Spoken like one who has obviously never felt the strange taste in the mouth that a good vein full of junk brings! What a chump.
I have recently realized that a lot of people I know do cocaine. I even watched people snort cocaine a month ago for the first time, which brought home the reality of this practice in a new way for me. I have never done it, and don't intend to, but I'm all "Ah, cocaine! People do cocaine!" I've known this for years, and yet it's different for me to think about now.
For the record, I am not Steve, and Brandi is not Cindy.
I had a friend in college who used to say 'Opium's really cool, just don't make a habit of it.'
IME, White People think having done drugs is cool, being open-minded toward drugs is cool, occasionally doing drugs is cool, but being addicted to drugs is pathetic. And "drugs" here is really broad--trashy drugs, upscale drugs, boutiquey drugs, even cigarettes and alcohol. Needing a cigarette is gauche, but wanting a cigarette is cultured.
I thought needing drugs would be cool, but I was wrong- it really was pathetic. It was also pretty interesting, in a way, but that didn't make it less pathetic.
3: I came to a similar realization about eight or nine years ago. A few years later I came to the realization that most everyone who uses once said something like: I have never done it, and don't intend to
The question is, how many people who say "I have never done it, and don't intend to", go on to act contrary to that (non-)intention? It's not really remarkable that many people should have disclaimed any intent who then go on to use.
I, personally, think that being open-minded towards drug users is cool. As a consequence, occasionally doing drugs is fine, having done drugs is fine, and being addicted to drugs is unfortunate.
That said, since codeine makes me feel like crap, I'm not inclined to try organic whole-grain opium. Even though I do, actually, understand a certain reluctance to use street drugs that have been cut with god knows what while being open to using stuff that presumably hasn't. If one were inclined to do such things at all. Which I'm generally not.
6: Yeah, it combines a veneer of open-mindedness with solid respectability. A healthy sense of curiosity balanced out by a mindful attentiveness to success. Or something.
This thread is making me think of a terrific interview with Steve Earle from a few years ago. Terrific, in spite of the fact that I think it was conducted by Terry Gross.
She asked him how he was able to be such a productive songwriter, performer, and now short-story writer. He said it was amazing how much time he had after he didn't have to spend so much of every day figuring out how to get his hands on $200 for drugs.
And now I see that he was on The Wire.
8 is true of anal sex, too. I wonder if they're related?
The question is, how many people who say "I have never done it, and don't intend to", go on to act contrary to that (non-)intention?
Oh, probably a fairly small percentage, I'm sure, fluctuating with the popularity of the drug; I'm willing to bet lots more in the past decade than in the decade preceding it. But it really is one of those poster drugs for cognitive dissonance; most alcohol users don't start out saying "I'll never drink," most marijuana users don't start out saying "I'll never toke."
13: Given the common side-effects of cocaine use, I'm thinking... no.
8, 9: Well, speaking for myself, I would probably be more likely to try something like cocaine or hallucinogens now than I ever was in my youth, simply because as I've gotten older I've come to see such things as less risky than I did when I was younger.
Largely, I suppose, because my models for drug use when I was in my teens and twenties were mostly people who were also doing a lot of other risky crap, and I've since met enough people who know enough about drugs, specifically, to learn how to distinguish casual drug use from general indiscriminate recklessness.
I can't believe that w-lfs-n reads Men's Style.
I never had the dorm experience, and was kept under tight control by my (as you all know by now) psycho strict Asian parents throughout college and law school. And now I'm up in the Bay Area. Whoa, weed everywhere! Just like in the movies! And at yuppie house parties in the Oakland Hills! I politely decline, but maybe because it's a little late for me to develop such habits or feel peer pressure. So I'm one of those "I haven't and don't, but go ahead" types.
Although, like B, I can't stand codeine, or for that matter, vicodin. Opium sounds like an option to those with sensitive tummies. My granddad used it, but he grew up in the Indochine era in Vietnam. I love it when white people want to act Asian, because the joke is that all Asians are aspiring whites.
My attention was directed thereto; I do not, ordinarily, read it.
But you are so stylish, w-lfs-n. You verily rock the linen shirt, and your pants are from Germany, as are your weird t-shirts. I thought "ah, this explains it." So your style is innate. Either that, or you just shop where Ogged tells you to shop.
I grew up with DARE, and then in law school had friend who worked for Drug Policy Alliance. I never really got over my personal risk-aversion to drugs, but I became persuaded about the legalization of some drugs and certainly against mandatory minimum sentencing laws and the federal policy against granting financial aid to anyone who has ever been convicted of any drug offense. That's an awful law.
I'm never saying anything about anything I own, do, or like to you, ever again.
Sorry w-lfs-n--I didn't mean offense. :(. I meant it as gentle teasing. Failed miserably. Sorry.
Having just read the article, Ben was being kind: the people therein are far more toolish than the brief excerpt he quoted makes them appear.
19: I believe that the research shows that DARE is actually counter-productive.
Well, I couldn't quote the whole article, you know.
OT: Someone named Usain Bolt just set the world record in the 100 meters. Even though that's a record that will stand only until Pistorius breaks it, Usain Bolt is still an excellent name for a sprinter.
I've gone on about this before but can never resist an opportunity: when I am king, grass and shrooms will be legal, LSD by prescription, junk treated as a disease and cocaine punished by being locked in a room with a bunch of other cokeheads. Maybe I'd strap megaphones to their faces and hearing aids to their ears, too. Christ but I cannot stand cokeheads and every single one of them thinks they are the essence of clever and that no one will ever realize why they're always dashing off to the bathroom. Honest to the gods, every single cokehead I've known has been about as subtle as a bag of hammers and half as smart.
25: But, but, Usain Bolt. Okay. Whatever.
You can talk about figures in sports only if, for each such figure, his or her name is strictly more awesome than that of Aquinas Hobor.
Usain Bolt's name is merely exactly as awesome as Hobor's, so discussion of him qua sportsman is, I'm afraid, right out.
That should be "you can only talk about ... if".
Okay then, back on topic: I wish my life was a bit more conducive to playing around with recreational drugs. Alas, no.
I tell with pride how DARE tried to make me pledge in 5th grade that I would never try alcohol until I was 21 and drugs and cigarettes never, and my mother wouldn't let me sign the pledge. I was the only person in my class who refused, and it was really embarrassing. But Mom said, vows are always also to God, and we don't make vows about things that have never tempted us. Likewise, I was the only person in my church youth group who wasn't (at age 13) not allowed to sign the True Love Waits card vowing that I wouldn't have sex before marriage.
Whether Mom was right about the theological implications of vows, I think it's evidence that my mom is an extraordinary person.
Your mom is so cool, AWB. Cool stories .
we don't make vows about things that have never tempted us.
That's an amazing sentiment. Would more people felt it.
Wow, so many sub-threads I want to respond to.
A White Bear: Yes! All my friends do coke now too. There was some sort of watershed year, when I was living in London, when it suddenly became cool and acceptable in Seattle to do cocaine. It was the exact opposite of what happened to 'Garden State'.
Dare n such: We once had a Drug Warrior come to our middle school to lecture us on the dangers of trying drugs. Her first cautionary tidbit: 'All of you are at particularly high risk. Seattle has some of the most potent marijuana in America.' Standing ovation.
Also, what's wrong with seven-grain?
"19: I believe that the research shows that DARE is actually counter-productive."
In my case my father worked vice narcotics for about 5 years and then taught drug education classes for quite a few after that. That mostly just helped me have a really good idea of what I wanted to try and how I wanted to do it when the time and opportunity came.
Jaroslav Satan? Tshimanga Biakabutuka?
26: The cokeheads probably don't care all that much about being subtle and already mostly hang out with other cokeheads, the more so the heavier they use. I don't think locking them in a room together would work.
At any rate, I'm not convinced that as far as personal obnoxiousness goes, blow is a significantly worse offender than booze. The real curse of cocaine is that wherever it becomes popular it eventually leads to crackheads, who are orders of magnitude worse.
30: Ari, Ari, Ari. You have to make time.
Drugs are all very well, but drug circumstances are so boring. You're always waiting around for the drugs to arrive, and then you so often find yourself hanging around with a bunch of drug-addled types who want to talk about drugs.
I had the same coke revelation the second semester of college, and it was really depressing. All of these people who are cool and funny during the day spend all night practicing their self-indulgence and self-regard, or they get bitchy because they've run out of coke. Not fun. The next realization was that my heart isn't cut out for cocaine, so I can be simultaneously glad that I won't become one of these people and depressed that I have years and years to go on the same situation.
That said, the most remarkable non-personal thought I've been having about drugs lately is how there is a clear, unhindered progression in the number of drugs it is acceptable to take recreationally over time. Were I a child, I'd wonder how we're going to have room in our brain for all of them in a hundred years.
21: This abasement before w-lfs-n is profoundly unseemly. Have you been doing The Drugs?
28.3: Perhaps an intervention is in order? The man's life is slipping out of control.
40: there is a clear, unhindered progression in the number of drugs it is acceptable to take recreationally over time.
More like an ebb and flow. Cocaine will eventually cycle back out of fashion, marijuana's steady rise in social acceptability will stall out when it doesn't have tobacco to kick around anymore, and so on.
More like an ebb and flow.
Maybe. I've heard it argued that harder drugs ebb in twenty-year cycles, as one generation seeks the negative effects and abstains until the next generation, having seen no negative effects, takes it up again.
I wonder if the fact that many of the new fashionable drugs are pharmaceuticals means this process will be disrupted, as variants can be marketed as entirely new drugs without delay.
Opium is kind of fun, and it definitely does feel weirdly classy and 19th century when you're smoking it, especially with the correct kit. The process of making it seems fun, too.
Boy, crappy habit to pick up, though. I'd stick to ether.
Also, coke is sort of annoying. I await the E renaissance with a heart full of song.
Like Belle Lettre, between D.A.R.E. and parents RebelliousCala never had a chance (even though I wasn't allowed to Just Say No either, because a) my dad thought peer pressure was stupid and b) the Just Say No bracelets they issued to all of us had numbers stamped on them and mine was 666.) It's not that I want to experiment now, it's just that I kinda wish I had ten years ago.
shivbunny never experimented for completely different reasons. See, most everyone here has experiences of people doing drugs at Ivies, or people doing drugs and being mostly successful in the rest of their lives. His experience with drugs is seriously like the anti-drug propaganda: everyone he knew who started out with marijuana ended up addicted to heroin or crack. And because it was a rural town without a lot of options anyway (other options: get drunk, have sex.), getting addicted to drugs probably meant you were fucked up for life.
This obviously says more about class and rural towns than it does about drugs.
Unfogged drug experimentation meetup! I'll totally sign on as a mystical guru.
Canadians are wholesome, Mary Catherine being but an extreme example. B is not Canadian, but has her own unique wholesomeness.
nd it definitely does feel weirdly classy and 19th century when you're smoking it
The crowd in the article should go the whole hog and get a tincture of the stuff, so they could experience authentically organic 19th century constipation.
45: I think the most grimly effective depiction of drug use during that era is Long Day's Journey Into Night.
And 47.2 rings completely true.
Another interesting drug shift during my lifetime is with regard to cigarettes. Young adults still smoke. Young adults still get addicted. But young adults seem to understand that they should go outside, stick their heads out the window, expect that restaurants and hotels will not have smoking accomodations, that bars might not allow smoking, and deal with it, as a reaction to their habit. And they do so without whining or complaining or refusing to visit their kids because the airports don't allow smoking.
Old (boomer-aged and up) smokers? Madder'n hell that the damn liberals took away their right to smoke, back in my day no one found it annoying, they just opened a window.
Madder'n hell that the damn liberals took away their right to smoke
Yeah, there's even a literature in political philosophy from the early to mid 80s about banning smoking in public and its implications for liberal theories of rights and blah blah.
What's striking to me is what a generational thing it is. It's like a Goofus and Gallant panel. Goofus dad thinks it's his right to smoke in his house Gallant husband knows his wife is allergic to cigarettes and thus goes outside to smoke, plus, who wants all your stuff smelling like cigarettes anyway?
47.2 put me in mind of this: heroin mixed with vodka, the Battle Mountain Treat.
One 19th-century affectation that does not seem weirdly classy is snuff. I can't speak to whether it felt that way—it must have, at some point, or the guy never would have taken it up—but as far as I could tell, the primary side effect was picking your nose alot.
Goofus goes off on the weekends to do crack in alleyways with transsexual hookers; Gallant buys top-grade opium for all his friends and serves it with cucumber water in his living room.
50: the non-white among us know that laudanum was primarily a western artifact in the 19th century; in Asia they smoked or ate. Also, the constipation is a product of the drug, rather than the form of ingestion.
Also I welcome a new era of every damn thing on unfogged being racialized, just so this place becomes yet more of a honkfest.
56: well, in actual fact, Opium is no more classy than heroin; it can make you puke, too, even. But it's been given a veneer of orientalist class by the intervening decades. There's a cool (if a bit heavily dude-reporter-has-Adventures!) book on the topic that I can't google right now.
Wow am I sheltered. I have no experience with any drugs at all- closest was during a day off with some other staff at summer camp, they offered some hash but I declined. No first hand experience in HS or college. Only family involvement is one cousin who's in rehab from painkillers. I've been told that various friends have been involved to varying degrees at other times, but nothing in front of me. Maybe everyone thinks I'm a narc.
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I woke up this morning three hours before I wanted to because I was lying awake, thinking "What is Q'orianka Kilcher doing with her life? That girl has got to get it in gear!" Sad, when IMDB needs trump the last three hours of sleep.
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Also, the constipation is a product of the drug, rather than the form of ingestion.
Aha. My only direct experience with opium involved a person #1 cheerily offering some to me and person #2 frantically shunting #1 out of the room and telling them to stfu, for fear I would be appalled at #2's associates and thus want to dump them.
Constipation is a side-effect of opiate derivatives, too. Intestines say if the rest of y'all going to check out, don't be looking at us to function.
Speaking of, uh, movements, it looks like I'll be trekking back east next year.
it looks like I'll be trekking back east next year
On a permanent basis? Cause for congratulations?
I've been thinking about drugs this weekend as I just got my Dead hard drive fixed and I've been listening to it.
Drugs have been very good to me professionally. But not as much alcohol and sex.
I believe that we have had this discussion previously. Moderation is not difficult to maintain with pot. Hair-on has a nasty ability to totally fuck your life up.
Oh, and w-lfs-n is very stylish. He probably secretly edits for Men's Style.
On a permanent basis?
Yeah. Not quite officially sealed yet, but should be tomorrow.
Cause for congratulations?
Not if you're Apo.
I await the E renaissance with a heart full of song.
Seriously. Yet another drug I never tried because I couldn't afford $30 worth of groceries at the time it was around and available, but damn is it more fun to be around friends whose drugs make them lovey-dovey than it is to be around "friends" whose drugs make them need ever-increasing access to cash.
Not if you're Apo.
Awesome. I salute you. I suppose that, until global warming takes its course, you will now not have to make that hard choice between stupid hat and melanoma.
that hard choice between stupid hat and melanoma.
Indeed, except living in Melanomaville has made wearing a stupid hat second nature.
Goodness, am I late to this thread. Opium is a totally lovely high, but isn't around here anywhere near often enough to develop a habit. I don't think I've seen it in fifteen or more years, but I haven't been looking either, so.
everyone he knew who started out with marijuana ended up addicted to heroin or crack
This is so completely orthogonal to everything I've ever seen, I don't even know where to begin with it. If I had to guess, I'd say 90% of the people I've known who have smoked pot never went on to do anything else, much less develop substance abuse problems. This sample is not restricted to college students.
Yet another drug I never tried because I couldn't afford $30
Not that I recommend my past or present habits to people with normal tolerance levels for pharmaceuticals, but ecstasy is a drug everybody ought to try once.
Seriously. Where are people getting this opium? The only people I knew who had a hookup lived in Southern California and hung out with Iranians. During my wilder days I partook whenever any was around, which is to say exactly twice. I didn't know enough Iranians back then, obviously.
77: I've only very rarely found it. You can make opium tea from dried decorative poppies, and it's not too different. Apo's right, though, that opium per se is too hard to find to get addicted to.
My drug advice has always been to stick to marijuana and other hallucinogens. But I'm old enough now to see where I might have gone off track. Perhaps when one is a moody 17-year-old is not the optimal time to begin a psychedelic inquiry into the meaning of life.
But it did save me from the other suburban temptations. Some folks get stuck with $80,000/yr materialism habits. Or more!
Playing DopeWars has made me think about opium quite a lot, but heroin and cocaine are where the real money's at. I wouldn't deal opium. Not worth it until the demand grows.
I remember we had to take these multiple-choice surveys all through high school about what drugs we had or hadn't done and at what frequency. It was all anonymous, but it was really hard not to say, "No, I've never tried alcohol or cigarettes, but I do opium several times a day." In Kansas, being asked if you've done opium as a teen is like being asked if you've ever flapped your arms and sailed into the sky.
being asked if you've ever flapped your arms and sailed into the sky
Just that one time when I was on acid, sir.
I imagine it would have been problematic if I'd done drugs in high school, but I don't quite know how it could have been much worse.
I don't think I've seen it in fifteen or more years, but I haven't been looking either, so.
I've only had the chance to try it once (I took that chance and wasn't all that impressed but have no idea of quality, etc.) and that was well over a decade ago.
plainly opium has old-world class: this pub (for which a whole posh bunch of london is named: viz fitzrovia) is where aleister crowley aka THE GREAT BEAST invented the cocktail the KUBLA KHAN 2 feat. gin. vermouth and laudanum
i have drunk in the pub often but never this cocktail (don't like vermouth)
83: it's always been surprisingly mild in my experience, like mellow all-natural vicodin.
58.(\sum_{i=0}^{\infty} \frac{1}{2^i}): don't even act surprised. The people in this article are totally honked out.
Wasn't there a printed-on-crappy-newsprint-to-assuage-Lewis-Lapham's-rich-white-guilt center section article about opium poppies, and how one could order them from perfectly legitimate seed catalogues, in Harper's several years ago? As I recall, the article went quickly from "seizing books that tell people how to harvest opium sap is a violation of..." to "and why shouldn't we be able to make poppy tea in the privacy of our own gardens?"
75: Yeah, I don't think it's a universal experience, certainly, and even shivbunny described it was 'like one of those 'gateway drug' commercials.' Alcohol abuse was pretty bad there, too.
88:Yes. It is a super terrific article. About that Loompanix guy getting arrested for buying dried poppies at a craft store, among other things.
90: the Loompanics guy is such a loon. I'm surprised he doesn't get arrested just for existing.
86: The people in this article are totally honked out.
Unlike Thomas de Quincey.
Interested in larger quantities? Then our wholesale poppy pod program may be what you're looking for.
I for one would be happier if Unfogged sent honky studies the way of emoticons and analogies. Limited references to honkitude might still be allowed in the comment sections, but threads that seem to be veering to far in that direction should be disciplined or extinguished.
In Portland OR some older Hmong refugees were busted for raising poppies and making opium around 1980. They were genuinely aware that it was illegal, IIRC: in Laos their CIA handlers had been indifferent or even friendly to their opium-growing and processing activities.
Interested in larger quantities?
See my friends Burnett and Cooper by Sonny's black Daytona in the parking lot.
I was disappointed to learn that a prostitute with a heart of gold figures in De Quincey's Confessions.
"He is believed to be driving a bright yellow 2008 Chevy Aveo, with Alabama license plates OMGROFL. Anyone who may know their whereabouts is urged to contact their local law enforcement."
99: That becomes substantially less funny when one reads that the girl is 14 years old.
85: That might have been my problem, actually, as at the time I was doing lots of drugs I also felt forced by financial circumstance to always go for the biggest intensity:cash ratio available. These days I'm more capable of affording subtlety and utterly disinterested.
99: subject was spotted in a stolen Toyota Camry, license plate SUX2BME. He was killed by police after trying to run a roadblock in a 1983 Ford Mustang, license plate LEEROY.
99: subject was spotted in a stolen Toyota Camry, license plate SUX2BME. He was killed by police after trying to run a roadblock in a 1983 Ford Mustang, license plate LEEROY.
98: I was more disappointed to find out that like half the fucking book is about Manchester Grammar School (school motto: "England's biggest provide of psychologically fucked-up kids to Oxford and Cambridge Universities since 1821")
102-103: In what appears to be a some manner of pathetic copycat attempt, a suspect was killed after driving his Toyota Tacoma, license plate LAWG1VR, into the lobby of the police station.
(\sum_{i=1}^7 \varphi(i)): My attention was directed thereto; I do not, ordinarily, read it.
Unlike Paper.
Weren't cordarounds discussed here once? Google says No, but where else would I have heard of such things?
Also - would cucumber really add any flavor to water? I can imagine it, but remain skeptical.
26 is funny. I've only skimmed the thread, but it seems many (younger) people have been raised in the Drugs Very Scary! milieu.
The only time I've seen opium is when helping a friend scrape the sap off his poppies every morning while I was visiting. He was pretty attentive to it, along with the rest of the garden. Fresh strawberries for breakfast every morning!
I imagine it contributes to toolishness about drug use if you're having to go to great efforts at procurement, waiting for the dealer to show up (or whatever), then some dramatic unveiling.
I think I did opium once. It may have been viola wax, which commonly sold as opium to freshman who don't know any better. I was too stoned on the weed to remember if the opium got me high.
Black tar heroine was nice, though. Once.
I've grown the poppies but never extracted enough sap to try it. I think there was something I wasn't doing right.
110: I don't know. I had to be shown what we were supposed to be doing with those poppies -- the same way I have to be shown what to do with any other grown thing, how to pinch back this or prop up that. As I remember, you scrape the sap off the flower buds, which seep the most of it in the morning, with a razor, gather that over time ... takes a while to get any decent amount, I understood, and I don't know what you do with it then. I don't think anything was done to promote the sap-seeping; maybe they were propped up to the early sun.
I believe, not from personal experience, that you score them with the razor, and sap seeps out from where you've scratched the bud. I've always wanted to try making opium just for the whole cottage-industry, making drugs in your window box, feel of it, and they're such pretty flowers.
Never tried it, though. I'm a total lightweight with opiates -- I get completely fucked up, in a very happy way, on the mildest of prescribed codeine.
112: Yeah, I did the scoring but I think I had the timing wrong. They are such pretty flowers, and if you grow them the temptation to collect the opium is pretty strong. I can't just let it go to waste, can I?
Only white people use the \frac command when there's the perfectly good \over command.
Is it true that from repeated use of E it basically stops working? I read this in an interview with some governmental drug expert, so I find it a) plausible, but b) possibly drug war propaganda.
Ah, score them. Vertically. Yes, I think that's right; then scrape upwards. There was a small to-do about finding a virgin straight razor or further sharpening one (say what?), but I couldn't remember why that was. And yeah, in my friend's case, this was no large-scale project, just something there in the garden, much like the strawberries and raspberries.
I have tremendous numbers of raspberries growing now in my backyard! Kind of pleased, looking forward to them.
I am like Goldilocks when it comes to drugs. Pot gives me dreadful muchies, cocaine makes my sinuses hurty, E or any amphetamines are my least favorite drug, because I get awful emotional hangovers that last for days. I deeply identify with that Huey Lewis song where he's like, "I want a new drug, one that won't slow me down, etc."
113: Geez, I should preview on occasion, eh? but yeah, like that! I think you don't do the scoring right then each morning; only every once in a while when it seems they're closing up, to freshen the scores, and they'll seep in the morning. And maybe it's every other day. But how long can a bud last before flowering? (I do get the gardening curiosity, I do.)
It's after flowering -- not so much a bud, as the seed-pod after the petals have fallen off.
Is it true that from repeated use of E it basically stops working?
There are certainly declining returns.
107: yeah, I've had it a restaurant once. Very nice on a hot day; I liked it better than water with lemon. Have thought of doing it myself but felt too yuppie-prissy.
119: Oh. That makes sense, actually. I never saw the flowers. Rube.
122 gets it exactly right, actually.
71: IMO they're called "E-tards" for good reason; basically being around people who are on a drug is usually annoying if you're not also on it, or at least on some comparable alternative. Also, it's a fun high but the health side-effects are even scarier than cocaine.
The halcyon early raver days when E seemed harmless are gone, what with people mixing it with meth and all sorts of other shite these days. Damn kids.
A couple of years ago I ended up at a warehouse party in SF for New Year's, and of course E seemed like a really good idea, even though I hadn't tried to buy off complete strangers for eons. So I go up to a friendly looking girl about my age and ask. "Oh yeah," she said, all vague and mismy-like, "did you want MDA or MDMA?"
Awesomeness.
Anyway, that's to say that it isn't all dubious meth- and speed-mixed pills nowadays.
125:
where is the product control these days?!?!
You just dont know if your E was made in a clean trash can or a dirty trash can! Have you seen the people who make this stuff? They are not exactly hygene freaks.
44: I've heard it argued that harder drugs ebb in twenty-year cycles, as one generation seeks the negative effects and abstains until the next generation, having seen no negative effects, takes it up again.
I don't think drug fashions and negative side-effects are really that directly related. If a drug acquires enough social cachet (and/or if the experience of doing it has good enough word-of-mouth), people will brave any number of side-effects. It's highly implausible that many people who currently smoke crack or meth got into it while being unaware of the negative effects.
I've had people tell me that E was incredible, but then casually drop that they were depressed for a week afterwards because of how it fucked with their neurotransmitters. That's scared me off it.
As I always understood it, opium should really be mixed with hash.
And a big yes, yes, yes to 26. Although I do occasionally find out people I respect dabble in coke and seem to keep it to a mild party-only level. Not sure how I feel about that. No coke for me, anyway. Nasty stuff.
Your liver can convert sassafrass oil naturally into MDA. The downside is that eventually your liver is destroyed. Sassafrass oil is no longer used in root beer.
Lots of valuable information here. Nutmeg oil is also reviewed.
... basically being around people who are on a drug is usually annoying if you're not also on it, or at least on some comparable alternative.
Misanthropy, justified.
I have tremendous numbers of raspberries growing now in my backyard!
I planted two tame blackberry bushes by the back gate three years ago. Last year they made enough berries to grab a couple on my way in from work every day. This year they're making more. I would really love to produce enough this year to bake something that contains some of them. If they perform like the one my parents planted in the yard of my childhood home then sooner or later Rah and I will have a blackberry bush the size of a VW van and more berries than we know what to do with.
basically being around people who are on a drug is usually annoying
Now that's misanthropy.
I have tremendous numbers of raspberries growing now in my backyard!
I planted two tame blackberry bushes by the back gate three years ago.
They will take over everything shortly. Blackberries, at least, are like cancer.
135 is the most racist of all. The blackberries will inevitably outbreed the lighter-colored berries? because of their inherent barbarism and lack of self-control?
Blackberries, at least, are like cancer.
Like a sweet, juicy cancer that is pure heaven when put in a blender with ice cream.
John Emerson, the Steve Sailer of botany. How disillusioning.
Blackberries, at least, are like cancer.
Since I've quit smoking I've learned that carcinogens are basically the glue holding my cells together. You have to leave me with something deadly, John, I beg you.
Blackberries I don't like so much as raspberries. Seeds, no? But yes, pausing for 5 minutes for a raspberry snack before heading to work is heaven. And on the way in after work.
Well, you know, any time, really.
Raspberries are seedier than blackberries, but both are delicious. (Fresh ripe off the vine blackberries, though, are the delicioiusist.)
The very best of the best is a pie (or a bowl I guess but a pie is a kind of bowl, isn't it?) that contains them both.
Raspberries and blackberries, I mean. I actually have zero remembered experience of boysenberries but honestly, if it has "berries" in the name I'm probably going to dig on it.
I started to make a joke about various foul things I could put in front of the word "berries," but then I remembered that berries are, generally speaking, low-hanging fruit.
Boysenberries I can't figure out what to do with. There's a large bush/tree alongside the driveway, and I've tried eating them raw, just off the tree, and, um, not so good. I think I've been told they must be baked with sugar and such, but that's a lot of work, I don't like sugar much, so we just let them drop and have stains all over the driveway for a time. Which is fine.
Things that have to be baked with sugar to be palatable don't necessarily end up tasting very sweet or sugary, you know; consider rhubarb.
I should know; I'm eating some delicious strawberry-rhubarb but mostly rhubarb pie right now.
I'm also eating some delicious dingleberries.
I really enjoy raw rhubarb. I shall try rhubarb in my miracle fruit-induced reverie; that sounds fascinating.
In Oregon people pay good money to get rid of the wild blackberries, and it isn't easy. Some blackberry patches cover acres. Goats are bought specifically to clear blackberries.
Good habitat for wildlife vermin, though.
150: It's not about them tasting sweet or sugary (though there is that, not very much to my liking); I don't like baking with white sugar. It's a prejudice, I'm afraid. I like tart tasting things, though. With berries.
Hey tweety, you know what I thought of the other day?
Rhubarb syrup for cocktails! Presumably it would be sourish-sweet, not to mention of a potent color.
Fresh ripe off the vine blackberries, though, are the delicioiusist
Central Valley-centric. The Central Valley is like the only place on earth I've found where blackberries really, truly, fully ripen. It was a revelation when had them at a farmer's market. So that's what the fuss is about.
158: oh, that would be max boss indeed.
157 and 158, taken together, are deeply exciting.
159: Actually, my experiences of blackberries comes from picking them at my cousins' place in Santa Cruz, and all over Seattle.
When I was a kid I loved eating raw rhubarb. Then again, I loved eating lemons the same way other folks ate oranges. Though that wasn't good for the tooth enamel and I can no longer eat lemons without tooth pain. I wonder about the rhubarb now.
Maybe I should make some rhubarb syrup.
157. I think I'll order some of that tonic.
Boysenberries I can't figure out what to do with. There's a large bush/tree alongside the driveway, and I've tried eating them raw, just off the tree, and, um, not so good.
Maybe not ripening properly? Are you sure they're boysenberries? I grew up with them in So. Cal, and Utah is also good country for berry growing, and damn those things are delicious.
The most delicious right-off-the-bush berry I have ever grown are so-called "golden" raspberries (pale-fruited variants of regular raspberries). Boysenberries are a cross between blackberries, raspberries and loganberries, developed in California in the 1920s and promoted by Knotts Berry Farm.
Maybe not ripening properly? Are you sure they're boysenberries?
Actually, I'm not. I'll check again. I'd never seen them before: they were here when I moved in and someone said that's what they were (I thought). Surely big and juicy, but not very tasty to me. They look like very large blackberries, but on a more tree-like thing rather than a bush. Tomorrow I'll look this up.
promoted by Knotts Berry Farm
Anyone here old enough to remember the Alligator Farm that used to right next to Knotts? Was in Lincoln Heights until 1953, and then it was next to Knotts in Buena Park. Closed around 1980 or so.
My grandfather used to take my mom there when she was little. Kids could get their pic taken while sitting on an alligator.
168: oh, those are Poisonberries.
Tonight Rah and I got to partake of homemade cherry-rhubarb pie that was extremely delicious.
oh poor old Ben, his gentle satire of the foibles of his community is simply failing to have any effect on their behaviour. You're like the white Bill Cosby, Ben.
168: Might be mulberries, but then they'd be sweet and kind of tasteless.
172: All that SWPL stuff was supposed to make us change our behavior? Like, give up our stand mixers? I had no idea.
There's an enormous boysenberry tree right by the Durham Farmer's Market that is just dripping with ripe, sweet boysenberries for free. Noah gorged himself on them Saturday.
174: I'm going to guess that those are mulberries (and maybe parsimon's are as well), which grow on trees. Boysenberries grow on canes similar to blackberries and raspberries. See the descriptions here.
I agree that parsimon's fruit are mulberries. you should find a sicilian recipe for mulberry granita, it's amazing--although it's got to have white sugar, I guess.
as a public service announcement I would like everyone to know that codeine or vicodin making you sick does not mean you don't like opiates. codeine and vicodin happen to suck and be difficult to tolerate. I don't like codeine or vicodin because they make me evil queasy. percodan, on the other hand, and demerol, and morphine, and oxycontin, and heroin and stuff is all lovely bittersweet goodness.
opium, yeah, it's fun; I read all the Sax Rohmer books as a kid so I dig the atmosphere. I smoked up with hmong tribespeople a few times in rural north vietnam. we couldn't communicate at all, except in the international language of drugs. well, and food and a place to sleep. opium is basically just another way to get low, though, and you can get hooked on it like anything else, at which point you may realize that tar heroin is incredibly cheap, powerful and easy to obtain.
finally, the rhubarb syrup/soda idea is amazing, and everyone should try ecstasy once. really. I know it sounds like if sifu, apo and I are pushing this it must be something for crazed drug weirdos, but that's just not true. it's fun, you may learn something about yourself, and the depression thing won't happen unless you keep doing it for a while, so just try it and then stop.
If Tweety, alameida, and I all agree on something, you know it's true.
My neighbor had a tree which bore fruit last year, so I went and ate one, and it was delicious but I couldn't figure out what it was. I came up with all these exotic options and then decided it must be some sort of shiny exotic nectarine. Months later I realized I'd forgotten to consider plums.
It seemed very slapstick and hilarious to me at the time, but in this write-up I'm now realizing this episode is not interesting. Sorry about your brain cells.
my father grows seaberries, we call it chatsargana
it's oil is good for peptic ulcer healing
Unfogged's next project should be to invest in Jargalmaa Magsarjav's start-up.
all you need is a good idea for a retailer to stock the chatsargana jelly and juice, like Ikea with those inedibly sour Swe4dish berries.
My experiences parallel SP's. When I was in college my friends knew enough to try out pot, when I wasn't there. When I went to my sister's college graduation at the age of 29, I was offered some by the housemates of one of her friends. They had a vaporizer and everything, but I declined. I think that my neurotransmitters are sensitive enough already.
that was actually funny, heebie.
Aw, don't sound so surprised!
I wasn't surprised!! I meant, don't doubt yourself, you amusing heebie-jeebster!
158: The Puritans, who were not teetotallers, made a drink of rum, maple sugar, and rhubarb juice. My father tried it once and it was not a success. Perhaps if he'd cheated with some carbonation it would have worked.
Everything's OK, Heebie! Don't worry!
Blackberry bushes are monsters, and I don't care what B says.
I did not appreciate my mother's rhubarb dishes when I was young, but I do now. The old neighbor lady makes them too, and they're good.
Goodness. Have you seen this?
http://stuffwhiteparentslike.com
