A Tokin' Woman Goes to Jamaica and DC

Cup attendees from Puerto Rico.

The first High Times Jamaican World Cannabis Cup was well worth attending (and I was lucky enough to do so).

Held at a park right on the beach steps away from the swanky Sandals/Beaches complex in Negril, the event featured exhibitor booths under canopies, which worked against the afternoon rains that came nearly every day. On sunny Saturday, attendance hit its peak with people from Kingston and other parts of the island in attendance, as well as folks from all over the US, Central America and Europe.  

NORML had a booth and was able to re-invigorate its Jamaica chapter at the event, with NORML founder Keith Stroup and Jamaica NORML founder Paul Chang attending, and new volunteers Linda Jackson, Linda Browne and Sharifah wo-maning the booth where many attendees signed up to stay in touch.

The event came as Jamaica has legalized possession of two ounces of ganja for all, as well as a religious exception for Rastafaris, and is expected to issue regulations for sales. It was held under the religious exemption as a Rasta Rootzfest, and Jamaican Minister of Justice Marc Golding, who has been a proponent of religious freedom, spoke at the opening ceremonies.  

Someone finds another use for
Tokin’ Women at the event.

People were walking around the event with sticks of herb in their back pockets, or in baskets, obviously for sale. On the second day, signs appeared on the booths saying, “No Token, No Herb.” The idea was to purchase tokens in the manner of drink tickets from an official booth, in denominations of $5, $10, or $20 and exchange these for herb at a booth in the section that sold Ital foods. No alcohol except for Ethiopian wine was sold at the event, and a mellow time was had by all.

I brought promotional copies of my new book Tokin’ Women: A 4000-Year Herstory and was interviewed on IrieFM  by famed DJ Mutabaruka, who informed me that the Rastas sing about the Queen of Sheba bringing ganja to Solomon, a conclusion I also reached. I also got to meet Charlo Greene, the Alaska newscaster who famously quit on the air in order to work for marijuana legalization in her state. We’ve been in touch, and I plan to add her to the final first edition of Tokin’ Women.

At night the program was filled with the sounds of The Mighty Diamonds, Tarrus and more, and during the day, a high-level program was held with Jamaican government officials talking about the future of ganja laws. High Times cultivation editor Kyle Kushman, who got married at 4:20 on Thursday at the event, was rhapsodic about the possibilities of bringing more modern agricultural techniques to the island, known for its ganja tourism.

Miss High Times stops by
the NORML booth.

The winners of the World High Times Cup were mostly from the US and Amsterdam, with the Jamaican Cup winners from Orange Hill in Westmoreland, and the St. Bess /Elizabeth and St. Ann regions.

Charles Nesson, an attorney and professor from Harvard Law School, was also presented with an award. Nesson defended Daniel Ellsberg in the Pentagon Papers case, brought suit on NORML’s behalf in Massachusetts, and told Salon he is “interested in advancing Justice in Jamaica…as well as national drug policy.” Nesson called Jamaica a testing ground for regulation in California, because of its large community of outlaw growers.

At the Drug Policy Alliance conference in Washington, DC immediately following the cup, doctoral student Vicki Hanson from the University of West Indies in Kingston spoke on a panel titled, “Ensuring Inclusion, Repairing Damage: Diversity, Equity and the Marijuana Industry” about the need for land reform for farmers in a nation where much of the ganja comes from guerilla grows on public lands. Hanson was chosen to speak at the closing plenary at the conference, which hosted 1500 attendees from 71 countries. DPA's Ethan Nadelmann said we must remember “the farmers and peasants the world over who have lost their livelihood because the plant they were growing was deemed illegal….and we must hold accountable some of those people who justified and allowed those policies to stay in place.”

Big ups to all who put these great events together and hope to see you all in Jamaica next year, and in Atlanta in 2017 for the next DPA conference.

(P.S. Rumors that Rihanna was at the Cup promoting a new brand of cannabis remain unconfirmed. I didn't see her.)

Drinking in America, From the Pilgrims to Today

Susan Cheever

It grabbed me from the first line: "The pilgrims landed the Mayflower at Cape Cod, Massachusetts, on a cold November day in 1620 because they were running out of beer." Thus begins the new book by Susan Cheever, Drinking in America: Our Secret History.

Cheever, the daughter of novelist (and drinker) John Cheever, brings a brisk, novelistic style and fresh attitude to her histories, weaving fascinating, little-known tidbits into interesting, readable volumes like American Bloomsbury and Louisa May Alcott: A Personal Biography.

Here again, as in My Name is Bill (about Bill Wilson, founder of Alcoholics Anonymous), Cheever tackles Americans' love of alcohol. She makes clear at the outset that our ancestors relied heavily on beer due to unhealthy water found on sea voyages and elsewhere. Beer was served at the first Thanksgiving table, since "the Pilgrims' first barley crop had born fermentable fruit." By 1635, Plymouth had begun granting licenses to make and sell liquor, and public drunkenness had become unlawful. Puritain elder Increase Mather explained the dichotomy this way, "Drink is in itself a good Creature of God, and to be received with thankfulness, but the abuse of drink is from Satan."

It's no mystery why voters want a president with whom they can enjoy a beer. George Washington, Cheever writes, lost his first election for the Virginia Assembly in 1755, but two years later "he delivered 144 gallons of rum, punch, cider, and wine to the polling places distributed by election volunteers who urged the voters to drink up.... Most elections featured vats and barrels of free liquor as well as the candidate in hand to drink along with his constituency." Two of Abigail and John Adams's sons and two of their grandsons died of alcoholism and Jefferson wrote that he wished Americans would stick with beer and eschew whiskey "that now kills one third of our citizens and ruins their families." Liquor was given to slaves to help keep them docile. 

The book's clever cover. 

"The American Revolution was instigated and carried on with energy provided by rum made from Caribbean molasses and with Caribbean distilling techniques," Cheever continues in a subsequent chapter.  Of the revolt against Washington's drive to enforce a tax on home-brewed whiskey, she adds, "The eighteenth century in America, beginning with the Whiskey Rebellion, was all about whiskey." In a chapter titled, "Johnny Appleseed, The American Dionysius," she picks up on Michael Pollan's observation that the beloved seed-sower was popular because he was bringing the possibility of alcoholic hard cider, not apples for eating, to the prairies. (As well as wine grapes, god-of-excess Dionysius was the patron of cultivated trees and the discoverer of the apple.)

To hint at motivations and explain events throughout the tale, Cheever adds her own insights, such as, "Alcoholics are inspired liars, and soon enough in an alcoholic family no one knows exactly what is true and what is not true." She delves into the stories of famous prohibitionists like P.T. Barnum and Walt Whitman, and her chapter on Ulysses S. Grant and the civil war brings the reader up to the present state of affairs concerning alcohol and armies. The failure of prohibition, and the effects of alcohol on Joseph McCarthy and Richard Nixon are touched on, as is the news (to me) that the Secret Service agents guarding JFK the day he died were hungover from an alcoholic binge the night before.

Cheever's tone isn't moralistic, and she acknowledges in several places the positive effects alcohol may had had on our history, such as inspiring writers and generals. She ends the book with a series of tantalizing "what ifs" had teetotalers had their way instead of drinkers.

It's important that marijuana reformers understand how deep the connection to alcohol runs in our country, and Drinking in America is, in that regard and many others, an illuminating and enjoyable read.

Girls on Ganga in "Grandma's Boy"

Netflix has done it again: found a little-known film with a surprising amount of pot smoking in it. This one is 2006's Grandma's Boy starring Linda Cardellini of Freaks and Geeks, the short-lived but acclaimed TV series that was NBC's more thoughtful answer to That 70's Show.

In Grandma's Boy, Cardellini plays Samantha, a project manager at a video game company dealing with a bunch of geeky guys, including a pothead game tester named Alex who's living with his grandmother (Doris Roberts from Everybody Loves Raymond). Significantly, Alex isn't apologetic about his pot use. He admits he wasn't much of an accountant, but he shreds at his new job, especially after smoking a phattie. Samantha turns out to be a smoker herself, and she's soon the life of the party.

 Most surprising (and delightful), Alex's grandma and her friends have their fun when they accidentally drink some tea made with his stash. Shirley Jones, in her dancingest role since Pepe (1960), gets in on the fun and makes out with a grateful geek. And Shirley Knight, who played the heavenly Heavenly Finley in Sweet Bird of Youth, wherein Paul Newman tries to bribe an aging actress over her hashish use, gets to be a senior woman who enjoys it without ramifications in the "My Grandma Drank All My Pot" scene (above).

The film, directed by Nicholaus Goossen (of Trevor Moore's "High in Church") makes it until the final scene without a single negative reference, and then it's not too bad. No one has to quit smoking pot to get the girl, because the women are all cool too. Too bad Roberts couldn't smoke on Raymond because Peter Boyle, who played her husband, was a pot smoker (and was the best man at John Lennon and Yoko Ono's wedding).

Freaks and Geeks is also on Netflix. The series that launched Seth Rogen and James Franco put out mixed messages on pot, no doubt under the heavy hand of the censors. Cardellini's character Lindsay, a smart girl looking to be bad, tries smoking in her bedroom and gets a look of self awareness on her face for an instant, but just then her Dad knocks on the door and sends her babysitting, and she gets paranoid. In the season finale, her guidance counselor (an old hippie radical from Berkeley) turns her on to the Grateful Dead and she has to choose between a summer filled with academics or fun.

Cardellini was also seen as Velma in the Scooby Doo movie, in Brokeback Mountain, and recently as Don Draper's neighbor/lover in Mad Men. She's in the new Avengers movie, too.

Busy Phillips, who played Kim in Freaks and Geeks, appeared on the wine-soaked ABC/TBS series Cougar Town. Its finale earlier this year was titled "Mary Jane's Last Dance," wherein everyone says "What?" to weed when Chick (for Chico?) brings it up. 

UPDATE 2019: Cardellini "reaquaints" Christina Applegate to marijuana in "Dead to Me" on Netflix.

The Day John Denver Died

“John Denver: Country Boy,” a documentary produced by BBC in 2013 to commemorate Denver's 70th birthday, aired on PBS earlier this year and is the being promoted on Netflix in time for the anniversary of the singer's death today. Claiming to tell the full story, the film nonetheless skips over Denver's admission of pot smoking and his use of psychedelics.

The film points out that Denver, who projected a wholesome innocence, was known for his catchphrase “Far Out.” Early footage of him singing an anti-Ku Klux Klan song with the Chad Mitchell Trio reveals his politicization, and he’s also shown with Peter, Paul and Mary singing his song, “Leaving on a Jet Plane,” a tune that became an anthem for US boys flying off to Vietnam.

Denver told reporters at a 1976 press conference in Sydney, Australia, "Sure I enjoy hashish. I use it. I have a lot of fun with the stuff. But it's like alcohol. You shouldn't let it get out of hand." According to High Times magazine (March 1976),  "One shocked religious leader in Arizona called for Denver to be deported immediately. A newspaper columnist described the candid quote as '. . . like Billy Graham announcing he was going into Blue Movies'."

Denver’s writing of the song “Rocky Mountain High,” now an official Colorado state song, is covered in the film. But the origin of the lyric, “And they say that he got crazy once and he tried to touch the sun,” about an LSD trip he took, is omitted. Denver wrote in his autobiography Take Me Home that the song wasn’t just about tripping, saying, “It was also about exhilaration, freedom and morality.” He added, "Exploring inner space had become as important to my generation as the exploration of outer space."

Annie and John Denver

The filmmaker interviewed Denver’s first wife Annie, she of the wedding favorite “Annie’s Song.” In the film, both she and John talk about how the song was written, when John took to the ski slopes near their Aspen home after the couple had a fight. John’s description made me wonder whether he’d had a puff to enhance his physical activity on that day, since he says, "Suddenly I was hypersensitive to how beautiful every thing was." His thoughts lead to the first line, “You fill up my senses.”

The only nod to Denver’s marijuana smoking comes at the end of the film, when his lyric “while all my friends and my old lady sit and pass a pipe around” from the song from “Poems, Prayers, and Promises” is heard.

Later Denver, a victim of his own ambition/need for acceptance whose music was excoriated by rock critics, succumbed to drinking and had several drunk driving arrests. He was only 53 when his plane plunged into the Pacific Ocean near Monterey, California on October 12, 1997.

"Sure he was a hippie, but he was one the whole family could enjoy," read his obituary in the Guardian.

Film of Denver on Jacques Cousteau’s boat demonstrates his support of Cousteau, through proceeds of his song “Calipso.” Denver was appointed by Jimmy Carter to work on hunger in Africa, akin to the moment God chose him to spread his word in the movie “Oh, God!” 

 See a clip of the film:

Taffy Nivert, co-author of "Country Roads," is shown here with Denver singing VIP Merle Haggard's  "Okie from Muskogee" including a verse that hammers home the point that it's a parody song.

Read more about John Denver.

Breast Cancer and Cannabinoids

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, an event sponsored by the manufacturer of Tamoxifen that leads to strange sights like NFL teams playing in bright pink shoes, gloves, or helmets (shown).

Just in time for the Big Pink, the National Cancer Institute, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, has finally updated its website to admit that cannabinoids have anti-tumor effects in pre-clinical studies.

The page says:

Studies in mice and rats have shown that cannabinoids may inhibit tumor growth by causing cell death, blocking cell growth, and blocking the development of blood vessels needed by tumors to grow. Laboratory and animal studies have shown that cannabinoids may be able to kill cancer cells while protecting normal cells.

A laboratory study of delta-9-THC in hepatocellular carcinoma (liver cancer) cells showed that it damaged or killed the cancer cells. The same study of delta-9-THC in mouse models of liver cancer showed that it had antitumor effects. Delta-9-THC has been shown to cause these effects by acting on molecules that may also be found in non-small cell lung cancer cells and breast cancer cells.

A laboratory study of cannabidiol (CBD) in estrogen receptor positive and estrogen receptor negative breast cancer cells showed that it caused cancer cell death while having little effect on normal breast cells. Studies in mouse models of metastatic breast cancer showed that cannabinoids may lessen the growth, number, and spread of tumors.

A laboratory study of cannabidiol (CBD) in human glioma cells showed that when given along with chemotherapy, CBD may make chemotherapy more effective and increase cancer cell death without harming normal cells. Studies in mouse models of cancer showed that CBD together with delta-9-THC may make chemotherapy such as temozolomide more effective.

Many animal studies have shown that delta-9-THC and other cannabinoids stimulate appetite and can increase food intake.

Also, NORML has just updated its Emerging Applications for Cannabis and Cannabinoids booklet, a review of scientific studies, which says, "Preclinical studies demonstrate that cannabinoids and endocannabinoids can also inhibit the proliferation of other various cancer cell lines, including breast carcinoma... and uterus carcinoma," citing sources such as the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

NORML reported in 2011 that the non-psychotropic plant cannabinoid cannabidiol (CBD) "completely prevents" the onset of nerve pain associated with the chemotherapy drug Paclitaxel, which is used to treat breast cancer, according to preclinical data published in the journal Anesthesia and Analgesia.

In an interview that aired on October 16, 2005 on "Dateline NBC," Melissa Etheridge said that she smoked medicinal marijuana to help with the side effects of chemotherapy during her treatment for breast cancer. In October 2007, actress Polly Bergen appeared on Desperate Housewives, peddled pot brownies to her daughter with cancer. But recently, a Florida jury has convicted a man who faces 35 years for growing 15 marijuana plants he says were to help his wife survive breast cancer.

Breast cancer survival rates are, thankfully, very high at early stages, so there is reason to be aware. But like so many things, we tend to go overboard with the emotional pleas and ignore the facts. NCI notes that despite promising preclinical studies (known about since the 1970s), there are still no human studies into cannabinoids and cancer. Awareness of that fact might actually lead to a cure.

Helen Hunt Takes Us on a Wild "Ride"

Written and directed by actress Helen Hunt (The Curse of the Jade Scorpion, What Women Want) the movie Ride now on Netflix is full of wit, heart...and, surprisingly, pot smoking.

I confess I'd watched it, not knowing about Hunt's involvement, because I'd watch Luke Wilson (Idiocracy, The Family Stone, Bongwater) in anything. He's typically endearing here as Ian, the surfing instructor to Hunt's character Jackie, a high-powered New York editor who follows her wayward son Angelo to California and ends up on a quest of her own.

The 52-year-old Hunt, who has surfed for 10 years, is thrilling to watch as her character learns to surf in the film. And her rapid-fire dialogue, reminiscent of her role as the quintessential modern wife in TV's Mad About You, is refreshingly honest and direct. (Only a woman could write the line, spoken while arguing with her adult son: "Because one adult came out of the other adult's vagina.")

After Jackie tries some pot possibly belonging to her son, she really begins to open up, confronting past issues long bottled up and better able to express her emotions. I confess I wasn't expecting that.

Inevitably, it gets heavy-handed in parts, as when Ian refuses to smoke and Angelo gets turned off by a role model who turns out to be a pot dealer.

As the film states about the ending to the story Angelo is writing, "It just has to be surprising and inevitable." So is Ride. So is life.

In 1980 Hunt played a schoolgirl who smokes pot and is unable to write a book review (ironically, of Moby Dick) on the TV sitcom The Facts of Life. Possibly this was one of the sitcoms that was bribed by the federal government to churn out anti-drug propaganda. Charlotte Rea, who played the housemother in the series who berates Hunt's character over her pot smoking, accidently doses the ER cast at their Christmas party in 2008 with her special brownies, made for a friend in chemo.

Now Available: Tokin' Women: A 4000-Year Herstory 

Eleusis and the Equinox

Demeter of Knidos, c. 350 B.C.E.

I am reminded, as we ring out the Hebrew year 5775, that the fall equinox is also the time of the nine-day pilgrimage to Eleusis in Ancient Greek times, for the Eleusinian Mysteries—the Burning Man or Grateful Dead concert of its day that honored the grain goddess Demeter. 

In 440 BC the historian Herodotus observed Scythians (among them the Amazon Women) using cannabis ritualistically, around the time Greek playwrights Aristophanes and Orestes wrote about the Eleusinian mysteries in their plays.

"The Frogs by Aristophanes (405 B.C.E.) involves the sybaritic Dionysus as the new god of Eleusis. Some scholars think the play focuses on the exiled general Alcibiades, who stole the Eleusinian sacrament kykeon from the temple of the grain goddess Demeter, and started partying with it at orgies at his home....." (excerpted from Tokin' Women: A 4000-Year Herstory).

In Roman times, Demeter became known as Ceres or Pomona. Marcus Tullius Cicero, the Roman orator who gave us the enduring maxim, “Let the punishment fit the crime” wrote:

For it appears to me that among the many exceptional and divine things your Athens has produced and contributed to human life, nothing is better than those [Eleusinian] mysteries. For by means of them we have transformed from a rough and savage way of life to the state of humanity, and have been civilized.” 

Nonetheless, in 392 AD, the Romans outlawed the Mysteries.

According to legend, a king of Thessaly named Erysichthon ordered all trees in the sacred grove of Demeter to be cut down in order to build himself a feast hall. As punishment, Demeter inflicted him with insatiable hunger, driving him to exhaust all his wealth and finally, in abject poverty, devour his own flesh. It seems to me humanity is on that same path.

Sponsor a Tokin’ Woman for an exciting new book project

UPDATE: Ellen Komp, the author of Tokin Women, will premiere the book at the Women Grow event in Rohnert Park on September 10, and the Bay Area Cannabis Author Showcase in Oakland on September 17. 

Pre-orders are now being taken.  

I’m going to print with the book “Tokin’ Women: A 4000-Year Herstory” featuring short biographies of over 50 ganga goddesses from Ishtar to Miley Cyrus (list below). Each biography will be accompanied by a photo or illustration. See sample pages

To go into print, I need high-resolution images and I want them to be as extraordinary as these women are! I’ve found many photos in public domain, and have combed various sources and come up with prices for the images I’d like to use that require licensing.

AWESOME ANGEL
I need a $150 sponsor for this great Dean Chakley photo of Chrissie Hynde.

Angels receive credit (if desired) and 3 copies of the book.

SUPER SUPPORTER
I found photos of each of these women for $75:

Barbra Streisand
Sue Mengers
Jennifer Aniston

Supporters at this level will receive 2 copies of the book.

BARGAIN HUNTER’S SPECIAL
I found some bargain shots of these ladies for only $33 each:

Joan Rivers
Roseanne Barr

Sponsors for these photos will receive one copy of the book.

I can bill you through my PayPay account, whether or not you have PayPal (just provide your email address). Donations can also be made to:

Ellen Komp
Evangelista Sista Press
POB 5172
Berkeley, CA 94705

If there’s extra green energy about, I could use donations of any amount for printing and shipping costs. I will also be making the book available for pre-orders very soon. Alternatively, if anyone has photos they can donate to this project, please let me know! And if anyone is able to help promote the book, please contact me.

This work is the culmination of over 10 years of research, much of it published on this blog or at www.VeryImportantPotheads.com. My aim, as always, is to broaden our knowledge base and raise awareness. With California heading for a ballot initiative in 2016, we’ll need women’s votes now more than ever!

When I give presentations on my research, women come up to me and say, “You’ve made me feel a part of something.” Here’s a great chance for all of us to be a part of Herstory. If you’d like to know more, or set up a PayPal payment, please write ellen@veryimportantpotheads.com

Miley Cyrus is sponsored by Liana Limited
Sarah Silverman is sponsored by Green Rush Consulting
Lily Tomlin is sponsored by Giggle Therapeutics
Oprah Winfrey is sponsored by Paradigm Cannabis Group 
Elizabeth Taylor and Karen Silkwood are sponsored by M&M Aldrich.
Maya Angelou is sponsored! 
Whoopi Goldberg upgrade is sponsored!

Susan Sarandon has been sponsored!

The Tokin Women are:
Ishtar
Princess Ukok
Seshat
Helen of Troy
Jezebel
Parvati
Magu
The Queen of Sheba
Hildegarde von Bingen
Harriet Martineau
George Eliot
Ada Clare
Louisa May Alcott
Queen Victoria
Mary Todd Lincoln
Helena Blavatsky
Maud Gonne
Isabelle Eberhardt
Gertrude Bell
Marie Laurencin
Alice B. Toklas & Gertrude Stein
Violette Murat
Iris Tree
Josephine Baker
Isak Dinesen
Bessie Smith
Billie Holiday
Mary Lou Williams
Tallulah Bankhead
Sarah Vaughan
Anita O’Day
Lila Leeds
Candy Barr
Margaret Mead
Grace Slick
Janis Joplin
Mama Cass Elliot
Barbra Streisand
Sue Mengers
Elizabeth Taylor
Linda McCartney
Karen Silkwood
Maya Angelou
Jennifer Aniston
Whoopi Goldberg
Chrissie Hynde
Susan Blackmore
Patti Smith
Sarah Palin
Melissa Etheridge
Oprah Winfrey
Lily Tomlin
Jane Fonda
Sarah Silverman
Roseanne Barr
Joan Rivers
Susan Sarandon
Barbara Ehrenreich
Cameron Diaz
Kacey Musgraves
Miley Cyrus

“The known literature of women’s experiential involvement with what we today call recreational drugs can now be extended to include more famous with this new anthology of freshly discovered Tokin Women texts by an amazing blogger-sleuth.”
–Michael Horowitz, co-editor of Shaman Woman, Mainline Lady and Sisters of the Extreme 

“This book by dedicated ‘herstorian’ Ellen Komp explores the use of cannabis by women throughout the ages. Readers discover that the world’s most famous women used this herb for food, fiber, and medicine, and that behind every great woman is a little bit of cannabis.”
–Debby Goldsberry, High Times Freedom Fighter of the Year (2011)

Harriet Martineau's Chibouque

"Harriet at Home" from an engraving by
Alfred Croquis (Rischgitz Studios)

UPDATE 12/15: I just discovered that Martineau is the great great great great grandmother of Princess Kate Middleton.

10/15: Martineau is included in the new book Tokin' Women: A 4000-Year Herstory.

Ladies who have courage to do what is good for them, and agreeable to them, in new circumstances, in disregard of former prejudices, will try the virtues of the chibouque while in the East: and if they like it, they will go on with it as long as they feel that they want it. The chibouque would not be in such universal use as it is in the East, if there were not some reason for it: and the reason is that it is usually found eminently good for health. I found it so: and I saw no more reason why I should not take it than why English ladies should not take their daily glass of sherry at home — an indulgence which I do not need. I continued the use of my chibouque for some weeks after my return; and then left it off only on account of its inconvenience: and in the East, it is not inconvenient. 

–Harriet Martineau, Eastern Life Present and Past

Often called the first female sociologist, English author Harriet Martineau (1802-1876) was a prolific and influential writer whose admirers included a young Queen Victoria.

Nearly deaf from childhood and with a spotty education sometimes handled by some of her seven siblings, Martineau was first published at the age of 18 with an article titled "Female Writers on Practical Divinity."  Her father was so impressed that he declared, "Leave it to the other women to make shirts and darn stockings; and do you devote yourself to this." When The Central Unitarian Association advertised for three prize essays discussing how Catholics, Jews and Mohammedans might embrace Unitarianism, she entered all three contests under different names and won them all, and 45 pounds.

Her first commissioned work, Illustrations of Political Economy, was so successful across Europe that she was hired to produce monthly volumes for 24 months, each critiquing various political and economic affairs. Beseeched by a fellow writer to curb her pen so as not to offend French king Louis-Philippe, Martineau replied, "I write with a view to the people, and particularly the most suffering of them." In The Charmed Sea  she drew attention to poor treatment of Polish exiles in Eastern Siberia, causing the Russian czar to order all copies burnt. Traveling to the United States, she took flack for her books deploring British slavery in the colonies and was warned against traveling to any Southern states. She nonetheless visited Columbia, Charleston, and New Orleans, traveling by boat up the Mississippi to Kentucky, and producing Society in America and other volumes about her experiences.

Martineau traveled to the East in 1846, writing Eastern Life Present and Past as a study in comparative religion and an attempt to track down the evolution of faith. "Eastern travel and the production of Eastern Life were the turning point in Martineau's biography" writes Billie Melman in Women's Orients: English Women and the Middle East. "It was immediately after the journey that she abandoned her rational, Necessarian brand of Unitarianism for Positivism, soon to become [sociologist Auguste] Comte's first populariser in Britain and his first translator."

Melman writes that on her travels Martineau became "quite addicted" to the chibouque, a pipe used to smoke hashish. In Eastern Life, Martineau wrote that "the stem of my chibouque was one day embossed with fresh-gathered roses" and called a bottle of ale "the greatest possible refreshment in the desert, except the chibouque....I was very well satisfied with myself if I wrote my journal after dressing and chibouque, and before dinner."

Of one evening, she wrote, "Then the chibouques were brought,— at once the indispensable comfort and chief luxury of Eastern life:— a comfort of whose importance there no more conception can be formed at home than the people of the Guinea coast can appreciate our winter clothing and fires."

Harem Girls Smoking a Hookah
from an early 20th century postcard

Writing about a jolly time spent in a harem, she describes a cross-cultural experience: 

The next joke was on behalf of the Jewesses, four or five of whom sat in a row on the divan. Almost everybody else was puffing away at a chibouque or a nargeeleh, and the place was one cloud of smoke. The poor Jewesses were obliged to decline joining us; for it happened to be Saturday: they must not smoke on the Sabbath. They were naturally much pitied: and some of the young wives did what was possible for them. Drawing in a long breath of smoke, they puffed it forth in the faces of the Jewesses, who opened mouth and nostrils eagerly to receive it. Thus was the Sabbath observed, to shouts of laughter. 
 
In her Autobiography, written in 1855, Martineau says:

At past forty years of age, I began to relish life, without drawback; and for ten years I have been vividly conscious of its delights, as undisturbed by cares as my anxious nature, and my long training to trouble could permit me ever to be. I believe there never was before any time in my life when I should not have been rather glad than sorry to lay it down. During this last sunny period, I have not acquired any dread or dislike of death; but I have felt, for the first time, a keen and unvarying relish of life. ...

I had little idea ...how the convictions and the action of the remnant of my life would be shaped and determined by what I saw and thought during those all-important months that I spent in the East....there were effects produced on my own character of mind which it would have been impertinent to offer here, even if the lapse of years had not been necessary to make them clear to myself. I never before had better opportunity for quiet meditation....

Of Hamnett and Hashish

British Bohemian Queen Nina Hamnett, an artist and muse who was known for her performances of Sea Shanty songs, once attended a party where Elsa Maxwell played the piano "with great vigor." Hanging out with poetess and Tokin Woman Iris Tree, they concocted drinks using imitation absinthe, gentian, and brandy.  Around 1921 she would run into Marie Laurencin, Picasso, Cocteau and Brancusi at "Le Boeuf sur le Toit," the Parisian restaurant where she often dined. 

Hamnett wrote in her book Laughing Torso:

"One evening....a man whom we all knew, asked us to come to his flat and try a little hashish. I had never tried any, but only a few days before, the Irish journalist whom I knew, had told me about his experiences when he had tried some. It is not a habit-forming drug and does not do any one much harm....

"I believe that one loses all sense of time and space. It takes about a hundred years to cross quite a narrow street and, as Maurice Richardson pointed out when I told him the story, probably a hundred years to order a drink.

"The first effect is a violent attack of giggles. One screams with laughter for no reason whatever, even at a fly walking on the ceiling.

"The Irishman went through all the stages and finally decided to go home. He had to walk across Paris and cross the river by Notre Dame. When he reached it he found that it was at least a mile high, and, giving it one despairing look, sat down on the quays to wait till its size had diminished. He had to wait for some time, but finally he decided that it had grown small enough for him to continue his walk home."

Hamnett by Modigliani

She then describes a dinner party thrown by a Countess to which Aleister Crowley was invited. Afterwards:

"We went to our friend's fiat after dinner. He had a large pot on the floor which contained hashish in the form of jam. On the table were some pipes, as one smoked or ate it, or did both. I tasted a spoonful, swallowed it, and waited, but nothing happened. The others got to work seriously and smoked and ate the jam. I felt no effect except that I was very happy, much more happy than if I had drunk anything. I sat on a chair and grinned.

"The others entered the giggling stage. This was for me a most awful bore as I could not say a word of any kind without them roaring with laughter. I got so bored that I went home...Crowley eventually returned to Cefalu, taking his wife with him, and so we had no more Kubla Khan No. 2."

Crowley unsuccessfully sued Hamnett in 1934 over a statement in her book that “he was supposed to practise Black Magic.” The incident was said to effect her greatly, and for whatever reasons, she succumbed to alcoholism, dying after a fall from her balcony in 1956. 

Go Ask About Alice

Today is Alice's Day in the Sequicentennial of 1865, the year when an English mathematician named Charles Dodson (aka Lewis Carroll) led us all down the rabbit hole in Alice in Wonderland.

Professor Sherry L. Ackerman writes in Alice and the Hero’s Journey, “Alice's being repeatedly instructed to eat or drink various intoxicating substances, after having descended into the underworld, was reminiscent of the function of kykeon in the Eleusian mystery schools. The Wonderland mushroom, suggestive of the Amanita muscaria, takes a central position in this context, as the caterpillar instructs Alice to eat it in order to change sizes. Interestingly, the caterpillar is a principal symbol for transformation…the foreshadow of the chrysalis. Thus, the symbol for transformation sits atop the transformational agent, the psychoactive mushroom. After ingesting a Wonderland version of the kykeon, Alice's subsequent adventures illustrate the mystic's death, as she summons the power to face, with relative equanimity, every manner of unusual being that the underworld has to offer.”

Hallucinogenic mushroom experiences have been traced back to 1799 in England, so it's possible Dodson partook in them. Of course, the caterpillar was also smoking a hookah (as shown here in the classic John Tenniel illustration). Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote of the English youth who “ate hasheesh” back in 1856, and English novelist George Eliot mentions hashish in her 1859 novella The Lifted Veil; Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson was smoking hasheesh by 1875.

The Greek Eleusinian Mysteries, with their psychoactive sacrament kykeon, survive in modern times as Grateful Dead concerts or Raves, without the sanction or guidance of society or organized religion, and targeted by mainstream society as deviant and dangerous. At least until the 1960s blew them wide open.

"White Rabbit," the rock anthem penned 50 years ago by Tokin Woman Grace Slick, begins: 

One pill makes you larger 
And one pill makes you small
And the ones that mother gives you 
Don't do anything at all
Go ask Alice
When she's ten feet tall.  

Asked about the song, Slick said, "...[P]arents read us these books, like Alice in Wonderland, where she gets high, tall, and she takes mushrooms, a hookah, pills, alcohol. And then there's the Wizard of Oz, where they fall into field of poppies and when they wake up they see Oz. And then there's Peter Pan, where if you sprinkle white dust on you, you could fly. And then you wonder why we do it? Well, what did you read to me?"

Slick is now producing paintings as interesting as her songs. One of her works called White Rabbit in Wonderland (shown) depicts Alice perched on a mushroom, chasing a rabbit on a path where Timothy Leary appears as the mad hatter and Ram Dass is the caterpillar.

Could Rosie O'Donnell Lose Child Custody Rights Over Marijuana?

If you can believe Radaronline via the National Enquirer, Rosie O'Donnell is at risk of losing custody of her 2-year-old daughter Dakota after her ex-wife Michelle Rounds alleged "The View" star is excessively using marijuana and alcohol. She reportedly submitted to a hair follicle test, which came up positive for pot.

If true, this would make O'Donnell, 53, the highest (ha) profile person to face this rather common problem since, perhaps, Paul McCartney.

Although some say marijuana actually can make you a better parent when used wisely, and court rulings have upheld parental rights of medical marijuana users, battling parents often bring up their spouses' marijuana use in custody hearings. The type of testing O'Donnell reportedly underwent can pick up drug use for months after it was last used. 

Apparently the story stemmed from a TMZ report that was later denied by Rounds, who told the NY Daily News she is seeking full custody because O'Donnell is too distracted raising her other four children.

The Enquirer also reports that Susan Olsen, the actress who played little Cindy on "The Brady Bunch," spent years growing and selling marijuana.

“I was, I guess, technically a drug dealer – but I was really a [marijuana] grower,” said Susan, also 53, saying that she grew  the “green stuff” with one of her two ex-husbands.
 

Susan has apparently changed her Facebook profile picture to one taken in a marijuana garden (right).  This would make Olsen the highest profile actress to admit she grew pot since the Blair Witch Project's Heather Donahue, author of Growgirl.

Of Henrietta and Hemp

I picked up the new biography Irrepressible: The Jazz Age Life of Henrietta Bingham tonight. Its cover trumpets:

"Raised like a princess in one of the most powerful families in the American South, Henrietta Bingham was offered the helm of a publishing empire. Instead, she ripped through the Jazz Age like an F. Scott Fitzgerald character: intoxicating and intoxicated, selfish and shameless, seductive and brilliant, endearing and often terribly troubled. In New York, Louisville, and London, she drove both men and women wild with desire, and her youth blazed with sex."

Bingham's father was a Kentucky politician, judge, newspaper publisher and ambassador, serving as the US Ambassador to Great Britain in between Andrew Mellon and Joseph Kennedy. She took off to Europe like her possible paramour and Tokin Woman Tallulah Bankhead—the daughter of an Alabama Senator—and became part of the partying Bloomsbury crowd in London.

At the time, London was hip to the jive. In a review called “Light Up” at the Savoy Theatre in 1940, “The sensation of the evening was a dope fiend dance called ‘Marihuana’ which brought the house down.” Another piece called the ‘Hashish Hop’ was described as, “A frighteningly macabre dance which ought to sweep the town.” Source. Welch artist and writer Nina Hamnett, a fringe member of the Bloomsbury Group, "made a conscious effort to lose her virginity, and ended up doing so in the same rooms in Bloomsbury where Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud had lived in the 1870s. ...She met Ford Maddox Ford and Gertrude Stein, then smoked hashish with Cocteau and Raymond Radriguet." Source.

During World War II, Bingham returned to Kentucky and ran a farm. "Henrietta was patriotically growing 'marihuana,' as her Department of Agriculture permit called hemp, to help fill the Navy's demand for rope when hostilities interrupted imports...The hemp crop took up fields she needed for corn to feed the hogs...."

This would make Henrietta the first female farmer I'm aware of who participated in the US Government's "Hemp for Victory" program in the 1940s. She was part of the American Women's Voluntary Services (pictured right, holding a booklet titled, "Share Health and Victory with a War Garden").

By Your Leave, Sir, a wartime pulp romance aimed at recruiting women for service was set on a hemp farm overlooking the Ohio River and drew on Henrietta's life, according to Irrepressible.

I couldn't find anything about Bingham using the more potent form of hemp in the book, only alcohol and Seconal, prescribed by doctors for alcoholism. Her family rather disowned her for her wild ways and one psychoanalyst tried to "cure" her of her homosexual tendencies, contributing, her great niece and biographer concludes, to her death at age 67, "succumbing to a daily cocktail of amphetamines, sedatives, and alcohol."

Simone de Beauvoir's Adventure with Marijuana

Simone de Beauvoir in Harlem, 1947

Simone de Beauvoir, the acclaimed French author whose book The Second Sex remains an influential feminist treatise, tried marijuana in New York City in 1947 and wrote about it in her book, America: Day by Day.

“As in all big cities, people use a lot of drugs in New York,” Beauvoir wrote. “Cocaine, opium, and heroin have a specialized clientele, but there’s a mild stimulant that’s commonly used, even though it’s illegal—marijuana. Almost everywhere, especially in Harlem (their economic status leads many blacks into illegal drug trafficking), marijuana cigarettes are sold under the counter. Jazz musicians who need to maintain a high level of intensity for nights at a time use it readily. It hasn’t been found to cause any physiological problems; the effect is almost like that of Benzedrine, and this substance seems to be less harmful than alcohol.”

Beauvoir says she was “less interested in tasting marijuana itself than in being at one of the gatherings where it’s smoked.” Her guide into this world was none other than Bernard Wolfe, the writer and jazz aficionado who co-wrote Really the Blues with Very Important Pothead Mezz Mezzrow. As she describes it, Wolfe took her to a pot party at a hotel, where she was advised to try smoking herself. She found the taste bitter and unpleasant, and when told she wasn’t inhaling properly, she said it burned her throat. She valiantly tried smoking four cigarettes, she said, and failed to feel any effect. “It seems that I ought to feel lifted up by angels: the others are floating, they tell me—they’re flying.” During the next few days, “I live in a half-dream; perhaps the marijuana smoke insidiously slipped into my blood,” she wrote. While in New York,  Beauvoir attended a Louis Armstrong concert with Mezzrow and Wolfe at Carnegie Hall.

Beauvoir was 39 years old when she first tried marijuana, by her own account. An interviewer asked her how it was possible, as she recounted in her memoir, that while writing The Second Sex at the age of 40, she "had not previously perceived the female condition you describe?" She answered that she had not been in a situation to notice the treatment of women, but I've got to wonder if somehow smoking marijuana altered her perception, as it seemed to do for Mark Twain, Pablo Picasso and others before they made their creative breakthroughs.

New research is finding that the brain necessarily clicks off our consciousness into a daydreaming state, in order to fully accomplish tasks. This has certain advantages. "[T]he daydreaming mind may make an association between bits of information that the person had never considered in that particular way. This accounts for creativity, insights of wisdom and oftentimes the solutions to problems that the person had not considered," researcher Eugenio M. Rothe said in a National Geographic article. Writers have observed that cannabis enhances the imagination, and that this can have an evolutionary advantage. One study found that a moderate dose of alcohol increases the productive meta state, where your mind is wandering but you're not aware of it. Up until lately researchers have generally been funded only to study negative things about cannabis, like that it enhances "novelty seeking" or schizophrenia.

In a rare television appearance from 1975, Beauvoir displays her intellectual prowess and grasp of herstory. She states (in translation): "In the Middle Ages, and in the Renaissance, the female physician had much power. They knew about remedies and herbs, the 'old wives' remedies which were sometimes of great value. Then medicine was taken away from them by men. All of the witch hunts were basically a way for men to keep women away from medicine and the power it conferred. In the 18th and 19th centuries statutes were drafted by men that prevented women—who were imprisoned, fined, etc. —from practicing medicine unless they had attended certain schools, which did not admit them anyway. Women were relegated to the role of nurses, of Florence Nightingale, as aides and assistants."

In The Second Sex, Beauvoir wrote, "[W]oman is both Eve and the Virgin Mary. She is an idol, a servant, source of life, power of darkness; she is the elementary silence of truth, she is artifice, gossip, and lies; she is the medicine woman and witch; she is man's prey; she is his downfall, she is everything he is not and wants to have, his negation and his raison d'etre....behind the sainted Mother crowds the coterie of white witches who provide man with herbal juices and stars' rays: grandmothers, old women with kind eyes, good-hearted servants, sisters of charity, nurses with magical hands...."

It's time to reclaim woman's healing power, and her healing herbs. 

Asherah: The Tree of Life

Ivory box-lid found at Ugarit (1300 BCE) is thought to
depict Asherah as the Tree of Life feeding a pair of goats. 

UPDATE: One of two altars from 8 CBE in Israel was used to burn cannabis. Dual altars may have been used to worship divine couples; in this case Yahweh and Asherah are the most probable candidates, with the smaller altar where cannabis was burned most likely dedicated to Asherah. 

The Canaanite Earth and Mother Goddess, called "Creator of the Gods," is Asherah, or Athirat. Consort, sister or mother to the gods El and Baal, the first mention of Athirat is found in Babylonian texts dating to the first dynasty (1830–1531 B.C.), along with her fellow goddesses Anat, Astarte, and Qedeshet. (Judith M. Hadley, The Cult of Asherah in Ancient Israel and Judah: Evidence for a Hebrew Goddess, Cambridge University Press, 2000.)

She is often confused with Ashtart (Astarte), and is sometimes the mother of Astarte, or Ishtar. The Ashtoreth of the Hebrew Scriptures, worshipped along with Baal and reviled for their incense-burning practices in the Bible, may refer to Athirat the Mother Goddess, or to Ashtart. Polish anthropologist Sula Benet, whose 1936 doctoral thesis ''Hashish in Folk Customs and Beliefs'' won her a Warsaw Society of Sciences scholarship for graduate study at Columbia University, theorized that the biblical incense kaneh bosm was cannabis.

Athirat is associated with the Tree of Life, also known as the Tree of Knowledge, which appears in the Biblical myth of the Garden of Eden, bearing the forbidden fruit that allows men to think like gods. Ugaritic amulets show a miniature "tree of life" growing out of Asherah's belly (William G. Dever, Did God Have A Wife?: Archaeology And Folk Religion In Ancient Israel, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2005). In Biblical passages, an Asherah meant a sacred tree or pole to honor the goddess. It wasn't until the discovery of the Ugaritic texts in 1928 that she began to be seen as a goddess also.  

"In light of Ashera's recognition as a symbol of the sacred tree and her cult's use of cannabis (Emboden 1972), it is of interest to note that in medieval times, certain Moslem groups referred to cannabis by the name ashirah," wrote Chris Bennett and Neil McQueen in Sex, Drugs, Violence and the Bible.  "They saw it as an endearing term for their hempen girlfriend" (Rosenthal 1971, p. 37, citing a 15th century list of nicknames for hashish from al-Badri). Emboden says (1979, p. 53-4), "Greece had a word for smoking this plant, cannabeizein. This often took the form of volatilizing it by placing the resinous top in an incense burner in which myrrh, balsam, and frankincense had been mixed, this in the manner of the shamanic Ashera priestesses of pre-Reformation temples in Jerusalem, who anointed their skins with the mixture as well. This was possibly the material of the priestesses at Delphi."

Ke(d)eshet, the Egyptian goddess related to Asherah.
British Museum.

Some say Asherah is also sometimes shown riding a lion, holding lilies and serpents in upraised hands, as Qadashu or Qetesh, as she was known in Egypt. Scholars think Ashoreh or Astarte and Baal were introduced in Egypt somewhere around 1450 BC, during the height of Ugarit.* Ugarit had close connections to the Hittite Empire, sent tribute to Egypt at times, and maintained trade and diplomatic connections with Cyprus. 1350 BC Canaan was of significant geopolitical importance as the area where the spheres of interest of the Egyptian, Hittite, and Assyrian Empires converged.

In the Bible, the Hebrews are repeatedly instructed to destroy all the Asherah poles, even though the goddess was considered a consort of Yahweh. But her sacred tree or pole in the temple at Jerusalem stood for about 240 years until the temple's final destruction in 70 CE. Maacah, the daughter of the Biblical King David's son Absalom, was removed from her royal position by her grandson King Asa because "she built an obscene memorial to the goddess Asherah." (1 Kings 15:1-14, 2 Chronicles 11:20-22, 2 Chronicles 15:16)

(Left) Asherah Tree from palace of Ashurnasirpal II; (right) Modern Image of Cannabis Harvest. 

A relief from the palace of Ashurnasirpal II (883-859 BC) showing an Asherah Tree is surrounded by male figures holding anointing oils. The tree's leaves have seven or nine points, and a large cola-like flower in the middle, like cannabis. The winged figure or dove over the tree might be a precursor to the Holy Spirit, the third member of the Christian trinity. The dove was a "ubiquitous symbol of goddess religions," probably because of doves' ability to make milk. 

A modern image of a cannabis harvest, from the Ludlow-Santo Domingo Library, is strikingly similar to the Asherah Tree.

*Athirat is a key player in the Baal Cycle found at Ugarit (at its height from 1450 BCE to 1200 BCE). We first see her sitting by the sea using a spindle and doing laundry. The rites contained a sacred drink as an offering:

He [Ba’al] does get up, he makes ready a feast and gives him drink;
he places a cup into his hand(s), a flagon into both his two hands,
a large beaker, great to see, a holy cup such as/which should never woman behold,
a goblet such as/which should never Athirat set her eye on;
a thousand pitchers he takes of wine, ten thousand he mixes in....

Wine in ancient times is thought to have contained herbs or drugs as well as fermented fruits.

In two places the Baal Cycle alludes to anointing with sacred oil, once when the priestess undergoes a ritual shaving, and secondly when she is returned to her father's house. "Anointing is widely understood as a rite of purification," says Daniel E. Fleming in The Installation of Baal's High Priestesses at Emar. He adds: "The meaning and origin of the practice of anointing have been thoroughly discussed by biblical scholars because the rite is so prominent in account of selecting both kings and priests." In Ugarit times, women were also anointed during wedding rituals and during a ceremony that brought a woman out of slavery as a prostitute. Anointing oils may have contained cannabis, say some scholars.