Purple Drank

Sometimes we learn things from patients that we don't from our lecturers. I distinctly remember a moment in medical school where I was interviewing a patient with substance abuse and asked him how much heroin he did every day. He gave me the answer in a dollar amount, and after talking to him, I went to a computer and googled the cost of heroin. I immediately realized the hospital might be monitoring my Internet use, and quickly closed the browser lest I got in trouble.

For the vast majority of us health care professionals who have never had contact with drugs, it is a weird experience to realize the patients know more about street drugs than we do. Most recently, I admitted a patient who was intoxicated with purple drank, which I had never heard of. Apparently, it is a (terrible sounding) concoction of cough syrup, Sprite, and Jolly Rancher candies. Who would have known?