In a curious case report, Indian psychiatrists Lekhansh Shukla and colleagues describe a young man who said he regularly got high by being bitten by a snake. The 21-year old patient sought treatment for his heavy drug abuse, which included heroin and marijuna. He also reported a less conventional habit: he visited a local snake charmer, where he was bitten on the lips by a "cobra" in order to get high:
He reported that his peers and the snake charmer informed him that he would have drowsiness, euphoria, and feeling of warmth followed by a deep sleep after the bite. Subjectively he reported experiencing all these symptoms and they lasted for 2-3 days.
However, Shukla et al. were suspicious of this account, not least because the Indian cobra is highly venomous and its bites are usually fatal. So they decided to visit the snake charmer to find out what was ...
