This is a good example of how the past doesn’t go anywhere. Those drugs are still around as much as they ever were, or in even greater numbers. But we all know what they are now and what they do. There’s nothing to talk about so their names drop off the cultural airwaves. They’ve settled into the culture. You don’t hear about them, but that doesn’t mean they’re not around. The past doesn’t go anywhere. The future is just laid on top of it.
I may have had the best sex of my life while on Quaaludes.
qualewds
That’s exactly how I would’ve though it was spelled too.But apparently…
The drug name “Quaalude” is a portmanteau, combining the words “quiet interlude” and shared a stylistic reference to another drug marketed by the firm, Maalox.
Is it bad that I learned the spelling through playing tons of DopeWars back in the 2000s? 🤣
Made me wonder what combination is behind Maalox.
The acronym ‘MAALOX’ refers to the solution’s compositional elements: magnesium and aluminum as oxides.
Damn, not as interesting as I’d hoped.
Thai Sticks are probably still available in Thailand and still probably amazing. And in the 70s when Mexican ditchweed was all you’d find in North America, it was worth the peril to import the amazing stuff.
Nowadays, anyone with a light can grow equally amazing stuff. I would love to taste some real Thai herb, but it won’t get me more stoned than my homegrown. Thai smugglers are welcome to come to Manitoba and call my bluff, DM me baby.
Windowpane was more or less a marketing label on the same Shakedown Street sheets that made their way around the country in the wake of the Dead. They arrived up here via letters sent home. You can still get sheets but I have no idea who’s making em, probably dodgy Russian chemists whose families are held hostage…
I know almost nothing about ludes.
Knockoff ludes are popular south of the equator. Africa, Southeast Asia. No one makes a legitimate Quaalude anymore, so it’s all illicit production, mostly in India, iirc.
I live in South Africa. They call it Mandrax over here. They also call it “buttons” (singular and plural). Both formal and informal illegal drug naming systems as a whole are completely busted, but that’s another story.
I don’t have more context on production beyond that old Hamilton Morris documentary. I think at least some part of the production chain is still here.
The apartheid government’s chemical weapons program, which involved large scale manufacture of the drug, probably left some instructions lying around.
The head of that program, Wouter Basson (also known as fucking Dr. Death), somehow still has a medical license and is practicing cardiology in Cape Town.
He’ll even admit to the war crimes (which he officially denied) to patients who demonstrate a sufficient level of racism.
Meanwhile, some of the most desperate people in this country are still crushing those tablets, smoking them out of broken beer bottlenecks, and end up lying facedown in the street in the middle of the day.
Have you seen the Lord of War? Is there really a drug they mix with gun powder like it shows when he is in Africa? Always wondered that.
I’ve heard a lot of stories about bizarre adulterants, so I don’t doubt that happened, but it’s probably not commonplace.
It does sound like something an insurgent group would actually experiment with.
That being said, I’m pretty poorly informed with what happens in conflict zones north of the border.
Ether and laughing gas. Opium?
NOS have become very popular in EU
The background lore of the TV show Severance is gonna create a new rise of ether used as a recreational drug in a sort of “do not build the torment nexus” way.
Laughing gas has seen some bans in Europe recently, so it’s already declining again.
Ckarky Cat
krokodil
Smooth skin is yesterday, man!
What is windowpane? If the sheets mentioned in a comment are anything to go by, I’m guessing acid or spice? Both still have their popularity in certain crowds.
For me it was four hits of acid made to look like a window.
There were album covers like that, too.
Ever watch Breaking Bad or a cop show about a person making meth. Aparently it was like that but instead of busting it up into a powder it was basically a payne of what looked like glass that could fit into the palm of your hand. Kind of like a window payne. It was up to the user to bust it up or whatever. But it looked like someone carved out a square of glass. Now supposedly Black Beuties were kind of like that but had a little work to get high off of.
aah ok managed to mostly stay away from meth so that’s a new one to me
Windowpane is LSD, but like I said, mostly marketing.
gotcha
Opium was a major problem in parts of history. Especially China/Silk Road times
I did pure opium once and hash. My questioning as a student of history is how did they transport it long distance? I think like a crown royal bag or something but that would probably melt or something depending how plyable it was.
Not a reliable source here, I had to take an eastern world history class between 1500 - 1900 in college and I very much didn’t want to be there. Opium was big product in west china from the poppy plants and seeds that grew easily there. So the times I know of they were using ships for some trade already. There was a divided nation and Japan was known for coming in and pillaging and fucking things up over and over. Britain came into the scene, took advantage of that, and established a colonial trade of tea. Opiate use was used as a way to control the local people, at times, made illegal at times. It was just a cluster fuck for decades and a bit of the reason opium isn’t normalized in Europe today as eastern cultures grabbed back power over their industries. Idk. You are better off going on a Wikipedia dive!
damn, that was a long course you took!
Don’t speak to me like that, mortal.
Nicotine is actually making a comeback, as it’s a nutrient (not what the pharmaceutical companies want us to believe is a drug).
It’s actually in nightshades, the highest amount of it going to eggplant.
Just like clean beautiful coal?
(not what the pharmaceutical companies want us to believe is a drug)
This makes me curious
The downvotes prove me right somehow.
Proof of this, as follows: https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=OAiZtUhrgAQ&t=0
