, and I keep losing myself whenever I look at something and then look at something else, which unfortunately happens rather often. Or fortunately, if you look at it my way.
To be honest, the description of dinosaurs, sounds pretty accurate. Still, down with organized religion.
And islam is based off the bible o_0 whaaaaaaat? I was under the impression that the Quran was the scripture for islam.
Either ways, down with organized religion!!! Wee-haaaa!!!
Something with a FAQ page at least. "What about murdering in self defense? And what if your neighbor's wife is really hot? Do two Commandments cancel each other out? Can I murder my hot neighbor's stupid husband?"
hahahahahaha...oh that was funny.
"Pretty impressive for a drink that routinely gets beat in taste tests by Pepsi." Oh, bullshit!!!
Also, Dr Pepper doesn't have a period after "Dr" (which would have made it very difficult to punctuate this sentence if I didn't add this parenthetical bit). Doesn't now, and to my knowledge it never has- check the website.
1 Where is the evidence that moses was a druggie? I never heard the phrase mushroom king in that context before, pretty cool! :)
And I'm sure he wouldn't have to make his own site to say moses was perfect, just find one made by a religious man that was somehow smart enough to work a website maker :D
P.s How can you tell it's moses?
if you cant face the fact that moses was a mushroom king get fucked and dont read the article as far as religon bashing goes f**k jesus f**k god f**k the bible moses did more then mushrooms a scholar at havard said he was heroin addict too all im saying if the atricle pisses you off then f**k off and dont read it..its fucken entertainment you want to paint a picture pefect image of moses start your own fucken religous site so you and anyone like you cant b***h about what ever you want
p.s. f**k you mix master your whiny faggot
if you cant face the fact that moses was a mushroom king get fucked and dont read the article as far as religon bashing goes f**k jesus f**k god f**k the bible moses did more then mushrooms a scholar at havard said he was heroin addict too all im saying if the atricle pisses you off then f**k off and dont read it..its fucken entertainment you want to paint a picture pefect image of moses start your own fucken religous site so you and anyone like you cant b***h about what ever you want
p.s. f**k you mix master your whiny faggot
man you posters get to touchy about religon like fucken jesus i stopped believing in the bible i dont know around the same time i stopped believing in fucken santa cluase or teh easter bunny all the scholar said is there are two not one TWO types of pyshdelic mushrooms on that mountain and you think a bunch of people that spent days walking through a f*****g dessert with no food or water and stumble across a bunch of mushrooms arnt goig to eat them? f**k that if they were hungry they would of ate them and if they ate them they got high and f**k like you religous biggots cant pull your heads outta asses for two second and laugh at this article build a fucken brigde and get the f**k over it
You shoulda put beatles making sgt pepper here because it's ranked greatest album of all time by rolling stone. So yeah the greatest album of all time was made while high
Touchy aren't you? Someone jokes about organized ancient mythology and out comes evidence for big-foot and silly bible quotes vaguely interpreted in a manner as to make dinosaurs roaming 2000 (or is it 5000?) years ago plausible. Who describes Richard Dawkins as a stupid douche? I mean really? By the same definition he said aliens could have started life here he said so could had god. He acknowledges he can't disprove either, just break it down to likely-hoods, neither of which scores very high. I commend cracked for smashing religion, clearly logic, science and the progressive agenda are not doing enough already to end the ignorance and primitive mind set associated with a group of people who adamantly believe they can escape their own mortality because a bizarre ancient book claims so. Were not going to evolve until today's religions are regarded the same as the past's, all as ridiculous. Cracked's authors are just already there, being objective and hilarious. So relax it's all good, and remember, whenever you see a rainbow, it means god is having gay sex.
I totally second the previous posters who pointed out the anti-religious BS in the Moses post. Are you kidding me? ONE scholar says that Moses did drugs. ONE. I bet I could find you 3 who claim the moon landing was faked, and 10 that say 9/11 was an inside job. That's your 'proof?'
It's just anti-religious bull. And tell me, exactly how did that scholar "figure it out" anyways? Did he wander across a few writings from the time of Moses talking about all the Israelites getting stoned? Oh wait! There AREN'T any other writings about the Israelites from the time of Moses, not until almost a millenium later!
Keep posting crap like this and you're gonna lose a lot of your audience, me included. Not only is it anti-religious propaganda, but there is literally more evidence for the existence of bigfoot than this.
I have to agree with mixmaster93, there is a fairly blatant anti-religous agenda showing up in a lot of recent cracked articles. It didn't used to be this way, Cracked used to be really good about offending everybody equally, now it's slowly becoming another "bash organized religion" site.
"where are the dinosaurs?" Book of Job, chapter 40, verse 15-18: "Look at the Behmouth, which I made along with you, and which feeds on the grass like an ox. What strength he has in his loins, what power in the muscles of his belly! His tails sways like a cedar, the sinews of his thighs are close-knit. His bones are tubes of bronze, his limbs like rods of iron."
Though a lot of revisionists have mistranslated 'behmouth' to 'hippopotimus' or 'elephant', I'd like to see a hippo or an elephant with a tail like a cedar. There's only one animal in the fossil record the meets all the criteria listed for the behmouth, and the word 'dinosaur' wasn't invented until 1849.
The list was good up until number 1.I know that your job of writing articles is primarily to make people laugh and Moses on shrooms is a very funny picture but can you try to be a little more subtle about your obvious agenda against religion? you sound like someone who has never read past the ten commandments. if you read a little further you would see there are a fuckload that come right afterword. the only reason the ten commandments are famous is because they contain the basic principles used in all the other decrees. did you even know there are five books of the testament all longer than any f*****g harry potter book (maybe not the fifth, seventh, sixth... or fourth)? if you did then you must have realized that they are not there just to list the ten commandments with less than a quarter of a letter on each page. the amount you seem to actually know about the bible is actually scary including the fact that if you look at any religion bible based, including but not limited to Christianity, Judaism and Islam that they will all deal with the retarted questions you asked at the end of the article (i know they were just a joke but they played off a very stupid point which is that the ten commandments need elaboration). I am not a religious nut or associated with any religion at all but i have done research into many religions and the fact that you wrote this article with such blatantly condescending views on religion is just f*****g annoying. the reason i'm pissed is because i like every cracked article i've read and have basically trusted the main facts in each one but now that i had to waste my time reading number one on a list of druggies (after getting pumped up because the rest of the list was really good)as Moses with basically no supporting evidence other than the assumption that you think over 600,000 people all took drugs and had the same exact hallucination and decided to make a religion out of it. o and to answer those questions: yes you can kill in self defense, still can't cheat, there is no contradiction that isn't settled through some sort of interpretation, and it matters how stupid the given husband is.
Nick Diaz caught Gomi in a gogoplata, after which he tested positive for weed. Though he probably wasn't high at the time, he was high the night before, and if you know anything about jiu0jitsu or Gomi, you'd know how badass that was
oh wait. the bible actually has passages against drugs (keep a sober mind and body, cleanse your bodies of vile substances, speaking of opiates and halucinagens) i'll keep up my research and tell you if i find something relevant though.
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f**k you guys. JOKES JOKES JOKES JOKES JOKES JOKES!