5 Real Ways to Get High Straight Out of Science Fiction

"You're so fired." It’s known as a ‘Eugeroic,’ which translates to ‘good arousal’ in Greek, probably because it stimulates an entirely healthy state of wakefulness, and not because it gives you a mental boner. But it gets better; Modafinil has other, unintended effects too. It reduces impulsiveness, increases mental focus, and boosts the ability to recall numbers as well. All of these combine to generally improve your problem solving abilities, and because of this fact it’s quickly becoming the drug of choice for professors, academics, and chess-players alike. It makes you more intelligent, more alert, and more calculating. It’s like the mindset of a supervillain in pill form. The Pros The alertness isn’t described as unavoidable or stimulated; it’s just alert. If you want to go to sleep on Modafinil, it’s just as easy as ever. There are supposedly no side effects for coming down off of it, it just stops working. Also, the brand name for Modafinil is Provigil, which probably is not short for Professional Vigilante, but you can tell people that if you like. The Cons I don’t have any of it, and if you don’t fall asleep in front of subway trains – you’re probably don’t, either.

"Psh, what am I supposed to be, impressed? I can do that with a ping-pong ball and an iPod." Because of shady research practices, skewed results and questionable subjects, the Ganzfeld Experiments did nothing to advance the theory of ESP, but if you really feel like tripping balls, and not so much like eating fungus picked out of cow-shit and then staying up for five hours past the point when it stops being fun, Ganzfeld might do a little something for you. The Pros It doesn’t alter your blood chemistry, it can be stopped at any point, it’s practically free, and it seems like something out of a Buck Rogers episode. The Cons You look like a total and complete tool.

"The answer is yes." Acomplia was later found to have other effects when the heroin addicts ordered to detox on Acomplia (surprise!) still took a shit-ton of heroin anyway. They found that, when taken with certain other drugs (pot and smack, mostly, but limited effects have also been observed with nicotine, hence its common prescription to quitting smokers,) Acomplia, rather than neutralizing the intoxicant effects of other drugs, instead drastically reduces their side-effects. In other words, instead of preventing heroin addicts from enjoying heroin, it just removed all of the unpleasant consequences. Now, its uses for heroin are clear enough – coming down off the Old Tijuana Waterslide (Editor's note: That's not actually a nickname for heroin) is a hellish experience full of delirium, cold sweats and nausea. But it also reportedly eliminates side-effects for weed as well. Which begs the question: What side effects? Does it rid you of the desperate need for convenience store nachos and the sudden desire to converse in-depth about religion? The Pros Acomplia is also prescribed and has been proven rather effective as an anti-obesity drug. So to recap, it reduces the negative side-effects of recreational drugs, helps you quit smoking, and gives you kickin’ abs. It’s the kickin’ abs that really sends this one over the believability edge, and straight into sci-fi territory. That’s just slightly too good to be real. It’s like an infomercial promising that their device slices, dices, reunites you with your estranged father, makes julienne fries, and brings you to earth-shattering orgasm with every use. The Cons It works by messing with the Endocannabiniod system, which is a pretty scary thing to fuck with. It controls pleasure, pain tolerance, and relaxation. So, considering one side effect seen was crippling depression, and another was the resurgence of dominant Multiple Sclerosis in one patient, maybe you should just deal with the beer gut, hangovers, Funyuns cravings and lengthy arguments about whether or not god is really like, this green and pink ball of light that you saw one time in the parking lot of the Circle K.