S02E09: I'm Down To Have A Bad Night

Zosobi Boo-Bury

and

lavish

Aug 13, 2024

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TO BE IN NASHVILLE

We return from a week sojourn in Nashville, TN hanging around the big Bitcoin Conference, but also getting high and swimming in the river by the AirBnB.

At least five shows were broadcast live from our makeshift studio, with varying degrees of success. Much fun was had by all.

We never ate any Nashville hots.

GIG LIFE

DRUGS ARE A FUNNY THING

STAY STONED

💊 Humans sure do love drugs. When a good drug is discovered, it is rarely forgotten or lost to history. Some drugs, like Opium, have been consumed for hundreds or thousand of years. Yet since people have been around for a while, some substances slip through the cracks and are lost to us forever(?).

Let’s hope we don’t help bring these back.

Five Stone Powder

or Cold Food Powder, was used by the literati, or elite-scholar class of ancient and medieval China.

💊 Drugs 1 - Five Stone Powder

The exact ingredients and ratios have been lost to time, but according to Chinese texts written between the 3rd-9th centuries, Five Stone Powder is said to include (among other things)…

Fluorite
Quartz
Red Bole Clay
Stalactite
Sulfur
Arsenic
Mercury ore, Cinnabar
Lyme from clam shells
Ginseng
Cinnamon

Orpiment (arsenic sulfide) from China

Cinnabar crystals

From about 250 CE to 900 CE, a completely inorganic powdered mixture of various minerals was a popular narcotic among Chinese nobility and intellectuals. It apparently caused euphoria, possibly hallucinations, and aphrodisiac effects, as well as getting you somewhat stoned.

However, it also caused an immediate intense increase in body temperature such that you could actually die if you didn't take a cold bath, and would cause internal and external abscesses that would eventually develop into lesions in your brain that kill you.

Nonetheless, it remained popular for 700 years, and as far as we know it was not really considered a bad thing in popular society. It was sufficiently in vogue among the highs of Chinese society, and probably difficult and expensive enough to make that it kept itself obscure.

The Book of Jin says that Huangfu Mi, an influential scholar and doctor, used hanshisan poisoning as an excuse to decline a position offered by Emperor Wu (r. 265–290). The Cold Food Powder "disagreed with his nature and each time he was convulsed with excruciating pain. Once in a rage of suffering he prayed for a sword with which to kill himself, but his aunt remonstrated with him and made him stop." Amazingly, the emperor apparently accepted this excuse without complaint. It would be like a President calling on one of his pig-fucking Yale-professor buddies to take a cabinet position, and the professor replies, "Wish I could but I’m too railed on speed," and everyone being cool with that.

Huangfu said that the vogue for consuming Cold-Food Powder began with the Cao Wei state (220–265) scholar and politician He Yan (c. 195–249), who used the drug to achieve greater spiritual clarity and physical strength. He Yan and his friends propagated the consumption of the drug in their philosophical circles. He’s been described as a court dandy. His lack of constraint brought down on him the ill-will of the orthodox traditionalists. He is even said to have brought into fashion a drug that brought on a state of ecstasy, and many of his friends and epigones were drug addicts."

Apparently it was taken in three doses, sometimes with food. Numerous sources mention that the drug was washed down with wine, sometimes heated, sometimes cold. This undoubtedly was to heighten the effects of the drug, but certainly, it must have made it more dangerous to the body. We are also told that after consuming the drug, it was necessary to "circulate the powder" (hsing-san 行散), that is, to move about so that the drug would circulate in the bloodstream.

Soma

is an enlightening hallucinogenic substance described in the ancient Vedic texts, the Rigveda, perhaps the oldest surviving text in the world, the basis for the Hindu religion.

💊 Drugs 2 - Soma and Terrence McKenna

The Ninth Mandala of the Rigveda is known as Soma Mandala. It consists entirely of hymns addressed to Soma Pavamana (purified Soma). Soma, the sacred intoxicator is the lord of delight. Pavamana is another name for Soma. Pavamana also means that which flows and that which purifies. The Ninth Mandala is the collection of Pavamana-stotras;here practically every important statement about the preparation of the drink and cult of the God Soma is repeated ad nauseam.

-An Excerpt from Rigveda (8.48.3)-

ápāma sómam amŕ̥tā abhūma

áganma jyótir ávidāma devā́n

kíṃ nūnám asmā́n kr̥ṇavad árātiḥ

kím u dhūrtír amr̥ta mártiyasya

We have drunk the soma; we have become immortal; we have gone to the light; we have found the gods.

What can hostility do to us now, and what the malice of a mortal, o immortal one?

Lord Indra

The Ninth Mandala is the only major grouping in the Rigveda devoted to a single ritual procedure. All hymns of the Mandala are dedicated to Soma Pavamana, ‘self purifying Soma’. It treats the deified ritual substance, the exhilarating drink Soma, whose preparation and offering are the focus of the most important Vedic ritual, the Soma sacrifice, but it treats that substance at only a single episode in the whole elaborate ritual, the time when the Soma juice, which has already been pressed, is poured across the sheep’s fleece that serves to purify it that is, to remove the vegetable detritus still present in the liquid–before it is first diluted with water, then mixed with milk, and poured into the offering vessels.

Laser

(lass-err), processed from a now-extinct plant called Silphium (sill-fee-um), was a gum-resin or juice greatly valued by those ancient Mediterranean peoples we think so much about every day. It was cultivated in Cyrene on the north coast of Africa and exported all over the known world. It was used by the Greeks and Romans as perfume, seasoning, medicine, and so much more!

💊 Drugs 3 - Silphium

lāser ~eris, n. lāsar. [app. altered and abbreviated from lac sirpicium (see LAC and SIRPE) owing to wrong analysis (piceus) and influenced by piper, siser, etc.]

1 A strong-smelling resinous gum produced by the silphium plant, asafoetida.

2 The plant which produces this, silphium.

💊 Drugs 4 - Tender Meat

💊 Drugs 5 - Laser

💊 Drugs 6 - Medicine

💊 Drugs 7 - First Gyno

Sore Anus of Emphasis, an ancient Greek gynecologist, wrote about the contraceptive nature of Silphium.

💊 Drugs 8 - Heart-Shaped

💊 Drugs 9 - Big Pharma

Many secrets of our natural world come and go through the eons, and although our love of drugs often renders them immortal, some things are too precious not to vanish. 💊🌭⛅

Sources

BPMData on Reddit

Why was the drug "Five Stone Powder" so popular in medieval China?

Paul McCartney admits taking LSD (Interview from 1967)

The Rig Veda and Soma - Terence McKenna

Silphium: The Extinct Miracle Plant of Ancient Rome