|
afc84b0
|
Junk turns the user into a plant. Plants do not feel pain since pain has no function in a stationary organism. Junk is a pain killer. A plant has no libido in the human or animal sense. Junk replaces the sex drive. Seeding is the sex of the plant and the function of opium is to delay seeding. Perhaps the intense discomfort of withdrawal is the transition from plant back to animal, from a painless, sexless, timeless state back to sex and pain and time, from death back to life.
|
|
pain
plant
opium
seed
junk
|
William S. Burroughs |
|
666d0be
|
"How about this? Hong Kong had been appropriated by British drug pushers in the 1840s. We wanted Chinese silk, porcelain, and spices. The Chinese didn't want our clothes, tools, or salted herring, and who can blame them? They had no demand. Our solution was to make a demand, by getting large sections of the populace addicted to opium, a drug which the Chinese government had outlawed. When the Chinese understandably objected to this arrangement, we kicked the fuck out of them, set up a puppet government in Peking that hung signs on parks saying NO DOGS OR CHINESE, and occupied this corner of their country as an import base. Fucking godawful behavior, when you think about it. And we accuse of xenophobia. It would be like the Colombians invading Washington in the early twenty-first century and forcing the White House to legalize heroin. And saying, "Don't worry, we'll show ourselves out, and take Florida while we're at it, okay? Thanks very much."
|
|
opium-wars
opium
hong-kong
drugs
|
David Mitchell |
|
e605049
|
An enormous semiofficial drug-smuggling operation was established in order to improve Britain's unfavorable balance of payments with China--the direct result of the British love of tea.
|
|
opium-wars
opium
tea
china
|
Tom Standage |
|
dbef91a
|
That's what opium does to suffering: makes it of hypothetical interest only.
|
|
opium
|
Sebastian Faulks |
|
a1104e1
|
Opium makes you quick-witted - perhaps only because it calms the nerves and stills the emotions. Nothing, not even death, seems so important.
|
|
opium
|
Graham Greene |