Oaxacan Gold, Mexico - foto by Smith

A brief history of marijuana from WEEDS and Smith:

2727 B.C. - China begins using marijuana as medicine
500 B.C. - marijuana reaches Europe by way of India and Africa
1492 - Christopher Columbus brings marijuana to the new world
1619 - Jamestown Colony law: All settlers required to grow marijuana
1797 - George Washington’s primary crop at Mount Vernon is marijuana
1876 - The Sultan of Turkey gives the U.S. marijuana as a gift
1880 - Turkish smoking parlors open all over the northeast U.S.
1891 - Queen Victoria is prescribed marijuana to relieve menstrual cramps
1908 - Henry Ford’s first Model T is made with marijuana plastic and runs on marijuana ethanol
1937 - Federal law bans marijuana
1942 - the U.S. Military uses marijuana as truth serum
1965 - 1 million Americans had tried marijuana
1974 - 24 million Americans had tried marijuana
1980s - the Reagan administration begins its war on drugs
1980s - every 38 seconds someone is arrested for violating marijuana law
1996 - Proposition 215 passes in California, medical marijuana is legal
2009 - marijuana is America’s #1 cash crop at $36 billion a year
2009 - 95 million Americans have tried marijuana

Presidents of the United States who have smoked marijuana: George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, John F Kennedy, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, Zachary Taylor, Franklin Pierce, Abraham Lincoln. (You notice the only real scumbag of the lot is George W Bush).

YEAR - MARIJUANA ARRESTS
2001 - 723,627
2000 - 734,498
1999 - 704,812
1998 - 682,885
1997 - 695,200
1996 - 641,642
1995 - 588,963
1994 - 499,122
1993 - 380,689
1992 - 342,314

data harvested from these 3 addresses, among others:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/21/a-brief-history-of-weed-v_n_206197.html

http://skeptically.org/recdrugs/id8.html

http://www.vetocorleone.com/2009/02/12-presidents-who-allegedly-smoked-weed.html

buzzed - foto by Smith

across the street from our Oaxacan apartment - foto by smith

Today is my bornday. I’m 63 and sober when I’d rather be stoned; cold when I’d rather be warm; in pain when I’d rather not be. Arthritis is aggravated by cold, humidity and lack of grass (grass is a pain reducer as well as an anti-inflammation).

So I’ll rewrite what I wrote 2 months ago and didn’t post. Figured it best if I waited until out of Mexico. Looking back, I’m glad to be out of the daily dope business - it gets rather repetitive, becomes usual, mundane.

~ ~ ~

Past 24 hours have been a druggie’s dream, a William S. Burroughs short story.

Last night did some Clonazepam(*). Today smoked a big bunch of grass, a lot of hash, and had my first taste of fresh opium paste.

Clonazaepam is a weird, strong unstone. Lady got a prescription to help her sleep back when she was having anxiety problems, and since that is past, she let me try it. Being an old druggie, I love expanding my experience. You take 8 drops of Clonazepam and a powerful taste moves through your head but you don’t get high, just feel a little odd, and then 30 minutes later you’re asleep for 4 hours. If you try to stay awake, you still go to sleep. Interestingly functional, but nothing fun.

Smoked grass and hash daily for 15 months down here in Oaxaca Mexico. The grass was $6 an ounce, the hash $2.50 a gram. Smoked close to 4 ounces of grass and 3 grams of hash a month. For the first time in 42 years of smoking, availability and cost were not factors. Only factors were how early to start in the day, and how much to smoke. Figured a good stone was 60 cents a day.

My personal high point in our 31 months of travel was a month of smoking Moroccan hash in Marrakech. Other cool points were finding a month of red skunk weed in London, two weeks of golden hash in the south of France, a month of good grass in Krakow, two more months of Moroccan hashish in Essaouira, and 15 months of grass hash and opium in Mexico. And of course a week of buying different grasses and hashes from coffee bar menus in Amsterdam.

10 of those 31 months I was straight - the first 10 months in 2006-7.

It took us 6 weeks to find smoke in France, 1 day in Marrakech, 3 weeks in Essaouira, 3 days in London, a month in Krakow, and 4 days in Mexico. Never did find it in Croatia, Spain or Italy. Here in Cleveland I found it our first day, but can’t afford to buy it.

But enough is more than enough. Time to see who straight Smith is, although in today’s society, calling me straight is like calling a Republican honest, a CEO ethical, or a priest moral.

*[Clonazepam is an anti-anxiety medication in the benzodiazepine family, the same family that includes diazepam (Valium), alprazolam (Xanax), lorazepam (Ativan), flurazepam (Dalmane), and others. Clonazepam and other benzodiazepines act by enhancing the effects of gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) in the brain. GABA is a neurotransmitter (a chemical that nerve cells use to communicate with each other) that inhibits brain activity. It is believed that excessive activity in the brain may lead to anxiety or other psychiatric disorders. Clonazepam also is used to prevent certain types of seizures.]

Lady’s last trip to the Juarez Market, Oaxaca - foto by smith

Clonazepam - foto by smith

The doc gave Lady a prescription for Clonazepam to help her sleep to recover from her month of no sleep at all last year. It was supposed to be enough for two weeks, but she still has some two months later and let me try it last night because I couldn’t sleep and was keeping her awake.

According to Wikipedia, “Clonazepam (a.k.a. Rivotril or Klonopin) is a benzodiazepine derivative with highly potent anticonvulsant, muscle relaxant and anxiolytic properties. Clonazepam is a chlorinated derivative of nitrazepam and a nitrobenzodiazepine like nitrazepam. Clonazepam is the second most misused benzodiazepine in the United States.”

Being a semi-retired druggie–I’m down to cannabis, cookies and coffee–I was dying to see what it was like. For 42 years I’ve taken hundreds of drugs, and each time I sit and wait to get off, analyzing their subtle beginning effects to see if, when, how, why I’m getting high.

One of my biggest drug disappointments was in the hospital ICU back in 1991 when I drank myself to death. Before they shoved a hot wire down my throat to cauterize my hemorrhaging esophagus, they gave me some sodium pentothal intravenously and told me to count backwards from 100. I was ecstatic finally getting to try such a rich high I’d repeatedly read about and seen in the movies. I didn’t make it to 90. Somewhere in there I was awake, the next second I was gone, and the third second I was back and they were done. No high, no feeling, just a switch that turned me off, then back on again.

Clonazepam is like that. You put 8 drops in a spoon and lick it with your tongue. You can feel this powerful odd taste moving quickly through your head flesh and think wow, this is strong stuff. But there is no high. There’s taking, there’s taste, and there’s sleep - no in between. Within 30 minutes of taking it, you are asleep. If you want to stay awake and see what it’s like, too bad - you’re asleep. It turns you off like a light switch.

And it isn’t a restful sleep either. Whatever benefit your body receives from normal sleep doesn’t happen. You’re tired, desperate for rest, take the drops, disappear, wake up tired and groggy and desperate for rest.

I tell you, being a druggie just ain’t what it used to be. My body and my brain used to be one unified drug desire. Now at 63 years old with a tired weary worn experienced body and a weary worn experienced cynical sorry brain, it’s more like “what are you doing, and why?” Still, I’m happy to add one more stuffed head to my drug collection. But my body and soul are getting tired. As I wrote three years ago,

Junkie Business

I’m losing my last two crutches:
coffee
and marijuana.

In the old days
I could have coffee
after dinner.

Now no.

You know,
this junkie business
is for younger bodies.

You keep doing it,
and pretty soon,
you end up like Keith Richards,
falling out of trees
and landing on your head.

My biggest drug disappointment though was here last year when we trekked up the endless mountains to Huautla to do legal magic mushrooms. The amount of over-priced mushrooms the shaman sold me was not enough to get me off (although Lady had a wonderful warm magic trip - her first). I’ve tripped hundreds of times on mushrooms from 1968 through 2008, and this was the first time I never got off. Turned out it took two of their doses to give me a mild trip. This was massively disappointing because Huautla is where the Beatles, Bob Dylan, and Donovan went in the 1960s to do mushrooms. Since we were going to the very magic mountain which was the source of it all, I expected to have the best trip of my life, and instead got ripped off. (If anyone else goes, stay away from the woman who is involved with the 13 Grandmothers Council of Indigenous Women–they’ve high prices and low quality product.)

I’m kind of glad my drug days are slipping away, especially since what was fun then is work now.

junkie business - foto by smith