Writing On Drugs

298 Pages·2000·8.79 MB·English

by  Sadie Plant

Writing on Drugs
Sadie Plant
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
New York
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
19 Union Square West, New York 10003
Copyright © 1999 by Sadie Plant
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
First published in 1999 by Faber and Faber Ltd., Great Britain
First published in the United States by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
First edition, 2000
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Plant, Sadie, 1964-
Writing on drugs / Sadie Plant,
p, cm.
Originally published: London : Faber and Faber, 1999.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-374-29334-1
1. Drug abuse—Social aspects. 2. Drug abuse in literature. I. Title.
HV5801.P595 2000
394.1 '4—dc2i 00-020822
Writing on Drugs is dedicated to
the man who wore a white shirt and a blue sarong
With thanks to Derek Johns and Jon Riley, and all
the friends who have contributed to the writing of this book.
Very special thanks to Hilda and Philip Plant.

Contents
Prelude, ix
Private Eyes, 3
Artificial Paradises, 32
Unconscious, 54
White Lines, 61
Magicians, 93
Pilots, 119
Ghosts, 139
Dancers, 174
Gray Areas, 182
Trade Wars, 217
Black Markets, 222
Double Agents, 251
Bibliography, 267
Index, 279

Prelude
The man wore a white shirt and a blue sarong. He would have
sold you anything: emeralds, Toyotas, Marlboros, teak. He
smiled: "The best of everything. It all comes from Khun Sa."
Across the street the border guards, smoking in the shade, feet
up on their motorbikes, watched the deal being done. "Be
cool," he said. "They're OK. The whole town trades. They
won't say anything to you."
So you gave the man his dollars, went back to the house,
and sat on the veranda through the late afternoon. Chasing
I lie dragon as the sun went down, high above the outskirts of
! lie border town.
You feel it now, a slow smooth rush as the day cooled off
into the dusk. The whole world paused in that moment: the
mists peeling off the mountains, wood smoke curling from
die settlement below. Even the river's placid flow, the color of
die earth, shallow, slow.
And then the pace picked up, you breathed again. The
j ·,ιΐΙ den Buddha settled in the mountainside, and the temple
hell began its strange uneven chime. You tuned in to the
•.minds of kids and laughter, cowbells in the hills, the clatter
« » I Coca-Cola crates and two-stroke engines in the town.
I he rhythm tightened when the darkness fell. Tree frogs
.mil cicadas started singing as the mountain shadows crept
.h loss the valley and the sky. The house felt like a hide,
I >.idied in candlelight, wrapped in the blanket of the blue-
I 'lack world outside, a dark night broken only by the lights of
μ hides on the road, strips of fluorescence, a smattering of
1.1 is. Everything was gentle, effortless, and calm.
I nter still came music from the Burmese side. The disco
nu\es of another world. "Sugar bah bah bah bah bah bah oh
I tniiai Honey bah bah bah bah bah bah You are my candy girl and
i/iwi got me wantin' you , . ."
IX
PRELUDE
Chains of mountains, chains of thought, events ... you ran
with the dragon to the delta, out to sea, and into the arms of
the whole wide world. You chased it to the makeshift facto­
ries, out to the poppy fields, the fertile soil, the harvest and its
workers, the women and the kids, the seasons and the cycles
of demand and supply. Brown sugar, black gold, warm white
light: you watched the whole thing crystallize, running
through its repertoire, its stories and songs, the art and design
of its influence. You stalked it through a maze of waterways
and ports, streetcar tracks and highways, hotel rooms and
squalid squats, city squares and alleyways and off into a maze
of deals and rackets and temptations, a long and tangled tale
of prohibitions and desires. You saw the insights it had given
and the lies it had told, the pain it had driven and the plea­
sures it had sold. It gave you its plots and its characters, the
maps of its memories, its charts and diagrams, its tales of ad­
venture in the far-off Western lands. It boasted of its wars and
the battles it had won, the fortunes it had made, the damage it
had done.
It kept running. Dragons never tire. It blazed its trails across
your darkness, etching its tracks onto that black mountain­
side. It kept running through your mind, tempting, escaping,
daring you to chase it just a little more. You kept running
through the story, running its story through your mind. It
danced ahead, it laughed at you, it knew you would fail. You
heard it all, and still became the dragon's tail.
X
Writing on Drugs