The Aural High

Swallowing, sniffing, smoking and injecting are the prevalent ways of using drugs. One youngster has accidentally explored another method--packing her ear. The aural high was reported in a whimsical letter to the New England Journal of Medicine by Dr. Thomas E. Piemme of the George Washington University School of Medicine. Identified only as a "young lady of 18," the unwitting pioneer was undressing for a nude dip in the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool during an antiwar demonstration. She solved the problem of how to protect half a gram of hashish by depositing it in her left ear. How to extract the wad became another problem; amateur efforts pushed the dampened hash deeper into the external auditory canal. She had to go to the George Washington University Hospital emergency room, where the staff performed what Piemme terms a "hashishectomy." Though the girl claimed not to have smoked either hash or marijuana that day, she said that she felt high. She also showed signs of being so. The probable explanation is that the ear canal's epithelium absorbed some of the active ingredient in the splashed hash.

A practice that is far more serious --the inhaling of fumes from aerosol canisius becoming a fatal fad. Youngsters seeking a high spray the mist into a bag or other container and breathe deeply. About four deaths a month are now being recorded, according to the Food and Drug Administration. The gas propellants (usually fluorocarbons) in hundreds of different kinds of household sprays can kill quickly. They are carried by the blood from the lungs to the heart, where they interrupt normal cardiac rhythm.

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