The Howard Marks Book of Dope Stories

by Howard Marks

  TWO

  ‘Much of the holiness of bhang [marijuana] is due to its virtues of clearing the head and stimulating the brain to thought. Among ascetics the sect known as Atits are specially devoted to hemp. No social or religious gathering of Atits is complete without the use of the hemp plant smoked in ganja or drunk in bhang. To its devotee, bhang is no ordinary plant that became holy from its guardian and healing qualities. According to one account, when nectar was produced from the churning of the ocean, something was wanted to purify the nectar. The deity supplied the want of a nectar-cleanser by creating bhang. This bhang Mahadev made from his own body, and so it is called angai or body-born. According to another account some nectar dropped to the ground and from the ground the bhang plant sprang. It was because they used this child of nectar or of Mahadev in agreement with religious forms that the seers or Rishis became Siddha or one with the deity. He who, despite the example of the Rishis uses no bhang shall lose its happiness in this life and in the life to come. In the end he shall be cast into hell. The mere sight of bhang cleans from as much sin as a thousand horse-sacrifices or a thousand pilgrimages. He who scandalizes the user of bhang shall suffer the torments of hell so long as the sun endures. He who drinks bhang foolishly or for pleasure without religious rites is as guilty as the sinner of sins. He who drinks wisely and according to rule, be he ever so low, even though his body is smeared with human ordure and urine, is Shiva (a man of god). No god or man is as good as the religious drinker of bhang. The students of the scriptures at Benares are given bhang before they sit to study. At Benares, students of the Ujain, and other holy places, yogis, bairagis and sanyasis, take deep draughts of bhang that they may center their thoughts on the Eternal. To bring back to reason an unhinged mind the best and leanest bhang leaves should be boiled in mil, and turned to clarified butter. Salamisri, saffron and sugar should be added and the whole eaten. Besides, over the demons of madness bhang is Vijaya or victorious over the demons of hunger and thirst. By the help of bhang, ascetics pass days without food or drink. The supporting power of bhang has brought many a Hindu family safe through the miseries of famine. To forbid or even seriously to restrict the use of so gracious an herb as the hemp would cause widespread suffering and annoyance and to large bands of worshiped ascetics, deep-seated anger. It would rob the people of a solace in discomfort, of a cure in sickness, of a guardian whose gracious protection saves them from the attacks of evil influences, and whose mighty power makes the devotee of the Victorious, overcoming the demons of hunger and thirst, of panic, fear, of the glamor of Maya or matter, and of madness, able in rest to brood on the Eternal, till the Eternal, possessing him body and soul, frees him from the haunting of self and receives him into the Ocean of Being. These beliefs the Musalman devotee shares to the full. Like his Hindu brother the Musalman fakir reveres bhang as the lengthener of life; the freer from the bonds of self. Bhang brings union with the Divine Spirit. ‘We drank bhang and the mystery I am He grew plain. So grand a result, so tiny a sin.’

  On the Religion of Hemp, 1894

  Shy traffickers, the dark Iberians come

  And on the beach undid his corded bales

  Matthew Arnold

  Havelock Ellis

  Mescal: A New Artificial Paradise

  It has been known for some years that the Kiowa Indians of New Mexico are accustomed to eat, in their religious ceremonies, a certain cactus called Anhalonium Lewinii, or mescal button. Mescal – which must not be confounded with the intoxicating drink of the same name made from an agave – is found in the Mexican Valley of the Rio Grande, the ancestral home of the Kiowa Indians, as well as in Texas, and is a brown and brittle substance, nauseous and bitter to the taste, composed mainly of the blunt dried leaves of the plant.

  [The] mescal rite may be said to be today the chief religion of all the tribes of the southern plains of the United States. The rite usually takes place on Saturday night; the men then sit in a circle within the tent round a large camp fire, which is kept burning brightly all the time. After prayer the leader hands each man four buttons, which are slowly chewed and swallowed, and altogether about ten or twelve buttons are consumed by each man between sundown and daybreak. Throughout the night the men sit quietly round the fire in a state of reverie – amid continual manifestations of mescal intoxication, and about noon on the following day, when the effects have passed off, they get up and go about their business, without any depression or other unpleasant after-effect.

  There are five or six allied species of cacti, which the Indians also use and treat with great reverence. Thus Mr. Carl Lumholtz has found that the Tarahumari, a tribe of Mexican Indians, worship various cacti as gods, only to be approached with uncovered heads. When they wish to obtain these cacti, the Tarahumari cleanse themselves with copal incense, and with profound respect dig up the god, careful lest they should hurt him, while women and children are warned from the spot. Even Christian Indians regard Hikori, the cactus god, as coequal with their own divinity, and make the sign of the cross in its presence. At all great festivals Hikori is made into a drink and consumed by the medicine man, or certain selected Indians, who sing as they partake of it, invoking Hikori to grant a ‘beautiful intoxication’; at the same time a rasping noise is made with sticks, and men and women dance a fantastic and picturesque dance – the women by themselves in white petticoats and tunics – before those who are under the influence of the god.

  It would be out of place here to discuss the obscure question as to the underlying mechanism by which mescal exerts its magic powers. It is clear from the foregoing descriptions that mescal intoxication may be described as chiefly a saturnalia of the specific senses, and, above all, an orgy of vision. It reveals an optical fairyland, where all the senses now and again join the play, but the mind itself remains a self-possessed spectator. Mescal intoxication thus differs from the other artificial paradises which drugs procure. Under the influence of alcohol, for instance, as in normal dreaming, the intellect is impaired, although there may be a consciousness of unusual brilliance; hasheesh, again, produces an uncontrollable tendency to movement and bathes its victim in a sea of emotion. The mescal drinker remains calm and collected amid the sensory turmoil around him; his judgement is as clear as in the normal state; he falls into no oriental condition of vague and voluptuous reverie. The reason why mescal is of all this class of drugs the most purely intellectual in its appeal is evidently because it affects mainly the most intellectual of the senses. On this ground it is not probable that its use will easily develop into a habit. Moreover, unlike most other intoxicants, it seems to have no special affinity for a disordered and unbalanced nervous system; on the contrary, it demands organic soundness and good health for the complete manifestation of its virtues. Further, unlike the other chief substances to which it may be compared, mescal does not wholly carry us away from the actual world, or plunge us into oblivion; a large part of its charm lies in the halo of beauty which it casts around the simplest and commonest things. It is the most democratic of the plants which lead men to an artificial paradise.

  If it should ever chance that the consumption of mescal becomes a habit, the favorite poet of the mescal drinker will certainly be Wordsworth. Not only the general attitude of Wordsworth, but many of his most memorable poems and phrases can not – one is almost tempted to say – be appreciated in their full significance by one who has never been under the influence of mescal. On all these grounds it may be claimed that the artificial paradise of mescal, though less seductive, is safe and dignified beyond its peers.

  It may at least be claimed that for a healthy person to be once or twice admitted to the rites of mescal is not only an unforgettable delight, but an educational influence of no mean value.

  The Contemporary Review, January 1898

  From: The Hashish Club: An Anthology of Drug Literature, vol. 1, ed. Peter Haining, 1975

  All are but parts of one stupendous whole

  Whose body nature is, and God the Soul


  Alexander Pope

  Mike Jay

  Blue Tide – 2

  Within the low-level field of electrical conductivity which is the medium of brain activity, messages are carried around the brain by chemical agents known as neurotransmitters, of which the best-known are probably dopamine and serotonin. In 1994, the mechanism of action of cannabis was finally understood: it’s a natural analogue of a neurotransmitter which exists in the brain, an ‘endo-cannabis’ in the same way as endorphins (‘endo-morphines’) are our natural internal opiates. So cannabis and opiates work by flooding the brain with chemicals which are themselves designed to send out waves of signals, initiating ‘cascade reactions’ of other chemicals which translate these brain signals into powerful physical reactions. In the early 1950s, it was discovered that when the neurotransmitter serotonin was incubated in vitro in the pineal gland tissue of mammals, it broke down into a range of complex organic metabolites. Serotonin itself is a tryptamine, and some of these metabolites were other methylated tryptamines, such as dimethoxytryptamine – DMT. What’s more, these in turn broke down into betacarbolines harmaline, tetra-hydro-harmine and the rest. Various mammalian and human pineal glands were then analysed for these chemicals, and found to contain them. The extraordinary fact was that the ayahuasca brew of harmaline and DMT was actually present in the human brain.

  Blue Tide, 2000

  Where’s my serpent of Old Nile?

  William Shakespeare

  Jeremy Narby

  Biology’s Blind Spot

  IN 1979, IT was discovered that the human brain seems to secrete dimethyltryptamine – which is also one of the active ingredients of ayahuasca. This substance produces true hallucinations in which the visions replace normal reality convincingly, such as fluorescent snakes to whom one excuses oneself as one steps over them. Unfortunately, scientific research on dimethyltryptamine is rare. To this day, the clinical studies of its effect on normal human beings can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

  In their visions, shamans take their consciousness down to the molecular level and gain access to information related to DNA, which they call ‘animate essences’ or ‘spirits.’ This is where they see double helixes, twisted ladders and chromosome shapes. This is how shamanic cultures have known for millennia that the vital principle is the same for all living beings and is shaped like two entwined serpents (or a vine, a rope, a ladder . . .). DNA is the source of their astonishing botanical and medicinal knowledge, which can be attained only in defocalized and ‘nonrational’ states of consciousness, though its results are empirically verifiable. The myths of these cultures are filled with biological imagery.

  Shamans say the correct way to talk about spirits is in metaphors. Biologists confirm this notion by using a precise array of anthropocentric and technological metaphors to describe DNA, proteins, and enzymes. DNA is a text, or a program, or data, containing information, which is read and transcribed into messenger-RNAs. The latter feed into ribosomes, which are molecular computers that translate the instructions according to the genetic code. They build the rest of the cell’s machinery, namely the proteins and enzymes, which are miniaturized robots that construct and maintain the cell.

  The Cosmic Serpent, 1995

  It has, I believe, been often remarked, that a hen is only an egg’s way of making another egg

  Samuel Butler

  Peter Matthiessen

  At Play in the Fields of the Lord

  A DOG TURNED in its circle and lay down in the shade, and a vulture swung up and down in a short arc above the jungle, as if suspended from a string. In the heat of the siesta, the street below was hollow as a bone.

  He took the cork out of the bottle, and holding his breath to kill the bitterness, drank off half the brown fluid in a series of short gulps, gargling harshly when he was finished and spitting the residue into the street. The aftertaste made him gag. He sat down on the window sill and in a little while the nausea receded, leaving only a thick woody taste and a slight vagueness.

  A half-hour passed. Maybe the Indian had watered the infusion. A voice in the salon below sounded remote to him, and he nodded; he was on his way. A little more ayahuasca, Mr. Moon? He took up the bottle and drank off another quarter of it, then set it down very slowly. You’ve made a bad mistake, he thought; already he knew he did not need it. The effects were carving very suddenly, and he stood up and stalked the room. In overdose, he had read somewhere, the extract of Banisteriopsis caapi is quite poisonous and may bring on convulsions, shock and even death.

  How silent it was – the whole world was in siesta. He glanced quickly out the window, to take time by surprise; the dog slept soundly, and the vulture still swung up and down its bit of sky, dark as a pendulum. From the far end of the street, a solitary figure was moving toward him, down the center of the street – the last man on earth. There you are, he thought, I have been waiting for you all my life. Now he was seized with vertigo and apprehension; his heart began to pound and his breath was short. He went to his bed and lay down on his back. He felt a closure of the throat and a tension in his chest, a metal bar from chin to navel to which the skin of his chest was sewn. Breathing became still more difficult, and a slight pain in the back of his head became a general, diffused headache. He turned cold and his teeth chattered; the hands pressed to his face were limp and clammy.

  I am flying all apart, he thought; at the same time his chest constricted ever more tightly. Let go, he told himself aloud. Let go.

  He rolled over on his side and blinked at the other bed. The man on the bed retreated from his vision, shrinking and shrinking until he was no bigger than a fetus.

  Color: the room billowed with it; the room breathed. When he closed his eyes, the color dazzled him; he soared. But there was trouble in his lungs again, and his heart thumped so, in heavy spasmodic leaps, that it must surely stall and die. He broke into a sweat, and his hands turned cold as small bags of wet sand . . .

  He sat up, aching, in a foreign room. He could breathe again, although his heart still hurled itself unmercifully against his chest: how thin a man’s poor chest was, after all; it was as thin as paper, surrounding a hollow oval space of wind and bitterness. Thump, thump-ump, um-thump; it would crash through at any minute, and what then? Do I greet it? Introduce myself? How long can a man sit holding his heart in his hands?

  He keeled from the bed and drifted to the window, but the figure coming down the street was gone; again he had missed some unknown chance. The street was void, a void, avoid. Dog, heat, a vulture, nothing more. A dog, a vulture, nothing more, and thus we parted, sang Lenore.

  Singing. Somewhere, somewhere there was singing. His whole body shimmered with the chords, the fountainhead of music, overflowing. The chords were multicolored, vaulting like rockets across his consciousness; he could break off pieces of the music like pieces of meringue.

  You’re sleeping your life away, he told the dog.

  Do you hear me? I said, Do you hear me?

  Meri-wether, Sheriff Guzman said. That’s some name for a red nigger, ain’t it? You’re the smart one, ain’t you, kid? Ain’t you supposed to be the smart Cheyenne? Done good in the war, and now they gone to send they little pet Christ-lovin Cheyenne to college, ain’t that right, kid? Well, kid, if you’re a real smart Injun, you won’t even go and look at me that way, you’ll keep your Injun nose clear, kid.

  Oh, to be an Indian! (Now that spring is here.) Big Irma: Be a good boy, Lewis. Do not fight so much. You come back and see us now. Alas, too late – the world is dead, you sleepyhead. The Inn of the Dog and the Vulture. There are voices, you see, then singing voices, then strange voices, then strange musics, hollowed out, as if drifted through a wind tunnel, these followed by a huge void of bleak silence suggesting DEATH.

  The Story of my Life, by Lewis Moon

  Now . . . something has happened, was happening, is happening. BUT WILL NOT HAPPEN. Do you hear me? I said, DO YOU HEAR ME?

  A softer tone, please.
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  To begin at the beginning: my name is Meriwether Lewis Moon. Or is that the end? Again: I was named Meriwether Lewis Moon, after Meriwether Lewis, who with Lieutenant William Clark crossed North America without killing a single Indian. So said my father; my father is Alvin Moon ‘Joe Redcloud,’ who lived up on North Mountain. Alvin Moon still traps and hunts, and in World War I, when still a despised non-citizen, exempt from service, joined those 16,999 other Indians as insane as himself who volunteered to serve in World War I. Alvin Moon is half-Cheyenne; he went down South when he came home and took up with a Creole Choctaw woman named Big Irma and brought her back up to his mountain. The worst mistake that Alvin Moon ever made was trying to educate himself; his information about Lewis and Clark was the only piece of education he ever obtained, and it was wrong. He used to joke that he couldn’t educate himself unless he learned to read, and how could he learn to read if he didn’t educate himself? So he left off hunting and trapping and came down off his mountain and took work near the reservation to keep his children in the mission school, to give them a better chance in life.

  Again: my name is Lewis Moon, and I am lying on a bed (deathbed?) in a strange country, and I hear eerie voices and a crack is appearing on the wall, wider and wider, and the bulb in the ceiling is growing more and more bulbous, and will surely explode – a crack (of doom?) of lightning down the walls.

  The extract of B. caapi is a powerful narcotic and hallucinogen containing phenol alkaloids related to those found in lysergic acid, and whether or not it finds a respectable place in the pharmaceutica of man, it has held for unknown centuries an important place in the culture of Indian tribes of the Amazon basin.