'High Society: Mind-Altering Drugs in History and Culture' by Mike Jay is due to be published on November 8th 2010. Produced in conjunction with the Wellcome Collection's exhibition of the same name (November 11th -- February 2011) in London, the book is an enthralling mixture of text and image that charts the changing role and conceptions of drugs in society and culture from prehistory to the modern day.

Mike Jay has written High Society as an extension to his advisory and curatorial role with the Wellcome Collection's exhibition. Having previously published works like Emperors of Dreams (2000), Blue Tide (1999) and an anthology of drug writing entitled Artificial Paradises (1999) he is well versed in the historical implications of culture and drugs. Whilst this book does touch on some episodes recounted in his earlier works, there is much more attention focused on global drug customs and trade. And coupled with the rich, multicultural imagery that underpins the international elements of his exploration, the book really brings the historical relationships of a High Society to life.

The much-hyped "prediction" that, according to the ancient Mayan calendar, the world will end on Dec. 21, 2012, may be based on a miscalculation.

According to recent research, the mythological date of the "end of days" may be off by 50 to 100 years.

There goes that end-of-the-world party...

When my wife and I bought a house last year in the little town of Ukiah, California, the first person to offer us advice about growing marijuana was our realtor. The house was a stolid 1909 prairie box that had been partitioned into four units, with a front porch, dark green trim, and a couple of fruit trees in the yard. It was charming, but we probably would have settled for a yurt. What mattered most to us was having a foothold in Mendocino County, a place we had long ago decided was the most beautiful in America.

Our realtor, however, drew our attention to the house’s electrical meters. There were four in total, one for each unit. If we ever wanted to grow a few indoor pot gardens, he said, we had an ideal setup. I laughed and thanked him for the tip.

Then the advice kept coming. A neighbor offered to help me get started with a few plants whenever I was ready. The owner of a local hydroponics supply store shook my hand and encouraged me to stop by his warehouse. "We’ll set you up," he said. Ukiah, I realized, was weirder than I thought.

I’d always known that pot was a huge part of the county’s livelihood, accounting for two-thirds of the local economy, by some estimates. But in eight years of visiting the place with my wife -- including one gloriously unsuccessful four-month experiment in backcountry living -- I’d never so much as set eyes on a seven-fingered leaf. Then, last year, I began exploring the region’s cannabis economy in earnest, setting out for dirt roads in the hills and basements in Ukiah, occasionally wearing a blindfold.

Gradually a new picture of Mendocino County began to emerge. Neighborhoods in town were dotted with light-flooded outbuildings packed with plants, quietly paying the mortgages of those who tended them. And the county’s amber and green hills were full of homesteaders who for decades had been leading the kind of existence we’d once failed at -- men and women who’d come for the land but managed to stay because of marijuana. Many had built their own off-grid homes and outfitted them with elaborate solar arrays, potbellied stoves, and well-tended gardens. In an age of homemade baby food, fire-escape agriculture, and home-brew chic, they’d achieved an almost mythical ideal: economic independence derived from a small piece of earth.

[Thanks Sam Hell!]

Mr. Llewellyn, a self-described former crack addict, started out making mephedrone, a stimulant also known as Meow Meow that was already popular with the European clubbing set. Once governments began banning it earlier this year, Mr. Llewellyn and a chemistry-savvy partner started selling something they dubbed Nopaine -- a stimulant they concocted by tweaking the molecular structure of the attention-deficit drug Ritalin.

Nopaine "is every bit as good as cocaine," says Mr. Llewellyn, who has lived in Antwerp on and off since the late 1980s. "You can freebase it. You can snort it like crack." Still, he emphasized, "Everything we sell is legal. I don't want to go to jail for 14 years."

Mr. Llewellyn is part of a wave of laboratory-adept European entrepreneurs who see gold in the gray zone between legal and illegal drugs. They pose a stiff challenge for European law-enforcement, which is struggling to keep up with all the new concoctions. Last year, 24 new "psychoactive substances" were identified in Europe, almost double the number reported in 2008, according to the Lisbon-based European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, or EMCDDA.

The problem is also touching U.S. shores. A new synthetic drug similar to marijuana is increasingly popular, for instance. Some states have started banning it. But many of the other substances and stimulants vexing Europe are less of an issue in the U.S., according to a spokeswoman for the Drug Enforcement Administration.

[Thanks Sam Hell!]

Alcohol is a more dangerous drug than heroin or crack cocaine, a study claims.

Scientists have found that alcohol is the most harmful drug overall and three times as harmful as cocaine and tobacco, according to a new scale of drug harm that rates the damage to both users and to wider society.

Ecstasy is only an eighth as harmful as alcohol, according to the new analysis, led by the controversial sacked government drugs adviser David Nutt with colleagues from the breakaway Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs.

The study says that if drugs were classified on the basis of the harm they do, alcohol would be class A, alongside heroin and crack cocaine.

The findings of the study, published in the Lancet today, are likely to reignite the debate over the government's drugs classification system.

Professor David Nutt was sacked last year by then home secretary Alan Johnson after he challenged ministers over their refusal to take the advice of the official Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, which he chaired.

[Thanks Thomas and Sam Hell!]

Historic.

The final episode in the search for real zombie poisons.

For a high price, Hamilton procures a sample of the zombie powder and its mysterious antidote. He returns home to subject both to extensive chemical analysis.

Here's a youtube video made out of some of the great late philosopher of religions, Alan Watts' comments on drugs...

"The laws of the United States and the programs, government sponsored, concerning the use of addictive drugs, are a total failure. Not only a total failure, but they are making the problem worse. They are so stupid that anyone supporting those laws must either be a moron, or involved in the racket. It's that bad."

More on the search for zombie poisons.

Hamilton goes to meet a new bokor deep in the rice fields of Artibonite. To prove his strength, Hamilton takes a large dose of zombie powder and is rewarded with a peak inside a zombie’s shed.

To reach Jason's farm you drive south out of the small town of Arcata, in Humboldt County, Calif., and plunge into the forest that gave the region its "Emerald Triangle" nickname. After passing through hilly ranch country and a stretch on a dusty dirt road, a wooden house peeks out of the fruit trees on 150 acres of land, completely off the electrical grid. Jason is in the kitchen, stuffing cannabis leaves into a juicer.

"Everyone around here is involved in some way," says Jason, a professional marijuana grower. What he means is that a large percentage of people in town, and every other town for miles, is either directly or indirectly subsidized by dope, from the young parents cultivating a few seedlings in the backyard to the owner of the sushi restaurant where seemingly unemployed people eat dinner, always paying in cash.

"I think we're in the middle of a boom time," says Jason, clomping over to a leather sofa with his juice. He's in his late 30s and wearing camouflage pants with a small knife clipped to his belt, heavy-duty work boots, and just enough chin scruff to keep him from looking groomed. Despite its rustic accommodations -- personal business is conducted in an outhouse down the path -- the house bears many signifiers of high household cash flow: gleaming new appliances, lots of products made by Steve Jobs, a Droid satellite phone. He got into the pot business almost by accident. After several years drifting hippie-style through California, Jason fell in love with the pastoral lifestyle and realized that he had to earn money to sustain it, so he became a businessman. He agreed to explain the economics of his trade, provided Bloomberg Businessweek withheld his full name.

[Thanks Sam Hell!]