GR:The stoned reading

[George Haberberger]

At 08:29 AM 9/15/97 -0400, Sojourner wrote:
>At 10:54 AM 9/13/97 -0500, Craig Bleakley wrote:
>
>>Of course, alcohol's the drug They want me on, isn't it?  But somehow I
>>can't imagine "GR: The Drunk Reading."

much clipped

>The Church in regards to this matter, the Church of Luther's time, was a 
>church of priests who could read and a populace that couldn't.  A Church
>where the Bible was to be read and interpreted FOR you, and not BY you.
>
>And drugs like marijuana would easily be counter-productive in that
>society.  A person who at the end of toiling on land owned by someone else,
>a hugely fat someone else while you worked 7 days a week for months on
>end without respite, who maybe could sit for a moment and think about
>WHY things are, might not be so easily lorded over.  Alcohol on the other
>hand is perfect -- the moment you get a break from work or life, you
>get blotto, get numb, get anaesthetized, get rubberized, and then you
>wake up, you groan, you barely remember that "good time" you so
>desperately dreamed of, and head off to the daily grind.  And each time,
>you think that if you were a bit drunker, you might enjoy yourself a
>bit more, but the more you drink the more you find that the enjoyment
>itself comes from and only from "not having to deal with your problems
>while you are butt boned drunk".  Vis a vis -- work hard now feudal
>serf, and enjoy your life in heaven.  Or.. work hard now so you can
>escape from your problems with yer old relative and bosom buddy
>al-Uncle Hal.

My only problem with this thesis is I can't think of any drugs available in
Lutheran Europe besides alcohol that were relatively safe and relatively
effective. Psychoactive cannabis was available to the Scythians of
Herodotus's time, but in the age of Luther, you had to go south of the
Mediterraneum or to the middle East to find it available.

What else is there? Belladonna, thorn apple, deadly nightshade? While these
were suppressed by the Church, and may be okay for an occasional
shamanistic trip, I've never heard of anyone personally using them. 

Opium? It was common in the Egyptian, Grecian and Roman empires, but
apparently rare in Europe until the 17th century.

Caffeine, nicotine, sugar? Again, not commonly available until the 17th
century.

Ergot fungus? The remote villages in the Alps hallucinating for 500 years
sound fun, but unrefined ergot has much harsher side effects than LSD-25.

Fessing up, I stole most of this from Terrance McKenna's "Food of the
Gods", who professes a similar attitude to alcohol, "the Dominator Drug',
that you do.

Ob M&D: I thought I recalled reading a section in "Food of the Gods" where
McKenna posulated a remote European village where the three drug scourges
of the 17th century, refined sugar, tobacco and caffeine all occurred at
once. Reading the Philadelphia section of M&D, the coffeehouse scenes
brought this to mind, with the tobacco smoke, the doughnuts and the coffee.
Alas, when I went back to "Food of the Gods", I could find no trace of it,
perhaps it was on a web page. A-and I thought I had tracked one of TRP's
influences down.

George