The relationship between drugs, lust and witchcraft is exact. In 1692 the inquisitor Johannes Nider described an old woman who rubbed a certain ointment in her armpits and groin: ‘After disrobing and applying this ointment she fell asleep, and with the aid of the Devil, she dreamt of the lustful Venus.’
Centuries before, in the trials of Carcasonne, the confession of an old herbalist woman read: ‘In the Sabbat I found a gigantic male goat, I surrendered to him, and in return he taught me the poisonous plants.’
In 1324 a document of the Inquisition explained the belief in flying brooms: ‘While searching the attic of the lady, an ointment was found that she used to anoint a walking stick, mounted upon which she could wander and gallop through any obstacle.’
In 1470 another inquisitorial document declared ‘the witches confess that on some nights they anoint a stick in order to reach a certain location, or else they rub themselves with an ointment in their armpits or in other places on the body where hair grows.’
In a woman, the other place where hair grows is that which is in contact with a broom when she rides it. The stick was used to rub or insert ointment in areas that the modesty of the inquisitor prevented him from describing, the stick serving as a sort of chemically reinforced dildo.
The same thing is suggested by a confession extracted from two women in 1540, since they ‘many times, in solitude, carnally knew the Devil; and when questioned whether they had known some special delight in doing so, they repeatedly denied it, and that because of the incomparable coldness they felt in their diabolic parts.’
When inquisitors were absent, the women responded in a somewhat different manner, although the erotic might still remain. Using a certain sorcerer’s ointment provided by a constable, Andres de Laguna, doctor of Charles V and Julius III, put a hysterical patient in a deep stupor. Upon her return to a normal, she addressed the doctor and her own husband, saying, ‘Why did you wake me up at this time, when I was surrounded by all the pleasures of the world?’ And looking at her husband, smiling, she told him: ‘Stingy, I have been unfaithful to you, and with a younger and better-looking lover than you.’
[T]he use of drugs other than alcohol was punished with torture and death, regardless of whether it was religious or for enjoyment. Simultaneously, drugs were looked upon not as precise substances but rather as something riding on horseback between an infamous aspiration and a certain ointment. ‘If the accused is found with ointments on his body, subject him to torture,’ says Jean Bodin in his
Instructions for Judges in the Matter of Sorcery
. This gave permission to burn people found owning an ointment for relieving pain, as long as the person appeared to be suspicious or had enemies; it was also possible that in another dwelling, the presence of very psychoactive pomades would be considered innocuous. But dealing with plants and potions seemed to authorities to be too close to abomination, and put in question the official explanation of things: namely, that the world – punished by God – was full of witches with supernatural powers, thanks to their alliance with Satan.
The drugs of the witches betrayed what was eminently forbidden, which is the desire to embrace what is
here
, as opposed to the fervor for the
beyond
. Nevertheless, the desire to again feel at home on Earth, instead of exiled in it, was what the Renaissance, the animating spirit of the modern era, was all about. Best illustrated by Faust, the new man preferred to sell his soul to the Devil rather than adore a God who is in conflict with life.
To do so he leaned of course on psychoactive substances. The formulas for ointments transmitted by Cardano and Porta contain not only hashish, female hemp flowers, opium and solanaceous plants but also ingredients of high sophistication, such as toad skins (which contain dimethyltryptamine, or DMT) or ergot-infested flour (which contains lysergic acid amide), as well as fungi and visionary mushrooms. With such a variety of drugs, and the potency derived from their admixture, a competent European sorcerer could induce various trances. He could officiate in rural ceremonies and supply the urban user, oriented toward solitary dreams and ecstasies, inaugurating an underground commerce of ointments and potions, which – under inquisitorial persecution – would become a profitable target for constables and reward hunters.
The Inquisition in the Americas started with identical premises and persecuted large numbers of natives for using their traditional drugs. It was so effective, in fact, that not until the middle of the twentieth century were many rites related to peyote, psilocybin, mushrooms and other psychoactive plants rediscovered.
The inquisitor, however, did not find in the New World the direct connection between eroticism and drugs that he saw in Europe. There were an enormous number of psychoactive substances and uses there, not to mention cults, but what was missing was the repeated scene of women in trance with things that – rubbed on broomsticks and horns – transported them to orgies demanding the attire of Eve and the ease of Venus.
The vehicles for inebriation were also different in America and in Europe. After the destruction of the ancient pharmacological knowledge, European sorcery found itself limited to the local psychoactive flora, which are solanaceous hallucinogens such as henbane, daturas, belladonna and mandrake. American sorcerers were also familiar with some solanaceous plants, but, with few exceptions, their use was and is restricted to the shaman, because they are considered ‘too powerful’ for others; in collective rites, visionary-type plant use based on mescaline, psilocybin and similar active principles is much more common. One might therefore say that some Europeans may have celebrated feasts with coarse drugs, very toxic and not very useful as instruments of knowledge because of the stupor, credulity and amnesia they provoke. The distance between the tumultuous medieval Sabbat and the introspective peyote rites is as long as that between a voodoo initiation and the Mysteries of Eleusis.
A Brief History of Drugs
, 1999
High Archives
A Drastic Cure
CHINA PROPOSES DEATH TO DRUG ADDICTS – AFTER
1937
The Chinese Government proposes to execute all uncured drug addicts in China after 1937! This fact was revealed yesterday by Mr Victor Hoo, the Chinese delegate to the Advisory Opium Commission of the League of Nations, says Reuter. He said that 263 traffickers were executed in China last year, and figures of drug addicts and opium smokers still run into millions. The Commission was reluctant to endorse China’s drastic proposal.
From: High Archives section of
Man Bites Man: The Scrapbook of an English Eccentric George Ives
, ed. Paul Sieveking, 1981
Lester Grinspoon, MD
A brief account of my participation as a witness in the trial of Kerry Wiley
I
N
N
OVEMBER OF
1989 Kerry Wiley, a thirty-five-year-old computer-science lecturer from Sacramento, California, was apprehended in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, for the possession of marijuana. He was accused of mailing himself a package containing marijuana from Thailand, and an informant tipped off the police who searched his apartment and found more marijuana. He was charged with the possession of over 500 grams of cannabis. Death by hanging is the prescribed penalty for possession of more than 200 grams (7.05 ounces) under Provision 39b of the Dangerous Drugs Act of 1983. One particularly chilling part of this law reads ‘In any proceedings under this Act the provisions of this Act shall be construed and interpreted so as to give effect to the purpose of this Act without regard for ambiguities, or infirmities of language, or other defects or deficiencies therein . . .’
More than a hundred people have been hanged under this law, including eight young Hong Kong residents last summer. Bail is not allowed in such cases, and the prisoner may wait two to five years for trial. By the time Kerry came to trial he had spent over a year in the cruelly overcrowded Pudu prison, sleeping on a blanket on a cement floor in a small cell with several other prisoners, bathing in dirty water. It is not surprising that he became seriously depressed. As a twelve-year-old boy, while hiking alone in the San Jacinto mountains one winter, Kerry had slipped and fallen sixty feet down a ledge to sharp rocks below. Newspaper headlines described his survival as a ‘Christmas miracle,’ but he was left with serious disabilities, of which the worst was painful muscle spasms in his left shoulder and arm. Like many other people, including victims of quadriplegia, paraplegia and multiple sclerosis, Kerry discovered that cannabis was far more useful for this kind of pain and had fewer side effects than any of the medicines doctors could prescribe. He began to use it regularly, and like anyone who needs a medicine, he wanted to be sure of an ample supply. There is no evidence that he ever abused cannabis or sold it.
I first heard about Kerry’s plight when I received a call last February from his mother, Dr. Helen Wiley, a retired psychologist from Sacramento. Helen is a remarkable woman who, among other things, spent eight months living alone in a hotel in Kuala Lumpur to assist in her son’s defence. She called me because she had read ‘Medical Uses of Illicit Drugs’, a chapter James B. Bakalar and I wrote for the book
Dealing With Drugs
, which she believed would be useful in the trial if I would redraft it as an affidavit. I replied that much more would be needed for her son’s defense, and put her in touch with Ramsey Clark, who shortly thereafter went to Malaysia and talked with his Malaysian lawyer. Ramsey and I believed that a defense of medical necessity was the best and perhaps only hope for preventing a tragedy. Karpal Singh, the Malaysian lawyer, was understandably skeptical, since that defense had never been used in Malaysia.
By the time I testified, Kerry’s defense was in the hands of another Malaysian lawyer by the name of Mohammed Shafee Abdullah. On technical grounds, he had prevented the admission of evidence concerning the cannabis Kerry allegedly mailed to himself from Thailand, but the cannabis found in his apartment (265.7 grams) would be enough to condemn him to death.
I arrived in Kuala Lumpur on Monday, December 10, 1990. I examined Kerry in Pudu prison for three hours that day, and again for two and a half hours on Wednesday, December 12. I also spent an hour with the prison psychologist who had been treating Kerry for his depression. I spent many hours with Shafee preparing the medical necessity defense, with which Shafee had no experience. This bright and affable man arranged for me to give a lecture on the evening of Thursday, December 13, to a group of influential Malaysian physicians and lawyers. I spoke of the serious confusion embodied in the Malaysian concept of ‘
dadah
,’ a generic term which treats opiates and cannabis as though they were identical. Most of my remarks were about the history of cannabis as a medicine. I started by pointing out that Dr. W.B. O’Shaughnessy’s groundbreaking work, published in 1839, was based on his observations of the medicinal use of cannabis among Indians and Malays. Seldom have I lectured to an audience which expressed so much interest in cannabis. They seemed starved for up-to-date, reliable, realistic information about the drug.
I was called to the stand at 9 a.m. on Friday, December 14. The judge, Judge Shaik Daud Ismail, who sat without a jury, immediately expressed his irritation at my presence by asking Shafee, as he tried to introduce me, ‘Why have you brought this man halfway around the globe to testify when it has been established that the defendant possessed 265.7 grams of cannabis and the punishment is prescribed?’
Shafee then introduced the notion of medical necessity and pursued the direct examination. Like so many people in the previous night’s audience, the judge became increasingly interested in the medical uses of cannabis in general and Kerry Wiley’s use of it in particular.
The direct examination ended at 11.50 a.m. The judge then asked the prosecutor whether the ten minutes remaining before the break for noon prayers would be enough for cross-examination. He replied, ‘Oh no, my Lord! It will take two or three hours for me to get the truth out of Dr. Grinspoon.’ I had heard from several sources that the prosecutor, Abdul Alim Abdullah, believed it would advance his career to convict and hang the first American under Provision 39b.
Everyone in the courtroom was surprised by the first question he put to me after the recess. He asked whether, in completing my disembarkation form for visitors to Malaysia, I had indicated that I was here for business or pleasure. I responded, ‘For business.’
‘And what is your business here, Dr. Grinspoon?’
‘My business is to examine the patient and appear as a witness at this trial.’
He interrupted me to say, ‘You mean the accused? And how many times did you examine the accused?’
‘Twice.’
‘How many hours did you spend examining the accused?’
‘Five and a half hours.’
‘Good. And now you will kindly produce for the court the written authorization from the Ministry of Health as required by law for a foreigner to medically examine a prisoner in Malaysia.’
I told him I knew nothing about this law. It was clear from their reactions that neither Shafee nor the judge knew about it either. Alim then said that he would charge and arrest me for the violation. The judge, after satisfying himself that the law existed, said, ‘You are within your right to arrest this man now, but if you do, you will not be able to cross-examine him and you said that you needed two to three hours of cross-examination.’ Alim then decided to put the charge on hold and cross-examine me.
He had a long list of questions, which he crossed out one by one. The more he asked, the more ground he lost. Eventually, exasperated, he said, ‘Dr. Grinspoon, all that you have reported here about the capacity of cannabis to relieve suffering of one type or another comes from papers and journals. What has been your experience in observing this for yourself?’