Can a CD make you high?

May 17, 2007, 05:52 PM | by Leah Greenblatt

Categories: Music

According to a recent ABC News story, there's a CD on the market that supposedly makes listeners feel high — triggering through sound the effects of such drugs as peyote and marijuana. The story even quotes a student at a suburban New Jersey high school as saying, "You listen to it and you just kinda zone out, feel weird and kinda gives you the effect I guess." (It's not clear whether the student's garbled grammar was the product of the CD or a substandard New Jersey education. Ah, the articulation of youth.) Anyway, you can purchase said magical disc for $20 online from a company called I-Doser.com, which says the effect comes from binaural sound waves that synchronize your brain to simulate the effect of a drug trip.

Now, our first thought over here at E-Dubs blog headquarters was: "Wow, that sure could have saved us a lot of money — and a lot of grounding — when we were in high school!" Our second thought was, "Eh. It's probably about as effective as those 'herbal enhancers' they always sell at the counter in gas stations." And our third thought — yes, we are thinking machines, dear readers — was, "Why not just listen to the dozens, if not hundreds of naturally trippy and actually awesome albums already out there?"

Seriously: Whether it comes from artists who were quite literally on their own trips (the Beatles, Donovan, Pink Floyd, Bob Marley), made us think pleasantly of trippy things (the Orb's "Fluffy Little Clouds," Underworld's "Born Slippy," Jane's Addiction's "Three Days," pretty much anything by Primal Scream), or simply take the word "psychedelic" as both a musical category and a state of mind (Animal Collective, Dungen, Joanna Newsom), we can think of plenty of stellar albums and/or songs that make us feel all swirly-twirly without the aid of chemical or botanical and, may we be sure to add, CLEARLY ILLEGAL substances. Readers, what makes you feel most "Strawberry Fields Forever"-y?