I would agree. I've certainly run into those who feel "Libertinism" is requisite for Paths dubbed "Thelemic" and otherwise. I've known folks in such circles who regard marriage or monogamy as bondage. ... The Book of the Law would seem to tend in this direction-but the bottom line of its message is that DWTW will manifest in tremendous diversity. Crowley's message proclaims a path of liberty for those constrained by convention but it also makes allowance for every genuine expression of one's Nature. To impose MY summum bonum upon another for whom it is truly anathema isn't spearheading liberation but imposing a state of bondage.
I very much agree with this. Doing one's Will can just as easily involve asceticism as it can involve libertinism, and attempting to coerce others in to libertinism is itself a form of restriction. I'd interpret the Word of Sin being restriction as referring to imposing on others, not restricting one's self.
In fact, taking on personal restrictions can be a very powerful thing unto itself.
It definitely is an Individual / Will thing. I like being married as it helps me remain balanced. Not to mention the fun and work of trying to keep someone else happy and fulfilled, and seeing yourself in them and themselves in you. Otherwise I would be just a crazy drummer doing crazy things and probably even more self centred.
It definitely is an Individual / Will thing. I like being married as it helps me remain balanced. Not to mention the fun and work of trying to keep someone else happy and fulfilled, and seeing yourself in them and themselves in you. Otherwise I would be just a crazy drummer doing crazy things and probably even more self centred.
Indeed so. Restrictions are fine as long as they're entered in to willingly and produce a desirable effect.
Even within Thelemic practices a case could be made for things like Jugorum being exercises in intentional restriction. Even with de Cultu, adopting a regimen of practice is restriction.
I personally follow a more libertine path, but still do it under controlled circumstances, making sure that indulgence remains a tool and never becomes the master.
But remember, I'm also a Black Soror and a Selfie-stick poseur. 😉
I've never done cognac, that is a comparatively expensive brandy, Crowley was out of his mind on cognac and coke when he did his demonic graffiti art in Cefalu lol.
https://www.lashtal.com/wiki/Aleister_Crowley_Timeline
Crowley was out of his mind on cognac and coke when he did his demonic graffiti art in Cefalu lol.
Op, alc, coke et Meth - The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
I was a considerable devotee of cocaine and methamphetamine for many years (as i have explained, i didn't sleep from 17 to 27). I drink beer, and occasionally champagne, and have often drunk quite a lot; i consume spirits perhaps twice in an average year. i have never much liked opiates/opioids except for pain relief or to come down from excessive stimulant or psychedelic use, but god knows i've done plenty.
So, as the voice of considerable experience in these matters, i can say there is nothing much to recommend cocaine or speed (but they are good, if ultimately stupid, fun), nothing at all to recommend heroin/opium/morphine/etc. (and of course there is that nasty business of physical addiction, and agonizing withdrawal, if one develops a habit), and moderate use of alcohol is helpful to sanity.
But none of these can hold a candle to cannabis and psychedelics for purposes of magickal/mystical practice.
nothing at all to recommend heroin/opium/morphine/etc.
I have never understood the appeal of the recreational use of physically addictive anesthetics.
But I do think that opium smoke smells nice!
Heroin addiction/use was the main topic of my work when i was working (criminology/anthropology/epidemiology), and something i was around very often from my late teens til i retired. Many of my best friends, and other friends and acquaintances, from the '70s-present [several edits necessary on latter figure as i recalled "oh, yeah, and her" etc], were addicted; none still are. I have known many who eventually got clean, but not as many as those who died.
For some people, maybe most people, heroin/opium/morphine/etc just clicks- it is what they were missing, it is what they need. Most often this "click" is related to some deep unresolved pain/trauma- dope makes it no longer matter. Most often, if these folks do dope once, they are in for at least a ten-year ride of addiction, and often in for life (however long that may be).
Not because you get "hooked on the first shot", but because they have found their missing chemical, the one that make them feel human, so they naturally repeat the experience as often as possible. 30 days of that, and hello withdrawal. Lather, rinse, repeat.
I strongly favor legalization and controlled availability of all illicit drugs, but i would earnestly counsel anyone i cared about to never use opiates/opioids outside the treatment of severe physical pain, and very carefully for that.
i have never much liked opiates/opioids except for pain relief ...
I had bad reactions to alc and ops. I mean serious reactions with smoked heroin. The first time was a Crowley-Bennett type investigation. Since we had no idea of dosage, and didn't want to die, we decided to smoke it. I had two hits. I then had to lay down due to nausea/vertigo. If I stayed perfectly still, the unpleasantness receded. There were no visions or euphorias. WTF?
Later in life, on two occasions (well-spaced apart by years), I was purposely and consciously attacked with heroin poison in a pipe that was represented as having non-heroin in it/them. The first perpetrator was Frater Kuat, the meth addict who introduced himself to heroin in order to calm his nerves - it later caused a stroke with partial paralysis. The second was my brother, the oxycontinTM addict who turned to heroin when the docs suspended all his Rxs - he died a few years ago.
The effects of both these underhanded and vile attacks was the same as the first time. I am not allergic to opiods and welcome them for pain control (painayama), as has been done on four Passages through the Tuat Hospital. So we are in agreement on Opioi
But I do think that opium smoke smells nice!
ds, which are Earth dugs, although many people get the "fire" aspect that Crowley mentioned, and this leads to addiction (if the person is "fire" activated by poppies.
So we cannot qualify for all-around suscepibility and are thus precluded from being "the one who follows," although we are not precluded from being "chosen" for other tasks.
But none of these can hold a candle to cannabis ...
Frater Kuat was a true degenerate drug dealer. He was a fellow initiated brother of mine, a friend, and my legal patient (that is, I treated him weekly for several conditions. One day, I suggested the scenario of being on a deserted island with only one substance.
He thought about it a while, then said, "That would be marijuana."
But I do think that opium smoke smells nice!
Opium is different than opioids (which means "resembling opium"), even if they have been derived from opium. Opium will provide visions and euphoria. According to AC, it is not addictive if merely used moderately.
Up north, on the Magickal Island, Frater Shem had a small jar of opium and a genuine heathen Chines opium pipe with an authentic opium lamp. He was a former opiod addict (reformed). He did not smoke it, as one would expect. They took it out once a month "for her period." I suppose he had some with her. They both had some with me. It did not trigger him back into opiod-craving. Opium is not the extracted or synthesized stuff that is so powerfully addictive, especially the synthetic stuff.
For some people, maybe most people, heroin/opium/morphine/etc just clicks- it is what they were missing ...
Exactly. For other people, it will be alcohol or nicotine or some upper. Everybody can get rxd, or otherwise [legally?] try almost anything. Most folks are probably going to discover their "missing ingredient." Too bad most "missing ingredients" are addictive. Blessed are those who are only hooked on caffeine and cannabis, for their withdrawal shall be unpleasant in some minor ways, but everything else? It's in the DNA, you know?
deep unresolved pain/trauma- dope makes it no longer matter.
Aha! Anesthesia (actually means "feeling nothing"). "Unresolved" means repressed. Repressed means "unconscious." These people need to do some Libers. But then you said that many of these h-folks are into Crowley. Was this because Crowley used heroin, or because they did the work?
Most often, if these folks do dope once, they are in for at least a ten-year ride of addiction ...
Ah, yes, the "one try will hook you" syndrome. I have heard it quoted, but I never actually saw it happen or had it described to me. So i figured it was myth. But then more recent medical reports have described a (true?) "one hit addiction" with some of the more highly refined stimulants.
Your description, of course, makes perfect sense. A person has a constant gnawing agony - they encounter any given substance that their DNA or their agony responds to - and they've found a life-long friend.
Not because you get "hooked on the first shot", but because they have found their missing chemical ...
Your message is clear. There is an overriding psychological factor at work - which is probably often overlooked by those watching from the outside.
i have never much liked opiates/opioids except for pain relief ...
I had bad reactions to alc and ops.
Most often, if these folks do dope once, they are in for at least a ten-year ride of addiction ...
A
Not to downplay the horrors of such stories but do you know what you'd see if you were to take away the average America housewife's sugar intake, her coffee or her shopping card/credit card or cancel her weekly soap opera? You'd see a junkie having a tantrum. Likewise the men and their hockey or baseball TV footage, the teenage girls with their water and mobile phones and the males with their X-Box games.
https://www.lashtal.com/wiki/Aleister_Crowley_Timeline
do you know what you'd see if you were to take away the average America housewife's sugar intake, her coffee or her shopping card/credit card or cancel her weekly soap opera? You'd see a junkie having a tantrum. Likewise the men and their hockey or baseball TV footage, the teenage girls with their water and mobile phones and the males with their X-Box games.
Um, no. I think we can now be sure you have never been around anyone withdrawing from heroin/etc use. And thus, you have literally no idea what you are talking about.
Opiate/opioid addiction is not at all similar to even very heavy cocaine or speed use, and nothing at all like wishing you had a cellphone or TV and sports or sugar or coffee.
We are not talking about "addiction as a metaphor", we are discussing actual physical addiction, with agonizing, devastating physical consequences on discontinuing use, or failing to maintain an adequate dose: total physical immobilization, vomiting, diarrhea, insomnia, spontaneous ejaculation, emotional turmoil, utter fucking misery. There is nothing else that can compare to it.
Not just teenage and not just males. I like to mash some buttons now and then.
But, as Ignant pointed out, it's a really poor comparison. To my knowledge, nobody's died from Xbox withdrawal.
Your gender stereotypes are pretty poor too. Are average housewives even a thing in this century?
Um, no. I think we can now be sure you have never been around anyone withdrawing from heroin/etc use. And thus, you have literally no idea what you are talking about.
Opiate/opioid addiction is not at all similar to even very heavy cocaine or speed use, and nothing at all like wishing you had a cellphone or TV and sports or sugar or coffee.
We are not talking about "addiction as a metaphor", we are discussing actual physical addiction, with agonizing, devastating physical consequences on discontinuing use, or failing to maintain an adequate dose: total physical immobilization, vomiting, diarrhea, insomnia, spontaneous ejaculation, emotional turmoil, utter fucking misery. There is nothing else that can compare to it.
Right yes, Crowley did he describe those symptoms and what of any other rock stars, did they? Apparently a school friend of mine was a junkie, he looks a picture of health now, works in a mental institution.
https://www.lashtal.com/wiki/Aleister_Crowley_Timeline
Yet with mescaline/DMT/Psilocybin there is no addiction, no withdrawal, very little danger.
There is minimal processing of the raw materials. They are consumed and you transcend the world as we normally perceive it. You may encounter new landscapes, revisit ingrained thought patterns that have held us back, from a new vantage point, so we can identify, understand, accept and let go. We can speak with many entities and converse, acquiring knowledge that we previously did not know. Strengthening your connection to nature and actually feeling the infinite Love that we came from and will return back to one day.
Hmmm, seems like everything Crowley meant by "Strange Drugs".
So why did AC chose to keep this source of his visions secret, is a mystery. Most of his important works that he created/wrote/channeled came via this conduit. How many here accept or acknowledge this?
Yet with mescaline/DMT/Psilocybin there is no addiction, no withdrawal, very little danger.
There is minimal processing of the raw materials. They are consumed and you transcend the world as we normally
Hmmm, seems like everything Crowley meant by "Strange Drugs".
So why did AC chose to keep this source of his visions secret, is a mystery. Most of his important works that he created/wrote/channeled came via this conduit. How many here accept or acknowledge this?
I haven't read Crowley's essay on drugs, I take it that that was him following the directive of the HADIT instructions "whereof I will tell my prophet ." I take it he never recommended ever drug known to man or did he?
https://www.lashtal.com/wiki/Aleister_Crowley_Timeline
This will get you started:
The Herb Dangerous, Part II "The Psychology Of Hashish", by "Oliver Haddo"
Patrick Everett's thesis Cactus and The Beast does discuss your concerns as to why AC kept his use of cactus extract secret...important questions to think about...and refreshing at that...
I always found Liber Legis to be very psychedelic, but one that turns into a bad trip of sorts, or rather a paroxysm of rage transmitted through the amplification of projections meeting archetypal imprints...strange keys to release from spiritual identities suffocating the species...who knows...
Again the journey to encountering Peyote is interesting, and the thesis of Everett's perhaps just a beginning.
Could it be that AC went to Mexico for the cactus and not to climb some volcanoes...how was the Mason met, who gave the introduction...
How did western initiates learn of these medicines from both exoteric and esoteric readings.
Yet with mescaline/DMT/Psilocybin there is no addiction, no withdrawal, very little danger.
Thank you for returning to the thread's original topic, which includes "strange drugs," not "well-known drugs."
Strange Drugs are "strange" because they produce unpredictable results. The physical actions are pretty standard - not life-threatening or addictive. The emotional reactions call go just "off the wall and the scale, too" - totally unpredictable. Visual extravaganzas are somewhat predictable and even describable - but then they go "off the chart." Etc, up the line.
Mental Hangover (it's like short-circuit damage) can persist for a while, like Grady McM's heroic dosage of 2,000 micrograms of LSD, as reported in Inside Solar Lodge - Behind the Veil. He confessed to having his mind scrambled for 2 years. He took 4x the usual "maximum dosage." Over-indulgence is usually unpleasant - but the reasonable limits of everything have been established.
How many here accept or acknowledge this?
I have already subscribed to the concept that describes mescaline, an alkaloid in Peyote, as the catalyst that gave Thelema its wide-screen full-color panoramic pageants (as expressed in various Libers).
One could ascribe it (mescaline) as the source of the visions and the voices, and others would agree, but that's not quite correct. The common folk take Peyote and they have hallucinations - but no coherent message. A reasonably well-controlled magician takes Peyote and ends up writing down messages that blow minds a hundred years later.
Could it be that AC went to Mexico for the cactus and not to climb some volcanoes...how was the Mason met, who gave the introduction...
I don't think he went for the cactus, but that he came across it easily enough. It's available everywhere down there (herb shops). I asked in an herb shop one (1971). The clerk reached under the counter and lifted out a cardboard box filled with full-length peyote plants about 3" in diameter. I examined one, but did not buy.
Otherwise, yeah, I'd like a whole lot more details about that Mexico trip - in 1900, no less.
How did western initiates learn of these medicines from both exoteric and esoteric readings.
Crowley claims to be the person who introduced Peyote to Europe. Rumors say he tipped Aldous Huxley off to Mescaline, who then wrote a book that tipped everyone off. Crowley's experiences indicate that "magic potions" were legend, but not fact, so he and Bennett started to take them all, until they got to cannabis. Obviously, cannabis is a "gateway drug" because it (now) leads to psychedelic use ... for those who wish to tread the non-addictive path of mystical and magical delight.
Chapter 56 of Crowley's Confessions includes his cynical remarks about alleged opium damage as well as other drug references;
The day after New Year we crossed the Mekong. The river flows through a superb gorge with extremely steep banks..................
Talking of opium, I purchased the necessary apparatus and began to learn to smoke. I have already described the fiasco with laudanum in Kandy, and somewhere in Burma I had made an equally futile experiment with powered opium, taking thirty grains or so with no greater profit than making myself suddenly and painlessly sick. I found smoking the drug equally unavailing. I smoked twenty-five pipes in five hours with no result whatever. It now appears that I was not inhaling properly; but (for all that) I might have got something out of twenty-five pipes! The fact is that I have an idiosyncrasy with regard to this drug. I sometimes wonder whether I did not use up all my capacities in that respect in a previous incarnation; possibly I was Ko Hs’uen..
........................
Disappointed about learning Chinese ideas at first hand in this remote region, I hoped at least to get available information about the effects of opium smoking. Dr. Clark informed me that these effects were appalling — the usual scaremonger story. He said it was the curse of the country and that his clinic was full of victims; “Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds,” he groaned, “physical and moral wrecks from the habit.” “I should like to see one,” I replied with the appropriate sigh and shudder. “Well, you have only to come down to my clinic any morning,” re returned: “there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds.” He groaned again. Well, I went down to his clinic and he went on groaning that there were hundreds and hundreds and hundreds, and I went on sighing that I should like to see one.
During my whole journey, I never saw a man whom I could call definitely the worse for opium. My wife’s chair coolies were cases in point. They had smoked from twelve years old or thereabouts; and when I say smoked, I mean smoked. Every night on reaching the inn, temple or camp, as the case {489} may be, they cooked their rice and started to smoke directly they had eaten it, continuing till they went to sleep. In the morning again they smoked before starting. The chair (with Rose and the baby, and the books which I like to have handy to read at odd moments without unpacking my valise) weighed over one hundred and sixty pounds.
Each man had therefore to carry forty pounds. Not much, but a load of this kind is very different to dead weight. Each man had to keep in step with the rest and shake the chair as little as possible; and this over rough hilly toads, often slippery with mud; perhaps against a head wind, in which case the furniture of the chair offered a large surface. One of these coolies, the heaviest the most inveterate smoker of the quartet, cannot have been less than sixty years old. I timed the men under the worst conditions; a road mostly uphill, driving sleet — half a gale — dead ahead, streaming slippery cobbles, and they did eight miles without a rest in two hours dead. If those men were “physical wrecks from abuse of opium”, I should like to see the animal in his undamaged state!
There are of course men who have injured their health by opium; and one can see such on the coast, where the affair is complicated with alcohol and European vices. But on the whole, the search for an opium fiend in China is on all fours with the search for the man with tobacco amblyopia in England. Consular reports and independent medical opinion are unanimous that opium smoking does little or no harm to the Chinese. Dr. Thomas Stevenson, in his special article in Quain’s Dictionary of Medicine, sits on the fence as follows: “Great differences of opinion exist as to the pernicious or other effects of opium smoking. Some would have us believe that the practice is pernicious, not to say deadly; but debasing it often is. The pictures drawn as to its effects are evidently coloured by the bias of the observer. On the other hand some would persuade us that the practice is harmless, not to say beneficial. Doubtless neither view is absolutely correct, and whilst opium smoking is pernicious, the evils have been greatly exaggerated.” These remarks strike me on the whole as fair.
I have myself made extensive and elaborate studies of the effects of indulgence in stimulants and narcotics. (See my //The Psychology of Hashish//, Cocaine, The Green Goddess, The Diary of a Drug Fiend etc.) I have a vast quantity of unpublished data. I am convinced that personal idiosyncrasy counts for more in this matter than all the other factors put together. The philosophical phlegmatic temperament of the Chinese finds opium sympathetic. But the effect of opium on a vivacious, nervous, mean, cowardly Frenchman, on an Englishman with his congenital guilty conscience or on an American with his passion for pushing everything to extremes is very different; the drug is almost certain to produce disaster.
Similarly, hashish, which excites certain types of Arab, Indian, Malay or {490} Mexican to indiscriminate murder, whose motive is often religious insanity, has no such effect on quietly disposed, refined and philosophical people, especially if they happen to possess the faculty of self-analysis. In brief, generalization about such exceptionally subtle problems is a snare.
One one point, however, I must admit to thinking and feeling somewhat strongly. Dr. Clark told me that the missionaries treated the opium habit with injections of morphia; and in other parts of China I learnt that they had taught the Chinese, with the same laudable intention, to sniff cocaine.
The British government has acted with incredible folly. The economic prosperity of India is largely bound up with the export of opium. Whilst I was in China a petition against “the accursed traffic” had been presented. It was signed by many of the most eminent and enlightened men in China, to say nothing of the sister-in-law (I think it was) of the emperor whom they had persuaded to declare herself a Christian so as to have a foot in the enemy’s camp. The fact was the most of the petitioners were themselves opium growers whose business was damaged by the competition of the Indian product. In the same way, of course, many of the missionaries were employed by the manufacturers of morphia and cocaine to introduce these drugs instead of the practically harmless and even beneficial YEN.
https://www.lashtal.com/wiki/Aleister_Crowley_Timeline
It now appears that I was not inhaling properly
😯
The chair (with Rose and the baby, and the books which I like to have handy to read at odd moments without unpacking my valise)
Perhaps the first Traveling Library.
Consular reports and independent medical opinion are unanimous that opium smoking does little or no harm to the Chinese.
Right. Similar studies show that the descendants of the Inca chew coca leaves. They also make coca leaf soup. They chew/drink this to dull the hunger (they are starving) and to withstand the cold (in winter). They do not display addiction or withdrawal symptoms. How can this be?
These are both natural substances, which are balanced with other inherent alkaloids or oils or whatevers, and these tend to act harmoniously inside the human vehicle. But the 5th ray scientists discovered that the active ingredient can be extracted from the opium tar or coca leaves - thus we get "cocaine" and at least 10 opium derivatives including morphine, codeine, dilaudid, heroin, morphine, et al. These extracted substances are ALL addictive by medical and street standards. So the genie got let out of the bottle by extraction (using water, alcohol, or other liquids to extract the substance. Mescaline can be extracted from peyote pulp mush - this is probably what AC wanted to discuss with Parke-Davis pharma.
Then the 5th ray scients (as a result of sampling their extracts) decided to synthesize these substrances. That's where you make them up from scratch in a lab and test them on animals, then volunteers - in that order. Doctor Jekyll skipped the animal studies and became the first volunteer.
The synthetics, including meth, demerol, Percodan (which grew up to be OxyContin), and a few others are, in some cases, even more addictive than the simple extracts.
These are all known drugs with known side effects. They are not "strange."
I am convinced that personal idiosyncrasy counts for more in this matter than all the other factors put together.
Well, yeah, there's always that factor. But ... like everybody else who took these poisons for a month or two, he got hooked. Addiction is a known side effect - personal idios don't count in that part. They do count in how a person reacts to the substance.
... or on an American with his passion for pushing everything to extremes ...
<haha> Crowley pushed all the known envelopes. He also wrote in a Liber that we should pudh everything to determine our limits. And he blames Americans for this trait?
Patrick Everett's thesis Cactus and The Beast does discuss your concerns as to why AC kept his use of cactus extract secret...important questions to think about...and refreshing at that...
Could it be that AC went to Mexico for the cactus and not to climb some volcanoes...how was the Mason met, who gave the introduction...
How did western initiates learn of these medicines from both exoteric and esoteric readings.
Oscar Eckenstein was his first great teacher. Maybe it was he, who as well as alerting AC to visualisation techniques, also introduced him to peyote vision quests. Due to his extensive knowledge of Mexico from his hiking/mountain climbing.
https://www.100thmonkeypress.com/biblio/acrowley/articles/popo/essay.pdf
Yet with mescaline/DMT/Psilocybin there is no addiction, no withdrawal, very little danger.
Thank you for returning to the thread's original topic, which includes "strange drugs," not "well-known drugs."
Strange Drugs are "strange" because they produce unpredictable results. The physical actions are pretty standard - not life-threatening or addictive. The emotional reactions call go just "off the wall and the scale, too" - totally unpredictable. Visual extravaganzas are somewhat predictable and even describable - but then they go "off the chart." Etc, up the line.
Mental Hangover (it's like short-circuit damage) can persist for a while, like Grady McM's heroic dosage of 2,000 micrograms of LSD, as reported in Inside Solar Lodge - Behind the Veil. He confessed to having his mind scrambled for 2 years. He took 4x the usual "maximum dosage." Over-indulgence is usually unpleasant - but the reasonable limits of everything have been established.
Yes, the thread keeps getting sidelined into popular drugs that had very little benefit to AC or his works. The "Strange Drugs" is both that which transports you and is from an exotic location . It is very clear to see, so all conversation around Cannabis, Coke, Opium, Ether etc is moot IMO.
How many here accept or acknowledge this?
I have already subscribed to the concept that describes mescaline, an alkaloid in Peyote, as the catalyst that gave Thelema its wide-screen full-color panoramic pageants (as expressed in various Libers).
One could ascribe it (mescaline) as the source of the visions and the voices, and others would agree, but that's not quite correct. The common folk take Peyote and they have hallucinations - but no coherent message. A reasonably well-controlled magician takes Peyote and ends up writing down messages that blow minds a hundred years later.
That is a very astute observation @Shiva.
You are right, it takes time to understand and work with the psychedelic realms and entities that you encounter. The "letting go" aspect, is fundamental to how you engage. AC with the practice of yoga/meditation/visualisation/ritual etc, was well versed in navigating these areas and communicating with those beyond the veil of reality. This is a lot more common now may I add, than you may think. Each weekend here in Ireland there are Ayahuasca, San Pedro and other similar ceremonies and individuals come away having spoke with these entities and learnt something not previously known or understood. They instead write it into their own personal journal's, integrate it personally, rather than try and create a new world religion.
Yet with mescaline/DMT/Psilocybin there is no addiction, no withdrawal, very little danger.
Thank you for returning to the thread's original topic, which includes "strange drugs," not "well-known drugs."
Strange Drugs are "strange" because they produce unpredictable results. The physical actions are pretty standard - not life-threatening or addictive. The emotional reactions call go just "off the wall and the scale, too" - totally unpredictable. Visual extravaganzas are somewhat predictable and even describable - but then they go "off the chart." Etc, up the line.
Crowley claims to be the person who introduced Peyote to Europe. Rumors say he tipped Aldous Huxley off to Mescaline, who then wrote a book that tipped everyone off. Crowley's experiences indicate that "magic potions" were legend, but not fact, so he and Bennett started to take them all, until they got to cannabis. Obviously, cannabis is a "gateway drug" because it (now) leads to psychedelic use ... for those who wish to tread the non-addictive path of mystical and magical delight.
I see, the "Strange Drugs " are the psychedelics only but of course people e.g.lose parts of their nose on coke and so on and therefore have harmed themselves. What about 'wine'? Is it the least liver-corroding form of alcohol?
https://www.lashtal.com/wiki/Aleister_Crowley_Timeline
Is it the least liver-corroding form of alcohol?
Cirrhosis isn't the only major risk. Alcohol can cause physical addiction too.
When "designer drugs" were the fad (all those variations on MDMA and other similar drugs), I sometimes wondered if that was what was meant by "strange" - after all, there you have virtually an endless supply of, quite literally, strange new drugs.
What was that book, PiHKAL or something? (Yes.)
that book, PiHKAL
I spent a delightful afternoon hanging out with PiKAL/TiKAL author Sasha Shulgin, and his wife/co-author/lab partner Ann, about 20 years ago. An erudite and very nice couple.
For those unfamiliar, they spent decades synthesizing, and self-testing, thousands of novel psychedelics, and published the synthesis and use notes.
When they finally lost their DEA "hunting license" (to possess and manufacture illicit drugs), after a change of administrators, the agents raiding their lab/home consulted a reference document compiled by Shulgin for the DEA to determine which exotic compounds were illicit, and therefore seizable, and which were stuff new to the law.
What about 'wine'? Is it the least liver-corroding form of alcohol?
I have no experience in such matters. Only what I have read. It seems that the "experts" agree that wine has some beneficial qualities. I can't remember which. A sip of brandy before retiring is said to be good for the heart. There is also winoism, so at some point the alc is going to hit the toxicity bingo in the liver's control room. Beer usually sports a lower alc percent than wine, but it also packs in the fat-producing calories.
Alcohol, in any flavor, is considered a medical poison. Oh, yes, it does occasionally kill a person. It is also probably mankind's earliest recreational drug. It remains extremely popular. Here's a funny (but true) medical observation: The people who become alcoholics (alcohol dependent) are the ones who, when they first start drinking, feel little or no effects.
Anyway, my DNA and/or repressed traumatic complexes do not need alcohol in any form, except the high-octane stuff used to clean legal medical cannabis paraphernalia (what a word), surfaces to be siliconed or glued, and medical disinfection. However, I would not deny anyone a glass of sparking or foaming wine, and I might join them under the proper circumstances.
Also, for really serious medical dulling, I have adequate amounts of "pure grain alcohol" on hand ... from Mexico (where they drink it like water)(where it is made from Cane, not grain).
Alcohol can cause physical addiction too.
Car accidents, too. It is a major factor in homocides in Mexico. Very common. These are the dots - please add your own connecting lines to make a story - these are the dots:
Alcohol - A Weapon - A Female - Two Males - Romantic Dalliance
One of the two males is a boyfriend, a husband, a father, a brother, a cousin - you know, this extended family thing can get really big.
I used to be friends with a considerable lunatic, and Muslim convert, who, when offered wine, beer or spirits, would say
"I do not consume solvents."
Of course, what he did consume was enormous amounts of opiates, amphetamines, and miscellaneous drugs daily. Dude was a walking pharmacy, and had the PDR ( Physician's Desk Reference, the "bible" of pharmaceutical drug abuse) memorized.
I drink beer, mainly Belgian strong abbey ales, and my home-brewed copies thereof, and ride the bicycle, and do immense amounts of manual labor in the garden, to remove the excess calories.
And i just eat less than almost anyone else who is not a Buddhist monk or other renunciate (which i very definitely am not, i just don't need as much food as others, despite being 6'2" and 190 lbs). I ate a total of one burrito in 3 days at Shiva's house; it was a very large, and very delicious, burrito.
I ate a total of one burrito in 3 days at Shiva's house; it was a very large, and very delicious, burrito.
FACT-CHECKER: Verified as True.
If you want really strange drugs, during the last couple years before he went into the mental hospital with premature frontal-lobe dementia, my late best friend invented a drink, or practice, called "The Stuntman":
Order at the bar a shot of tequila, a little pile of salt on a bar napkin, and a slice of lime. [The normal protocol is to lick the salt, drink the shot, and bite into the lime.]
Snort the salt, drink the shot, squeeze the lime into your eye. That is "The Stuntman". He could do three or four in a row.
He was dead within a couple years of inventing this. I cannot imagine that snorting salt is good for you. Gods i miss him.
I cannot imagine that snorting salt is good for you.
Probably not - it's used to preserve dead meat.
However, saline (salt) in water (in pressurized cans no less) is sold OTC for rinsing mucous (or particles of sniffed weeds) out of one's nasal passages. Personally, I'd be more worried anout the lime-eye maneuver ... and even more about drinking the shot.
I, drink the shot, and bite into the lime.]
Snort the salt, drink the shot, squeeze the lime into your eye. That is "The Stuntman". He could do three or four in a row.
He was dead within a couple years of inventing this. I cannot imagine that snorting salt is good for you. Gods i miss him.
He sounds like a frat boy, speaking of which have you heard of the vodka in the eyeball stunt?
I was reading about someone who would down a bottle if whisky on coke,what would that do? What about qualudes and coke? Not that I want to try it out.
https://www.lashtal.com/wiki/Aleister_Crowley_Timeline
frat boy
Not so much, just as self-destructive a person as imaginable.
He was in his late 40s at the time he invented "The Stuntman", a punk-rock musician, who worked as a carpenter building crates for transporting expensive art. Had already had two huge music-biz opportunities at that point, maybe 3, or 4, and blown them all off immediately when any chance of success loomed.
Best described by an old band mate as "The Farm-Boy From Hell". Both his parents were card-carrying Communists who were human shields for Malcolm X, on the theory that white supremacists wouldn't shoot white folks to get Malcolm (they weren't working that night, and of course it wasn't white folks who shot him).
Moved from New Hampshire to NYC age 16 when his mom found him unmanageable, and shipped him off to live with his dad, who moved out to Connecticut, and left him, age 17, to live alone in a loft on W. 100th St in Manhattan. He lived alone for about a month before it turned into a now-legendary punk-rock commune.
Perhaps you may have heard of the band he founded in his loft when he was 17, and quit when he was 19, just when they were staring to get big?
They were a NYHC act called "The Beastie Boys"; he came up with the name. In their book, they say he quit because he was too cool to hang out them; true.
Perhaps you may have heard of the band he founded in his loft when he was 17, and quit when he was 19, just when they were staring to get big?
They were a NYHC act called "The Beastie Boys"; he came up with the name. In their book, they say he quit because he was too cool to hang out them; true.
'Punk rock commune'. They ended up selling clothes with Kim Gordon. Yeah they were a punk band made a song about an egg raid. We used to have egg raids with/against kids from the local council estate. Less dangerous than knives and guns.
https://www.lashtal.com/wiki/Aleister_Crowley_Timeline
"Egg Raid on Mojo", written by my late friend John Berry, is about him and the late Adam Yauch, aka "MCA ", throwing eggs on Mojo, the gigantic black bouncer at gay/hardcore punk club The Pyramid because he wouldn't let them in. Not because they were too young to drink legally, but because they were way too drunk to socialize.
Many years later when i married my current wife, my best man was Berry, and my second-best man was Mojo.
No one who was in the version of BB that got famous ever lived at the 100th St. house, two of them (Yauch and Michael Diamond aka "Mike D") just played music, and hung out, there. And of course Adam Horowitz replaced John after he quit, and was at the time in a kinder-punk band called The Young And The Useless , and not nearly cool enough to even get invited over, let alone live there.
You can read about "The Hell House", aka "The Monkey House", aka "The Orphanage", aka "The Home For Wayward Boys" here.
the local council estate.
Please define "local council estate."
the local council estate.
Please define "local council estate."
English council estates? Think Dante's third or fourth ring of Hell.
https://www.lashtal.com/wiki/Aleister_Crowley_Timeline
"Local council estate" is Brit-speak for what Americans call a "public housing project".
It is the alleged source of the UK slang term "Chav", meaning a feral kid with a hoodie and a knife, who is "Council Housed And Violent".
"public housing project".
Apo Pontos Kokai Daimonoz! I was involved in one egg assassination, once only and once upon a time (~1960). It had to do with the Rodeo Club, which was chartered by the Los Angeles Pierce Community College of Agriculture (and all other Community College subjects). They had their own cow herd and daily. What a trip.
So somehow there was this hazing event among the hard-line cowboy Rodeo clubbers (including me - but I did not ride the bulls. I was not suicidal). This event was very complex, involving several cars and trucks pursuing some other cars and trucks, in the dark (with headlights, of course), all over the wide-ranging, western San Fernando Valey ... my home.
I remember pinning down some wretched girl who was haddling at the end of a corridor that led to a barn. She got assassinated. Later, when we returned to the same barn, the cops were there. Too late to run. The cop asked, "What kind of an initiation was this?"
A slightly older member of the conspiracy replied, "Oh, no sir. Initiations are illegal. We were just playing a game of hide and seek." Some sort of notes were written down. Everybody got to leave. No initiation. No arrests. Nothing. Nirvana.
I don't think I ever even thought of lifting an egg in assault again.