The Legend: Spreading toothpaste on orange peels and smoking it will create hallucinogenic effects.
Status: False
Variations:
- Spreading toothpaste on cigarettes and smoking will make you high.
- Spreading toothpaste on orange peels, storing them until they mold (one source says to store them "under a rug"), then smoking or eating the mold will get you high.
- Taking some ABC gum (already been chewed) and wrapping it in an orange peel with some toothpaste until it molds, then smoking or eating the mold will get you high.
Analysis:
Here we go again with the oranges! Oranges and their peels have been appearing in drug-themed rumors for decades. Despite the rumors, there is nothing in oranges or their peels that will cause psychoactive effects.
Toothpaste is made from a mild abrasive, a foaming agent (generally sodium lauryl sulfate) and sodium flouride. There is nothing in toothpaste that is psychoactive. Flouride in high concentrations is toxic and can cause gastrointestinal symptoms, even death, but not hallucinations. It is doubtful that combining toothpaste with an orange would create a psychoactive compound.
There was a movie in 2002 called "Shuang Tong" in which a murderer is planting a hallucinogenic mold into the brains of victims. This is fiction people, fiction! Eating moldy organic material may make you feel different, but in an I-feel-like-I'm-gonna-puke sort of way.
The exception to this would be mold that grows from an already psychoactive host (mycillia) or the mold that grows on rye (ergot) from which LSD was synthesized.
The only trip a moldy orange will give you is to the bathroom.
