Howard Marks' Book of Dope Stories (10 page)

Due to the treachery of Big Chief Lying Bullshit, foreign tribes of Puritans, Prohibitionists and other Pricks were allowed to invade and gain control. Most ganja and ganja smokers were completely wiped out. Lucky ones (the Arawaks) fled to Jamaica and set up their culture over there. The Arawaks played ball games, sang, feasted, danced, shagged, drank maize alcohol to get pissed, smoked dried leaves to get stoned, and snorted white powders through inverted Y-shaped tubes to get completely trolleyed. They wore sexy short skirts, tattoos, ornaments, necklaces and feathers. They had no wheels (hadn’t even thought of them) and no written language. They had a few words, including
canoe
(enabling transport) and
hurricane
(fucking up transport).
Barbecue
is also an Arawak word. So is
hammock
. So is
tobacco
. A typical Arawak day was up at any time, have a smoke, lie in the hammock and wait for some barbecue red snapper. Sorted.

Welshman Henry Morgan, through the devious route of rum, piracy, slavery and trade, managed to stock the island with weed-smoking Africans and hash-smoking shopkeepers from the Indian subcontinent, thereby ensuring a permanent ganja culture. St Bob Marley did the rest.

Arthur Conan Doyle

T
HERE ARE FEW
plants more important in South American shamanism, whether as medicines or in mythology, than tobacco:
Nicotiana tabacum
of the Solanaceae or Nightshade family. It is native to the Andes. South American Indians had long ago discovered every way of utilizing it: smoked, as a snuff, chewed, licked, as a syrup applied to the gums, and in the form of an enema. In many tribes,
payes
use tobacco smoke blown over a sick patient, especially on the area theoretically affected, with appropriate incantations, in the belief that this practice can cure of itself or at least serve as a prelude to other treatments.

Tobacco is essential in the training of young men wishing to be
payes
. This aspect of their training is present in virtually every tribe in the Colombian Amazonia.

Amongst the Yukunas, for example, students must snuff tobacco in large amounts. It may take several years of this training before they master the knowledge of the
paye
and before they satisfy him of their proficiency.

The tobacco plant and the methods of its use among New World Indians never ceased to astonish the earliest European ‘explorers.’ It was unknown, of course, in the Old World before 1492, and snuffing was unknown in the Eastern Hemisphere before that time.

Vine of the Soul
, 1992

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

T
HE
A
SHANINCA SAY
that by ingesting ayahuasca or tobacco, it is possible to see the normally invisible and hidden Maninkari spirits. Carlos Perez Shuma had told me that tobacco attracted the Maninkari. Amazonian shamans in general consider tobacco a food for the spirits, who crave it ‘since they no longer possess fire as human beings do.’

The idea that the Maninkari liked tobacco had always seemed funny to me. I considered ‘spirits’ to be imaginary characters who could not really enjoy material substances. I also considered smoking to be a bad habit, and it seemed improbable that spirits (inasmuch as they existed) would suffer from the same kinds of addictive behaviors as human beings. Nevertheless, I had resolved to stop letting myself be held up by such doubts and to pay attention to the literal meaning of the shamans’ words, and the shamans were categorical in saying that spirits had an almost insatiable hunger for tobacco.

There are, however, fundamental differences between the shamanic use of tobacco and the consumption of industrial cigarettes. The botanical variety used in the Amazon contains up to eighteen times
more
nicotine than the plants used in Virginia type cigarettes. Amazonian tobacco is grown without chemical fertilizers or pesticides and contains none of the ingredients added to cigarettes, such as aluminum oxide, potassium nitrate, ammonium phosphate, polyvinyl acetate, and a hundred or so others, which make up approximately 10 percent of the smokable matters. During combustion, a cigarette emits some 4,000 substances, most of which are toxic. Some of these substances are even radioactive, making cigarettes the largest single source of radiation in the daily life of an average smoker. According to one study, the average smoker absorbs the equivalent of the radiation dosages from 250 chest X-rays per year. Cigarette smoke is directly implicated in more than 25 serious illnesses, including 17 forms of cancers. In the Amazon, on the other hand, tobacco is considered a
remedy
. The Ashaninca word for ‘healer,’ or ‘shaman,’ is sheripiari – literally, ‘the person who uses tobacco.’ The oldest Ashaninca men I knew were all sheripiari. They were so old that they did not know their own age, which only their deeply wrinkled skin suggested, and they were remarkably alert and healthy.

Intrigued by these disparities, I looked through data banks for comparative studies between the toxicity of the Amazonian variety
(Nicotiana rustica)
and the variety used by the manufacturers of cigarettes, cigars, rolling tobacco, and pipe tobacco
(Nicotiana tabacum). I
found nothing. The question, it seemed, had not been asked. I also looked for studies on the cancer rate among shamans who use massive and regular doses of nicotine: again, nothing. So I decided to write to the main authority on the matter, Johannes Wilbert, author of the book
Tobacco and Shamanism in South America
, to put my questions to him. He replied: ‘There is certainly evidence that Western tobacco products contain many different harmful agents which are probably not present in organically grown plants. I have not heard of shamans developing cancers but that may, of course, be a function of several things like lack of Western diagnosis, natural life span of indigenous people, magico-religious restriction of tobacco use in tribal societies, etc.’

In any case, scientists have never really considered tobacco as a hallucinogen, because Westerners have never smoked large enough doses to reach the hallucinatory state.

The Cosmic Serpent
, 1998

M
EANWHILE, THE SUPPER
went ahead, and appeared to have been supplied solely for Franz, for the unknown man scarcely touched one or two dishes of the splendid feast to which his unexpected guest did such ample justice. Then Ali brought on the dessert, or rather took the baskets from the statues’ heads and placed them on the table. Between the two baskets he placed a small vermeil cup, closed with a lid of the same metal. The respect with which Ali had carried this cup piqued Franz’s curiosity. He raised the lid and saw a kind of greenish paste that looked like preserved angelica, but which was entirely unknown to him. He replaced the lid, as ignorant of what the cup contained as he was before he had lifted it, and then, glancing at his host, he saw him smile at his disappointment.

‘You cannot guess what sort of eatable is contained in that little vase, and that intrigues you, doesn’t it?’

‘I confess it does.’

‘Well, then, those green preserves are nothing less than the ambrosia that Hebe served at the table of Jupiter.’

‘But,’ replied Franz, ‘this ambrosia, in passing through human hands, has no doubt lost its heavenly name to assume a human one.

‘In vulgar language, what do you call this thing – for which, in any case, I do not feel any great desire?’

‘Ah, thus is our material origin truly revealed!’ cried Sinbad. ‘We frequently pass so near to happiness without seeing it, without really looking at it; or even if we do, we still do not recognize it. Are you a practical man, and is gold your god? Then taste this, and the mines of Peru, Gujarat, and Golconda are open to you. Are you a man of imagination, a poet? Then taste this, and the boundaries of possibility disappear, the fields of infinite space will be open to you: you will walk about, free in heart and mind, into the boundless realms of reverie. Are you ambitious, do you run after the grandeur of the earth? Only taste this, and in an hour you will be a king, not of some petty kingdom hidden in a corner of Europe, like France, Spain, or England, but a king of the world, of the universe, of creation. Your throne will be established on that mountain to which Jesus was taken by Satan, and without being obliged to do homage to the devil, without having to kiss his claw, you will be sovereign master of all the kingdoms of the earth. Is it not tempting, what I offer you? And is it not an easy thing, since it is only to do thus? Look!’ With these words he uncovered the little vermeil cup containing the substance so highly praised, took a teaspoonful of the magic preserves, raised it to his lips, and savoured it slowly, with his eyes half shut and his head bent backward. Franz did not disturb him while he ate his favourite dish, but when he had finished, he inquired:

‘What, then, is this precious preparation?’

‘Did you ever hear,’ asked his host, ‘of the Old Man of the Mountain, who attempted to assassinate Philip Augustus?’

‘Of course I have.’

‘Well, you know he reigned over a rich valley dominated by the mountain from which he derived his picturesque name. In this valley were magnificent gardens planted by Hasan-ben-Sabah, and in these gardens were isolated pavilions. Into these pavilions he admitted his chosen ones, and there, says Marco Polo, he had them eat a certain herb, which transported them to Paradise to the midst of ever-blooming shrubs, ever-ripe fruit, and ever-fresh virgins. Now, what these happy young men took for reality was only a dream, but it was a dream so soft, voluptuous, and enthralling, that they sold themselves body and soul to him who gave it to them, and obeyed his orders as if they were God’s own. They went to the ends of th earth to strike down their destined victims, and would die under torture without a word, believing that the death they suffered was only a transition to that life of delights of which the holy herb, now served before you, had given them a foretaste.’

‘Then,’ cried Franz, ‘it is hashish! I know it, by name at least.’

1855. From:
Tales of Hashish
by Andrew C. Kimmens, 1976

L
EGENDS MAINTAIN THAT
Ḥ
asan-i
Ṣ
abb
ā
h kidnapped peasant boys while they were in a hashish-drugged sleep, then woke them in an artificial paradise of lithe, dancing
horis
(Islamic angels), fragrant wine and more slumber-inducing hashis. They would then be thrust back into the harsh reality of their poverty–stricken life with the option of a return to paradise, proffered through murderous service of the Master and martyrdom. This and other legends of Alam
ū
t and the gardens of paradise and of
Ḥ
asan-i
Ṣ
abb
ā
h and his hashish-crazed followers are the result of medieval disinformation, rumour-mongering, and over–reliance on limited early source material.

The followers of
Ḥ
asan-i
Ṣ
abb
ā
h, or more correctly the N
ī
z
ā
r
ī
Ism
ā
ᶜ
ī
l
ī
s (1009–1256 CE) of Iran and Syria, were, indeed, given the name
Hash
ī
sh
ī
n
. This appellation was picked up by the Crusaders and transmuted into ‘assassin’, a term found in many languages today. However, it is the second label ‘assassin’ which bears closer association with the reality than the first.

The rulers of the N
ī
z
ā
r
ī
Ism
ā
ᶜ
ī
l
ī
s were unassailable in their mountain retreats. Their fanatical followers who were promised their rewards in the afterlife used political assassination and subterfuge rather than heroics on the battlefield as their
modus operandi
. Although small in number, their fingers stretched far, and the kings and rulers of the medieval Islamic world slept uneasily in fear of these Islamic terrorists from Iran. Hence their infamy, and hence the stories of their exploits reaching the ears of both Marco Polo, who introduced to Europe the stories of the fabulous gardens and drugs, and the Crusaders, who carried back tales of the Assassins’ killing and terror.

The connection between a group of religious fanatics and indolent drug use is not so obvious, for the Ism
ā
ᶜ
ī
l
ī
s were strict in many of their religious observances. The explanation is the use of the term
hash
ī
sh
ī
n
or
hash
ī
shiyya
, meaning literally a user of hashish but also used as a general term of abuse for any disreputable person or group – similar to the meaning of ‘vagabond’. The Ism
ā
ᶜ
ī
l
ī
s were secretive, feared, and rumours of their beliefs and practices abounded but were not widely known. They were hated, and they terrified the Sunni establishment and its leaders. A grave insult at the time was to denounce them as hashish users, though in reality nothing could have been further from the truth. They were devout adherents of an Islamic doctrine who believed that their leader was the reincarnation of God. Religion and their moral code were of overriding importance and there was no room for drug-induced indulgence in their world.