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Contributing Writers Creative Pieces DRUGS - February 2018

Mind-Altering Holiday

Posted on February 9, 2018

Written by Reinilde Jonkhout

It’s a little-known fact that Sinterklaas has a long lost psychedelic loving lesbian twin-sister, Cindy Claus. Her existence is little known because for the last few centuries she’s been peacefully dreaming in the far-off cosmos. In that time Sinterklaas became a dominant world destroyer, grinding “bad kids” into holiday treats, roasting non-Christians on open fires the size of entire forests, and otherwise being aloof.

Thankfully Cindy has returned to Earth! After weeks of partying with his sister Sinterklaas has penned the following confession:

What is the best holiday gift, but an altered mind, illuminating for us the darkest days of the year and seeing the return of the light before it actually happens?

Children who need presents the most don’t get them. I have been giving presents to the wrong children all along. I won’t let children work in slave labor conditions anymore. Constructing presents for other children, made with water they can no longer drink. I will close my factories. Instead, I will show children the gift of giving.

It was MDMA that made me unafraid to touch the same sex, and I will research that further. MDMA made me realize all my fears are not a given. Touching another man was inconceivable to me before, being a traditional Catholic. Thinking of all the hugs I missed out on, physically reminds me of that deficiency by way of a cold current shooting through my body.

When I was on LSD, I saw the magnitude of things that aren’t me. Trees were majestically towering over me. They suddenly looked so much bigger, and the wind I normally hate I admired. Sitting in a swing under a tree, I felt the tree itself swinging me. I never understood those outdoorsy,  mountain climbing folks, but I get it now. Even in the grey and rain, I wanted to be near nature and outside. The water of the river was an ever-changing abstract painting, sometimes even a pastel van Gogh. It was as deep as my lover’s eyes. I challenge every world leader to take LSD.

On ayahuasca I have gone through everything that I have repressed. And truthfully, I have been abused sexually as a child. In society that’s a secret and shame I can’t talk about. While tripping, I came across a drawing I had made as a child. Suddenly I realized, I can be that child again, that child not ruined by adults, and the drawing was beautiful. It was a flower, that I drew, and suddenly the flower was towering over me like a 90 story building. The sheer amazement of things I never considered possible or could never visualize, when did that end? When did I stop taking creativity seriously?

I am still that child. We who forget the potential of a flower drawn in the corner of a page, we destroy children, and our future, with our lack of empathy and imagination. Realising all the wrong I’ve done, and that we’re beyond the point of really saving the world, I need to give up my immortality and pass the torch onto my sister Cindy Claus.

What I need is to be born again as an ant to be stepped on and crushed soon after birth. We can see where the universe will take me from there. Birth is wonderful. In LSD hypnotherapy I have given birth, a magnificent and unexpected experience, showing that the soul has no gender.

My last realization is that a person can have too many dogs. While ending my journey I saw a woman walking maybe, nine dogs. Nine similar little, yappy dogs. That’s just too much.

Reinilde Jonkhout, is an Amsterdam-based artist from Curaçao. You can check out her other work at http://www.reinilde.com.

Contributing Writers DRUGS - February 2018

Let’s Talk About Drugs

Posted on February 1, 2018

Written by Anonymous

Through my story, I want to share a different take on drug use.

I arrived in Amsterdam as part of my exchange year when I was 19-years-old. Beforehand, I had studied psychology for two years in France and was quite ignorant when it came to drugs. Years of watching South Park had taught me basically that, drugs were bad. My country lived in the hypocrisy that smoking a pack a day and drinking a bottle of wine a night was far better and more respectable than ever touching a joint.

My personal history with drugs is quite special. I don’t drink, and I’ve only barely tried cigarettes, I’ve been prescribed Ritalin and Xanax for my attention and anxiety disorders. Yet, I despised people who took drugs for ‘fun’. I remember rejecting advances from people high on ecstasy at parties on the belief that I thought I was better than them.

Arriving in Amsterdam, the smell of cannabis in the streets and the magic truffles on display quickly led me to rethink what I knew about drugs. Clearly, a country like the Netherlands couldn’t tolerate this if it threatened the security and well-being of its citizens.

In the first few months of my stay in Amsterdam, my life was becoming increasingly stressful. My big question was what am I going to do in life? I feared I had lost connection with myself and my anxiety was intensifying by the minute. I met a medical anthropologist specialized in psychedelics, and although our encounter was brief, I owe him a lot and will cherish those moments for a very long time. He promised me tripping on magic truffles would bring some clarity.

Photo by Amritanshu Sikdar

As an aspiring researcher, I seek truth and value empirical evidence. The Netherlands has softer regulations than other countries when it comes to drug trials and this allows progress. Whether or not you’re against drugs, we should all encourage research. Scientific research on all drugs is the best way to make them safe, and to protect all users (for example 2CB is widely used drug but is still unstudied). No matter where you stand, educating yourself on drugs serves your side.

After hours of conversation, and digging around on Erowid (the online Bible for substances), I thought, why not? It was a very spontaneous decision, but I’m a woman of science, and the evidence suggested it was the right thing to do. Researchers are aware of the healing potential of psilocybin (the molecule in magic truffles) and are coming to very promising conclusions.

It was by far the most meaningful and powerful experience of my life, changing me forever in a way I could never have imagined before. The experience is hard to describe with words, but I explored myself and the universe, and found peace. I came back to reality purged of all sense of worry, and for two months I walked the world with confidence and calmness.

A few months later, when the magic of my trip faded and anxiety crawled back in, I had exams coming up and little-to-no motivation or concentration whatsoever. I had read promising articles on microdosing psychedelics to study. Hofmann, the scientist who first synthesised LSD said micro-dosing could “have gone on to be used as Ritalin if it (LSD) hadn’t been so harshly scheduled (in the USA).”

I went and bought another box of magic truffles and divided them into ten portions. I took a portion every day or every two days after lunch and the results were convincing. The best way to describe it is increased stamina. You have increased sensory perception but not in a scary reality-distorting way, more in a sense that you progressively become more aware of your environment, like if you saw the world in high definition and had never realized that setting existed to begin with. Your attention becomes more narrow and sharp but not like with amphetamines when you think your heart is going to blow up. Your movements flow much softer and your head feels good without ever feeling high or like you’re tripping. I studied much better, became kinder to myself, and was relaxed and happy with myself throughout my entire break before finals.

From my experience with psychedelics I have become a much more open person. I doubt tripping every time you face difficulties in life is a good idea, and I doubt relying on substances to study thinking it’s going to save your grades is a good idea, either. But I do strongly believe there are good stories like mine out there that people should be willing to hear and share. Educate yourself on the chemistry, on your purchase, and on your body.

Be critical, because there is a difference between what’s legal, and what’s moral. Be careful about what you do as a person and what you inflict on your body. You’re not in a position to judge someone who does coke every Saturday night if you binge eat burgers and never work out. Drugs can be a blessing or a curse. Set limits for yourself (perhaps skip heroin), be aware of the dangers and possible drifts.

If nothing else get to know yourself and drugs better.

   
Contributing Writers DRUGS - February 2018

Doping Music

Posted on February 1, 2018

Written by Jonny Walfisz

I think Lance Armstrong deserves to keep his trophies.  

As a self-aggrandizing non-sports guy, it’s possible that I just don’t get it. The only conceivable justification I find is that, perhaps, he had an unfair advantage on account of his testicles. Specifically, how the void in place of his testicles may have made the ride a little smoother, on account of the bicycle seat’s continual insistence on being unendurably uncomfortable.

Moving away, momentarily, from the subject matter of balls and bicycles, I really do believe that Lance Armstrong earned his Tour de France wins.

The competition is straightforward: We’ve got a really long road here, and we’d love to know who can do the spinny thing with their legs the quickest to get to the end first. I may not be a sportsman, but the simplicity is elegant, also in its conclusion. Lance is the one who did the spinny thing with his legs the best.

Yeah, sure, he took performance-enhancing drugs, but most of the other riders did too. This only speaks to how widespread the issue is. So let’s be real here. When should a person’s achievement be disregarded because they enhanced their performance in some way? We decided that the line should be drawn before steroids, but after protein shakes.

Lance took his drugs and that’s one reason he won the Tour de France. But the guy that came second couldn’t have done it without the bowl of muesli he had that morning. I fully expect his tearful apology on Oprah to follow shortly.

What if the same arbitrary rules, so casually demarcating what constitutes real human achievement, were applied beyond sports?

Photo by Ryan Loughlin

While researching this article I came across a rather incredible piece of journalism by one of Duke University’s music professors Carl Schimmel on doping in the music industry. The article contained outlandish claims about the use of a drug called ‘ÜBERnunu’ by famed musicians, a rank including Schoenberg and John Cage. These composers have been using ÜBERnunu to stimulate their orbitofrontal lobe, giving them an incredible advantage in their composition abilities. As societal pressures rose around these figures they were forced to drop the drug and it quickly disappeared from the medicine cabinets of talented musicians worldwide.

Now to clarify, the article is a satire. Nu-nu is a reasonably obscure drug from the Amazon and its relation to John Cage is one that can only be found in this lone article. What’s clearly the issue here is that this so-called professor-cum-journalist wrote without the necessary eye-winking candour that typically comes hand in hand with a satirical piece. The mini-bio at the bottom of the page boasting of Schimmel’s Yale-based education only serves to add gravitas to any wild statements he made previously. The tell, for those reading the article is one dime of a sentence, which I’ll quote:

“Authorities have discovered that some users have been unwittingly buying nunu that has been cut with dangerous fillers such as powdered bleach, rat poison, and French postmodernism.”

In a long article, this comes as a schism in the unique process of reading a piece of genuinely brilliant journalism. That nunu may be being cut with both rat poison and Derrida’s Writing and Difference, is both, (1) a dear worry to any frontal lobe’s health, and (2) effectively a train in wall scenario for the perception of the article as a great bit of journalism. Now it’s left in tatters as either eloquent satire or shoddy fiction at best.

But the experience of reading it was real. I had a great time finding out that Cage was an ÜBERnunu fiend and that this was the secret to his success. Cage wrote great music regardless of his drug habits. John Lennon created stunning art in the midst of a decade-long acid binge. Many great names produced brilliant work on drugs including Huxley, Bowie, Lou Reed and so on.

We value many artists for their ability to share an intimate part of their humanity with us. Yet much of the time they’re in an affected mental state.

Artists have always had their achievements credited to them regardless of their conscious cognizance, why not extend the same courtesy to those expressing themselves with their bodies and physical prowess?

This leads me to a few conclusions, truth is old-hat, participation is 80% of success, and Lance Armstrong deserves his medals back.

He lost his balls for Christ’s sake!