bin laden weed

"Reporters at Bin Laden's million-dollar hideout discovered small plots of marijuana growing in the deserted lots on the compound's perimeter. The dope plants were planted on three sides of the compound, alongside some less sexy crops such as cabbage and potatoes, CNN reported Tuesday. Despite Abbottabad's reputation as a military city, the discovery is not surprising.
Pakistan makes about $4 billion a year from drug trafficking - though opium poppy is the drug-runners preferred crop." (NYDN)

Step into my office

Recently, my uncle reminisced about how he and my mom used to get high on her deck when they were younger. He said that she called it her office, as in step into my office or let’s go discuss this in my office. She would call it officione. But officione is not a Spanish word, it’s not even Italian. They used to repeat the word to each other when one or the other was thinking of heading out onto the deck to smoke a joint. The word became an inside joke and they started to use it all the time, only not to just signify getting high. It was a phrase used to signify the freedom of doing what you want and the ability to do what you want. Mainly, I think it was used to signify the excitement that went along with that freedom. After some time, they didn’t need the deck anymore, just the word. The word could take them where they needed to go.

This is where I began my project: in search of an ephemeral place to get high.

-Matthew Spiegelman, 2007

on the shores of oblivion

Kabbalah cult member Lindsay Lohan, 21, had sex in the public bathroom of the Cirque Lodge drug rehab facility in Utah, with married musician Tony Allen, 39, of the band Dead Stays Alive. His wife, Stephanie Allen, a British multi-million pound heiress, and mother of his 8 month old twins, has filed for divorce. Between you and fellow Kabbalah member Paris Hilton, I don’t know who is worse with the home wrecking. The cult did a great mind job on you lot.

Mike Nelson, from A Psychic Vacuum, 2007

Ed Ruscha, Public Stoning, 2007 (commissioned by James Frey)

Weyburn Mental Hospital photographed by Peter Fraser

"After the war, Humphry Osmond and his colleague John Smythies perceived a similarity between the effects of LSD and the early stages of schizophrenia. In 1951, Osmond and Smythies moved to Saskatchewan, Canada to join the staff of a large custodial mental institution in the southeastern city of Weyburn, Saskatchewan. At Weyburn, Osmond recruited a group of research psychologists to turn the hospital into a design-research laboratory. There, he conducted a wide variety of patient studies and observations using hallucinogenic drugs, collaborating with Abram Hoffer and others. In 1952, Osmond related the similarity of mescaline to adrenaline molecules, in a theory which implied that schizophrenia might be a form of self-intoxication caused by one's own body. He collected the biographies of recovered schizophrenics and held that a psychiatrist can only understand the schizophrenic by understanding the rational way the mind makes sense of distorted perceptions. Osmond is also known for a study in the late 1950s in which he attempted to cure alcoholics with LSD, claiming a fifty percent success rate."

Albert Hofmann portrait by Peter Fraser

Dear Mr. Steve Jobs,

Hello from Albert Hofmann. I understand from media accounts that you feel LSD helped you creatively in your development of Apple computers and your personal spiritual quest. I'm interested in learning more about how LSD was useful to you.

Nest

...it seems a great deal took place during these night-into-mornings. Dark and brutal slogans commingle with love and tenderness as both sentiments go into creating this ambiguous dwelling.