Image via OzHouse

Novelist, essayist, spiritual seeker, intellectual, humanist, and advocate for careful experimentation with psychedelic drugs.

Aldous Huxley loved California.

He enjoyed the open-mindedness, interest in Eastern religions, and cultural curiosity he encountered in America, along with the companionship of colleagues like Alan Watts, Christopher Wood, and Esalen founders Michael Murphy and Dick Price. Alan Watts and Felix Greene called Huxley, Gerald Heard, and Christopher Isherwood – all passionately interested in the Vedanta philosophy of Swami Prabhavananda – “the British mystical expatriates of southern California.”

On March 20, 1962 Huxley gave a lecture, “The Ultimate Revolution,” at the University of California at Berkeley. He warned his listeners about totalitarianism and how future oligarchs will ensure that people enjoy their servitude. Maybe we should add “prophet” to his list of accomplishments.

Huxley, “The Ultimate Revolution,” full lecture:

 
I normally can’t stand child actors, but the trio of kiwi kiddies assembled for this anti-drugs and driving PSA are comedic geniuses. They’re like Trailer Park Boys level funny… Perfect timing.

I guarantee these kids are going to get their own TV show.
 

 
h/t reddit

The medical kit is pretty self-explanatory
 
Lest we become too nostalgic for days of yore, let us remember the medicine of yore! It’s been known for centuries that the nicotine found in tobacco is a powerful drug, but attempts to harness any prospective medicinal powers were fraught with misstep. The treatment of tobacco smoke enemas—or “glysters,” as they were amusingly called—for drowning victims was pioneered by English doctor Richard Mead in 1745, and was practiced widely until 1811, when a doctor discovered that nicotine was poison.

In 1954, cardiopulmonary resuscitation was introduced, but Mead was one most prominent early medical voices to argue that the “demons” so frequently diagnosed in the mentally ill were in fact, disease, so this wasn’t considered crackpot science, but the height of medical technology. In 1774, there was even a little rhyme presented at a meeting of the British Medical Association!

“Tobacco glyster, breath and bleed.
Keep warm and rub till you succeed.
And spare no pains for what you do;
May one day be repaid to you.”

If that’s what you’re into.
 

 

 
In April 1954, Stan Getz wrote from the jail ward of the Los Angeles General Hospital to the Editor of DownBeat magazine explaining how he had been busted in Seattle for (as Popsie Randolph put it) “holdin’ up a drugstore to get money to buy some stuff.”

Getz was one of the most talented saxophonists of his day, and had been a featured tenor sax since he was sixteen-years-old. He was also addicted to heroin, which caused the various behavioral antics that led Zoot Sims to describe him as “a nice bunch of guys.”

According to drummer Don Lamond, Getz’s early career success had never allowed him “a chance to grow up.”

“And you know how it was during the war. There weren’t any bands. There was nobody for these kids to dig except for a few guys who happened to be around, and some of those guys were on junk. And you know how kids are. Everything their idols did was right. So the kids did it too.

“Stan was an impressionable kid like many of them. And he was a spoiled kid, coddled all his life. The tragedy is that I can’t think of anyone who has more talent. Stan is a natural musician. He has a fabulous ear, imagination, a retentive memory. What else do you need?”

At a loose end in Seattle in 1954, Getz needed junk.

In his letter to Down Beat, Getz began by declaring he had many things to say, “excluding excuses, regrets, and promises.”

Promises from me at this point mean nothing; starting when I am released is when my actions will count.

His actions in Seattle was what he wanted to explain, and to understand.

What happened in Seattle was inevitable. Me coming to the end of my rope. I shouldn’t have been withdrawing myself from narcotics while working and traveling. With the aid of barbiturates, I thought I could do it. Seattle was the eighth day of the tour and I could stand no more. (Stan you said no excuses.) Going into this drugstore, I demanded more narcotics. I said I had a gun (didn’t).

The lady behind the counter evidently didn’t believe I had a gun so she told another customer. He, in turn, took a look at me and laughed, saying, ‘Lady, he’s kidding you. He has no gun.’ I guess I didn’t look the part. Having flopped at my first ‘caper’ (one of the terms I’ve learned up here), I left the store and went to my hotel. When I was in my room I decided to call the store and apologize. In doing so, the call was traced and my incarceration followed.

The woman behind-the-counter was Mary Brewster. When she asked to see Getz’s gun, he fled the drugstore, and ran directly to his hotel across the street, as other customers watched. When Getz ‘phoned Mary to apologize, a policeman was listening in. Gettz said:

“I’m sorry for the crazy thing I did. I’ve never done anything like that before. I’m not a stick-up man. I’m from a good family. I’m going to commit myself on Wednesday.” Brewster asks “Why don’t you commit yourself today?” “I can’t. If I don’t get drugs, I’ll kill.

The cop on the phone spoke up, pretending to be a doctor and asked if he can help. Stan blurted out his life’s story. The “doctor” said he was coming right over to help. Locked in his room, despairing and ashamed, Stan tried to kill himself by swallowing a fistful of barbiturates. The police knocked on his door minutes later, and run him in for booking. A photograph of Stan in the back seat of a patrol car, looking sick and scared, was flashed over the news wire services. The overdose of barbiturates took effect minutes after he was locked up and he collapsed.

In his letter to Down Beat, Getz explained explained his attempted suicide.

My ‘dope poisoning’ was sixty grains of a long-acting barbiturate that I swallowed en route to jail. I’d had enough of me and my antics.

An emergency tracheotomy was carried out to save Getz’s life. When he came round from his drug coma three days later, he found himself lying on a hospital bed at the Harbor Haven County Hospital, with a breathing tube in his throat.

Getz was sentenced to six months in jail, and three years probation. In his summing-up, the judge said:

“You have talent, family and a good background, but despite an income of a thousand dollars a week, you are not only broke, but your family is living under deplorable conditions. They are sleeping on the floor while you travel in luxury spending money on yourself - and doing what comes naturally.

“You’re a poor excuse for a man. If you can’t behave yourself, someone else is going to have to look after you… It’s time you grew up.”

Getz was admitted to the jail ward at the LA General Hospital, where his detox began. At the very moment he was being processed to the prison ward, his addicted wife was downstairs, giving birth to their daughter Beverly.

In jail, Getz received incredible support (through letters, telegrams and ‘phonecalls) that helped him through his moment of despair. Though he was not a religious man, the experience showed him that “there was a God, not above us but here on earth in the warm hearts of people.”
 

 
And yea, Bob said unto the unbelievers, “Herb is the healing of the nation,” and it is “cool.” For those that smoke the herb shall bring their heads together to think one way. And Bob decreed that the herb was like a man drinking water, and though it be illegal, recall that the man who made the law was a baby once. For when you smoke the herb it reveals unto you yourself. Here endeth the lesson from the book of Bob.

Vintage interview with Mr. Bob Marley, in which he discussed his thoughts on Rastafari, the use of the “herb” and why alcohol is far more dangerous drug than marijuana. The video quality is slightly trippy, but there is much here to relish.

Check here for Bob’s interview with High Times from 1976.
 

 
A cafe in Glasgow, Scotland, has come under criticism for selling Breaking Bad crystal meth cupcakes.

The Riverhill Coffee Bar is selling the cupcakes, with a blue topping that resembles the crystal meth drug manufactured by Bryan Cranston’s character, Walter White, in the hit TV series, at $3.00 a hit.

Christine Duncan, chief executive of Scottish Families Affected by Alcohol and Drugs, told Glasgow’s Evening Times:

“The glamorising of drugs is completely distasteful.

“We know from our membership base that the impact of drug misuse on families includes financial instability, breakdown in family relationships and the loss of employment.”

Two different points being made by Christine here, neither of which relate to the subject of cupcakes.

Meanwhile Nina Parker, city councillor for the Green Party said:

“It doesn’t sit well with the work that is being done to tackle drug abuse. Quite frankly, there’s nothing funny about recreational drug use.”

I bet Nina’s parties are a riot.

The criticisms relate more to drugs and drug use rather than the retail of a novelty confection. Methinks, the comments are almost veering a wee bit towards Chris Morris’s Brass Eye satire on the drug Cake.

In response a spokesperson for the Riverhill Coffee Bar said:

“We absolutely do not condone the use of drugs. Breaking Bad is such a huge, cult hit and this was simply us jumping on that bandwagon and making something that would appeal to fans of the show.”

If you want to bake your very own Breaking Bad crystal meth cupcakes, then check recipes here and here, or video here.
 

Lest we forget: Chris Morris investigates the misuse of Cake.
 
Via the Evening Times

 
Raymond Pettibon’s cover art for Sonic Youth’s Goo album meets Breaking Bad in this droll tee-shirt mashup.

It reads: “I stole Combo’s mom’s RV. It was all whirlwind, heat, and flash. With-in a week we killed Krazy-8 and hit the road.”

Pettibon’s original illustration was based on a 1966 news photo of Maureen Hindley and David Smith, witnesses in the case of the “Moors murders” serial killers Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, as they to made their way to the trial.

It’s available at Society 6 for $18.00.

Via Suicide Watch

 
It’s normal for people to fantasize about having their own theme song. But thanks to the outlawed narcocorrido genre of Latin music, if you are a major drug smuggler or head of a Mexican drug cartel, you really do have your very own customized theme song.

It’s not enough to move millions of dollars worth of illegal drugs, intimidate rivals, scare journalists, accumulate a ton of flauntable personal wealth, and control large swaths of Mexico. One has to also be a modern-day folk hero and have ballads (corridos = traditional Mexican ballads) written about one’s criminal exploits.

Corridos originally used the medieval European ballad form to chronicle stories about heroes, revolutionaries, soldiers in the Mexican War, and outlaws like Pancho Villa or Emiliano Zapata. Drug smugglers view themselves as part of this lineage. The long-standing tradition of the corrido is anti-authoritarianism, with or without a drug culture to go along with it.

Cartel leaders pay Mexican songwriters to write glowing tributes to them, their organization, and superior products. It’s a great gig if you can get it… and don’t mind pissing off the leaders of other cartels, who might well kill you and your family for promoting the wrong side. Vice reported: “Sometimes narcocorrido singers avoid getting offed by getting songs approved by various cartels. Movimiento Alterado [another name for the narcocorrido genre] has sent songs to the Sinaloa cartel for clearance before releasing them.”

A norteño singer-songwriter from Monterrey named Edgar told me about the dilemma facing young artists. He left Nuevo Leon to start a Regional Mexican band in the U.S., where some of his relatives had already immigrated, because he didn’t want to write about the drug culture and no longer felt safe being a songwriter in Mexico.

Narcocorridos are banned from the radio and public performance in the states of Sinaloa and Chihuahua. This level of censorship is ludicrous considering the number of Spanish language radio stations in the U.S. with signals reaching far into Mexico, not to mention satellite radio and the internet.

Officials recently fined concert promoters in Chihuahua $8000 for allowing El Komander (Alfredo Rios) – whose catalogue was described by Latin Times as “one full of tall tales of pistol-packing drug traffickers and cartel dons” – to perform his work.

The fine was so high because Los Tucanes de Tijuana – whose shows have turned into shootouts in the recent past – were hired to appear at a music festival in Chihuahua City this summer and blithely paid the 23,000 pesos (about $1700) fine so they could play. Then the city raised the fine to 100,000 pesos ($7500). The mayor, Marco Quezada, said that he won’t issue another concert permit to the promoter who brought the narco-balladeers to town.
 

 
The template for the criminal folk hero is Robin Hood-like “generous bandit” Jesús Malverde, the patron saint of the illegal drug trade (along with Santa Muerte), especially in Sinaloa. Unofficial saint, because Malverde is just one example of local Mexican Catholic folk customs enraging and embarrassing the Vatican. He is said to have only stolen from the rich and helped the poor until he was killed by police in 1909.

The regular level of violence in this musical subculture far exceeds rap’s bad reputation. Singer Valentín Elizdale was murdered in front of hundreds of people in 2006 after a concert during which he sang lyrics insulted the Zetas cartel. Sinaloa’s beloved Chalino Sánchez, who performed mainly in southern California, was one of the major musical casualties of the drug war. He began writing narcocorridos to order at the request of his fellow inmates while in jail, and despite his weak voice, the song commissions kept coming once he was released. In 1992 when an audience member shot him during a concert, Chalino pulled out a gun and shot back. Unfortunately someone finally succeeded in murdering Chalino execution-style a few months later.

Narcocorridos, for all their dark, boastful, nihilistic, violent lyrics, sound…well, like cheerful polkas and waltzes. Trust me, I lived next door to people who played this music at top volume 24/7 for three years straight. A quick browse of the CD’s at a bodega or mercado reveals that most of the artists look like clean-cut pick-up truck driving cowboys, wearing tight jeans with huge belt buckles and cowboy hats. They do not resemble East L.A. cholos or Latin rappers in any way. If the Marlboro Man had a tidier Latino counterpart who was holding an assault rifle while surrounded by scantily clad women, he would be a narcocorridos singer.

Juan Carlos Ramirez-Pimienta, a teacher and scholar at San Diego State University, told Vice:

The narcocorridos react to reality. The cartels are at war, so the narcocorridos adopt a wartime propaganda message. They are meant to create fear in the enemy.

Composer Enrique Franco Aguilar disapproves of the drug culture and its glorification but loves corridos. Franco told music journalist Elijah Wald:

Too many of these “artists,” in quotation marks, only want money. But when you have a good interpreter the corridos can still have a very strong effect. Because the people believe in these artists. If the artists wanted, they could make a revolution. A great artist is more powerful than a politician.

The muy macho El Komander, waving lots of guns around after possibly raiding Johnny Cash’s closet, in “Mafia Nueva,” below

Previously on Dangerous Minds:

Valentin Elizalde: Raw Live Narcocorridos

‘El Narco’: An Epic and Bloody Mexican Gangster Film

 
When two beautiful worlds collide, you get… Nugtella!

I’ve yet to encounter this fantastical hazelnut chocolatey goodness—apparently infused with 320 milligrams of THC from hash oil—at my local dispensary, but I’m willing to give it try when I do! (You really had to twist my arm with that one, btw!)

So far it’s only available in the great state of California. And as BuzzFeed points out, “...all your Nutella recipes just got way more interesting.”

WORD.

 
At this point, “hipster” has basically become a catch-all for anyone under the age of 35 whose mother doesn’t dress them, so any and all drug consumption habits have fallen under the Instagram glow of this amorphous label.

Take alcohol, for example. Hipsters drink craft beer because they’re into DIY and micro-brews. Or is it that hipsters drink wine because it’s “artistic”? Oh wait, hipsters drink shitty malt liquor and PBR because it’s “ironic!” Or bougie mixed drinks made by these so-called “mixologists”? Or more esoteric hooch, like sarsaparilla and moonshine (ooh, retro!)?

Well you’re all wrong, because everyone knows drinking is soooooo over. Nowadays, hipsters do meth! Not only that, they make twee little videos about cooking it themselves! Next stop, Etsy! Maybe they can’t sell the drug there directly, but I’m sure they could make an adorable little illustrated how-to guide, and there’s all sorts of “cooking” accouterments that could be sold as accessories? Hand-felted meth pipes from recycled cat hair, for example!

(By the way, growing up in meth country, I was into meth wayyyyyy before it became hip!)