In this edition of Flashback Friday, writer Steve Block outlines all the reasons why everyone should avoid jimsonweed. Originally published in the December, 1975 issue of High Times.
The search for exotic highs is like the temptation to bet on “propositions”: of course, you know who won the World Series in 1936, how to sing the “Horst Wessel Song,” or that the dude drinking pink ladies cannot pour that glass into your trousers without getting you wet. Damon Runyon summed up the smart gambler’s attitude to “propositions” in his advice to Sky Masterton in Guys and Dolls “Sky,” he said, “some day a man is going to come along and show you a brand-new deck of cards on which the seal has not been broken, and he is going to offer to bet you any amount of money that he can make the jack of hearts jump out of the deck and squirt cider in your ear. But son, do not bet him, for as sure as you do, you will wind up with an ear full of cider.”
So it goes with dope. You trek 900 miles overland into the Amazon jungle to sample yagé in its natural habitat and some unscrupulous brujo (sorcerer) sells you a skullful of leopard piss that decorticates your left cerebral hemisphere. Cosmic Danny, the most righteous dealer in Denver, sells you a dozen buttons of peyote that get you the Nobel Prize for puking. Some hand-picked coca leaves trickle into Vancouver and your fillings trickle out. After a certain number of unsuccessful experiments with these overpriced emetics, one reluctantly gives up hit-and-run highs in favor of the tried and true, and peace reigns in the troubled brain.
Still, the temptation always lies beneath the surface. Stories circulate about gentle new blends of PCP or “mescaline.” …
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Author: High Times / High Times
