Category Archives: Words

Feb 04 2016

The Influence

Why Getting Sober Is Way Scarier Than Telling Jokes on Stage

I’m a stand-up comedian, which means I talk publicly about things that other people would deem private or shameful, and people often tell me I’m “brave.” Maybe that’s just a euphemism for “crazy.” But I usually shrug off the word, because I feel like the most fearful person on the planet. This fear ...

Oct 19 2016

The Influence

Eight Hundred Years Ago, Islamic Poets Wrote These Two Extraordinary Odes to Marijuana

October 19th, 2016 In some early Islamic societies, cannabis was outright prohibited on religious grounds. In others, it was embraced by intellectuals. The well-known Assassins sect, formed in the late 11th century, is rumored to have given hashish to its warriors and even to have derived its name f...

Feb 16 2016

The Influence

“Flying Ointment” and Betel Nuts: 10 Ways Human Beings Have Gotten High for Centuries

Mankind has been getting high for so long, it doesn’t even make sense to ask when homo sapiens “discovered” mind-altering substances. They’ve just always sort of been there, asking to be drunk, eaten and snuffed, a feature of our development as both a species and a civilization. From residues and fo...

Feb 19 2016

The Influence

The Late Harper Lee Shared These Enlightening Words About Addiction

Literary legend Harper Lee died today at the age of 89. Acclaimed for her masterful depiction of the United States in the 1930s Deep South, Lee leaves a legacy of enlightening analysis on race, gender, and class. And while drugs and addiction were by no means the focus of her work, Lee’s words on th...

Feb 24 2016

The Influence

These 30 Scottish Phrases All Mean “Drunk”

Eskimos use 50 different words for “snow,” runs a much-debated cliché. The idea behind it is that constant proximity to something alerts one to its many nuanced forms and makes it necessary to distinguish between them. Scottish people, on the other hand, have at least 30 different terms...

Mar 14 2016

The Influence

Karl Ove Knausgård: In America, an Alcoholic—In Scandinavia, Just a Genius

Karl Ove Knausgård, a Norwegian now domiciled with his wife and four kids in Sweden, is perhaps the world’s most revered living writer. Only, if he were American, the principal thing he and everyone else would say about him is that he is an alcoholic. Knausgård abandoned his efforts to write straigh...

Mar 14 2016

The Influence

Why the British Empire Was Built on Rum

For a long time, rum was a drink commonly issued to English sailors and soldiers. In the 18th century it replaced the traditional alcoholic beverages distributed to seamen and infantrymen, namely the more common beer and the less common wine and brandy. Rum proved to be much more attractive than the...

Mar 16 2016

The Influence

The Anatomy of a Heroin Relapse

After 10 years off junk, it wasn’t something I thought about much anymore. In the early days, every morning seemed to begin with an internal debate about whether or not to use. After a while, the voice inside advocating “just one last taste” faded out into a ghostly echo, and then one day it wasn’t ...

Apr 06 2016

The Influence

Club des Hashischins: Where Baudelaire, Balzac and Hugo Got High Together in Paris

Nineteenth-century Paris is well-known for its intellectuals, writers and philosophers. Less known is the fact that a lot of them used marijuana together. Jacques-Joseph Moreau is generally regarded as the first physician to seriously study drugs, writing the seminal text, “Hashish and Mental ...

Apr 07 2016

The Influence

Graphic: The Workings of a Street Crack-Dealing Operation

Influence contributor Seth Ferranti, who served 21 years of a 25-year mandatory minimum prison sentence for dealing marijuana and LSD, spent some of his time in the Feds authoring a book about crack, drug-dealing and hip hop. But he long hoped to bring his work to a different medium. “I was ge...

Apr 08 2016

The Influence

An Editorial About Drugs, by Hilde Kate Lysiak, the Nine-Year-Old Reporting Sensation

Ever since her self-published Orange Street News broke the story of a homicide in Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania, nine-year-old reporter Hilde Kate Lysiak has become a news sensation (and sadly, even little girls are not spared attacks by online trolls. She’s had to deal with some nasty comments). ...

Apr 13 2016

The Influence

Did Stephen King, the Master Storyteller, Lose His Truth in Writing About Addiction?

April 13th, 2016 I am an unapologetic Stephen King fan. Not the kind of fan who has read every book of his, nor the kind that writes fan-mail or takes the author hostage, as Annie Wilkes did in King’s 1987 novel Misery. But I am a fan. King’s memoir about his craft, On Writing, was the first [&helli...

Apr 20 2016

The Influence

Author Mira Gonzalez Tells Us About Her Plans for 4/20, Passing as “White,” and Her Twitter Habit

April 20th, 2016 Mira Gonzalez, 23, is a poet, prolific tweeter and psychosexual voice of an internet generation. Her first book, a collection of poetry, was I Will Never Be Beautiful Enough to Make Us Beautiful Together (Sorry House, 2013). Her second book, a collaboration with Tao Lin called Selec...

Apr 21 2016

The Influence

Meet Three Ex-Drug War Prisoners Doing Amazing Things With Their Lives

April 22nd, 2016 Reentering society after serving time in our nation’s correctional facilities thanks to the misguided War on Drugs can be a strangely disheartening experience. Sure, it’s a chance for a new start in life—something we’ve waited for for months, years, or even decades. But for many of ...

May 02 2016

The Influence

Quiz: Think You Know Your Strains? Then Tell Us, Is This Marijuana or Tomato?

May 2nd, 2016 As marijuana transitions in the public eye from strictly a street drug to a recognized medicine, the layman’s language develops alongside it. What was once simply “the good shit” to all but the most discerning might today be commonly described as “a high-THC, sativa-dominant hybrid pro...

May 11 2016

The Influence

Observing the Art Appear From Nowhere: Tao Lin’s Addiction to Terence McKenna

May 11th, 2016 Alt-lit icon Tao Lin is working on a new book, his first nonfiction, which he estimates will come out in 2017. It’s called Beyond Existentialism, and it’s about Terence McKenna (1946—2000), a philosopher and advocate of psychedelics dubbed the “Timothy Leary of the 9...

May 25 2016

The Influence

Beyond Parody? Five Times “the Onion” Brilliantly Skewered the War on Drugs

May 25th, 2016 America’s favorite snarky “news” source, the Onion, has never been short of ammunition when it comes to the War on Drugs. The only trouble is, in this field it can be hard to know when parody stops and reality begins… 1. Drugs Now Legal If User Is Emplo...

May 31 2016

The Influence

How Actually Druggy Is “Alice in Wonderland”?

May 31st, 2016 Since a hundred years before Don McLean’s “American Pie” and later-stage Beatles songs came to dominate stoned conversations about lyrical symbolism, one book’s enigmatic appeal has lent itself perfectly to such speculation. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderla...

Jun 01 2016

The Influence

“Art Is My God”—Sarah Matzar Isn’t Like Other Acid Cooks

June 2nd, 2016 [Editor’s note: The following excerpt from Heads: A Biography of Psychedelic America, by Jesse Jarnow, relays the never-before-told story of Sarah Matzar (above), a Guatemalan quilter and groundbreaking LSD chemist. In the 1980s, Matzar was living in the US, making quilts and wo...

Jun 01 2016

The Influence

With Ceaseless Turmoil Seething, the World’s Greatest Drug-Induced Poem Turns 200

June 1st, 2016 Ah, those Romantics. If they weren’t bedding their half-sisters or drowning in the Gulf of La Spezia, they were guzzling opium. Perhaps the most Romantic of all Romantic poems is Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan”—a fabulously conceived, breathlessly paced,...

Jun 17 2016

The Influence

The “First Great Millennial Novelist” on Porn, Drugs and Becoming a “Golden God of Clarity”

June 17th, 2016 My favorite line in Tony Tulathimutte’s debut novel, Private Citizens, is one in which Linda, a wannabe writer whose main creative outlet is ingesting different drug combinations, sums up the creative writing proclivities of her college peers: “Ooh, I had these Mennonite ...

Jul 05 2016

The Influence

“Girls” Meets “Trainspotting”? How Jade Sharma’s “Problems” Goes Way Beyond Heroin

July 5th, 2016 Few books feel as honest as Problems, Jade Sharma’s debut novel, which comes out today. Maya, the novel’s clever protagonist, is about as unfiltered and unpolished as a narrator gets these days, and she’s full of sharp insight about relationships, her drug use and being a young woman ...

Jul 06 2016

The Influence

These 12 Words Will Make Wine Snobs Love You, If That’s Really What You Want

July 6th, 2016 What is it about wine—above all other drinks and drugs, even modern marijuana—that brings out the imbiber’s inner snob? Ok, wine can be nice. Some find it nicer than other modes of intoxication. But doesn’t your innate ability to content yourself with the bargain rack at y...

Jul 13 2016

The Influence

Is This a Prescription Drug or a Harry Potter Spell? Take Our Interactive Quiz!

July 13th, 2016 Prescription drugs are notorious for their suggestively vague yet lyrical names—the result of a delicate dance between (sometimes diabolical) Big Pharma marketing and the FDA. Some companies try to market their wares as silver bullets…almost like magic spells. But can you disti...

Jul 25 2016

The Influence

The Drug-Dealing Egyptian Super-Heroine Everyone’s Talking About

July 25th, 2016 “The reality of human nature—none of us are totally good or pure evil. Even if we do make mistakes, it’s okay to forgive ourselves and accept it,” says Safya Baraka about the titular heroine of her new comic book, Lamis. In a testament to Baraka and her husband̵...

Aug 15 2016

The Influence

Do Antidepressants Actually Work? The Author of “Listening to Prozac” Is Back With the Answers

August 15th, 2016 A couple of months ago, a study on the efficacy of antidepressants for children and adolescents was published in The Lancet. A flurry of headlines from major news outlets followed: “Most Antidepressants Aren’t Effective for Children, New Study Finds” (Wall Street Journa...

Aug 16 2016

The Influence

This Is Your Brain on Bad Media Coverage—Five Dire Drug Headlines, Just From Today

August 16th, 2016 Although media coverage of drugs, addiction and criminal justice is gradually improving, there’s still no shortage of headlines (articles, too) that summon up outdated ideas and regressive stereotypes. Here are five examples obtained simply by Googling the word “drugs&#...

Aug 23 2016

The Influence

Four Photos That Illustrate What It Was Like Growing Up as Pablo Escobar’s Son

August 23rd, 2016 [Editor’s note: These photographs are from Pablo Escobar: My Father, by Juan Pablo Escobar, which comes out in the US on August 30. You can read The Influence‘s interview with the author here. The photos are published here with permission; the captions are the words of ...

Aug 26 2016

The Influence

With “I Love Dick,” Director Jill Soloway Returns to Limerence

August 26th, 2016 Chris Kraus’s I Love Dick, published in 1997, is a good description of the dissonance inherent to being a straight woman in the patriarchy: attraction to your own oppressor. When I first read I Love Dick—a work of meta-fiction with a protagonist named “Chris Kraus”...

Aug 30 2016

The Influence

“Necessary Trouble”—Why Grassroots Protest Movements Are Reshaping America

August 29th, 2016 In summer 2011, I went to the launch of “Rebuild the Dream“—a campaign by MoveOn.org that was supposed to serve as the progressive answer to the Tea Party. The event was hosted by the activist and Democratic strategist Van Jones. His pitch was to get Americans fired up ...