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Timeline of a 2003 Shabu party in Denver. Shabu is chemlab-pure methamphetamine. “The rush of Shabu itself is freakishly powerful. A single minuscule hit — about one-tenth of a gram, vaporized and inhaled — is enough to keep a weekend warrior like Nick riding the lightning for twelve hours. The statuette on Nick’s coffee table, cut into tiny pieces and smoked, holds about 250 hits.” (via tmn)
What are people smuggling into Germany? Twice as much cocaine as last year, stuffed lion cubs, and wine made from cobras.
Technological interruptions make you stupid: frequent email and phone users’ IQs fell more than twice as much as marijuana smokers’.
Photo of Beavis, a homeless man living in San Francisco, shooting up (perhaps NSFW). He was previously photographed in 1994 as a street kid in LA for Time magazine. “he picks his scabs to find a good spot; and tries a few locations before he gets a vein.”
Fascinating story of an amateur cyclist who starts taking various performancing enhancing drugs to see how they affect his performance. “I had a life once, and now I’m standing in the Easton WaWa in the middle of the night, looking like a cyborg, with thousands of dollars of drugs coursing through my veins. I started looking forward to the moment when the whole thing would be over.”
Video of a Steven Levitt talk on the economics of gangs and why gangbanger is not such a good vocation (for one thing, the job pays less than McDonald’s). The board of directors stuff made me think of the co-op on The Wire.
Story of a dog that was addicted to licking toads for the hallucinogenic effect. Listen to the audio version if you can. “Winter was going to come and we were going to have a dog without toad.” (via bb)
FDA says morning-after pills will be available for sale in the US to anyone 18 or older without a prescription. Since the morning after pill is just a bigger dose of regular birth control pills, does that mean women can get them over the counter now too? Why not?
Wu-oh. Floyd Landis had “an unusual level of testosterone/epitestosterone ratio” in his blood after stage 17 of the Tour de France. If his backup sample also tests positive, the title could be taken from him. You may remember stage 17 as the scene of Landis’ remarkable comeback. Cyclingnews.com says that “some athletes have naturally high levels, and can prove this through a series of tests”…is it possible that Landis was just super amped up from the effort that day?
Seth Stevenson describes an attempt to break out of his introverted shell by taking Paxil. Did it work? Only when he’d had a few drinks…oh and he basically lost the ability to feel emotions the rest of the time. “The fact that I considered a wholesale career change under the drug’s effects, and couldn’t complete any work, is alarming. ”
Speaking of brand genericide, Heroin was actually a brand name trademarked by the Bayer drug company. (thx chris, who joked, “Can I interest you in some Heroin brand morphine substitute?”)
Taking a drug test and feeling a bit dirty? Order a clean urine sample over the web. They even sell a kit with a fake penis for those under direct observation. (via rb)
New Google product announcement: Google Pharmacy. Spam is occasionally amusing.
Columbia House launches subscription meds program. “Qualified seniors may choose either 12 generic drugs for one cent, or five brand-name medications for 49 cents each, plus shipping and handling.”
Barry Bonds finally ties Babe Ruth with 714 home runs. And with relatively little fanfare, largely because the homers will be eventually invalidated by his drug use and because Bonds is a dink.
Update: The kid who caught the home run ball doesn’t care for Bonds much: “When asked if he would consider giving [the ball] to Bonds, Snyder declined with a mild expletive.” Bonds was also booed at stadiums around the league when the homer was announced.
Mexican president Vicente Fox didn’t sign the bill legalizing small quantities of drugs for personal use because of US pressure due to drug tourism fears. What I don’t understand is…why not just make it legal for Mexican citizens to allay US fears? Besides, anyone who goes to Mexico for drugs can get them if they want anyway, law or no.
Gladwell’s reading Game of Shadows (which alleges that Barry Bonds took steroids) and proposes that record setters like Bonds, Flo Jo, and Bob Beamon should be subjected to a high degree of statistical analysis before their records should be allowed to stand. (followup)
Not a big surprise, but it looks like Barry Bonds took all sorts of performance-enhancing drugs in the last few years of his career, including the season he hit 73 home runs.
“Fans are fascinated by the drugs-and-drink-fuelled excesses of rock stars such as Pete Doherty - but they don’t see the heavy personal toll it takes, writes Caroline Butler, who spent years with an alcoholic star”. (via tmn)
I’m in luck because it would take more than 260 cans of Pepsi to ingest enough caffeine to kill me. How much of your favorite beverage can you drink before suffering death by caffeine?
Laurie sends along an account of the week she spent in a psych ward. She says she’s “trying to publicize it in order to remove some of the stigma of mental illness”. Reminds me of Heather’s accounts of her psych ward stay last year.
Scientists who have tried drugs have included Carl Sagan, Richard Feynman, and Stephen Jay Gould. Like Sigmund Freud, fictional detective Sherlock Holmes was a fan of cocaine. (via cyc-c)
Freakonomists Levitt and Dubner: where did all the crack cocaine go? Well, it didn’t. Go. But the crime did.
The Hyperreal home page has lots of information about rave music, rave culture, and drugs.
Table of contents for The Complete Norton Anthology of Emily Dickinson, Post-Zoloft Prescription. Includes “Oh, the ice cubes are melting” and “Today’s a good day for stuff”.
The illegality of “Rio funk” music has driven it deep into the slums of Rio De Janeiro, controlled by the drug lords. “Funk songs used to pay homage to those who had died, but now it is fashionable to name-check those still alive. Juca is often asked by drug soldiers to write lyrics that include their names.”
The career of major league pitcher Dock Ellis, including how he pitched a no-hitter on acid.
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