Disinformation Book of Lists, The - Softcover

Kick; Russ

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0972952942 ISBN 13: 9780972952941

Publisher: DISINFORMATION COMPANY LTD, 2004

Synopsis

###############################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################

About this title

About the Authors

Russ Kick is the editor of the wildly successful three-volume anthology The Graphic Canon: The World's Great Literature as Comics and Visuals and the bestselling anthologies You Are Being Lied To, Everything You Know is Wrong, and 50 Things You're Not Supposed to Know . His books have sold over half a million copies. The New York Times has dubbed him "an information archaeologist," Details magazine described him as "a Renaissance man," and Utne Reader named him one of its "50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World." He is creator of the popular website www.thememoryhole.com.

Russ Kick is the editor of the wildly successful three-volume anthology The Graphic Canon: The World's Great Literature as Comics and Visuals and the bestselling anthologies You Are Being Lied To, Everything You Know is Wrong, and 50 Things You're Not Supposed to Know . His books have sold over half a million copies. The New York Times has dubbed him "an information archaeologist," Details magazine described him as "a Renaissance man," and Utne Reader named him one of its "50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World." He is creator of the popular website www.thememoryhole.com.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

BOOK OF LISTS

SUBVERSIVE FACTS AND HIDDEN INFORMATION IN RAPID-FIRE FORMAT

By Russ Kick

Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC

Copyright © 2004 Russ Kick
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-9729529-4-1

Contents

Introduction, 
About the Author, 
Acknowledgments, 
Drugs +, 
39 Famous People Who Used Drugs, 
42 Famous Drinkers of Vin Mariani, 
20 Famous Drinkers of Absinthe, 
A Dozen US Politicians Who Have Smoked Pot, 
31 Products Containing Hard Drugs, 
9 US Companies Allowed to Manufacture Illegal Drugs, 
6 Illegal Substances That Occur Naturally in Our Bodies, 
12 Songs About Drugs, 
16 Legal Substances That Can Cause False Positives on Drug Tests, 
12 Strange Drugs, 
82 Brands of Heroin, 
42+ Things That Have Been Made Out of Hemp, 
10 of Chong's Bongs, 
12 Ways to Alter Your Consciousness Without Drugs, 
Crime and Punishment +, 
13 Innocent People Who Went to Prison, 
36 Botched Executions by Michael L. Radelet, Ph.D., 
13 Last Meals Requested by Executed Texas Prisoners, 
8 Handmade Prison Objects, 
3 States Where Cockfighting Is Legal, 
14 Criminal Cops and Their "Punishments", 
Feds and Spooks +, 
25 Tips for Interrogating a Prisoner, From the CIA, 
7 CIA Plots to Kill Castro, 
34 CIA Cryptonyms, 
5 Designations of Importance Used by the CIA, 
10 CIA Front Companies, 
111 People Who Are the Subjects of FBI Files, 
6 Bands That Are the Subjects of FBI Files, 
9 Things That Will Disqualify You From Employment with the FBI, 
17 Questions You'll be Asked When Applying to Become an FBI Agent, 
10 Oldest Still-Classified Documents at the National Archives, 
War and Peace +, 
23 Quotes Regarding the 2003 Invasion of Iraq, 
12 Arguments Against the Police State at Guantanamo Bay, 
13 Exotic Guns and Knives, 
11 Materials That Have Been Made Into Guns, 
20 Mishaps That Might Have Started Nuclear War by Alan F. Philips, M.D., 
13 Nuclear Tests That Spread Radiation into Civilian Areas, 
46 Nuclear Tests by the US, 
33 Names of Defense Department Internal Investigations, 
13 Programs From DARPA's Defunct Information Awareness Office, 
40 US Interventions in Latin America in the 1800s by Nick Mamatas, 
Corporate Responsibility +, 
36 Corporations That Ripped off the US Government, 
9 Visitors Who Died at Disneyland by Barbara and David P. Mikkelson, 
32 Cigarette Additives, 
55 Companies Reportedly Doing Business With Enemy Nations, 
Top 100 Corporations Laying off US Workers Due to NAFTA, 
Sex +, 
12 Erotic Works by Well-Known Writers, 
12 Olde-Timey Porn Books, 
52 Items from the Delta Collection of the Library of Congress, 
12 Unorthodox Sex Practices, 
6 Sex Acts That Are Illegal, 
21 Natural Aphrodisiacs, 
32 Famous People Involved in Triads, 
23 Strange Genres of Porn Movie, 
63 Gay Animals, 
4 Unreleased Raunchy Songs, 
153 Bizarre and Revealing Spam Subject Lines Leading to Sexually Oriented, 
Messages by Paul Krassner, 
11 Quotes About Sex, 
Religion +, 
5 "Family-Safe" Bibles, 
18 Biblical Atrocities, 
21 Biblical Contradictions, 
8 Books That Didn't Make It Into the Bible, 
18 Celebrities Involved With the Church of Scientology, 
6 Celebrities Involved with the Church of Satan, 
87+ People Mormons Have Baptized by Proxy, 
815 People Killed by Religious Rituals and Objects, 
12 Godly People, 
9 Religious Quotes, 
Movies, Music, and Pulp Fiction +, 
16 Movies Banned in the US, 
10 Unusual Forms and Genres of Music, 
19 Profanely-Named Bands, 
25 Iranian Rock Bands, 
56 Pulp Novels, 
Odds & Ends +, 
15 Things That Cause or Mimic "Mental Illnesses", 
11 Super Cures Your Doctor Won't Tell You About by Diane Petryk-Bloom, 
11 Whistle-blowers, 
23 Early Cases of Involuntary Human Experimentation, 
8 Stupid Politician Quotes, 
12 Amazon Reviews of Senator Bill Frist's Family History, 
11 Quotes About Politics and Government, 
10 Reasons Why Cars Suck by Mickey Z., 
3 Uncommon Sources of Power, 
12 Things to do With Your Body After You're Dead, 
19 Suicide Notes, 
10 Top Magicians of the Twentieth Century by Richard Metzger, 
17 Tarot Decks, 
44 Substances That Soup up Your Brain, 
24 Toxic Chemicals in Bill Moyers, 
12 Acceptable Levels of Filth in Food, 
7 Edible Flowers, 
References, 

CHAPTER 1

+Drugs

LIST 1

39 Famous People Who Used Drugs

Maybe the title of this list should be "39 Famous but Unexpected People Who TookDrugs," because the idea is not to document every well-known person who smokedpot or popped a pill. Instead, the list concerns famous figures whose usagemight be somewhat surprising to the average person (of course, no readers ofthis book are merely average, but you know what I mean!). We won't look atpeople who were expected to do drugs, which means you won't read about anybodyfrom the Beat movement or the Counterculture, nor any rock or jazz musicians.Instead, we'll focus on scientists, old-school literary giants, Nobel laureates,legendary actors, physicians (and a nurse), etc. These are the people youprobably read about in school or college, but you didn't hear about theirfondness for opium, LSD, hash, laughing gas, and other such substances.

1

Mathematician Ralph Abraham—the primary developer of chaos theory—said in a 1991interview:

In the 1960s a lot of people on the frontiers of math experimented withpsychedelic substances. There was a brief and extremely creative kiss betweenthe community of hippies and top mathematicians. I know this because I was apurveyor of psychedelics to the mathematical community.

To be creative in mathematics you have to start from a point of total oblivion.Basically, math is revealed in a totally unconscious process in which one iscompletely ignorant of the social climate. And mathematical advance has alwaysbeen the motor behind the advancement of consciousness.

2

Social reformer, founder of Hull House, and Nobel laureate Jane Addams wrotethat she and some friends took opium once while in seminary-college. "Wesolemnly consumed small white powders at intervals during the entire longholiday, but no mental reorientation took place, and the suspense and excitementdid not even permit us to grow sleepy."

3

Little woman Louisa May Alcott was addicted to morphine.

4

Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor and philosopher, took opium.

5

Honoré de Balzac, one of France's literary giants, smoked hash at least once.

6

Victorian poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning suffered from numerous physicalmaladies and was no stranger to the use of opiates. When she and Robert Browningbecame involved, she was heavily addicted to laudanum (a tincture of opium inalcohol), morphine, and her own special brew, a mixture of morphine and ether.With his help, she was able to gradually reduce her intake, but because of anabscess on her lung, her doctor increased her dosage of morphine, which isprobably what killed her. Thus, much of Elizabeth's verse—including all of herimmortal love poems to Robert—were written while opium coursed through herveins.

7

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the Romantic poet, gave us what is probably the mostwell-known piece of literature written while tripping. After taking two grainsof opium and falling into a hazy state of mind in 1797, Coleridge saw vividimages with a corresponding poem of 200 to 300 lines. Coming out of his reverie,he wrote—or perhaps transcribed—54 lines that became the classic poem "KublaKhan." At that moment, though, "a visitor on business" from a nearby townknocked on the poet's door. Unfortunately for literature, Coleridge answered hisvisitor. By the time the salesman left over an hour later, the images and poemhad fled Coleridge, except for a few scattered lines. He tried many times toretrieve the lost portion of the poem but never could. (It should be noted thatsome experts think this account is bogus, saying that "Kubla Khan" was writtenlike any other poem, though perhaps based on images Coleridge saw whiletripping.)

Around this time (the final years of the 1700s), the poet described laudanum astaking him to "a spot of enchantment, a green spot of fountains, & flowers &trees, in the very heart of a waste of Sands!" The liquid opium would let him"float about along an infinite ocean cradled in the flower of the Lotos."

But Coleridge soon changed his tune when he became addicted to the milk ofparadise, taking huge doses of laudanum every day by 1801. In letters written inMay 1814, he speaks of "this wicked direful practice of taking Opium orLaudanum" and refers to the tincture as a "free-agency-annihilating Poison." Atthis time, he tried going cold turkey, but he went through sheer hell and wasput on a suicide watch (all sharp objects were removed and someone stayed withhim 24 hours a day). He never completely kicked the habit and used small dosesfor the rest of his life.

Opium may have been Coleridge's master, but his play pals included ether, hash,henbane, and belladonna.

8

Philip K. Dick was a pulp sci-fi writer whose dystopian stories of government-corporate-mediacontrol, strange drugs, and the subjective natures of realityand identity have achieved cult, even classic, status. Nine of his works havebeen made into movies, most notably, "Minority Report," Do Androids Dream ofElectric Sheep? (filmed as Blade Runner), and "We Can Remember It for YouWholesale" (turned into the film Total Recall).

Throughout most of his writing years, Dick was fuelled by amphetamines, whichallowed him to crank out 60 pages a day. His need for speed undoubtedlycontributed to his paranoia, visions, and breaks with reality.

Dick also dropped acid, although he said it didn't contribute to thehallucinatory quality of his work, especially since much of it was writtenbefore he took LSD. When asked if one of his stories was written while he washigh, he replied: "That really is not true. First of all, you can't writeanything when you're on acid. I did one page once while on an acid trip, but itwas in Latin. Whole damn thing was in Latin and a little tiny bit in Sanskrit,and there's not much market for that." Summing up his experiences in 1974, hesaid: "All I ever found out about acid was that I was where I wanted to get outof fast. It didn't seem more real than anything else; it just seemed moreawful."

9

Charles Dickens—Victorian England's greatest novelist—drank quite a bit oflaudanum to help him sleep and to ease a painful foot condition.

10

In 1970, Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Dock Ellis hurled a no-hitter while underthe influence of LSD. He and his girlfriend had dropped acid the night before.Ellis got up around nine or ten and downed another half a tab. Looking at anewspaper, his girlfriend informed him that he was supposed to pitch in a littlewhile, which was news to him. At the clubhouse, Ellis took Dexamyl andBenzedrine to counter the acid. The coauthor of his autobiography, Donald Hall,later admitted that he and Ellis bowdlerized this story. Instead of "takingtabs," the pitcher was said to have drunk screwdrivers the night before.

11

Physician Havelock Ellis, a pioneer of sexual studies in the late 1800s up tothe 1930s, was a devotee of mescal. Of his first trip, he wrote:

I was further impressed, not only by the brilliance, delicacy, and variety ofthe colours, but even more by their lovely and various textures; fibrous, woven,polished, glowing, dull-veined, semitransparent. The glowing effects, as ofjewels and the fibrous, as of insect's wings, being perhaps the most prevalent.

12

In Opium: A History, Martin Booth writes that Benjamin Franklin "was almostcertainly addicted to opium in his declining years."

13

In his first paper of several on the subject, "On Coca"—which in 1884simultaneously helped make Sigmund Freud's name and introduce the generalpopulace to coke—the father of psychoanalysis writes: "I have tested this effectof coca, which wards off hunger, sleep, and fatigue, and steels one tointellectual effort, some dozen times upon myself ..." He elaborates:

A few minutes after taking cocaine, one experiences a certain exhilaration andfeeling of lightness. One feels a certain furriness on the lips and palate,followed by a feeling of warmth in the same areas; if one now drinks cold water,it feels warm on the lips and cold in the throat. One other occasions thepredominant feeling is a rather pleasant coolness in the mouth and throat.

During this first trial I experienced a short period of toxic effects, which didnot recur in subsequent experiments. Breathing became slower and deeper and Ifelt tired and sleepy; I yawned frequently and felt somewhat dull. After a fewminutes the actual cocaine euphoria began, introduced by repeated coolingeructation. Immediately after taking the cocaine I noticed a slight slackeningof the pulse and later a moderate increase.

From our current perspective, it's wince-inducing to read this soon-to-be-eminentphysician making guesses that are 100 percent wrong: "It seems probable,in the light of reports which I shall refer to later, that coca, if usedprotractedly but in moderation, is not detrimental to the body." And thisclunker: "I have the impression that protracted use of coca can lead to alasting improvement [in the user's mental powers] ..."

Cocaine's addictive properties soon became apparent to the world at large, butFreud was gung-ho for blow for several years. Finally he quit lauding it andusing it.

14

King George IV believed that laudanum was a cure for his hangovers.

15

Like Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking, Stephen Jay Gould became famous as a superbpopularizer of science, in this case evolutionary biology, with his books TheMismeasure of Man and The Panda's Thumb, among others. Gould developed a cancerknown as abdominal mesothelioma, and his chemotherapy gave him horrendous nauseathat couldn't be tamed by any medications. As a last resort, he tried pot:

Marihuana worked like a charm. I disliked the "side effect" of mental blurring(the "main effect" for recreational users), but the sheer bliss of notexperiencing nausea—and then not having to fear it for all the days interveningbetween treatments—was the greatest boost I received in all my years oftreatment, and surely had a most important effect upon my eventual cure. It isbeyond my comprehension—and I fancy I am able to comprehend a lot, includingmuch nonsense—that any humane person would withhold such a beneficial substancefrom people in such great need simply because others use it for differentpurposes.

16

One of the greatest idols of the silver screen, Cary Grant starred in manyclassic films, including North by Northwest, An Affair to Remember, Notorious,Arsenic and Old Lace, Gunga Din, and Monkey Business. Starting in the late1950s, Grant dropped LSD during 100 therapy sessions with pioneering shrinks Dr.Mortimer Hartmann and Dr. Oscar Janiger. In CG: A Touch of Elegance, the matineeidol is quoted from that time period:

I have been born again. I have just been through a psychiatric experience thathas completely changed me. It was horrendous. I had to face things about myselfwhich I never admitted, which I didn't know were there. Now I know that I hurtevery woman I loved. I was an utter fake, a self-opinionated boor, a know-allwho knew very little.

Once you realize that you have all things inside you, love and hate alike, andyou learn to accept them, then you can use your love to exhaust your hate. Thatpower is inside you, but it can be assimilated into your power to love. You canrelax. Then you can do more than you ever dreamed you could do. I found I washiding behind all kinds of defenses, hypocrisies and vanities. I had to get ridof them layer by layer. That moment when your conscious meets your subconsciousis a helluva wrench. You feel the whole top of your head is lifting off.

Also in CG, Grant says:

The experience was just like being born the first time; I imagined all the bloodand urine, and I emerged with the flush of birth. It was absolute release. Youare still able to feed yourself, of course, drive your car, that kind of thing,but you've lost a lot of the tension.

It releases inhibition. You know, we are all unconsciously holding our anus. Inone LSD dream I shit all over the rug and shit all over the floor. Another timeI imagined myself as a giant penis launching off from Earth like a spaceship.

In his short autobiography, Grant wrote: "The shock of each revelation bringswith it an anguish of sadness for what was not known before in the wasted yearsof ignorance and, at the same time, an ecstasy of joy at being freed from theshackles of such ignorance." When he was 70 years old, he told his former flameMaureen Donaldson: "But you don't understand. LSD is a chemical, not a drug.People who take drugs are trying to escape from their lives. LSD is ahallucinogen, and people who take it are trying to look within their lives.That's what I did."

(Continues...)

Excerpted from BOOK OF LISTS by Russ Kick. Copyright © 2004 Russ Kick. Excerpted by permission of Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Edition details

• Publisher: DISINFORMATION COMPANY LTD
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0972952942
• ISBN 13: 9780972952941
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 319