Festivals, Drugs, The Recession And You

Will being poorer make you any less high at festivals this summer?

We investigate here.

DON’T

Holyfuckingshit, I swear I will never do drugs again in my life. I won’t even drink coffee. Just please, please quit materializing like that every time someone offers me a bump.

Yovani Solìs Embalms Ex-Presidents, Midget Wrestlers, And Victims Of The Narco Wars

Read about our time with him here.

Illegal 90s raving in Brighton

See the rest of the photos here.

FILIBUSTIN’ WITH WILLIE D - PUFF, PUFF, PASS DRUG LEGALISATION

Everyone knows America isn’t serious about winning the so-called “War on Drugs.” Think about it. If America has the military intelligence and muscle to invade a country and track its president to a hole in an isolated farm, you can’t tell me we couldn’t stop a boat, truck or airplane loaded with dope from crossing the border and reaching its desired destination.

Read the full article here

THE KING OF CANNABIS

fter making millions by smuggling weed from his Moroccan plantation to the rest of the world, and then being captured and convicted for the seventh time, pot baron Cees Hendriks decided to change his life and focus on refining cannabis seeds. Now he’s revolutionizing weed growth.

Watch the film here

WE CAN’T GET HIGH LIKE WE USED TO

More and more often when I go out partying in Mexico City, I notice that my friends somehow feel guilty for indulging in a joint or doing a line. When they do it, they can’t avoid thinking – at least for a second – that they are in some small way contributing to Mexico’s drug war, which has been responsible for 50,000 deaths and the disappearance of tens of thousands of people during the current government’s reign. Perhaps it’s even fair to say they no longer just smoke some weed or do a bump of coke: They smoke a finger, snort a tongue, take a bong rip of a torso. Then they laugh and get over it.

Read more about Mexico’s history with drugs here.

QOTD: WHAT’S YOUR WORST DRUG EXPERIENCE?

Decadent Western culture tends to portray intensely awful drug experiences as a good laugh, to the point where there’s a movie where some guys get roofied and wake up in a trashed hotel room, bloodied, with teeth missing and a tiger in the bathroom and it’s a nearly universally enjoyed lighthearted comedy. But sometimes you do a bunch of drugs and it’s not all that hilarious. We asked some people to tell us about their worst times getting high and… Jesus Christ.

Read the full article here

SMOKE PACO AND BECOME ONE OF THE WALKING DEAD

Hugo Ropero sat in his parked car, eyes fixated on the rearview mirror. He stared back vacantly at the hollow, sunken eyes and grey, lifeless skin drooping off his face. It had been a year since he’d started smoking paco and he no longer recognised himself.

Ropero tells me his story six years after rehab, his hands and feet fluttering from tremors, a side effect that will probably last his lifetime. He is the former photo editor for Noticias, one of Argentina’s leading culture magazines and a recovered addict of “the drug of extermination” also known as paco. It is a dangerous, highly addictive and toxic drug that first swept through the slums of Buenos Aires after the country’s devastating economic crisis in 2001. Its use has become a growing problem in the middle and upper classes.

Read the full article here

POTHEAD VS. PILLHEAD

The first psychiatrist who diagnosed me as bipolar and suggested I go on lithium ended up facing the wrath of my mom, a master in the art of passive-aggressiveness. “Have you asked her how often she exercises? How healthy she eats?” (She said this while eyeing the McDonald’s Value Meal on the doctor’s desk.) “How much pot she smokes?” The doctor walked us out, empty-handed, with the demeanor of a dog who’d just shat itself.

I was confused. I was fifteen. I was sure pharmaceutical drugs would come of this outing. So in the car I asked my mom what the hell had just happened. “That stuff will turn you into a robot, a zombie,” she said. “You’re not going on lithium – you’re creative.”

“Fine,” I said, trying to give the air of an ultimatum, like I had a choice in anything. “I’m going to keep smoking pot then.”

“Go right ahead,” she said. And for the next nine years, I self-medicated with weed.

Read the full article here

ACID CAM! - PHOTOS FROM MY TRIP TO THE WESTMINSTER DOG SHOW

Two days ago I ate acid and went to the Westminster Dog Show. While I was there I took a bunch of photos. These acid vision pictures wouldn’t fit in the original post, so here they are, in all their psychedelic glory.

See more photos here

THE WESTMINSTER DOG SHOW… ON ACID!

The Westminster Dog Show is a hellscape packed to the gills with Midwesterners and dogs who receive more attention and have better lives than at least 40 percent of the world. The amount of misplaced love and resources funnelled into these pooches on a daily basis is enough to make a stone-cold sober person uneasy. But yesterday I discovered that being thrust into the middle of the whole ordeal, while tripping acid, is a great way to kill an afternoon.

Read the full article here

FINALLY, THE HIP HOP KIDS ARE TAKING ACID

The Flatbush Zombies’ whole crew is sleeping the day away when I enter their crash pad somewhere in Brooklyn. It’s the midafternoon and four dudes are still sprawled out over two oversized mismatched couches under a haze of last night’s stale reefer smoke. From hung-over murmurs, I gather that there are acid tabs in the refrigerator and treasure troves of sour diesel weed hidden like stinky Easter eggs all over the apartment.

Zombie Juice and Meechy Darko, the MC duo that make up the Flatbush Zombies, are in the flophouse’s only bedroom. The tiny room has two bare mattresses on the floor and a single microphone looming in the corner. These are humble digs for a group that has been fawned over by every hip hop site on the web and is getting attention from major labels all on the strength of one really fucking good music video.

Read the full article here

LAURYN HILL LIVE… ON ACID!

A few weeks ago, a PR rep at Mohegan Sun Resort & Casino asked me to drive a few hours into Eastern Connecticut to interview Lauryn Hill. Now I like L-Boogie as much as the next guy. She’s known to not like white people all that much, Sister Act II has a great post-colon tagline (“Back In The Habit”), and The Miseducation Of… would have been perfect if it weren’t for the clips of kids learning between tracks. It seemed like as good a time as any to take a bunch of acid.

Read the full article here

DO YOU WANT TO JOIN MY CANNABIS CLUB?

The liberal political party in Germany, “Die Linke”, is pushing to make marijuana legal as long as it’s been cultivated in so-called Cannabis Social Clubs (CSCs). Under the proposed legalisation, people could become members of a CSC club and take a gram of marijuana home with them each day. Furthermore, motorists who are caught with THC coursing happily through their bloodstreams would not lose their licenses as easily. Similar legislation is already in place in Spain and Belgium, and unsurprisingly crusties and amateur stoners alike are attending such clubs in scores.

Since 2002, Georg Wurth has been the spokesman, director and owner of the German Hemp Collective. In 1996, he was charged with possession of four grams of marijuana, and so took it upon himself to get the ball rolling on the legalisation debate. To his misfortune (or fortune?), his charge brought him to the highest place possible, Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court, but it’s his 2010 petition, titled “Cannabis Consumer Decriminilisation”, that has played a major role in getting Die Linke to take these proposals to parliament.

I spoke to Georg the day before Die Link put the proposals he helped shape to parliament.

Read the full article here