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The Online Reefer Madness Teaching Museum
The Poison Trail
- By William F. Boos -- pages 175 - 180
from
Chapter eleven
"Cocain(sic) and
the Marihuana Peril"
Though
cocainism often leads to violence---and hence is a peril to the community as
well as to the addict---it is not nearly as grave a
potential menace as the now rapidly spreading peril from hasheesh.
If you have any doubts as to the plausibility of this statement, just
look up the word "assassin" in the
dictionary or encyclopaedia. You
will find that it is derived from "hasheesh," and that the original
"Assassins" (meaning "hasheesh-eaters") were members of a
Mohammedan sect headed by a mysterious figure known as the "Old Man of the
Mountains." They used to stoke
themselves up with this drug, which produces a kind of intensified "Dutch
courage," before going out against their enemies, and their name has now
become an international synonym for the furtive, cruel killer.
At the same time---or rather as preliminary to their murderous states of
mind---they would experience through the use of their drug certain strange,
adventurous, exciting hallucinations which played magic tricks with time and
space; and of these latter sensations I can, in a
modest way, speak from first-hand knowledge.
Once upon a time---in the line of duty---I smoked hasheesh.
I smoked it only once. Once
was enough for me, at any rate.
Here
is the story. The Watch and Ward
Society is a New England organization very similar in purpose to the
"Comstock Society" of New York. In
its efforts to provide Boston with a literary censorship it has upon occasion
given rise to serious criticism, but nevertheless it has done valiant service to
the community as the untiring enemy of the drug traffic.
When, therefore, on a certain day several years ago, information was
received by Mr. J. Frank Chase, then Secretary of the Society, to the effect
that a queer resinouslike substance was being peddled in one of the Arabic
restaurants in Boston, that experienced crusader was extremely interested.
According to the information received the stuff was being smoked in pipes
by the habitues of the place, who were Turks, Arabs, and Syrians, and that as a
result of this the addicts went into a physically trancelike state in which they
showed great mental excitement with both delusions and hallucinations.
At times, it was said, the addicts became noisy and threatening, and the
informer, himself an Arab and familiar with the effects of the drug, believed
that the substance peddled was hasheesh. So,
with the aid of the police and his informer, Mr. Chase raided the restaurant and
made some seizures. A little later
he placed in my hands two lumps of this same hard, resinous material.
"I
am told that this stuff is hasheesh," he said.
"Could you analyze it and, if it is really hasheesh or something of
the sort, will you testify for me in court?"
"Can
you get me a cat?" I asked.
"What!"
"A
cat. Any cat will do.
The point is that the chemical tests for hasheesh are not conclusive and
the only way to prove its identity is by animal experiment."
"Very
well. Do what you think necessary.
I'll have a cat for you tonight."
So
that evening he sent me a starved female alley cat which, however, was gentle
and made friends right away. Furthermore,
its undernourished condition made it very suitable for my experiment.
I
set to work immediately, making a ten-per-cent alcoholic solution of the resin,
added twenty-five drops to a bowl of milk, and set the milk before the cat.
Pussy started to lap it up eagerly, but suddenly stopped and turned away
when she became aware of the strange taste.
For a moment I was afraid the experiment was going to fail, but after a
short time the cat went back to the milk and finished it.
I had her under observation in a small room with the door closed, and I
did not have to wait very long for something to happen.
For
a little while after finishing its drugged milk the animal sat quiet and
relaxed, but all at once she began to purr in a queer way and to wander around
the room as if looking for something. A
moment later she stood rigid and stared intently at one particular, wholly
unoccupied, place on the wall. She
then assumed a crouching position, typical of a cat who is about to pounce on a
bird. She worked her feet back and
forth under her, twitched her lips, made the little cat sounds of the hunting
animal, and in a flash leapt at the place on the wall at which she had been
staring. She fell back from the bare
wall and once again began to wander. Then
she found a place on the opposite wall which she proceeded to attack in a
similar manner; and this imaginary hunting expedition went on in various parts
of the room until she was evidently weary. She
seemed now to be looking for a bed, but suddenly becoming aware of the tip of
her tail for the first time she found enough energy left to chase herself round
in a circle until she was really exhausted.
Then she lay down, curled herself up, and went to sleep.
Her rest, however, seemed much disturbed by dreams.
She twitched all over from time to time, and almost incessantly moved her
lips and made her hunting noises.
So
much for Pussy. The experiment did
at least show that the cat had been subject to great mental excitement and
hallucinations, and I am glad to observe that her dreams, from the feline point
of view, appeared on the whole to be happy ones.
I did, however, feel that perhaps the animal experiment was not
sufficiently convincing. Since I
could tell only vaguely what was going on in Pussy's mind, I determined to try
out the stuff myself.
The
large living room of our house was connected by a wide hall with the library,
and one had an excellent vista from the window seat in the living room to the
opposite windows of the library. On
the evening of my experiment I sat on the window seat, while the members of my
family were grouped around a lamp in the library.
From this point of vantage they were able to watch me and note any signs
I might exhibit, while I had them always in full view.
I cut some shavings from the resin, mixed these with tobacco, stuffed a
pipe with the mixture, and began to smoke. At
first I experienced nothing, but after I had been smoking for ten minutes or so
I began to have the queer, not unpleasant sensation of being lifted upward into
the air. This sensation persisted
for some time and was then replaced by a peculiar visual phenomenon.
The family in the library seemed gradually to move away to greater and
yet greater distances until at length they seemed so small that offhand it would
have seemed impossible to differentiate them.
Yet at all times they were quite distinctly limned.
I kept on smoking, and gradually my mind turned from my family; instead
the room now seemed full of unfamiliar people in exotic costumes who moved about
and talked excitedly to one another but paid no attention to me.
Then I experienced a queer and painful feeling of constriction about my
head, as from a metal band which was being drawn ever tighter.
At the same time I experienced a drowsy feeling, accompanied by headache
and a strong desire for sleep. I
went to bed and fell asleep almost at once; but all
night I had the most horrible dreams about stabbing, throat-cutting, and murder
in general.
A
classic description of the action of hasheesh is to be found in Gerard de
Nerval's "Voyages en Orient" which has been translated and published
in this country under the name of "The Women of
Cairo." He who reads the first chapter of the section of that book
entitled "The Story of the Caliph Hakem," and checks my experience
with the account contained therein, will have little doubt that the resinous
material I placed in my pipe was a preparation of hasheesh.
At the same time he will see that my experience was incomplete, for while
marked distortion of space was present there was less distortion of time.
Furthermore hasheesh hallucinations at one stage or another are apt to be
highly erotic, and of this element-to the best of my recollection-I experienced
no trace. At the trial the most I
could conscientiously say, on the basis of my own experience and the cat's
behavior, both of which I described in detail, was that the seized resin
produced the characteristic action of hasheesh and certainly belonged to the
hasheesh group. This was enough and
the defendant peddlers were sentenced to serve time for "illegally selling
a harmful narcotic drug." Other
prosecutions and convictions followed and after a while the local trade in the
stuff was, for the time being, stamped out.
Unfortunately, as we shall see, it was not stamped out forever.
Hasheesh,
which is made from the tips of Indian hemp (cannabis indica) is used in
different ways in different places and is known in different countries by
different names. The active drug is
prepared for use by boiling down an extract of Indian hemp with water and butter
until a paste is formed. Sometimes
it is chewed, sometimes smoked, and sometimes drunk in dilution.
In India, where it is commonly taken in the form of a sweetmeat, the name
is "bhang." The
Hottentots, like the Greeks, also "have a word for it"---though the
word eludes me. And now in America
it has in recent years reappeared under yet another name.
Marihuana, of which we hear so much at present, is nothing but
hasheesh---or rather, home-grown hasheesh. Addiction
is spreading by leaps and bounds, and nobody knows to what extent the illegal
varieties of hemp are being cultivated in the United States for the purpose of
supplying the rapidly growing trade in "marihuana candy" and
"marihuana cigarettes." When the burlesque theatres were temporarily
closed en masse in New York City during 1937 one of the principal reasons cited
for this stringent and sweeping action was the alarming
increase in sex crimes in the metropolis.
A general connection was held to exist between attendance at burlesque
performances and a predisposition to this kind of misconduct; but more precisely
the fact was that there was reason to think that marihuana candy, as well as
cocain, was being passed around during the intermissions at some of the houses.
What is more serious still, the marihuana habit is spreading among
children of high-school age through the agency of peddlers who haunt the
vicinity of schools during the noonday and other recesses.
This is doubly abominable, as the reputation of the drug for producing
erotic hallucinations makes it particularly appealing to the curiosity of
adolescents, among whom addicts are created with much more than ordinary ease.
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