Anyway, I’ve been a weed smoker for nearly 15 years. I’ve never been a heavy user. At my peak, I was smoking 1 or 2 cones every couple of days. I guess you could say I’m a bit of a light weight, but I can handle my weed. On many occasions I’ve had some HUGE sessions with my mates and been EXTREMELY stoned but always in control with no worries.

However, I moved from Australia to the UK about 6 years ago and started work in an industry that does drug testing. Bummer! Anyways, I heard about this legal stuff called Spice Gold. Legal, not detectable by drug tests and apparently just like weed – awesome! Anyway, we got some and were skeptical. Any other ‘herbal’ shit I’d tried in the past was useless, I mean we might as well have been smoking tea leaves.

Well we tried the Spice Gold and were blown away! Not in a bad way mind you. This shit actually worked! We got stoned just like weed. Well, it had a slightly different feel but there was no mistaking it – we were properly stoned. It was great and I smoked Spice Gold for years.

Anyway, we started trying for a family so I stopped smoking all together. Like I said, I’ve been smoking for years but am just a casual smoker so stopping was no problem what so ever. Every now and then between rounds of IVF I would have the odd smoke on the weekends – one cone every few months with never a problem.

Then about a year and a half ago we went to Canada for Xmas. I used to live there years ago so am well versed on Canadian weed. BC Bud, oh yeah! I was so pumped to actually smoke some real weed and enjoyed getting high again after so long without. No problems at all with the real deal.

Fast forward a year and a half with absolutely no smoking, real or Spice, and we get to last night. We had just found out that our 5th round of IVF had failed and I was a little bummed. Anyways, by this point Spice Gold was banned and illegal in the UK so I had picked up some other stuff from a shop in Camden. It was called Afghan Black Ultra and came in the same type of packet as Spice. I actually picked it up a year ago and had never used it.

I was actually trying to decide if I should actually smoke it or not or just have a quiet drink. I spent about an hour tossing up whether to have a smoke or not. Eventually I decided to have a tiny smoke. MASSIVE MISTAKE!!!!!!!

I packed possibly the smallest, most lightly packed cone in history. It was about a quarter full and I have a small cone in my bong. So I take a hit – very small and exhale immediately, not holding it in. I took 2 more baby hits.

It hit me INSTANTLY!!

Straight away I knew this wasn’t like weed. This was NOT like getting stoned on weed in ANY WAY! The whole room started oscillating wildly! I stood up and tried to walk it off and get myself centred. It didn’t work. I was losing it and losing it fast! Like I’ve said previously, I’ve smoked weed for years and can handle my smoke. In the past I’ve also done speed, extacy and cocaine. Not lots by any stretch, but enough to know what different highs, and lows, feel like with different drugs. What I was experiencing after smoking the worlds smallest amount of Afghan Black Ultra was like none of them and like nothing I’ve ever experienced before. It was a nightmare.

I was staggering around the room and starting to panic. I’m a rational guy with a good head on my shoulders and am pretty intelligent. I can keep my head in pretty much any occasion and usually DO NOT PANIC about anything, even in emergency life threatening situations. Not last night, I was flipping out big style!

The last thing I wanted to do was wake up my wife and worry her, but I had no choice. I actually 100% thought I was going to lose my mind and not be able to make it back. I remember actually rationalizing about it. I was thinking that I knew what was happening, I was actually going mad, and there was nothing I could do about it. The only thing I could think to do was wake up my wife and tell her that I love her and to say goodbye before I lost it totally.

I woke her and told her I was in big trouble after smoking that shit and that I was flipping out. I told her how sorry I was and that I loved her and that I thought I was slipping away. That’s when I started to hyperventilate and told her to call an ambulance. I had only had about 3 hours sleep the night before so was already dead tired and exhausted. The hyperventilating was killing me.

I was flapping big style. My mind was racing, the room was spinning, I was hyperventilating like a mad man and my heart was beating out of my chest. I was yelling at my wife to hurry! I was slipping away and I felt it. I was so unbelievably exhausted but I knew if I sat down or fell over I would never get up again. I had to keep on my feet. I was fighting with everything I had! I was swaying side to side stamping my feet and shaking my head, hyperventilating like crazy fighting to stay up right and conscious. My mouth and throat were as dry as you can imagine. I have never been so desperate for water. I screamed for my wife to get me water which she did while on the phone to the emergency services. I was nearly gone when she poured the water down my throat. I could barely get any down as I was hyperventilating so bad but the little I did get down brought me back.

I was then desperate for oxygen. I was breathing so hard by felt like I was suffocating. I was begging for them to arrive with the oxygen. I was so physically exhausted but at the same time my mind was totally gone! I felt as if keeping awake and upright was the key to keeping alive. I honestly thought that I would die if I went down. I kept saying sorry to my wife and saying goodbye. I kept shouting to her that I was going. I’m going, I’m going I was shouting.

By this stage I was totally buggered. I was starting to lean against the wall. I thought the game was up! My wife was amazing, she was really scared but kept her head, talking with the emergency operator and trying to help me at the same time.

Eventually the ambulance arrived. It was mad, as soon as they walked into the house I started to calm down. The hyperventilating stopped almost straight away. I was however still physically spent and my head was still spinning. They got me downstairs and I started to calm down but also started to feel violently ill. I eventually fell onto the floor and vomited my guts up. And when I say I vomited, I really vomited. I was reaching like mad and my wife said she’s never seen so much vomit. I was so ill.

Anyways, they took me to hospital in the ambulance. I had another vomiting session in the ambulance which they were less than impressed about and also started hyperventilating again. Eventually we got to the hospital and hooked me up to a heart monitor. All was OK and they sent me through to the normal a&e area to wait to see a doctor.

I was now totally calm but still spinning and feeling ill. I was also as tired as I can ever remember. My wife and friend arrived at the a&e and I said lets go home. My heart was fine and it was a 3 hour wait to see the doctor. Screw that, I knew I was OK.

I got home totally ashamed and embarrassed, but alive. Something I didn’t think I would be only 1 hour or so earlier. I went to bed and got some sleep. Not the best sleep kind you, but sleep none the less.

I have spent the day today feeling really weird. I don’t mean just physically either. I am so ashamed, embarrassed, angry and a little scared. I’ve been trying to work out if it was just the bad drugs or if there’s actually something wrong with my mind. It has been the most unsettling feeling knowing how close I came or thought I came to losing my mind and dying. I was convinced I was going to go permanently mad or die. I was 100% certain.

MY wife and friend are laughing about it today, but the shame and embarrassment is killing me. I can’t believe I needed an ambulance to come and rescue me after having a smoke, but I did.

The moral of the story is this – if you need or want a smoke, for Christ sake just smoke the real deal!!!! Its natural and you can’t beat that.

OF course everyone has different reactions to different drugs, but as a smoker of 15 years I can tell you that smoking Afghan Black Ultra synthetic crap is NOT like smoking weed and really bad news. I can’t believe that anyone would have a good reaction to that shit.

DO NOT SMOKE AFGHAN BLACK ULTRA!!!! ITS BAD NEWS!!!

Matt Herper argued that you got chemophobics to read about chemistry. My argument to that is that you also supported their reflexive chemophobia. Really, David, this isn’t so bad. But, as I said earlier, had someone else written this exact article (and put it up on HuffPo or a similar sight), I think that us chemophobe-police would have been more upset.

I do wonder how helpful it is to compare one aldehyde to another. for example, these two in question are pretty different molecules: formaldehyde is a fairly simple and well-documented toxic molecule. cinnamaldehyde just happens to share a functional group (the aldehyde bit), and usually aldehydes have a scent to them, so often when we smell things (like flowers), we’re actually inhaling the aldehyde molecules.

that said: I always assumed the REAL health concern with this bizarre behavior was the fact that people are SWALLOWING FINELY GROUND TREE BARK. If this were the “talcum powder challenge,” the “turmeric challenge,” or the “cork challenge” (if preferred to keep with a tree bark theme), participants would still get a lungful of something we’re not meant to inhale. I don’t think it’s any safer to suck in a mouthful of ground thyme than ground cinnamon. Since cinnamon is delicious, I suspect it’s easier to get dimwits to attempt such a cockamamie idea with something that’s not as foul-tasting as onion powder.

It doesn’t much matter if it’s high in cellulose, or low in aldehydes, inhaling a teaspoon of particulate matter of any kind will cause damage. I’m curious to know what ground cinnamon looks like under a microscope (I suppose I could google it)… is it jagged? Irregular? Large? Crystalline? I say it’s safe to say it’s UNSAFE to inhale, though, and that’s without even addressing the specific chemical composition of the mixture being inhaled in the first place.

Health and safety risks of inhalation exposure to the aldehyde component of cinnamon are just the delicious-smelling icing on the cake of stupid known as “the cinnamon challenge.”

PS: The fact that we have to discuss the science of “the cinnamon challenge” makes me laugh and cry at the same time.

I would think it would be reasonable to be concerned about inhaling enough of an alpha-beta unsaturated aldehyde into my lungs (as opposed to the oral route, where you have a little bit more metabolic capability.) I believe that both aldehydes and Michael acceptors are ‘structural alerts.’ One would imagine that sufficient, regular dosing would generate some interesting biological activity (desired or undesired.)

Also, I think the dude was trolling; he can be profitably ignored.