Among the remedies which it has pleased Almighty God to give to man to relieve his sufferings, none is so universal and so efficacious as opium.
Thomas Sydenham
Everything one does in life, even love, occurs in an express train racing toward death. To smoke opium is to get out of the train while it is still moving. It is to concern oneself with something other than life or death.
Jean Cocteau
While reading Baron Ernst Von Bibra book, " Plant Intoxicants" late last night I began to think about the use and misuse of drugs. Can any drug be the universal drug for pain and suffering. Who wouldn't want to take a drug that would end all their pain ? Many people would want a drug. How many us at one time in our lives have used drugs ? I do not think that a single person can say they haven't used at least one drug. There might be a few older people that have not used illicit drugs, however he/she may have been prescribed a pain killer after an operation or a visit to the dentist. Drugs have been part of cultures for thousands of years.
I love what Salvador Dali answered when asked that question. He said,
" I don't use drugs. I am drugs."
One of the best Chinese proverbs about drugs is:
It is easy to get a thousand prescriptions but hard to get one single remedy.
The drug marijuana has been legalized in thirteen States. New York is not one of those states and I do not think it ever will be. There are many opinions about the use of marijuana. I know some people are trying to legalize marijuana because of the medicinal purposes. Some of their very lives and their pain levels depends on these drugs. If you were in that situation wouldn't you want to legalize the drug. I see people suffer from devastating diseases. I do want anyone to suffer with a disease or watch the disease ravage their bodies. If I could ease their pain, I will. I will turn to an opium derivative.
Yet I have heard of some people doing real hard prison time for carrying a small bag of marijuana. In history there are plenty of people who gave used drugs for a good purpose and some even use drugs to keep their jobs. When does social drug use become an addiction ? Is there such an entity as social cocaine or LSD use? If you have control issues in your personal life, you would not a good candidate to using drugs. There are people using cocaine, crack, ecstasy, heroin, opium, methamphetamines, LSD, psylocibin, peyote, PCP, amphetamines, uppers, Ketamine and downers. Some are happy about their use and some wish they had never touched the stuff. I have seen drugs end lives. Very famous people have used drugs over the years. Some of those people had wished they never started using drugs, and some feel they could not live without drugs. Would a painting by Dali be a painting without hashish ? Would Bela Lugosi been a great Dracula without his morphine and opium ? Would Miss Tallulah Bankhead been so witty without cocaine? I could go on and on. Drugs are part of our culture.
Hallucinogens have been part and parcel of man's cultural baggage for thousands of years. The hallucinogenic or psychoactive plants have been of great significance in the ideology and religious practices of a wide variety of peoples the world over, and in some traditional cultures continue to play such a role today. The native peoples of South America, alone utilized nearly a hundred different botanical species for their psychoactive properties, not counting scores of plants used for the brewing of alcoholic beverages to induce ritual intoxication. Many people are shocked by the idea that experiences resembling religious experiences can be produced by drugs.
I was amazed to discover that Papaver somniferum (Opium) is mentioned in the Bible. While reading James Duke's Medicinal Plants of the Bible, opium is not directly mentioned, but James Duke believes that the biblical gall was opium.
" They gave him vinegar to drink mingled with gall: and when he had tasted thereof he would not drink." Matthew 27:34 (King James Version) The gall added to the vinegar and thus given to Jesus was the juice of the opium poppy.
Opium is the air-dried milky exudate obtained from the excised unripe fruits. The seeds contain no opium and are used in cooking and baking. Although the poppy seeds on a bagel contain no narcotic alkaloid, a urinalysis following their ingestion may lead to a false positive urine test for opiods. Although only into 50 or so pages from the book, The History of Opium I am able to discuss some basic opium facts.
The opium poppy (Papaver somniferum) is a native of Greece and Turkey. The opium poppy has a long history in China. The trade of this drug has had an immense political impact on that country. The author tells how 18th-century British farmers were given medals and cash rewards for pioneering high-yield methods of growing the opium poppy. Opium has yielded possibly the most effective pain killer of the day. It was fine the Wicked Witch of the West to put Dorothy, the Cowardly Lion and the Scarecrow in a deep sleep in the 1939 Wizard of Oz. It is fascinating to read of early advances in cultivation. Through the centuries of morphine, laudanum and heroin use, I begin to understand its impact and even reflect on the human costs of the recreational use of opium drugs today. If you do not think we have a drug problem in the United States, you are out of the loop and totally wrong.
Will the new Dali film show him smoking the drug, hashish. As of January 22, 2011 it has been discussed that the 45 year old Scottish actor , Alan Cumming is to play the eccentric Spanish artist Salvador Dali in a new £10 million 3D biopic. Until now there has been no film solely devoted to the great Spanish surrealist Salvador Dali.
I find it appropriate that the movie will be in 3D, a dimension that Dali himself loved. The love affair which began between Salvador Dali and the poet Federico García Lorca was seen on the silver screen in 2009's, Little Ashes. The setting was in The Residencia de Estudiantes, or Students' Residence, a modern environment which encouraged Spain's brightest young minds. Dali and Lorca were two of those brightest minds. How much of Lorca will be seen in the new Dali screen is yet to be determined. I have been fascinated with Dali from a young age. It is the one artist that I can freely discuss in a conversation with some authority. I was totally surprised this holiday by Rick who gave me a 1939 New World's Fair Russia Exhibition postcard signed by the genius himself, Salvador Dali. There is one fact that many do not know about Dali ? He wrote and illustrated a cookbook called Les Dinners de Galla
My own chef, Rick, has a copy given by the semi-Daliesque authority, Me.
Hollywood made no mistake by casting Mr Cumming in this role.
Until tomorrow...
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