tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post116049578256394127..comments2024-03-10T20:46:19.274-04:00Comments on In the Middle: Hallucinogenic Mushrooms and Vampire Historians: BABEL Goes to Oxford [Mississippi, That Is]Cord J. Whitakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06224143153295429986noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-1160831048345925162006-10-14T09:04:00.000-04:002006-10-14T09:04:00.000-04:00Super busy this week (I have a post drafted: will ...<I>Super</I> busy this week (I have a post drafted: will I get it up this weekend? Form appropriate symbols with your fingers--crosses, spaghetti shapes--to wish me luck), but did you know about Benjamin's experiments with drugs, which he chronicles in <I>On Hashish</I>? I didn't, until I read the Oct 16 issue of <I>The Nation.</I> Check <A HREF="http://www.thenation.com/doc/20061016/wolin/3" REL="nofollow">this</A> out, from Richard Wolin's review:<BR/><BR/>--<BR/>Benjamin's drug-related experiences were not that much different from yours and mine. (Full disclosure: Here I speak from experience; and yes, I did inhale.) He gazes across the room at an oven, which turns into a cat. A desk turns into a fruit stand. He suddenly imagines that in the next room, "events such as the coronation of Charlemagne, the assassination of Henri IV, the signing of the Treaty of Verdun, and the murder of Egmont might have taken place." After ingesting hashish in Marseilles, he wanders into a local restaurant. As the waiter appears to take his order, Benjamin is paralyzed by indecision lest he "offend" any of the various entrees on the menu by not ordering them. Ultimately, he settles on pâté de Lyon, which he giddily translates as "lion paste." Emerging from the restaurant, he becomes slightly disoriented. Since he still has the munchies, he enters another restaurant and orders dinner again. I was cheering for Benjamin on almost every page. There is something touching about his willingness to test his theories, his schoolboy romanticism. But it's unlikely that any of the philosophical epiphanies he sought actually materialized.<BR/><BR/>Benjamin himself seems to have developed serious doubts as to whether such profane illuminations could "win the energies of intoxication for the revolution" and produce a break with the profane continuum of history. By his own admission, smoking hashish had proved alternately enlightening and stupefying. And as he became increasingly committed to political radicalism, he began to worry that profane illuminations might divert energies from the revolution. Hashish is not exactly known for improving soldierly discipline, any more than booze is. As Benjamin put it in a more sober passage, profane illuminations might "subordinate the methodical and disciplinary preparation for revolution...to an undialectical conception of the nature of intoxication."<BR/><BR/>Nevertheless, Benjamin tried to persuade his friends in the Frankfurt School that intoxication (dialectically conceived, of course) could serve the cause of liberation. In 1938, the year of the Munich crisis, he wrote to Max Horkheimer, director of the New York-based Institute for Social Research, imploring him to "recognize how deeply certain powers of intoxication are bound to reason and its struggle for liberation." In a passage that uncannily anticipates attempts in the 1960s to fuse politics and countercultural hedonism, Benjamin continues:<BR/><BR/>What I mean is, all the insights that man has ever obtained surreptitiously through the use of narcotics can also be obtained through the human: some through the individual--through the man or through the woman; others through groups; and some, which we dare not even dream of yet, perhaps only through the community of the living. Aren't these insights, by virtue of the human solidarity from which they arise, truly political in the end?<BR/><BR/>Horkheimer, a bourgeois Marxist of consummate sobriety, was unmoved. <BR/>--Karl Steelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03353370018006849747noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-1160510734112352572006-10-10T16:05:00.000-04:002006-10-10T16:05:00.000-04:00"kava is will solve"is solving? will solve? Perh..."kava is will solve"<BR/><BR/>is solving? will solve? Perhaps both. After kava-tripping with some Vanuatu islanders, I will hold both.<BR/><BR/>The beauty of my discovery of kava is that I can stop making trips across the border to buy absinthe.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-1160510620895082212006-10-10T16:03:00.000-04:002006-10-10T16:03:00.000-04:00This is fantastic news! Can you put it in coffee?This is fantastic news! Can you put it in coffee?Eileen Joyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13756965845120441308noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-1160509643477709732006-10-10T15:47:00.000-04:002006-10-10T15:47:00.000-04:00Forget mushrooms. I am quite convinced that kava ...Forget mushrooms. I am quite convinced that kava is will solve humanity's woes.<BR/><BR/>From PubMed:<BR/><BR/>Phytother Res. 2004 Apr;18(4):297-300. <BR/><BR/>Kava treatment in patients with anxiety.<BR/><BR/>Geier FP, Konstantinowicz T.<BR/><BR/>In several clinical trials, mainly conducted with a dose of 300 mg kava extract per day, kava has been employed successfully for the treatment of anxiety disorders. The goal of the placebo-controlled double-blind outpatient trial was to obtain more information on the dosage range and efficacy of a kava special extract WS 1490 in patients with non-psychotic anxiety. 50 patients were treated with a daily dose of 3 x 50 mg WS 1490 during a 4-week treatment period followed by a 2-week safety observation phase. In the active treatment group, the total score of the Hamilton anxiety scale (primary efficacy variable), showed a therapeutically relevant reduction in anxiety versus placebo (more than 4 points). In the secondary variables studied, HAMA 'somatic and psychic anxiety' subscales, the Erlangen anxiety, tension and aggression scale (EAAS), the brief personality structure scale (KEPS), the adjective checklist (EWL 60-S) and clinical global impressions scale (CGI), a trend in favour of the active treatment was detectable. WS 1490 was well tolerated and showed a safety profile with no drug-related adverse events or post-study withdrawal symptoms. It can be concluded that the applied 150 mg WS 1490 per day is an effective and safe treatment of non-psychotic anxiety syndromes in the described population.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com