Aufhebunga Bunga
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/359/ Apollo Gets High ft. Benjamin Fong
🕑 Added 2023-08-22 13:00:54 +0000 UTCOn the American drug binge.
Forget all the stereotypes – drug use is no longer confined to particular subcultures. US Americans are taking world-historic levels of drugs. Benjamin Fong tells us about his new book, Quick Fixes: Drugs in America from Prohibition to the 21st Century Binge, which covers everything from morphine to mushrooms, SSRIs to speed, caffeine to cocaine.
Ultimately, is all this drug-taking about reckless abandon, or about control?
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Links:
- Building Big Things, Damage Magazine, Issue 1
- Quick Fixes: Drugs in America from Prohibition to the 21st Century Binge, Benjamin Y. Fong, Verso
- Who Deserves Amphetamines, Benjamin Fong, The Point
Comments
DTC
I have been working in the nightlife entertainment industry for over a decade and the fall of cocaine has been extremely palpable. I’m really surprised that ketamine wasn’t mentioned. It is, by far, the most popular drug these days in the club scene, at least in New York/Berlin/LA. Moreover, it’s the perfect drug for the moment: a legal dissociative. Great episode though. And the microdose crypto bro really is a thing these days.
Charles Gray
“Amphetamine fuelled acceleration” - you guys teasing an episode on Land? In all seriousness I loved this episode, and was reminded by one of the California episodes from way back, alongside something one of your guests said in the 100th anniversary episode. That juxtaposition between the euphoric end of history drug use of California (and maybe wider America) and the more ‘sense-of-dread’ era of the British 90s drug use (adjacent to the run-down Warehouse rave atmosphere - if I remember one of your guests from the California series remarked how in America people smoked to relax, but was initially shocked to see partygoers smoke to keep up and keep dancing - which would become sanitised towards the end of that decade) is very striking, and I think Fong’s work sounds like it gives great insight for that former period and updates it for todays context!
