Contact high

A contact high is a psychological phenomenon that occurs in otherwise sober people and animals who come into contact with someone who is under the influence of drugs. It involves a supposed transfer of the physiological state of intoxication. A glossary of drug users' language from the 1970s describes the term as "a psychogenic 'trip' without taking drugs by being close to somebody while he or she is on drugs. The term is often incorrectly used to describe the high obtained by inhaling the smoke of other marijuana smokers."^[1]

In Alexander Shulgin's PiHKAL book under the 2C-I entry, a notable reaction is observed in a participant who takes a placebo, existing in an environment with other people who are under the drug's influence. The participant wrote that he had "absorbed the ambience of the folks who had actually imbibed the material,".^[2]

Stanislav Grof, together with his wife Christina, experienced a contact high assisting a person under LSD therapy described in his book When the Impossible Happens: Adventures in Non-Ordinary Reality (2006) in Part 4 about Pecherskaya Lavra (p. 213, in German edition).

Cultural references

• Rocket Science released an album with the same name in 2001.
• The Godz' first album is entitled Contact High with the Gods.
• The Soup Dragons released a song called "Contact High" on their album Hydrophonic.
• Scissor Sisters, Allen Stone, and Ike & Tina Turner all had B-side songs called "Contact High".
• The Austrian film Contact High deals with this phenomenon.^[3]
• Australian indie rock band Architecture in Helsinki released a single in February 2011 named "Contact High", which according to frontman Cameron Bird is about "the notion of a contact high through the intoxication of love."^[4]
• The song "Kokomo" by The Beach Boys refers to a "tropical contact high"

See also

• Hotboxing

References