FRONTIER PSYCHIATRIST

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), physiologist, medical doctor, psychologist and father of psychoanalysis, pictured here with phallic symbol. Freud articulated the concepts of the unconscious, of infantile sexuality, of repression, and proposed a tri-partite model of the mind's structure, all as part of a radically new conceptual and therapeutic frame of reference for the understanding of human psychological development, based on a limited sample of unhappy Viennese housewives.



Eventually a frequent cocaine user, Freud started with the purchase of a gram for fatigue. After all, he reasoned, the German army used it to fight off exhaustion so maybe it would help some of his patients. First, he took a dose himself. And then another. Before long, he was tooting on a regular basis. He even sent some to friends, including his fiancee, Martha Bernays, accompanied with this note on June 2, 1884:

"I will kiss you quite red and feed you till you are plump. And if you are forward you shall see who is the stronger, a little girl who doesn't eat enough or a big strong man with cocaine in his body. In my last serious depression I took cocaine again and a small dose lifted me to the heights in a wonderful fashion. I am just now collecting the literature for a song of praise to this magical substance."

Clearly, Freud was coked out of his gourd.


John Styth Pemberton, plucky entreprenuer and dope pusher

Along came Pemberton. Back then, one could buy cocaine lozenges and pastilles, elixirs and pills. Cocaine wine, first sold in Europe under the name of Vin Mariani, was a raging success. There were many imitations. In the United States, John Styth Pemberton brought out his own version in 1881. He hit the jackpot when Atlanta banned the sale of alcohol in 1885, and he tweaked the recipe, removing the alcohol but keeping the cocaine, and sold his drink under the name Coca-Cola.

This was the true "Classic Coke." Of course, the coke was eventually removed from the Coke (in 1913) but the company has remained successful. It turned out it was even cheaper to sell colored sugar water without the cocaine!


In the spirit of psychiatry, we present a wonderful expressionistic portrait of madness by The Avalanches, entitled "Frontier Psychiatrist:"

GO ASK ELLIS

Not long ago, major league baseball player Dock Ellis passed away. His best season was 1971, when he won 19 games for the World Series champion Pirates and was the starting pitcher for the National League in the All-Star Game. Ellis is probably best known for pitching a no-hitter while under the influence of LSD in 1970.

He didn't plan it that way. Ellis had been hanging out with friends in LA and was under the impression he had the day off when he ingested the powerful psychedelic.

"I was in Los Angeles, and the team was playing in San Diego, but I didn't know it. I had taken LSD..... I thought it was an off-day, that's how come I had it in me. I took the LSD at noon." At 1pm, his girlfriend and trip partner looked at the paper and said, "Dock, you're pitching today!"

Ellis boarded a shuttle flight to the ballpark and threw a no-hitter despite not being able to feel the ball or clearly see the batter or catcher.

"I can only remember bits and pieces of the game," Ellis recalled. "I was psyched. I had a feeling of euphoria. I was zeroed in on the glove, but I didn't hit the glove too much. I remember hitting a couple of batters and the bases were loaded two or three times. The ball was small sometimes, the ball was large sometimes, sometimes I saw the catcher, sometimes I didn't. Sometimes I tried to stare the hitter down and throw while I was looking at him. I chewed my gum until it turned to powder. They say I had about three to four fielding chances. I remember diving out of the way of a ball I thought was a line drive. I jumped, but the ball wasn't hit hard and never reached me."

autographed ball: Dock Ellis, No Hitter 6-12-70

The dubious achievement inspired several songs, including "Dock Ellis" by Barbara Manning (performed by SF Seals), "Dock Ellis No-No" by Chuck Brodsky, and "America's Favorite Pastime" by folk singer by Todd Snider.

Listen to "America's Favorite Pastime" by Todd Snider, click the button below:

Listen to "Dock Ellis" by SF Seals, by clicking here:


Dock Ellis, American Hero

BURNING MAN

What's the deal with Burning Man? It's 120 degrees in the shade and you have to pack in water...it's like Road Warrior on the surface of Mercury. What's the deal? Why not have the annual freakout in some mountain meadow with a babbling brook? How about in the dunes on some beautiful coastline? Am I just hopelessly square? What brings out all the freaks, neo-hippies, ravers, artists and strippers to bake in this hellish landscape? Is it the dope? The art? The naked people? Is it the sense of belonging? Are people tripping their brains out? WTF?

The art looks pretty cool...and it looks like people put a lot of work into their projects, so we tip our hat. Maybe this is the last chance for full-out craziness, the last hurrah for non-conformists on our orderly, dying planet. Okay, I can see that. I shouldn't rush to judgment. Who knows? Maybe someday I'll glue some toy dinosaurs on the Mazda and drive down to Death Valley or whatever godforsaken landcape they've chosen for their revels, and have a truly transcendent experience. I could make a hat out of tinfoil. Paint my ass blue. Get some roller skates, you know, and some bottled water, and head out beyond the Thunderdome. And why not?


Burning Man? Check out the official website here.

HENRY MILLER

"The dreamer whose dreams are non-utilitarian has no place in this world. In this world the poet is anathema, the thinker a fool, the artist an escapist, the man of vision a criminal." - Henry Miller


Henry Valentine Miller (American writer, 1891-1980) was a novelist most famous for writing "Tropic of Cancer," "Tropic of Capricorn," and "Black Spring." Shocking to some, he was a radical in style and content, and probably as infamous for his obscenity trials as his written works. Miller wrote joyously and exuberantly about sex and other taboos and shocked a prudish America. He was a cranky mandarin expat who didn't suffer fools gladly, and would just as soon spit in your eye as use a polite euphemism or censor his freewheeling imagination. Miller once said you could travel thousands of miles in America and never once taste good bread.


In 1940, George Orwell praised Miller in an essay entitled, "Inside the Whale."

"Here in my opinion is the only imaginative prose-writer of the slightest value who has appeared among the English-speaking races for some years past. Even if that is objected to as an overstatement, it will probably be admitted that Miller is a writer out of the ordinary, worth more than a single glance; and after all, he is a completely negative, unconstructive, amoral writer, a mere Jonah, a passive acceptor of evil, a sort of Whitman among the corpses."

"Actually we are a vulgar, pushing mob whose passions are easily mobilized by demagogues, newspaper men, religious quacks, agitators and such like. To call this a society of free peoples is blasphemous. What have we to offer the world besides the superabundant loot which we recklessly plunder from the earth under the maniacal delusion that this insane activity represents progress and enlightenment?" - Henry Miller

SUMMERTIME JUKEBOX COUNTDOWN

Summertime is music time.

The song of the summer. Santogold live on Jools. "L.E.S. Artistes"

"I can say I hope it will be worth what I give up..."




"Dig Yourself, Lazarus Dig!"

"...But what do we really know of the dead And who actually cares?"

He may look like a 1970s used car salesman in a highly flammable leisure suit, but Nick Cave writes some catchy songs. Here's one about sex, death, drug addiction, success, and resurrection.

"Poor Larry!"

CLASSIC CARTOON CORNER

Betty Boop and Koko the Clown get stoned on nitrous oxide (laughing gas) in this 1934 cartoon from Max Fleischer. The depiction of drug use, even justified by excruciating dental pain, got this classic cartoon banned by puritanical censors. This amazing cartoon is a highlight of early animation.

For more on the great Max Fleischer, click here.

FATHER OF LSD DIES AT 102

Albert Hoffman, the Swiss scientist who created LSD, died at his home near Basel, Switzerland at the age of 102.

To some, LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) may seem to be an anachronism, a souvenir of the psychedelic counterculture of the 1960s like lava lamps and black lights, but the drug was actually created in 1938. It's powerful psychoactive properties weren't discovered for five more years, when Hoffman accidentally ingested the drug and experienced its powerful effects while riding his bicycle home from the lab.


"[Hoffman] then took LSD hundreds of times, but regarded it as a powerful and potentially dangerous psychotropic drug that demanded respect. More important to him than the pleasures of the psychedelic experience was the drug’s value as a revelatory aid for contemplating and understanding what he saw as humanity’s oneness with nature. That perception, of union, which came to Dr. Hofmann as almost a religious epiphany while still a child, directed much of his personal and professional life."
--the New York Times, 4/30/08

From a BBC documentary on LSD:


A link to the New York Times obituary, click HERE.

9 POUND SHOWCASE: THE FUGS

Keeping our promise to offer offbeat, beat, non-conformist, non-commercial, visionary and downright strange acts of creativity to our readers, we bring you this 9 Pound Hammer Showcase highlighting the uncle beat poets from the East Village, The Fugs. Brilliant avant-folk provocateurs, these guys sang truth to power with a wicked sense of humor, satire, irony, high level stuff that could get you arrested (and did) in the Land of the Free.



The Fugs formed back in 1964, when Ed Sanders rented the former Kosher meat store on East 10th, and transformed it into the Peace Eye Bookstore. He met poet Tuli Kupferberg. They named themselves after a Norman Mailer-coined euphemism from "The Naked and the Dead," a wartime novel written when soldiers were free to kill but not say the word "fuck," at least in print. They played in cafes and theaters in the Village, and headlined a cross-country tour opposing the Vietnam war in its early days, playing folk and rock and basically blowing minds in the Heartland.



We drew inspiration for the Fugs from a long and varied tradition, going all the way back to the dances of Dionysus in the ancient Greek plays and the "Theory of the Spectacle" in Aristotle's Poetics, and moving forward to the famous premier performance of Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi in 1896, to the poèmes simultanés of the Dadaists in Zurich's Cabaret Voltaire in 1916, to the jazz-poetry of the Beats, to Charlie Parker's seething sax, to the silence of John Cage, to the calm pushiness of the Happening movement, the songs of the Civil Rights movement, and to our concept that there was oddles of freedom guaranteed by the United States Constitution that was not being used.
- Ed Sanders


They first recorded in 1965, and put their show on vinyl to the delight of far flung fans and connoisseurs of beatnik irreverence. This wasn't the frail, anemic poetry of your timid schoolbooks, but some rough beast vexed to nightmare, it's hour come at last, playing electric guitars and invoking the gods. They freaked the squares out. The grey flannel Chamber of Commerce types didn't dig this crazy pagan humor, and the crewcut cops were notified, but the children -- at least, some of them -- thought it was great to spit in Goliath's eye.

The Fugs became a cult favorite, secretly traded among fans like contraband, passed like a joint between outstretched fingers, popping up all over this great land. Yes, soon the Feds would be pounding at the door, and the FBI would try to crush this communist conspiracy of "free thought," but the damage had been done. Songs like "Kill for Peace" had already gotten out to undermine the war effort and corrupt the youth of Athens, er, I mean America.

You will enjoy this, I'm sure. For those who think the 1960s were all Austin Powers and the Monkees, this is a good antidote. Just don't take it and operate heavy machinery, okay kids?


For more information, check out the official History of the Fugs here. An interview with Ed Sanders is here. For more tales of beatnik glory, check out Ed Sanders' Woodstock Journal here.

PSYCHEDELIC EXPLOITATION MOVIE TRAILER

Some guy had a brilliant idea -- film all the crazy hippie runaway kids flooding the Haight and make a ton of money selling it to the curious squares! Why not? There were already tour buses jammed full of gawkers, why not some cheesy weirdo lava lamp psychedelic "trip" for the grindhouse? That's a very young Jack Nicholson, who acted in a lot of similar Roger Corman flicks, and Bruce Dern in a frightwig. This was the tipping point, a subculture on the verge of being packaged and sold by waterbed entrepreneurs with pencil-thin mustaches.

This clip reminds me of the Psychedelic Supermarket, a little rundown shop where I bought a blacklight poster and a teardrop-shaped peace amulet on a cheap leather string. It was lame, but to a sixth grader it seemed pretty cool. Squinting at the brilliant Day-glo posters, I literally stumbled into a dark backroom that looked like a sultan's tent with parachute silk ceilings and oriental rugs, and as my eyes adjusted to the darkness I saw faint images of hippies sprawled out on beanbag chairs. A pretty girl in a headband swayed to the music, undulating to trippy psychedelica, maybe the Electric Prunes, and there was a whiff of strawberry incense in the room, and the slightly acrid smell of burning leaves. I probably got a contact high just standing there. I was dumbstruck. The baseball team would never believe this. I felt like Toby Tyler, first discovering the circus. There was no turning back now. PSYCH OUT! PSYCH OUT!!!!

THE GIRL CAN'T HELP IT

What's with you, Amy Winehouse? Are you going down in flames? You make a great record, then fall apart like a cheap suit? I hope not. Last month you got busted for weed in Norway. Your husband was tossed into jail. Last night, the crowd booed your show because you were high as a kite and slurring your words. So you threatened the booing crowd. Amy. Come on. Pull out of this tailspin. Watch these girls. They did it first. They had a hard sweet sound and bad girl beehives. They had troubles, too, but they were tough as steel combs in a rumble. Learn something from the Ronettes.

MAGIC MUSHROOMS

If you live in the beautiful Pacific Northwest, especially Oregon, you've undoubtedly seen these mushrooms growing in damp fields and cow pastures. These are Psilocybe semilanceata, or Liberty Cap mushrooms, and they contain the psychoactive compound psilocybin, a powerful mind-altering substance.
Approach with caution, and not just because they distort your consciousness. These little nipple-capped fungi are listed as Schedule 1 drugs under the United Nations 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances, and therefore illegal to possess and distribute. The classification of psilocybin mushrooms as a Schedule 1 drug has come under criticism because they are considered soft drugs with a low potential for abuse. Local laws may be somewhat ambiguous. Either way, if you're poking around cow pies picking mushrooms, be aware of the risks involved.


In this age of the Great Drug Wars, it's difficult to find a truly disinterested observor speaking candidly about drug experiences (unless we're talking legal, socially acceptable drugs like alcohol, caffeine, and tobacco) so here is something rare: an intelligent, non-hysterical talk about magic mushrooms. The speaker is the well-respected physician and health expert, Dr. Andrew Weil, author of "Eight Weeks to Optimum Health" and other bestselling books.

Forbes on-line magazine writes: "Dr. Weil, a graduate of Harvard Medical School, is one of the most widely known and respected alternative medicine gurus. For five years, he has offered straightforward tips and advice on achieving wellness through natural means and educating the public on alternative therapies."

Here, Dr. Weil talks openly about psilocybin mushrooms without the distortion of drug war politics or puritanism clouding his report.

Andrew Weil, from "Mushroom Hunting." Journal of Psychedelic Drugs. Jan-Mar 1975: 7(1).

...Soon I had eaten 25 of the tiny mushrooms...[liberty caps in a field in Oregon]

Gradually I became aware of a strange sensation in my stomach, a sort of buzzing vibration that grew slowly in intensity. It was not at all unpleasant, and I knew at once it was the mushrooms. Over the next ten minutes this unusual feeling became stronger, filling my abdomen. Then it began to invade the rest of my body, pushing outward through the muscles to the extremities. I was distinctly aware of a subtle but powerful energy vibrating through the musculature of my whole body. It made me feel warm and strong. As it reached my head, my senses sharpened, and I found myself admiring qualities of the wet pasture I had ignored until then. The green of the grass was of glowing intensity, highlighted by tones of brown and red. The smell of the earth and rain was overpowering. I had no desire to move. If the ground had been dry, I would have stretched out and rolled on the grass.

For the rest of the story:
http://www.erowid.org/plants/mushrooms/mushrooms_ps_semilanceata_info1.shtml