The Null Device

Posts matching tags 'heroin'

2008/11/24

The Mind Hacks blog has a summary of a paper looking at the content of another adulterated street drug, in this case, heroin. Not surprisingly, your average wrap of street smack contains a lot of adulterants; the analysis lists random medications and pharmaceutical substances, anaesthetics, dietary supplements and chelating agents for metals, as well as other street drugs including cocaine and amphetamines.

The article also looks at the economics and business practices behind the adulteration of heroin. Obviously, taking advantage of the lack of quality control and getting more money out of less actual expensive heroin is a major consideration for the dealers, but it isn't the only one:

Interestingly, the paper also notes that professional heroin cutters are expensive, charging up to $20,000 for a kilo of heroin. This is likely due to the skill and knowledge needed to select ingredients that will have certain effects, which can be different for 'smokers', 'snorters' and 'injectors'.
Additionally, some ingredients are added purely for their psychoactive effect to give a different experience and 'brand' the dope.

(via Mind Hacks) crime drugs economics heroin marketing society 0

2005/12/11

The eXile's 90 things to hate about the 90s (and part 2):

What is the 90s? What does it represent? What was its zeitgeist? This is the tricky part. See, hipsters in the 90s thought that they'd figured out a way to position themselves as the first generation ever which wouldn't, in retrospect, look as ridiculous as previous generations. They thought they'd secure their place by ironically fixating on 70s retro (thus sparing themselves from having to create too much of their own destined-to-be-dated material) as well as adapting the language of a hyper-conscious, self-aware man-outside-of-his-time, narrated as glibly as possible, as a way of ironically distancing themselves from their own stances.
The list itself starts off with "Authenticity" (and also takes in "Smog" and "Wobbly Camera As Authentic/Gritty Device") and ends with "Bare Midriffs", and includes the likes of "Generation X", "The Greatest Generation", "Grrls" (not to mention "Straight Edge", "Reclaiming The Night" and "Reclaiming Our Bodies/Empowerment"), several variants on "Aggrieved White Males", "Madonna-ology", "lower case spelling", "Wiggers", "Nerd Chic", "Misogyny Chic" and "Blue Collar Chic":
33. The End of Heroin Chic
The Shame: One of the few genuinely intelligent, smart trends in the mid-90s was the belated recognition that heroin is a good drug, overturning decades of hippie oppression and prejudice. We have Kurt Cobain and Trainspotting, a movie whose mediocrity is less important than the positive message it sent, to thank for that. Sadly, some people - we won't mention any RIVER PHOENIX names here, but a few LAYNE STANLEY guys couldn't handle CHRIS FARLEY their shit, making it tough for the rest of us, while other KATE MOSS people, again names THE EXILE we won't mention, functioned RUSH LIMBAUGH just fine while floating on the great poppy. Sadly, a combination of weak-willed celebrities, Ben Stiller's Permanent Midnight and 9/11 ended this brief dawn of reason. Now we are back in the Dark Ages of cocaine chic. Frankly, we'd rather drink beer than do coke.
61. Goth
The Sham:In the ultra-segmented scene of the 90s, being fat, ugly and socially retarded wasn't an impediment to being hip. You just had to wear lots of layers of black gauze to hide the blubber, get some prominent piercings and paint spider webs on your eyelids and, voila! You were a scary, alienated Goth! A whole bevy of bands competed for your attention, including Pretty Hate Machine, NIN, and Marilyn Manson, and the evening news might even do a segment featuring people who look just like you and the decline of American values or the dangers of Columbine - even though Klebold and Harris hated Goths.
63. Being Gay
The Sham:In college, most American girls of the 90's went through their obligatory BUG (bisexual until graduation) phase, which segued for more daring ones into their stripper phase. Gays became so big that even one of the Friends' star's mother had a lesbo tryst, and everyone had to have a gay neighbor to spice up their lives. Clinton made promoting gays in the military his first priority - and his liberal agenda was essentially destroyed by that. No matter, gays went bourgeois anyway, they didn't really need most of the liberal stuff anymore, not the help-the-poor/minorities crap anyway. Then 9/11 happened. A source who lives in Noe Valley told the eXile that within a year of 9/11, Noe Valley was transformed from the Dyke Quarter of San Francisco to the Baby Stroller Capital. Who'd-a-thunk.
73. Missing Children
The Sham:According to the National Center for Exploited and Missing Children, guess how many are "long-term" kidnapped by strangers every year? 20,000? 10,000? It's gotta be a lot, considering all the alarmist attention it gets. Welp, we got news for you: only 115 children are kidnapped in America each year, out of a population of 300,000,000. And about 100 children are kidnapped and murdered each year. In other words, NO ONE WANTS TO SOCKET-FUCK YOUR HAIRLESS CHILD'S STRANGLED CORPSE. Does that disappoint you? Statistically, your child has an infinitely higher chance of growing up to be a convicted sex offender than he does of getting kidnapped and killed by one. But you don't want to believe that your child, or you, are doomed to a life of never being stalked. So instead you'll pamper and protect your child and instill him with so many worries and complexes that when he grows up, he'll have this weird, tingly feeling every time he sees a vulnerable, hairless child left alone beside a car wash...
82. Zines
The Sham:Back before Live Journal gave every bored office worker in America a soap box, zines were the only outlet for folks who wanted to write something that nobody but friends would ever read. Made by Kinko workers working the graveyard shift and distributed to the local revolutionary bookshop, they were hailed as authentic samizdat. Except that there was a market for samizdat, and risk involved. Zines were just another way to convince grrls that you were authentic, so you could bang 'em.
89. Blue collar chic
The Sham:Middle class guys picking up garage mechanic uniforms with cursive names sewn into the breast pocket at the local thrift store and slumming it. Then, while downing cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon for a buck a pop at the local hipster dive, peopled with other indy hipsters wearing Confederate hats or T-shirts and scraggly beards, they'd talk about this art instillation they've got planned for their studio in Williamsburg.
90. Bare Midriffs
The Sham:Will someone please tell American girls to cover their lower hips? In the last 10 years, girls' hips have grown wider and wider, expanding like in some bad 80s horror film...and yet, for some reason they have no shame in showing these wide loads to the whole fucking world. All we can assume is that no one has the courage to tell them how bad they look. We're the types who, if we had a booger hanging out of our nose while talking to you, we'd want you to tell us. So we're doing the right thing and telling you: hide your hips, and while you're at it, tie a sweater around your ass. Note: This does not apply to Russian girls AT ALL.

(via jwz) 1990s gay goth hate heroin hipsters misanthropy nihilism obesity paedophilia russia the exile zines 7

2005/12/6

On tonight's BBC News, the music in the background at the Tory leadership election sounded an awful lot like the Velvet Underground's "Heroin".

amusing heroin music tories velvet underground 0

2005/8/13

A quote from a Graun interview with Baxter Dury, who, of course, is the son of cockney punk-funker Ian Dury.

"Drugs have never helped music, they've killed music," he says. "People on acid haven't actually made a great deal of music, they've usually gone mad and dug holes in Wales or whatever. People on heroin choke on their own vomit. Cocaine just makes them turn up the high frequencies and ruins everything. Dad was fiercely outspoken about coke, probably did it sometimes, but didn't agree it had any relation to being creative. He smoked a lot of spliff, though."

acid baxter dury cocaine drugs heroin marijuana music 0

2005/4/1

The Age reviews New Order's new album, drawing attention to Bernard Sumner's uniquely leaden songwriting:

Guilt Is a Useless Emotion provides the classic dodgy lines: "Real love can't be bought/It is wild and it can't be caught."

And below that, it accuses New Order of having been "the whitest - that is, most blindingly uptight - disco band in the world" (not that that's a bad thing; one doesn't listen to New Order for the same reason one listens to, say, Prince).

Was True Faith about falling in love with a person or falling in love with your sequencer?

Neither, actually -- it was about heroin.

heroin music new order 0

2004/12/7

It seems that everything from cheese to pornography, from technology to obesity to all-terain vehicles, is "the new heroin" these days.

drugs heroin metaphors zeitgeist 0

2003/10/22

Scientists in the Netherlands have discovered that an orgasm is neurologically equivalent to a hit of heroin. By getting volunteers to have sex whilst keeping their heads perfectly still in a PET-scanning machine, researchers at Groningen University were able to form an image of the neurological effects of orgasm.

drugs heroin neurology sex 1

2003/5/22

North Korean defectors testify about weapons programme, government-run heroin export industry, suggesting that North Korea gets a big chunk of its funds from its heroin and methamphetamines industry, and that the government thereof is essentially the world's first nuclear-armed drug cartel (though given its penchant for kidnapping useful talent from overseas, that's not too surprising). Though weren't there rumours of the Soviets having massive opium plantations in their Asian republics to bring in hard currency in the '80s or so?

crime drugs heroin north korea nuclear weapons 5

2003/2/18

New claims have emerged that the Queen Mother, who died in her sleep last year aged 101, was euthanased with a massive dose of heroin. It is claimed that she saw it as her duty to avoid dying at an inappropriate time (such as her daughter's jubilee), and thus elected to die a "mercy death" beforehand. Euthanasia is somewhat of a tradition in the British monarchy; the terminally ill George V. was euthanased with cocaine and morphine, so that his death would make the morning papers rather than the "less appropriate" evening ones. Nonetheless, royalists are outraged by the allegations. Euthanasia and assisted suicide are currently illegal in Britain, with terminally ill commoners forced to travel to places like Switzerland to die with dignity.

euthanasia heroin rumours the royal family 4

2002/5/20

Britain's 240,000 junkies will soon be able to get heroin on the National Health.

heroin medicine nhs uk 0

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