Tag Archives | Heroin

Liquid Sky: Me and My Rhythm Box

By on January 7, 2013 in News 1

So imagine you are deep into the promiscuous androgynous heroin fueled 1980′s New Wave underground. You’re listening to your drug addled synth music, your face painted wilder than Bowie’s ever was, you have the most abstract hair-do, and you’re high as hell. Then some UFO’s come down and zap you into non-existence while you are having sex. The reason why: they feed off the endorphins released into your brain during orgasm. What would you or anyone else do in these circumstances? Well, the obvious answer: Just continue stumbling along in a drug-induced haze, listening to cold heroin driven synth music in seedy New Wave clubs looking for a good lay.

Enter the world of Liquid Sky. A maddening, visually amazing film that can be boring, beautiful, campy and unsettling at the same time. Images and sound speak louder than words for this movie, so without further ado, here’s the blood/mind freezing song Me and My Rhythm Box and a trailer for the movie. Everyone should track down the soundtrack to this as well.

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Top DEA Agent Won’t Admit Heroin More Harmful Than Marijuana

By on June 22, 2012 in News 16

There’s some reefer madness going on at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency. Eric W. Dolan reports for The Raw Story:

During a House Judiciary Subcommittee hearing on Wednesday, Drug Enforcement Administrator Michele Leonhart repeatedly refused to admit that anything was more addictive or harmful than marijuana.

Democratic Rep. Jared Polis of Colorado pressed Leonhart on whether illegal drugs like methamphetamine and crack, as well as legal prescription drugs, caused greater harm to public health compared to marijuana. But within a three minute time-span, Leonhart dodged his questions eleven times.

“Is crack worse for a person than marijuana?”…

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Mexican Scientists Unveil Vaccine Against Heroin Addiction

By on February 27, 2012 in News 26

5567541966_5f2b89f5d6An inoculation could make the ravages of drug dependency an ailment of the past. One imagines the tobacco and pharmaceutical industries putting up an epic battle a few years down the road when researchers turn their sights toward developing vaccines to eliminate cigarette and painkiller addiction. Reuters reports:

A group of Mexican scientists is working on a vaccine that could reduce addiction to one of the world’s most notorious narcotics: heroin. They have successfully tested the vaccine on mice and are preparing to test it on humans.

The vaccine, which has been patented in the United States, works by making the body resistant to the effects of heroin, so users would no longer get a rush of pleasure when they smoke or inject it.

… Read the rest

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What Would Drug Legalization Look Like?

By on September 23, 2011 in News 14

Cocaine-ProblemsSuppose we decriminalized hard drugs — heroin, cocaine, and all the rest? The Indypendent ponders the scenario and how we could make it work:

For heroin, says Eric Sterling, the conundrum is how much use would spread if “the price goes down and the ease of acquisition goes up,” but if a legal scheme set the price too high or made the restrictions too inconvenient, users would go back to the illegal market.

He posits a system in which “addiction management” specialists would supply enough drugs to keep addicts from getting sick, but would not tolerate criminal behavior. Rehab and counseling would be available, and addicts might also be required to work or go to school.

Switzerland, which had close to the highest rate of heroin addiction in Europe in the mid-’90s — with an estimated 30,000 addicts out of about 7 million people — has had some success with heroin maintenance.

… Read the rest

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Afghanistan: The Endless War for Resources

By on August 28, 2011 in News 40
Afghanistan Poppy Field

Photo: DVIDSHUB (CC)

Abby Martin writes on Media Roots:

Last year marked the tenth anniversary of America’s invasion of Afghanistan, officially making it the longest war in US history. Now that Osama Bin Laden is finally confirmed dead, the federal government’s logic of continuing the occupation remains unclear.

Initially, the Bush administration irrationally insisted that any sovereign nation harboring terrorists was itself complicit in “terror” and therefore open for pre-emptive US military action. This rationale is absurd — just because one criminal might be living inside of a particular country doesn’t make that entire country guilty of the criminal’s crimes.

In 2002, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was quick to tell CNN that US forces had successfully pushed the Taliban and Al Qaeda out of the region, and reports reveal that Osama Bin Laden hadn’t even been in Afghanistan since 2001. Additionally, a White House spokesperson recently admitted that there hasn’t been a terrorist threat in the country for the last eight years.… Read the rest

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Krokodil, The Cheap Heroin Alternative That Eats Your Flesh

By on June 23, 2011 in News 20

krokodilIt’s cheap, made from codeine and paint thinner, leaves you disfigured or dead, and not surprisingly is Russia’s most popular new activity. Death and Taxes writes:

The name krokodil comes from its trademark side effect: scaly green skin like a crocodile around the injection site. A quick search for that will bring up graphic images of people with swollen faces, exposed bones and muscles and skin rotting off on any given body part.

The reason the drug is so anatomically destructive is due to its mix-ins. Users stir in ingredients “including gasoline, paint thiner, hydrochloric acid, iodine and red phosphorus which they scrape from the striking pads on matchboxes.”

Video is in Russian but the sight of someone’ skin melting away is the same in every language:

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Pennsylvania Woman Hides 54 Bags of Heroin Inside Herself

By on March 18, 2011 in News 5

Heroin StampDenis J. O’Malley writes in the Times-Tribune:

After crashing her car Sunday, police said a Scranton woman suspected of burglarizing the Dunmore Inn was found to have a sizeable stash of drugs and money hidden in an unlikely location. According to a criminal complaint:

Dunmore police Officer Anthony Cali asked Scranton police Officer Nancy Baumann to detain Karin Mackaliunas, 27, 1609 Mulberry St., at the scene of a crash at the North Seventh Avenue off-ramp Sunday evening…

After searching her for weapons, Officer Baumann found three bags of heroin in Ms. Mackaliunas’ jacket. But as the officer drove her to Scranton police headquarters to charge her for drug possession, Officer Baumann noticed Ms. Mackaliunas fidgeting in the backseat of the cruiser…

A search of Ms. Mackaliunas by a doctor at Community Medical Center turned up 54 bags of heroin, 31 empty bags used to package heroin, 8.5 prescription pills and $51.22.

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True Blood For African Addicts

By on July 16, 2010 in News 0

At what point do people need a fix so bad that they are willing to inject another person’s blood into themselves? With the constant presence of AIDS related deaths in Africa, and the progressive educational-outreach towards sex workers and addicts, it would seem a foolish thought. BBC reports:

Desperate heroin users in a few African cities have begun engaging in a practice that is so dangerous it is almost unthinkable: they deliberately inject themselves with another addict’s blood, researchers say, in an effort to share the high or stave off the pangs of withdrawal.

The practice, called flashblood or sometimes flushblood, is not common, but has been reported in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, on the island of Zanzibar and in Mombasa, Kenya.

It puts users at the highest possible risk of contracting AIDS and hepatitis. While most AIDS transmission in Africa is by heterosexual sex, the use of heroin is growing in some cities, and experts are warning that flashblood — along with syringe-sharing and other dangerous habits — could fuel a new wave of AIDS infections.

… Read the rest

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The Cocaine Supply Chain

By on July 9, 2010 in News 12

National Geographic investigates popular “recreational” drugs in its upcoming Drugs, Inc. series, starting this Sunday, July 11 with a look at coke, then continuing on to marijuana, heroin and meth:

The supply chain of cocaine stretches around our world, bringing vast wealth to a few … and misery to millions. Follow its trail through the eyes of peasant farmers producing cocaine paste, a trafficker tied to Mexican cartels and a 28-year-old crack dealer in Miami’s poorest neighborhood. And literally see the true nature of cocaine addiction via revolutionary brain photography in a leading lab in Brookhaven, N.Y.

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The Bayer Company Made Heroin

By on March 24, 2010 in News 7

Another chapter from my book, 50 Things You’re Not Supposed to Know, published in 2003, by Disinfo.

For more on me, please check out The Memory Hole.

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Bayer AspirinAspirin isn’t the only “wonder drug that works wonders” that Bayer made. The German pharmaceutical giant also introduced heroin to the world.

The company was looking for a cough suppressant that didn’t have problematic side effects, mainly addiction, like morphine and codeine. And if it could relieve pain better than morphine, that  was a welcome bonus.

When one of Bayer’s chemists approached the head of the pharmacological lab with ASA — to be sold under the name “aspirin” — he was waved away. The boss was more interested in something else the chemists had cooked up — diacetylmorphine. (This narcotic had been created in 1874 by a British chemist, who had never done anything with it.)

Using the tradename “Heroin” — because early testers said it made them feel heroisch (heroic) — Bayer sold this popular drug by the truckload starting in 1898.… Read the rest

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