Description

Buy Purple Drank Online

Buy Purple Drank Online is a slang term given to a recreational drug which includes a prescription-strength cough syrup used in a manner inconsistent with its labeling and mixed with a carbonated soft drink. The mixture became popular in the hip hop community in the southern United States in the 1990s, originating in Houston.

The prescription-strength cough syrup used in Buy Purple Drank Online contains codeine and promethazine (not to be confused with dextromethorphan; DXM). The cough syrup, used in doses much higher than medically recommended, is typically mixed with ingredients such as the soft drinks Sprite, Mountain Dew or Grape Fanta and optionally “a Jolly Rancher hard fruit candy thrown in for extra sweetness. The purplish hue of purple drank comes from dyes in the cough syrup. The amount of cough syrup used “can exceed up to 25 times the recommended dose. The concoction is “typically consumed out of Styrofoam cups”.

There are numerous other slang terms for purple drank, including sizzurp, lean, syrup, drank, barre, purple jelly, Texas tea, dirty Sprite, and Tsikuni.

Effects

The physiological effects of Buy Purple Drank Online on the user is to produce mild “euphoric side effects”, which are accompanied by “motor-skill impairment, lethargy, drowsiness, and a dissociative feeling from all other parts of the body”. Houston author Lance Scott Walker noted that the super-sweet combination of soda, cough syrup, and Jolly Ranchers provides a flavor and mouthfeel which stays on the tongue for an extended duration. This phenomenon is often appealing to first-time users. Purple drank is often used in combination with alcohol and/or other drugs.

Hazards

Dangers arise in higher dosages because promethazine is a depressant of the central nervous system and codeine is a respiratory depressant. When codeine is taken in very large amounts, it can cause one to stop breathing. Using alcohol and other drugs alongside purple drank increases the chance of problems. Fallieras stated that the concoction does not cause seizures itself but increases their likelihood in those susceptible to them. The drink includes a “massive” amount of the opiate codeine, which can be addictive in high doses, and Fallieras states that “promethazine has at least anecdotally been noted to intensify the euphoric effects of codeine in the brain.

History

According to Houston-based author Lance Scott Walker, purple drank developed in that city around the 1960s when blues musicians would take Robitussin and cut it with beer. Later when wine coolers came onto the market, they substituted for beer. These blues musicians lived in Houston’s Fifth Ward, Third Ward, and South Park neighborhoods and the practice was taken up by the generation of rappers growing up in the same parts of the city. In the 1980s and 1990s the formula changed to using codeine promethazine cough syrup, lemon-lime-flavored soda, and Jolly Ranchers.

Walker holds that DJ Screw’s music was particularly appropriate for Houston’s climate. Due to the heat and expanse of the Houston area residents spent long drives in their cars, “the music that most appropriately complements that has always been the music of DJ Screw, it’s slowed down – and when I say slowed down I mean he would record sessions in his apartment with rappers freestyling over beats and he would make these big mixtapes and then he would actually slow them down even further on his cassette recorder.” DJ Screw’s invoking purple drank in his lyrics and his use of slow tempos had caused his style to be characterized ” if the song itself has taken too much codeine promethazine”.