I'm sure many of you are familiar with a quote by Sir Oliver Wendell Holmes describing his experience inhaling ether. The quote came through a "quote of the day" list that I'm on, and seemed worth repeating here:

"I once inhaled a pretty full dose of ether, with the determination to put on record, at the earliest moment of regaining consciousness, the thought I should find uppermost in my mind. The mighty music of the triumphal march into nothingness reverberated through my brain, and filled me with a sense of infinite possibilities, which made me an archangel for a moment. The veil of eternity was lifted. The one great truth which underlies all human experience and is the key to all the mysteries that philosophy has sought in vain to solve, flashed upon me in a sudden revelation. Henceforth all was clear: a few words had lifted my intelligence to the level of the knowledge of the cherubim. As my natural condition returned, I remembered my resolution; and, staggering to my desk, I wrote, in ill-shaped, straggling characters, the all-embracing truth still glimmering in my consciousness. The words were these (children may smile; the wise will ponder):
`A strong smell of turpentine prevails throughout.'"

Of course, my first exposure to this quote was via The Monkees. In the first season of that show, the last minute or two of each episode were often given over to interview segments where the four Monkees fooled around or waxed philosophic, and in one of those segments, inexplicably, Peter Tork looked directly at the camera and pronounced, "The universe is permeated with the odor of turpentine." Undoubtedly whoever was editing the episode together just thought Tork was being a long-haired weirdo, not realizing the drug-soaked origin of that little snippet...

Oh Pete, I wish I could make this stuff up:

Pete Doherty has been caught injecting heroin on film, just hours after claiming he was drugs free.

The Babyshambles rocker is shown in the footage - shot on a mobile phone at his Wiltshire home on Friday (11.02.07) - 'cooking up' the class A drug in a spoon before filling up a needle and sticking it into his right arm.

Pete, 28, is seen still wearing the green wristband from the MTV Europe Music Awards in Germany the night before, at which he boasted he was still clean after spending six weeks in rehab and even joked he "missed" hard drugs.

I guess he missed it so much he had to rush right home and shoot some into his arm. And then a few hours later, he'll miss it again...

I wouldn't exactly call this news, but it appears that LSD has been discovered in South Africa for the first time ever.

Durban - Four LSD drug stamps have been found in KwaZulu-Natal, Ladysmith police said on Tuesday.

Captain Charmaine Struwig said it was the first time this type of drug had been found in the area.

"It's tiny - 8mm by 8mm - and it's perforated like a stamp," she said.

Stuwig said a teenager had brought the drug to the police's attention.

"Four stamps have been found so far and we are trying to establish the extent of the drug in the area. We have noticed that the stamp has pictures on it to attract the youth," she said.

I love the fear and reverence indicated by this short story. "It's tiny," they say, "perforated like a stamp," and "with pictures to attract the youth." Such wonders we have never seen. Let us be wary of this new tiny stamp, craziness is sure to follow...

Researchers have found a way to boost the level of anandamide (an endogenous THC-like cannabinoid) in rats exposed to stress, and guess what happens? The rats like totally mellow out. From the study:

The researchers administered URB597 to chronically stressed rats which showed behaviors similar to those seen in depressed human patients. After five weeks of treatment, the stressed rats treated with the drug were behaving similarly to a comparison group of unstressed animals. The study appears in the Nov. 15 issue of Biological Psychiatry.

URB597 works by inhibiting FAAH, an enzyme in the body that breaks down anandamide. Dubbed “the bliss molecule” for its similarities to the active ingredient in marijuana, anandamide is a neurotransmitter that is part of the brain’s endocannabinoid system and it has been shown in studies by Piomelli and others to play analgesic, anti-anxiety and antidepressant roles. It also is involved in regulating feeding and obesity. Blocking FAAH activity boosts the effects of anandamide without producing the “high” seen with marijuana.

So there you have it. Science has once again found a way to take all the fun out of drugs.

Follow-up: According to Wired sea-urchin eggs also contain anadamide, which when mixed with THC can produce amazing new drugs (not that there's anything wrong with the old ones...)

Bindeez, which won 2007 Toy of the Year at the Melbourne Toy and Hobby Festival, has been withdrawn from the market, because the toy's beads contain significant levels of GHB:

The beads should contain a non-toxic glue but instead they contains a different chemical which the body metabolises into gamma-hydroxy butyrate (GHB), also known as fantasy or Grievous Bodily Harm.

Ms Burney said an investigation into the toy, which is manufactured in Hong Kong, also would look at whether the substitution was deliberate.

Two children in NSW, a two-year-old boy and a ten-year-old girl, have been admitted to hospital in the past ten days after eating the beads.

One of the most surreal and twisted little bits of work I've ever seen. No really, watch this...

Our pals at drugsandpoisons.com sum up one of the headlines making the rounds today:

Some researchers in the States (Wake Forest University in North Carolina) carried out a web-based survey of 4,721 students. About a quarter of those who took the survey reported mixing an energy drink with their booze within the past 30 days. These special folks were found to be more likely to injure themselves, require medical assistance (read: alcohol poisoning), or get raped/rape someone. Party time!

And they need a study for these things?

Back when James and I were publishing Trip magazine, I wrote an occasional series called "From The Renegade Files of Scotto." After digging up an old college piece recently featuring the character of Crank Boy, I was reminded of this old "Renegade File" that also features Crank Boy, as well as a rare "behind the scenes" look at what it was like to publish Trip. Enjoy... if you dare!

*****

From the Renegade Files of Scotto:
The Strange Tale of Timothy Leary’s Head
Editorial from Trip #9 (winter 2003)

It was 4 A.M. on a Sunday when I received the call on the hotline: Timothy Leary’s head had escaped again.

Now I know this will raise many questions in your mind, so let me assure you: there is an easy explanation for why I was awake so early on a Sunday. The night before had been Trip’s semi-annual “Praise Us, Your Lords and Masters!” staff party where James Kent and I allow our small army of fawning sycophants out of their shackles and into state of the art explosive collars, so that they may dance about the local Holiday Inn convention hall in celebration of the fact that we allow them to open Trip’s insanely voluminous mail, copy edit Trip’s astonishingly important pages, and occasionally watch an episode of Buffy. After the party, James and I had returned to our cavernous headquarters for a late night cocktail of datura-infused absinthe and several hundred pills we’d nicked from the purse of a blind woman on the bus.

I was, in fact, just getting a really good buzz on – or else, I had caught some kind of deadly tropical disease, I can’t really be sure – when the hotline rang. It was my turn to answer the hotline; James got it last time and wound up having to spend three weeks in eastern Europe, settling a bloody squabble that had briefly – and terribly – interrupted the flow of black market drain cleaner into the country (remember, kids, intraocular injections are for professionals only!). I sighed heavily and picked up the phone as an army of small ants began swarming all over my skin, spelling out verses from the Book of Revelation, although with a lot more typos than I considered acceptable. I immediately recognized the voice of John Ashcroft, Attorney General of the United States, on the other end of the hotline. Strangely, he sounded considerably less drunk and panicked than usual. He must have taken my advice about the epidermal LSD patches, I decided.

Australian social commentator/TV presenter John Safran found himself getting sick and tired of the endless anti-rave rantings of radio shock jock Steve Price. Safran took matters into his own hands. Culture jamming at its finest:

I'm sure you've all heard the rumors of Britney's desires for some hot girl-on-girl action, as well as the occasional use of her breasts as a nice surface to let people blow a line of coke. I don't really have a comment here, other than I'm tired of the same old faces. Please, Johnny Depp, develop a public drug problem. I'm tired of reading about these burnt-out bimbos...