The always amazing Future Perfect blog has a nice little photo essay about Nasvai, a stimulant being sold throughout the former Soviet republics of Central Asia. Made from tobacco and slaked lime (plus a few other goodies), Nasvai is preferred to smoking tobacco because it provides a bit more of a lift.

Of course, Khazakstan Pravda doesn't see things so sanguinely:

Slight euphoria lasting about 30 minutes is fraught with serious hazards, too dear for life. Consuming frequency grows from 2-3 times a week up to 7-10 times a day.

The consequences are dire. The worst thing is school kids chewing “poisonous gums” during the classes. Doctors say that the poisonous produce is well launched into consumption. Children ask their parents for money allegedly to buy sweets, but buy… nasvai instead. To feel “higher” home-craftsmen mix chicken dung, lime, benabryl, and other poisonous “additives”.

Given that "shamanism" has its origins in this part of the world (if you believe Eliade), this is only the latest in a very, very, very long tradition of indigenous highs in Central Asia.

Okay, I caught this on Entheogenic Reformation and even I am still astounded. The first few transforms were a gimme, I could see the dropaway clothes and the wig and figured out the scam. But then it kept going, and going, and going. WTF? Magic upped to the next level...

It's been years in the making, even the President had to weigh in on the issue, but the day has finally come. Yes, it's official: Baseball players use steroids:

In a televised news conference in New York, Mitchell unveiled the results of his long-awaited investigation into baseball's so-called "Steroid era."

The probe was orderd 21 months ago by Commissioner Bud Selig in response to disclosures, first published in The Chronicle, about home run king Barry Bonds' involvement in the BALCO steroids scandal.

The report contained "many" names of baseball players who used banned drugs, Mitchell said.

Among the players named: New York Yankees pitcher Roger Clemens, a seven-time winner of the Cy Young award. The report describes Clemens' use of the injectable steroid Winstrol in 1998.

I guess no one can say they're surprised (unless they just woke up from a three-decade coma), but I can say I'm surprised to see it all hit the light of day. Has America lost its innocence? Are all of our greatest achievements built upon lies? Oh yeah, they are.

Man, someone's got big, probably at this point gangrenous balls.

[Editor's note: Trip report of cold water extraction of actual ergot (claviceps purpurea) from wild barley fields to follow...]

In our continuing investigation into the crazy things teenagers do, we now bring you this special report on "pharm" parties, and how kids today have learned to get their kicks from their parents' medicine cabinet:

And they aren’t just sneaking a pill or two from the medicine cabinet, he said. Teens regularly attend parties where the admission is a bag of pills or other medications that include over-the-counter cough medicines. The drugs are dumped into a bowl and taken randomly by the handful, washed down with alcohol or high-caffeine drinks.

Yikes! Talk about a knockout punch...

Parents have been on the lookout for signs their kids are using marijuana, LSD or other street drugs “but what’s not on the radar for parents is pills,” he said. Often, those pills come from the parents’ own medicine cabinet, unused prescriptions for Vicodin, codeine and other painkillers, sedatives and stimulants.

Bags have even been found with birth control pills and blood pressure and diabetes medications, Brown said, along with some aspirins kids had tried to use to gain access to a party. While it’s bad enough that kids with a credit card can order any prescription drug from shady doctors with Web sites, they can walk into any store and buy cough medicine that can produce the same effects as LSD in large enough quantities. There even are Web sites that describe the various levels of “Robotripping,” named for Robitussin, capped with the highest level that’s potentially fatal.

Cough medicines have long been popular as a legal way to get alcohol but the stronger over-the-counter ones that contain dextromethorphan, or DXM “are the killers,” he said.

...

Vicodin is seen most frequently, followed by OxyContin, Percodan and codeine. It’s not unusual to find other drugs like Ritalin, used for hyperactivity and traditional tranquilizers such as Valium and the most abused prescription drug in the country, Xanax.

"Where did you learn to party like that kids?"

"We learned it from you!"

You can get more on this latest fad, including how to gain access to your own local pharm party, by following the link below.

Here's the right Kashmir clip. Thanks cdin, More Zeppelin!

In an online discussion, the question recently came up of what does "crazy" mean. I would say someone is crazy if and only if their mental processes appear to be causing their lives to be unsustainable, physical harm, organizational problems such as homelessness, self-destructive behavior, etc.

There are some times when I would call people crazy even when I think they're right. Like Robert M. Pirsig, author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Having read the book, I believe that he experienced a true and accurate spiritual insight, but was unable to deal with it in a way that didn't fuck up his life, and so he went crazy, and then slowly eventually put his shit back together. The book is a detailed narrative of that process and is so far beyond merely worth reading that I can't possibly recommend it highly enough. Don't be fooled by the title, it's more about what I said here than it is about Zen.

If your beliefs aren't fucking up your life (or anyone else's for that matter), then I don't see why it would make sense to call you crazy, no matter what you believe or experience.

I once knew someone who had hallucinations all the time. Never did any drugs, apparently she just had part of a clinically schizophrenic brain without a lot of the problems. She was very mellow, and smart, and was able to figure out what was real and what was hallucinated just fine. I would not call her crazy.

There was also this guy who put out a bunch of full-page spreads in The Stranger in Seattle about how he was the homosexual messiah and God wants all men to get over their homophobia and suck His holy Dick. He was rich, he went to Burning Man and did a bunch of drugs, and got on the I Am The Messiah trip that we all know all about because anyone who has even the remedial loser GED version of a drug education knows all about that. I'd call him crazy, temporarily at least, because even though being rich was insulating him from the consequences he'd probably go down the toilet eventually, if he didn't get his mind back under control. But that is just a guesstimation-prediction based on my broader experience, so I wouldn't commit to saying he was crazy until he really did get messed up.

By the way, if anyone can remember that guy's web site, please add the link to this listing! :)

I don't know about anyone else, but for me Kashmir has a kind of timeless appeal that few other songs can ever match. Elder races, travelling through time and space - these are real concerns in my everyday life... and 20 years later they STILL sound better than 98% of anyone else who ever touched an instrument.

I'm posting an historic letter from the good folks at Erowid.org. This is indeed very fortunate news.

December Greetings!

(If you're an Erowid Member, you've already received this message.)

We wanted to send out this special announcement to let everyone know that after two years of dealing with lawyers and red-tape, the IRS has finally approved our new organization "Erowid Center" as a U.S. 501(c)(3) tax-deductible charitable organization. This is the news we've been hoping to get! With this formal approval, donations to Erowid Center are now tax-deductible in the U.S.

Receiving IRS approval is a big step in our goal towards making the Erowid project stable and sustainable over the long term. We hope that it will help us continue to improve the quality and reliability of available information about psychaoctive plants, chemicals, technologies and practices. We plan to begin Erowid Center's daily operations on Jan 1, 2008.

Erowid Center isn't yet set up to take donations by credit card, but if you would like to make a tax-deductible donation by check in 2007, please email us at donations@erowid.org. We continue to be able to take non-tax-deductible donations through the website as usual, by credit card, PayPal, or check (www.erowid.org/donations/).

As always, we can use your contributions!

We really appreciate the support Erowid visitors have shown us over the past twelve years. Thanks from all of us.

Fire, Earth & the Erowid Crew
Erowid.org

Alcohol advertising on television is making its way back into the mainstream, slowly but surely. Oh sure, it's been on cable for a long time now, but I guess cable doesn't "count." Meanwhile, one of NBC's flagship local stations in NYC is resuming alcohol advertising:

ALMOST six years after NBC ended an experiment to bring the first liquor commercials onto national broadcast network television, the flagship station it owns, WNBC-TV in New York, has started running such spots.

The decision is a small but significant sign of changing attitudes toward advertising of products that many consider contentious. From 1948 until 1996, no TV station or network accepted liquor ads although distilled spirits were advertised in newspapers, magazines and billboards.

Today, hundreds of television stations and networks carry commercials for distilled spirits. But the four biggest broadcast networks, including NBC, do not. They remain skittish about critics who contend that opening television — still the most powerful advertising medium — to the marketers of distilled spirits will more readily expose those pitches to children and teenagers.

Meanwhile, don't think you can just cross the line of marketing to children so easily when it comes to tobacco advertising, as Rolling Stone magazine recently learned when it ran a Camel advertising spread that too closely resembled cartoons:

Camel ads coupled with illustrations promoting rock music in Rolling Stone magazine violate the tobacco industry's nine-year-old promise not to use cartoons to sell cigarettes, prosecutors in various states said Tuesday.

Attorneys general in at least eight states planned to file lawsuits against R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. starting Tuesday about the advertising for Camel cigarettes in the November edition of Rolling Stone, officials said.

The section combines pages of Camel cigarette ads with pages of magazine-produced illustrations on the theme of independent rock music.

"Their latest nine-page advertising spread in Rolling Stone, filled with cartoons, flies in the face of their pledge to halt all tobacco marketing to children," Pennsylvania Attorney General Tom Corbett said in a news release Tuesday.

So on the one hand, we can't have kids running across playful cigarette ads in rock and roll magazines, but on the other hand, if they simply scroll through their cable channels - and now WNBC in NYC - they'll get all the alcohol advertising the advertisers can afford. Oh, and also, as long as the tobacco ads don't seem like cartoons, then kids might still run across them in rock and roll magazines. Or on billboards. By the way, do you think the kids have heard about this legal LSD-like super drug called salvia? I think as long as it isn't being advertised by EVERY NEWS OUTLET IN AMERICA RUNNING STORIES ABOUT IT, we might keep the kids sober for an extra week or two.