This series
explores opium and its history. Opium is a commodity of notoriety and
tremendous value. Wars have been fought over this lucrative commodity, the
infamous Opium Wars in China. The fighting in Afghanistan is currently being
waged in the province of Helmand, the world’s most productive region of opium. Apparently,
it’s still worth fighting over.
Opium: A
Portrait of the Heavenly Demon
by Barbara Hodgson, 1999, Excerpts
Opium:
potent and evocative, it is a word with the power to intoxicate both speaker
and listener, a word that implies languor, mystery and a sort of sinister
beauty. Nothing seems to capture the sensuousness of this word better than the
image of the dreamy smoker adrift in his illicit paradise. To consume opium
regularly, in any form, is to risk forging an almost unbreakable and deadly
bond. Opium is one of the most addictive and debilitating substances on earth,
the opium addict has been called slave, fiend and ghost.
Seeds of
Terror by
Gretchen Peters, 2009, Excerpts
Opium
makes up between 30 and 50 percent of Afghanistan’s GDP. It’s essential to
recognize the economic miracle the drug traffickers have achieved. From one of
the world’s most remote and backward regions, where the transport network and
infrastructure is almost completely shattered, they have managed to integrate
an agricultural product into the global economy. From importing precursor
chemicals to giving loans to thousands of small farmers to providing security
for shipments as they move across the border, this is an organizational feat of
the highest order. And it’s all about making money. Although the Taliban
commanders are deep in the opium trade, they are not the masterminds. This is
being run by businessmen.
Golden Triangle
Opium and
Afghanistan
Soviet-Afghan War: 1979-1989
Post Soviet-Afghan War
Post 9/11 Afghan War
San Francisco, Clarion Alley
Short film by Media Storm, from the Soviet invasion
and the mujahideen resistance to the Taliban and the American occupation,
examines thirty years of Afghan history.
How Collecting Opium Antiques Turned Me
Into an Opium Addict
24 Sep 2012
Great
selection historical photographs and story of Steve Martin’s, no relation to
the actor, journey from opium paraphernalia collector to opium user.
Shantaram by
Gregory David Roberts, 2003 Exceprts
He brought what I asked for – a steel spoon,
distilled water, disposable syringes, heroin, and a carton of cigarettes – and
he set the items out on the little dresser. I cooked up a taste of heroin. The
dose sat in the syringe for almost an hour. I picked it up and put the needle
against a fat, strong, healthy vein in my arm. The damnation drug, the drug
that had driven me to commit stupid, violent crimes; that had put me in prison;
that had cost me my family, and lost my loved ones. The everything-and-nothing
drug: it takes everything, and gives you nothing in return. But the nothing
that it gives you, the unfeeling emptiness it gives you, is sometimes all and
everything you want.
I pushed the needle into the vein, pulled back the
rose of blood that confirmed the clean puncture of the vein, and pressed the
plunger all the way to the stop. Before I could pull the needle from my arm, it
made my mind like the Sahara. Warm, dry, shining, and featureless, the dunes of
the drug smothered all thought, and buried the forgotten civilization of my
mind. The warmth filled my body, killing off the thousand little aches,
twinges, and discomforts we endure and ignore in every sober day. There was no
pain, there was nothing.
Flood of Fire by Amitav Ghosh, 2016, Excerpt
Then
Mr. Chan said, ‘We’re almost ready now, Mr. Reid. When I roast the opium again
it will catch fire. The smoke will last for one or two seconds. You must be
prepared – you must blow out your breath, emptying your chest so you can draw
in all the smoke. When the opium begins to burn I will put it on the dragon’s
eye’ – he pointed to the tiny hole in the pipe’s octagonal cup – ‘and you must
draw hard.’
Zachary
had already emptied the air from his chest: when the flaming pellet was placed
on the ‘dragon’s eye’ he inhaled deeply, filling his lungs with the smoke. Its
consistency was almost that of a liquid, dense, oily and intensely perfumed; it
poured into his body like a flood, coursing through his veins and swamping his
head.
As
he leant back against the cushions Zachary suddenly became aware of his pulse –
except that it wasn’t beating only in his wrist or his neck. It was as if his
whole body were pulsating; the drumming of his heart was so powerful that he
could feel his blood surging into his capillaries. The sensation was so strong
that he looked down at his forearm and saw that his skin had changed color. It
was flushed and red, as if every pore had been awoken and irradiated.
He
looked up at the ceiling and suddenly it was as if his eyes had become more
sensitive, his gaze more powerful. He could see minute cracks in the wood; his
hearing too seemed to have become more acute and the lapping of water was loud
in his ears. He closed his eyes, luxuriating in the feeling of weightlessness,
allowing the smoke to carry him away, as if on a tide.
