Testing It Up

A woman from Denver who was caught defacing a multi-million dollar painting attributed her meltdown to the use of bath salts.

Carmen Tisch, 36 years old, was caught by a surveillance camera beating a $30 million painting by the noted Abstract Expressionist Clyfford Still, before urinating on the 10-foot tall, 13-foot wide work of art.

Carmen Tisch shared with KDVR-TV that she does not remember the day she stumbled into the Clifford Still Museum. She said: “I was a pill popper, heroin addict. I was in the methadone clinic for while… And when I got off the methadone that’s when I started drinking a lot. That’s when I was doing the bath salt.”

She said that when police told her about what she had done a few hours later, she was in shock. By then, she was already in a jail cell, and had come down from her high.

Tisch said: “I’m kind of scared to watch it just to see myself like that… I was in shock… I was ashamed and also a little relieved that I didn’t murder somebody.”

At first, the police thought that she was drunk.

After spending time in jail as well as in two psychiatric wards, Tisch is currently on probation. She undergoes weekly testing for drugs and alcohol.

She stays sober for two reasons: “I got God, and I also have a daughter… My daughter, she comes in my mind every time now.”

We have written quite a number of features regarding the “bath salts” that never quite make it to the tub, as well as their negative effects, but it seems like concerns – and the incidents that fuel these concerns – continue to climb.

A feature on The New York Times shared a spike in the arrival of agitated, violent and psychotic patients in hospital emergency rooms across the country, after having taken the stimulants that are being sold – legally – as bath salts.

Dr. Jeffrey J. Narmi of the Schuylkill Medical Center in Pottsville, Pennsylvania, shared that at times, it would take “a small army of medical workers” to hold these patients down. “There were some who were admitted overnight for treatment and subsequently admitted to the psych floor upstairs… These people were completely disconnected from reality and in a very bad place,” Dr. Narmi said.

It is a scene that is replayed in hospitals all over the country, and doctors are trying their best to figure out how to best treat patients who are high on these new stimulant drugs.

Bath salts come in powder and crystal form, very similar to those that you probably have in your bathroom cupboard to sprinkle in the tub on days when you want to relax. These new bath salts, however, are being used – or abused – as recreational drugs. They are injected, snorted, or smoked, and doctors say that they have “unusually dangerous and long-lasting effects.”

The American Association of Poison Control Centers revealed that poison control centers across the United States have received 3,470 calls regarding bath salts from January to June of this year. In 2010, there were only 303 calls made about them for the entire year.

Karen E. Simone, director of the Northern New England Poison Center, commented: “If you gave me a list of drugs that I wouldn’t want to touch, this would be on top.”

New York Health Screening