We could barely catch a glimpse of the horses as they pounded past on the wet earth. She had this terrifyingly blank look on her face, and she said, “The ground was shaking underneath me… so this little courtyard here suddenly became the ocean, and I was floating in it.”
When you’ve been sent back to prison multiple times for dirty pee like I have, you end up thinking a bunch about addiction—whether you’re a screwup or a bona-fide addict, and if you’re an addict what that means. Lots of people define addiction as a “disease,” but I don’t.
A few weeks ago, the news broke that a number of cancer patients in Canada had been on the receiving end of faulty chemotherapy medications. The saline bags used to administer the drugs were overfilled, diluting the medication anywhere from 3 to 20 percent.
The war on drugs is racist, cruel, expensive, and it doesn’t even work, since people are still getting high—in the past few years, illegal drug use among kids has increased, while legal drug use (in the form of tobacco and alcohol) has declined.
There was a time when plugging in a record player in an abandoned building brought a police response more appropriate to the assembly of a nuclear device. Whatever rattled the establishment about rave culture, in their own warped way they had a point. It was dangerous.
Vang Vieng is a small town of 25,000 nestled in the jungles of northwestern Laos, on the banks of the Nam Song River. It’s home to caves, lagoons, and lush green hills—a landscape that up until recently had me believing that Laos, my mother’s native land, was mostly free from crass Western concepts like “partying.”
SEX - SCENT OF A VAGINA
Slicing through lower Manhattan’s midsection during my frequent walk from my Soho office to my boner-friend’s apartment in Chinatown, I cross many multi-cultural sensory experiences.
After 15 years of denial, obfuscation, and single-handedly creating the worst fashion trend of the 21st century, Lance Armstrong is finally ready to admit to the world—or Oprah, same difference—that he indulged in performance-enhancing drugs during his time as a professional bicycle-riding man.
The continued acceptance of gay men and lesbians by mainstream America is sort of a double-edged sword. Homosexuals can now serve in the military (everywhere), adopt children (in many states), and get married (in a few places).
As a commercially-minded fellow who understands the pitfalls of a consumer-driven culture and the importance of production, I decided to spend a day as an apprentice with a cook in the Colombian village of San Agustin.
