by Howard Marks
During the thirty years in which I was a constant user of drugs of many kinds, various people, including some doctors and chemists, have asked me how it was that I was able to continue in the habit for so long a time, and use such large quantities of drugs, and still remain in good health.
This true story of my experiences will explain the reason, and also may show the drug habit in an entirely new aspect.
It is now many years since I gave up using all drugs, but during the thirty years with which this story deals, I have used morphia, cocaine, hash, opium, and a good many other drugs, both singly and in combination.
The doses which I became able to take, after so many years of the habit, may seem almost impossible, yet it is a fact that I have increased my dose gradually, until I could inject eighty grains of pure cocaine a day; sufficient to kill many persons, if divided among them.
At other times, when I favoured morphia, I have injected as much as ten grains per day, although the medical dose is a quarter of a grain.
My arms, shoulders and chest are a faint blue colour, which, if magnified, reveal the marks of thousands of tiny punctures; hypodermic syringe marks.
Many years I have searched the jungles of the Far East for new drugs; testing strange plants, bulbs and roots, making extracts, and then testing them first on animals, and in some cases on myself; and I will describe later some of the strange effects produced, particularly in the case of one drug, which I will call ‘The Elixir of Life’.
If some of the things I describe are horrible, they are nevertheless true. What strange sights may a man not see during seven years in a country like China, if he goes to look for them below the surface? It is a country of camouflage and hidden ways. Innocent-looking junks, quietly floating down the rivers and canals, may be really sumptuously furnished gambling dens and drug haunts, where orgies of many kinds are carried on. No European, unless he is introduced by a trusted Chinese, will ever have entry to these places.
The life of a drug taker can be a happy one, far surpassing that of any other, or it can be one of suffering and misery; it depends on the user’s knowledge.
The most interesting period will only be reached after many years – and then only if perfect health has been retained – using several kinds of drugs (for one drug alone spells disaster), and increasing the doses in a carefully thought-out system, a system which was first made known to me by the Indian doctor who initiated me into the drug habit.
Waking visions will then begin to appear when under the influence of very large doses, and it is these visions which are so interesting.
I have sat up through the night taking drugs until the room has been peopled with spirits. They may be horrible, grotesque, or beautiful, according to the nature of the drugs producing them. Strange scenes have been enacted before my eyes; scenes which were very real and lifelike, and which I will describe later.
When the Dangerous Drugs Act came into force I gave up using all drugs, because the danger and risk of obtaining them was too great. The paltry quantities, about which the authorities make such a fuss, were of no use to me, and I was able to give them up without any trouble or suffering, owing to my experiments and discoveries.
This story will be as a message of hope to all drug addicts. The cure is easy, but not by the method generally adopted, that of gradually reducing the dosage: a method which will only cause intense suffering, and sometimes even death.
Underworld of the East, 2001
Alexander and Ann Shulgin
The Process of Discovery
HOW DOES ONE go about discovering the action, the nature of the effect on the central nervous system, of a chemical which has just been synthesized, but not yet put into a living organism? I start by explaining that it must be understood, first of all, that the newborn chemical is as free of pharmacological activity as a newborn babe is free of prejudice.
INTRODUCTION
At the moment of a person’s conception, many fates have been sealed, from physical features to gender and intelligence. But many things have not been decided. Subtleties of personality, belief systems, countless other characteristics, are not established at birth. In the eyes of every newborn, there is a universality of innocence and godliness which changes gradually as interactions take place with parents, siblings and the environment. The adult product is shaped from repeated contacts with pains and pleasures, and what finally emerges is the fatalist, the egocentric or the rescuer. And the travelling companions of this person during his development from undefined infant to well-defined adult, all have contributed to and have been, in turn, modified by these interactions.
So it is also with a chemical. When the idea of a new substance is conceived, nothing exists but symbols, a collage of odd atoms hooked together with bonds, all scribbled out on a blackboard or a napkin at the dinner table. The structure, of course, and perhaps even some spectral characteristics and physical properties are inescapably pre-ordained. But its character in man, the nature of its pharmacological action or even the class of the action it might eventually display, can only be guessed at. These properties cannot yet be known, for at this stage they do not yet exist.
Even when the compound emerges as a new substance, tangible, palpable, weighable, it is still a tabula rasa in the pharmacological sense, in that nothing is known, nothing can be known, about its action in man, since it has never been in man. It is only with the development of a relationship between the thing tested and the tester himself that this aspect of character will emerge, and the tester is as much a contributor to the final definition of the drug’s action as is the drug itself. The process of establishing the nature of a compound’s action is synonymous with the process of developing that action.
Other researchers who taste your material will include some (most, you hope) who make separate evaluations; and it will then appear that you defined (developed) the properties accurately. Other researchers (only a few, you hope) will disagree, and they will privately tend to wonder why they failed to evaluate the material more accurately. You might call this a no-lose situation, and it is the reward for personally following all three parts of this process, namely conception, creation and definition.
But it must be kept in mind that the interaction goes both ways; the tester, as well as the compound being tested, is molded by it.
Phenethylamines and Other Things I Have Known and Loved: A Chemical Love Story, 1991
Robert Sabbag
Smokescreen – 3
REED WAS A head who, at length and unapologetically could provide poetic discourse on ‘the energy, the magic, the beauty of the herb.’ And mean it. He was a smoker who had started smuggling pot because he got tired of looking for it. Feeling quite emphatically that ‘it should be in hand when you need it,’ he was religious on the subject. Literally. Marijuana was not an article of faith, it was the Faith itself, and Reed was its Defender. All the money he made smuggling herb he reinvested in smuggling more. The millions never caught up with him, he was always working. Reed, like other smugglers, lavished disposable income on cars and boats, but only on those in which he could haul marijuana. Where another scammer might seek joy in the extravagance of a platinum Rolex, an indigo-blue Maserati or a house with eight bathrooms on the rim of Red Mountain, Reed would be quite happy, he argued, ‘if I could keep enough smoke around me.’
Dope will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no dope.
– Freewheelin’ Franklin Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers
It was smoke, no doubt, that had led J.D. Reed to his appreciation of the transmigration of souls. Reed believed that he had been a great warrior in a previous life. ‘Many lifetimes I had to be a warrior,’ he reasoned – ‘I got the build for it, I got the instincts’ – and he took pride in the fact that, after coming of age in his present life, he had never inflicted harm on anyone. ‘With my body-strength and knowledge,’ he explained to Long, ‘I manipulate ‘em, I don’t hurt ‘em. That’s what mar
ijuana did for me. It turned my warrior-ness into peace.’
Reed was a warlord who had established his kingdom securely in the realm of the ethereal, and to achieve the celestial precincts thereof, he followed his very own camino real. The journey began with his laying hands on the highest-grade ganja any man could possibly score, and rolling a joint the size of a prairie dog. He would soak the joint in Afghani hash oil, a bottle of which he always kept handy, and hang it in the sun to dry – he would clothespin the oiler to the laundry line outside the kitchen of his ranch. Picking it at just the right moment, Reed would fire it up and smoke it until nothing but ash remained.
That was how he started his day. For anyone smoking with him, it signaled the end of the day.
Smokescreen by Robert Sabbag, first published in Great Britain by Canongate Books, February 2002
Have you no mind to do what nobody can do for you?
Miguel Cervantes
James Lee
About Drugs
I LEARN TO INJECT MORPHIA
Beautiful places in the tropics, I have heard, are often unhealthy, and this, I found, was one of them, and it was not long before I got a touch of malaria.
Malaria causes an absolutely rotten feeling, with headache and all the rest of it, so one day when I had an attack rather worse than usual, I sent over to the hospital for the Indian doctor or ‘babu’, who was in charge there.
He was a fat and jolly Hindu of about forty years of age. After feeling my pulse and taking my temperature, he said, speaking through his nose like most babus do, ‘Yes, sir. You have a little fever, but I will soon cure you.’
Then he called Abdul to bring a glass of water, and taking a little case out of his pocket, he opened it and took out a small glass syringe; the first hypodermic syringe I had ever seen. Withdrawing the glass plunger, he selected a tabloid from a small tube and dropped it into the syringe, replaced the plunger and drew the syringe three-quarters full of water. Placing a hollow needle on the end of the syringe, he first shook it until the tabloid was dissolved, and then injected the contents into my arm. I will never forget that first injection; the beautiful sensation of ease and comfort; the luxurious dreamy feeling of indolence and happiness which immediately ensued. Every distressing symptom of the fever had disappeared, and I only wanted to sit still in my chair. I was simply purring with content. The voice of the Dr Babu, who was a great talker, was like a gentle murmur, and I saw him through a pleasant haze.
I must have sat there for hours after he had gone, and it was growing dark, and Abdul came in with the lamp, and commenced laying the table for dinner. It was the first meal that I had really enjoyed for some days, and that night I slept well, and awakened fresh next morning.
As the day wore on, I felt not quite so well, rather tired and a little depressed, and I thought that perhaps I required a little more of the medicine the babu had given me the day before; also I felt that I would like to have another dose, so I went over to the hospital and saw the babu. He greeted me with a pleasant smile, and made no trouble about giving me another injection.
‘What sort of medicine is this, Doctor?’ I asked him.
‘It is morphia,’ he said. ‘The most useful medicine in the world.’
The word morphia meant little to me then – of course I had heard about morphia addicts, but I thought I was quite capable of controlling any impulse I might have of making a habit of it, and I thought a few doses could not make such a difference; moreover, the second dose seemed to be even more potent than the first; no doubt he had given me a larger one.
I even persuaded the doctor to give me a syringe and a tube of four-grain tabloids.
After a time I found myself looking forward to the afternoon when the day’s work was over, and I could take a larger dose and lie dreaming rosy dreams; meanwhile I had got in a supply of tabloids from Calcutta.
There were only daydreams, it is true, for I had not yet reached the stage where visions appear while asleep, much less that stage which extremely few drug addicts ever reach, the time when absolutely lifelike visions appear while awake. This stage can never be reached on morphia alone.
After a few months of regular indulgence in morphia I began to feel that to get the same results I had to increase my dose and also that the effect wore off more quickly.
Also, I found that my digestive system was getting out of order, and I was becoming so costive that no opening medicine had much effect. The latter symptom was causing me considerable inconvenience, and I was getting scared. I was using now about four grains a day, injected a grain at a time instead of the four-dose as at first, yet the effect was not so pleasant.
I decided that the drug habit was getting too great a hold on me, and that the time had come when I must give it up; never expecting any difficulty in doing so.
I had heard that morphia users broke themselves of the habit generally by reducing their dose a little every day, until they had given it all up.
I smile at my ignorance now, but then it seemed quite simple, so I started.
Next day I took my usual supply of morphia for the day: four grains, and mixed it in a small vial containing six syringes full of water, viz. 120 minims. I now drew up into the syringe one-tenth of the mixture (twelve minims) and threw it away replacing it by this quantity of water.
Next day I felt all right. ‘Hurrah, it is easy.’
The second day I threw away twenty-four minims and added only eighteen minims of water, thus reducing the quantity of liquid per injection from twenty minims to nineteen minims; the mixture also being not so strong.
Now I did not feel so good. I found my thoughts constantly turning to morphia, and going over again the pleasant sensation I had experienced. This seemed to emphasise my present state. I really felt uncomfortable and rather irritable, and I kept thinking what a pleasure it would be to take a thumping big dose.
Pride and fear made me stick to my intention, and persevere with this so-called system, until I had reduced my consumption of morphia to two grains a day. Beyond this I could not possibly go. I was suffering terribly; I could not sleep, nor sit still, and I was on the fidget all the time. I had a horrible toothache, and I was jumpy and nervous. I could not get a wink of sleep at night, for I would be up half a dozen times walking about the room, as I had cramps in my feet and legs, which I could not keep in one position while lying in bed for more than a minute, before they began to ache again. I felt wretched in the extreme, and I think that the worst symptom of all was the horrible feeling of depression and gloom – so terrible that it defies description. Moreover, I found that every reduction of the dose increased the sufferings, not only in proportion, but probably fourfold, and I had a tolerable idea that what I was suffering then would be only a fraction of what I would suffer when I got down to the quarter of a grain.
I could not stand it any longer, and I injected a whole-grain dose.
Can anyone possibly describe the sensation of relief I felt? I think not; no words possibly could do so. It was simply Heaven, and that is all I can say. I was now thoroughly scared, because I was back on my one-grain doses, and soon I even began to feel that I would like to increase them.
I decided to see the Dr Babu, so I went over to the hospital, where I found he was attending to the outpatients.
I went into his room and waited, and began to think.
I had often noticed a peculiar look in his eyes, when I met him. Sometimes I noticed that the pupils were mere pinpoints, while at other times they were so large as to almost fill his iris. Moreover, I had noticed that sometimes he would be calm and dreamy in his manner, while again he would sometimes be full of life and energy. His moods appeared to change in many different ways.
I remembered the peculiar smile on his face when I told him that I was going to gradually reduce my dose of morphia until I had given it up.
He had enquired two or three times how I was getting on, and each time I had told him of my success he had smiled. I wondered why he had not to
ld me how difficult morphia was to give up; so when he came in I tackled him about it.
‘Sir,’ he said, ‘morphia is a very strange medicine, it is both Heaven, and Hell. It is very difficult to give up, but it can be done.’
Morphia should not be used by anyone for longer than a few months, he told me, because by that time it will begin to lose its pleasant effect, and it will also begin to affect the health, because the action of the drug is continually in one direction.
He told me that he used many kinds of drugs, each in turn; changing over from one to another, using them sometimes singly, and at other times in combinations, so that no one drug ever got too great a hold on him. Each time he changed over, the drug he had been using regained all its old potency and charm when commenced again.
I complained about the binding effect of the morphia.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘that is one of the principal reasons why the long use of morphia alone is so destructive to health. Its deadening effect on the bowels and the digestion. Although purgatives are of little use, and, moreover, are dangerous to a morphia addict, there is one sure remedy.’
Then he gave me my first dose of cocaine.
I found the effect extremely pleasant, although I only had a beginner’s dose grain. It was stimulating, and exhilarating, producing a feeling of well-being, of joy and good spirits. Large doses will produce great self-confidence, and absolutely banish every feeling of self-consciousness in the most difficult situations; in fact it will make the user glory in becoming conspicuous.
Cocaine in large doses also has another effect, which I will not describe here, and this effect is considerably increased when certain other drugs are mixed with it. It is a strange fact that although cocaine, in itself, is not an opening medicine when used by any other person, the effect is immediate when taken by a morphia addict whose bowels have become inoperative.
Following the Dr Babu’s instructions, I first mixed up an ounce solution containing one grain of morphia to each twenty minims of water, and another of a five per cent solution of cocaine. Starting with twenty minims of the morphia solution, injected three times a day, i.e. three grains of morphia a day, I reduced the dose by one minim each day, and added one minim of the cocaine solution, until in twenty days I was using no morphia at all, only cocaine. I experienced no inconvenience at all, or craving for morphia, only increased pleasure.
