What's 'meow meow' actually like? Dr Max Pemberton found out for himself.

Last Saturday, I took drugs. This kind of behaviour does not constitute my usual type of weekend activity, I assure you. I am, after all, a doctor. As I stood with a rolled-up bank note in my hand, staring down at the thin line of white powder I was about to snort, I thought back to the innocent shopping trip earlier in the day that had led to this...

At first, I felt nothing except a slight burning sensation in my nose. Then, as I went to the kitchen to get a drink, it occurred to me how much I loved my friend Rhiannon. I came back in and sat down on the chair and stared at her. "You OK?" she asked. "I am absolutely fine," I replied, smiling widely. "I really love you." "It’s working then," she replied sardonically. A few minutes later, we were all sitting round in a euphoric haze, smiling benignly but with an incomprehensible, overwhelming desire to dance. It was nearly impossible to keep still.

Um, yeah. Fight the power. King County represent!

Two young men have tragically died. Police reports have stated that they were imbibed with a cocktail of alcohol, mephedrone and the synthetic opiod methadone. Yet the toxicology reports have yet to be returned and no causal link has yet been substantiated. These substances were found in possession only.

The media, and consequentially sound-byte politics, have been quick to pick up on this new health scare. The antagonist of the piece? Specifically mephedrone. On a day when it was revealed that the PM has been telling porky pies on defence funding; we have mephedrone -- a new national health crisis -- to push it down the news ladder.

The drug, 4-methylmethcathinone, is also known by the 'street' names MCAT, MEOW and 4MMC. It is sold legally as 'plant food' and 'not for human consumption' -- rather ironically it has to be said -- and in the great tradition of legal highs has been slowly edging its way toward illegality for some time. Now it is being thrust into social segregation.

Lila.info has a short but great interview with Stephan Beyer, author of 'Singing to the Plants'.

One thing that is touched on in your book is how shamans in the Amazon do not fit into our usual dualisms of light and dark, good and evil, and that shamanic power is morally ambiguous and ambivalent. As Ayahuasca extends itself beyond the forest, can we anticipate the same patterns of shamanic healing, shamanic warfare, and the same depth of magical reality to emerge in Western entheogen-using cultures?

Ayahuasca seems to be spreading along two different paths — the Brazilian new religious movements and the shamanic traditions of the Upper Amazon. Anthropologist Edward MacRae has specifically pointed out that Santo Daime has not incorporated such features of Amazonian shamanism as magic darts, protective arcanas, shamanic phlegm, or the idea of the moral ambiguity of the shaman. I have had some very interesting discussions with people about the extent to which the Brazilian ayahuasca religions can be considered shamanic. But in none of these discussions has anyone maintained that these churches have incorporated any idea of dark shamanism, attack sorcery, or the power of the shaman to harm as well as heal.

I also think that most foreigners are deeply uncomfortable with this darker side of Upper Amazonian shamanism — what I have called its tragic cosmovision. Shamans deal with sickness, envy, malice, betrayal, loss, conflict, failure, bad luck, hatred, despair, and death. But we have tended instead to assimilate the shaman to our existing catalogue of spiritual teachers, along with Zen monks, Tibetan lamas, Ascended Masters, and Hindu gurus. Many foreigners simply do not see the shaman as ambiguously dwelling in the landscape of suffering, passion, and mess.

Some shamans who work with foreign tourists adopt the concepts and language of their clients, some for commercial reasons, some out of a genuine desire to communicate. Mestizo shamanism in the Upper Amazon has always been voraciously eclectic, and we can observe it now as it incorporates currently popular foreign ideas about the nature of healing, the origins of suffering, and the sources of sickness.

This process appears to be largely one way. I just do not see most foreigners adopting the complex, tragic, and ambivalent views on healing and sickness that lie at the roots of ayahuasca shamanism in the Upper Amazon. Yet the existence and spread of the Brazilian ayahuasca churches shows that the teachings of the ayahuasca experience are in some ways separable from its cultural origins. This may be true in other settings as well. We will just have to wait to see how it all turns out.

Originally published in 2000 'Ayahuasca Reader -- Encounters with the Amazon's sacred vine' is one of the finest selections of psychedelic literature currently available on the market. Edited by Luis Eduardo Luna and Steven F. White, the reader manages to skilfully portray the ayahuasca experience in all its many dimensions.

Popular interest in ayahuasca has blossomed over the last twenty years, however, research, writing and oral poetry on the topic dates from a far earlier period of time. This reader brings those threads together in a manner that beautifully caters for the new position ayahuasca finds itself in: "The general objective of this anthology is to provide the reader with a panorama of texts from nearly a dozen languages that, collectively, treat the ayahuasca experience from what might be called an "anthropoliterary" perspective." The originality of this method immediately lends itself to an exciting literary prospect...

The legality of the drug mephedrone will be examined "very speedily, very carefully" following the deaths of two teenagers, Lord Mandelson has said.

The business secretary said the government would take "any action" needed to deal with the drug.

Louis Wainwright, 18, and Nicholas Smith, 19, died in Scunthorpe on Monday after taking the drug.

Four people have been arrested in connection with the deaths, including two men aged 26 and 20 and a boy of 17.

The Home Office said it would receive advice from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) on 29 March.

The ACMD said its chairman, Professor Les Iverson, had discussed mephedrone with Home Secretary Alan Johnson, who had expressed "grave concern".

Elaine Smith, mother: "I don't think Nick saw it as a risk"

It said: "The council has been looking at the dangers of mephedrone, and the related cathinone compounds, as a priority."

According to BBC home affairs correspondent Danny Shaw, a member of the ACMD, speaking anonymously, said he would be "very surprised" if the council did not make its decision at its next meeting in March.

The council will then report its recommendations to the home secretary.

The ACMD member said there was also "some understanding" of the science behind mephedrone, though it was "far from perfect".

[Thanks James!]

Did any of you get a chance to see this at SXSW? When I first heard about the use of animation in this film ("this groundbreaking new documentary uses a stunning new animation technique to tell the story of the modern cultural icon Bill Hicks"), I had my doubts; but the trailer makes those sequences look kind of cool. Of course, that's what trailers do, so... did any of you get a chance to see it?

And now, for something completely different:

[Thanks, Stuart!]

Charles Shaw has been making news with his book, Exile Nation: Drugs, Prisons, Politics & Spirituality, a potent look at the prison-industrial system from the inside. In Exile Shaw peels back prison walls to detail the layers of institutionalized oppression the U.S. calls both justice and big business. After reading the bleak tale of his time in the system, Mr. Shaw was kind enough to play along and answer our stupid questions.

You were sent to prison for a handful of MDMA tablets. Why did you decide to live a life of crime?

Funny you ask that. If it weren't for the fact that drug possession is a crime, I don't think I'd ever come close to a "criminal lifestyle." The only crimes I have ever committed were for drugs, and only because I was a de facto criminal. When you criminalize someone's lifestyle, you no longer have to give any credence to their political grievances. It's a great way to avoid having to address the larger issues, such as where the drugs are coming from, who's moving them, and why they are there.

Imagine you could write a Yelp.com review to rate your various prison experiences. Which experiences would come out on top, and how many stars would you give each?

I'd give the Cook County Jail in Chicago "Zero Stars." That place is worse than the hourly No-Tell Motels for crackwhores that populate Sunset Blvd. The guys in Guantanamo are living in five star luxury by comparison. I'd give the Stateville processing center, where all prisoners are (you guessed it!) processed into the Illinois prison system "Two Stars." This place is clean and safe, but only because it's brand new and you never come out of your cell. Lastly, the East Moline Correctional Center, where I served out my sentence, was definitely a "Four Star" endeavor in comparison to other prisons in the Illinois system. Because it was Minimum Security and situated on a campus setting, and you got to go outside twice a day, and they had a big library and moderately decent food, it wasn't as bad as it could have been. But don't let that fool you, the place was still pretty scary.

You write about the dehumanizing nature of prison. Wouldn't prison be less of a deterrent if the walls were clean, the food was decent, and the guards couldn't mistreat you?

Yes, if deterrence was their goal. It's not. They stopped "rehabilitating" prisoners in the 1970s. Today's prison-industrial complex is set up to do one thing and one thing alone, ensure your return. Considering that most prisoners are poor, because the prison system is set up to manage the "unruly underclasses"--what writers like Noam Chomsky and Christian Parenti call "surplus population" or "surplus labor"--most prisoners are worth more in prison than out on the street. When you're locked up, you are worth anywhere from $20,000-$90,000 a year, depending on the type of incarceration you are held under. Contrast that with an unemployed ex-offender who, if he's lucky enough to find a job, can squeeze maybe $12,000 a year out of some simple labor job. More often than not, they are a drain on the system, even though they are legally denied most social services. So no one in government is shedding any tears when people are reincarcerated at a rate of nearly 60% within three years. It's not that ex-offenders want to go back to prison, it's that it's almost inevitable; with no options available to them, most have no choice but to go right back to selling or using drugs.

Scientists at the University of Calgary announced Sunday they have unlocked one of the genetic secrets of the opium poppy - a discovery that may open the door to cheaper and more readily available pain relief.

Biological sciences professor Peter Facchini said they have traced the unique genes that allow the opium poppy to make codeine and morphine...

Using high-tech scanning equipment, she sorted through up to 23,000 different genes contained on one tiny slide.

More than a year ago, on Feb. 4, 2009, she ultimately located a gene called codeine /O/-dementhylase, which produces the plant enzyme that converts codeine into morphine.

"It was finding the needle in a haystack," said Facchini.

[Thanks Thomas!]