Back in the nineties, Doordarshan ran a weekly show Chandrakanta where two of its key characters Maharaja Shiv Dutt (Pankaj Dheer) and his help Tara (Anu Dhawan) used to feed on snakebites. Despite knowing it’s a pure fiction, the chilling scene sent jitters down our collective spine.
Well, now it has emerged that there are people who actually derive pleasure from letting cobras bite their tongues. Two Rajasthan men take snake poison as no amount of the usual narcotics makes them high anymore, Times of India reported.
Scientists are scratching their head as they are yet to come across a case where a person is getting cobra bite his tongue. There have been past instances where most addicts used snake venom on leg and arm, the report says.
The duo are now a subject of research at Chandigarh’s Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research. The study, ‘Snake venom use as a substitute for opioids: A case report and review of literature,’ was done by doctors Aseem Mehra, Debashish Basu and Sandeep Grover.
The duo also claimed that snake bites or snake poison mixed with other substance is quite common in their ethnic community in northwest Rajasthan.
“The patients were from Rajasthan and had been opioid–dependent for more than 15 years. Only four reports of use of snake venom for recreational purposes have been published so far from India. These (two) users were from well-off families, said Sandeep Grover, one of its researcher.
