I sucked that smoke in and made it part of me, joined mystically with the universe right at that point, said Yes to drugs forever just by the unique hit I got from that one packet of fags Andy liberated from his dad. It was a revelation, an epiphany; a sudden realisation that it was possible for matter – something there in front of you, in your hand, in your lungs, in your pocket – to take your brain apart and reassemble it in ways you hadn’t thought of previously. This was better than religion, or this was what people meant by religion! The whole point was that this worked! People said Believe in God or Do Well at School or Buy This or Vote for Me or whatever, but nothing ever worked the way substances worked, nothing ever fucking delivered the way they did. They were truth. Everything else was falsehood. Iain Banks, Complicity
If we could sniff or swallow something that would, for five or six hours each day, abolish our solitude as individuals, atone us with our fellows in a glowing exaltation of affection and make life in all its aspects seem not only worth living, but divinely beautiful and significant, and if this heavenly, world-transfiguring drug were of such a kind that we could wake up next morning with a clear head and an undamaged constitution – then, it seems to me, all our problems (and not merely the one small problem of discovering a novel pleasure) would be wholly solved and earth would become paradise. Aldous Huxley
Things like heroin and alcohol can and should be used for the purpose of worshipping, that is entering into communion with the Snake that giveth knowledge and delight and bright glory. Aleister Crowley, Diary of a Drug Fiend @364
The contracting Powers shall use their best endeavours to control, or to cause to be controlled, all persons manufacturing, importing, selling, distributing, and exporting morphine, cocaine, and their respective salts, as well as the buildings in which these persons carry such an industry or trade. 1912 Hague International Opium Convention
The Government’s Chief Adviser on Drug Policy has been sacked after insisting alcohol and cigarettes are more dangerous than cannabis and ecstasy. BBC News
Drugs are every nation’s problem. And every nation must act to fight them. We are determined to build the drug-free America. Bill Clinton, United Nations address 8th June 1998
Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself; and where they are, they should be changed. Nowhere is this more clear than in the laws against possession of marijuana in private for personal use ... Therefore, I support legislation amending Federal law to eliminate all Federal criminal penalties for the possession of up to one ounce [28g] of marijuana. Jimmy Carter
Casual drug users should be taken out and shot. Darryl Gates, LAPD Chief & US Senate Judiciary Committee
When a private enterprise fails, it is closed down; when a government enterprise fails, it is expanded. Isn’t that exactly what’s been happening with drugs? Milton Friedman
The ancient goals to be followed can be defined in modern terms in the metaphors of the present as Turn on, Tune in and Drop out. Dr Timothy Leary, Harvard University
Psychedelics are drugs which cause very major changes in the way in which people see the world – changes which are not really possible by any other means. Dr Carl Jenson
To get really high is to forget yourself. And to forget yourself is to see everything else. And to see everything else is to become an understanding molecule in evolution, a conscious tool of the universe. Jerry Garcia
Any kind of consciousness that is not related to the production and consumption of material goods is stigmatised in our society today. Graham Hancock
I persuaded two Blue Peter presenters to sell me drugs. Hacks 2011 starring Kayvan Novak & Nigel Planer & Phil Davis, writer & director Guy Jenkin, Kate, Channel 4 2012
Drugs sell for up to ten times their street value behind bars. Prison Nation, National Geographic 2007
35% of prisoners are drug users. ibid.
We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers ... and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls.
Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious drug collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can. Hunter S Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Ignore that nightmare in the bathroom. Just another ugly refugee from the Love Generation, some doom-struck gimp who couldn’t handle the pressure. My attorney has never been able to accept the notion – often espoused by reformed drug abusers and especially popular among those on probation – that you can get a lot higher without drugs than with them. And neither have I, for that matter. ibid.
A drug person can learn to cope with things like seeing their dead grandmother crawling up their leg with a knife in her teeth, but nobody should be asked to handle this trip. Bazooko’s Circus is what the whole hip world would be doing every Saturday night if the Nazis had won the war. This was the Sixth Reich. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas 1998 starring Johnny Depp & Benicio del Toro & Tobey Maguire & Ellen Barkin & Gary Busey & Christina Ricci & Mark Harmon & Cameron Diaz & Katherine Helmond & Michael Jeter & Penn Jillette et al, director Terry Gilliam, Raoul
Jesus! Bad waves of paranoia, madness, fear and loathing, intolerable vibrations in this place. Get out! The weasels were closing in. I could smell the ugly brutes. ibid.
The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge, and I knew we’d get into that rotten stuff pretty soon. ibid.
This is not a good town for psychedelic drugs. ibid.
Clearly I was a victim of the drug explosion. ibid.
Ah, devil ether. It makes you behave like the village drunkard in some early Irish novel. Total loss of all basic motor function. Blurred vision, no balance, numb tongue. The mind recoils in horror, unable to communicate with the spinal column. Which is interesting because you can actually watch yourself behaving in this terrible way, but you can't control it. ibid.
We’d abused every rule Las Vegas lived by. ibid.