The Party Drug That Will Give You a Sweet High
[Leslie Nguyen-Okwu]
May 3, 2016

Hundreds of people are packed into a bumping basement club in downtown Berlin, dancing for hours on end in a free-wheeling rave. The substance of choice hails from the exotic tropics. It’s said to impart a brain-boosting rush and tons of energy, enough to transform its users into raging Energizer bunnies. This drug can be ingested, drunk and even snorted. You’re probably familiar with its common name: cacao.

Say, um, “hi” to the sweetest party drug there is. In recent months, cacao has transcended its already lofty status as a superfood and vaulted into the realm of party drugs. In this latest incarnation, cacao powder is taking the place of alcohol and illicit substances like Molly and ecstasy in parts of Western Europe. Lucid, a monthly cacao-fueled dance party in Berlin, fixes bitter Balinese cacao into partygoers’ drinks. Morning Gloryville, a rise-and-shine rave company that organizes dance parties from London to New York, stocks its bar with cacao drinks and cacao pills. And in perhaps the strangest form, Belgian chocolatier Dominique Persoone invented a special $50 snorting device so you can huff your chocolate in powdered form, much like cocaine.

Never mind that this is the same raw powder you can find at the corner Vitamin Shoppe or processed in your favorite candy bar — or that cacao is perfectly legal in all the jurisdictions we found. Proponents say that raw, virgin cacao is far more potent than you ever imagined. First comes a surge of endorphins into your bloodstream, which increases acuity and fuels you with feelings of euphoria. Then there’s the flood of magnesium, which relaxes your muscles and de-tenses your body. Raw cacao is also chock-full of flavanols that increase blood circulation and stimulate brain power, according to a recent study from the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

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The use of cacao was pioneered in millennia past by Mesoamerican civilizations. As early as 1900 B.C., archaeologists believe, the Mokaya people in what is now Mexico were fermenting cacao beans into liquid chocolate. The Aztecs, it seems, valued cacao so highly they would trade the beans as a form of currency. Today, the very ethically conscious may have a beef with chocolate, protesting that appropriating cacao from its Mexican origins for Eurotrash-like dance parties rings a wee bit colonial.

Skepticism aside, cacao can act as a “catalyst for having more life,” says May, rather than “numbing ourselves with beer.” And “in all my years in research, I have never seen a person not smile when enjoying a piece of chocolate,” adds Kwik-Uribe. Admittedly, she has a vested interest — but on the other hand, we can’t imagine a party that can’t be improved by chocolate.


https://www.yahoo.com/news/party-drug-sw...-000000489.html


Pssst ... wanna dime bag of M&M's ?