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| Messe Noir, Manuel Orazi, 1903 |
Sex, Drugs & Magick: Powders, White and Deadly
It is wildly different talking about opioid addiction in 2022 than when this book was penned or revised. In the part of our Brave Nation that I hail from, most of us know someone whose life has been affected by addiction to these types of drugs. (If you don't know someone who is addicted to cocaine, you can easily find someone addicted to meth. If you don't know someone who is addicted to heroin, you can easily find someone addicted to prescription painkillers.) This has led to a culture that is more sympathetic whilst simultaneously being more judgmental. Pity seems to be measured by the distance between you and the addict(s) you know, with love for the addicts as a corollary. There's a lot of hemming and hawing; really, it is incessant, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of progress.
Secondly, it is a very different milieu since fentanyl made its debut on the world stage. Warnings abound about avoiding any powder as you don't know what it is and it could be cut with something worse than talcum powder and baby laxative. Many public health initiatives have tried to make testing kits commonly available (causing the moralists to powder the pearls in their clutches). Narcan training is increasingly common and there are often initiatives to get members of the public trained in its application. Over the past weekend, I passed a car with "I CARRY NARCAN" in large, red letters on a bumper sticker. These, while indicative of our times, are also signs of progress in our apprehension of the nature of drug addictions- that we must be ameliorative, instead of wishing it would simply go away.
Harm reduction is a wonderful thing, and I am heartened every time I see some new method adopted. I have always fancied Wilson's "solution" to the ill-effects of heroin and hope to see something like that in the United States someday. I don't care for people to die, despite unfortunate circumstances and/or choices.
Stray Thoughts
- Diary of a Drug Fiend is as insightful and interesting as Wilson makes it out to be, and, like most of Crowley's writing is occasionally very funny. It also contains some very harrowing scenes of drug addiction, but essentially it is a romance. The love between Peter Pendragon and Lou Laleham is a central part of the novel; I also agree that modern audiences would probably find Lou's true will more offensive than the other components.
- The poem quoted in this chapter from Diary of a Drug Fiend is "The Treasure House of Images" by Captain J. F. C. Fuller which Wilson also has Leila Waddell recite snippets from in Masks of the Illuminati.
- I do appreciate, and had forgotten, that Wilson acknowledges the provenance of Gardener's Wiccan rituals.
- While it could be said just as easily of many things, my experiences have taught me that heroin addiction, aside from the user and victims of theft, affects children more than anyone else. It is perhaps the most regrettable and heartbreaking part of the picture.
- I don't really have much of a song in mind for this chapter. Be safe out there.
:Pertinent suggestions for music:
I hope your new school year goes well.
ReplyDeleteThe same to you, Eric. Thank you!
DeleteEverything written in this blog post is so sensible, I'm not sure what to add. I will point out that while RAW is probably correct that heroin and heroin addicts are probably demonized too much, fentanyl does, as you state, make the situation darker. Carl Hart, who I've written about on my blog (he's the "Drug Use for Grownups" author) has emphasized that there is nothing wrong with using heroin, but that's only true if you have a guaranteed source of pure heroin that isn't cut with fentanyl or something else that's terrible. As long as there's no safe source of heroin, which I think is true for most users, the risks of using it outweigh any possible benefit. (When Nick Gillespie interview Hart, he asked about Hart's supplier. Hart did not answer, which of course is reasonable, but the question went to the heart of the problem.)
ReplyDeleteI was not familiar with the “coke bugs”, and found this information interesting, especially when linked to blue whorls of energy from Reichian therapy or pranayama, as well as sensory deprivation tanks. I wonder if RAW is talking from personal experience here. Anyone with enough experience in yoga or flotation tanks willing to weigh in?
ReplyDeleteDiary of a Drug Fiend was my first literary exposure to Crowley, around the same time I first read Prometheus Rising. Maybe the use of Pendragon as name for the main character, beside denoting nobility, is there to place him in the mythological realm, and indicate that if he’s to accomplish great things, that won’t be without first going through Chapel Perilous.
The description of what it feels like to do one’s True Will on p.241-2 corresponds with what is sometimes called peak experience.
Finally, I suppose that the Lamus quote on the same page shows not only Crowley’s, but also RAW’s general position towards substances in this whole book: “there is nothing in nature which cannot be used for our benefit, and it is up to us to use it wisely.” I suspect that another important message to take from this book might be “I will never allow myself to be mastered by any force or any person.”
On p.254, I found Wilson’s jump from describing a diet based on “nuts and uncooked vegetables” (literally ‘raw’ food…) to calling it later a “meatless diet” a bit of a stretch, not to say a fallacy. Much more than just dead animals seems to be missing from this type of food intake.
Overall, despite my general lack of personal interest for these types of drugs, I very much enjoyed this chapter. I noted that even though it’s called Powders White and Deadly, one is conspicuously missing. It is pretty addictive, does serious damage, and maybe its being so widespread calls for the name of epidemic. I’m thinking of sugar.
It isn’t mentioned in the chapter, but from the same time period than the book’s original publication is the classic Barbet Schroeder film More, dealing with two hippies falling for heroin in Ibiza to the sound of Pink Floyd (way before Ibiza became synonymous with ecstasy and coke instead).
Here’s some soundtrack for this chapter:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0ER5H0VYts
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgdS7Lmn6_4
I have encountered something like "swirls" and blurred vision after longer pranayama sessions. It is kind of like the "floaters" in your eyes becoming overwhelming. After magic seems to work I often find myself with tension headaches at the base of my skull/back of my head. I've always imagined this has something to do with The Moon and Qoph.
DeleteI really like Colin Wilson's descriptions of "peak experience" and John Higgs does a great job connecting that, and more subtly magic/mysticism, to the psychological concept of "flow" in Stranger Than We Can Imagine.
Are you a vegetarian as well, Spookah? Thank you for the excellent soundtrack! I haven't listen to The Flying Burrito Brothers in ages and I'd never heard Frigid Stars! Great picks.
I forgot to mention that in this chapter, we encounter Sherlock Holmes for the second time in the book. First it was through George C. Scott in They Might Be Giants (p.77), and now the actual character's use of cocaine and codeine is referenced (p.251)
ReplyDeleteWhile cocaine is sometimes used as a sexual enhancer, I assume that codeine, being related to heroin, would have the opposite effect of numbing down one's sexual needs. Holmes is a very cerebral person, seemingly uninterested in sex, and sometimes acting borderline misogynistic. Rather than being suspected of homosexuality, he has in recent years been reappropriated by the asexual community.
I experienced those whorls of energy all the time as a kid when in bed trying to go sleep. They did remind me of insects, they did seem alive. I don't remember it much after age 8 or 9. I do recall it once in the flotation tank. That time the "bugs" were red, when they enveloped my consciousness, when it seemed I was in the middle of them, I felt a great deal of anger even though I had nothing to get angry about. I remember being amazed that red had, at least for me in that moment, an experiential connection with anger.
ReplyDeleteI've never known or heard of anyone taking opiates regularly who didn't want to stop including Timothy Leary. In the past I thought anyone thinking of taking heroin or related substances should read Naked Lunch by Burroughs. When I read it, it viscerally turned me off from any sort of that curiosity. I've never done any opiates except one time I was prescribed tylenol with codeine for a burn. I tried a dosage and it did absolutely nothing for me not even make the pain go away. It just made me feel detached from it. After that, I stayed with weed and topically applied aloe vera to relieve the pain and heal. I would try smoking opium if the opportunity ever arises. Of course, that's not a white substance.
It seems possible to use cocaine intelligently though you never hear about that and seems rare if anyone ever does. I personally haven't used it for over 30 years. The one period I did engage with that substance occurred while working as an assistant engineer to my mentor, a star recording engineer who used it regularly to work. From what I saw it really contributed to his genius, but it also shortened his life. He was 3 months older than me and died at age 58 from cancer. Sigmund Freud was a noted coke enthusiastic and other creative types such as James Joyce have been said to use it. Coca leaves and tea made from it seem a safe and useful stimulant, again not a white powder.