Against all odds, High Times became an internationally known magazine, now celebrating 45 years of continuous publication with more than 500 issues. There is no question that the publication far exceeded the wildest, most ambitious expectations of the men and women who first introduced it to the world back in the mid-1970s.

High Times was founded in 1974 by the political activist and ace marijuana smuggler Thomas King Forcade. Forcade, it is said, was the first activist to use pieing as an act of protest, back in 1970. He was a brilliant and savvy media mind who co-founded and ran the Underground Press Syndicate, a network of counterculture publications, in the late 1960s. And he kept some of those magazines afloat, just as he later did with High Times during its lean years, with proceeds from his smuggling activities.

When Forcade conceived of High Times, it was, according to legend, intended as a one-off spoof of Playboy, with cannabis standing in for scantily clad women. However, some believe that Forcade’s mission in creating this magazine was no joke—perhaps even a protest against Richard Nixon’s war on weed. Nixon, of course, hated marijuana and, even more so, marijuana smokers (he would have absolutely despised a marijuana magazine being funded by pot-smuggling profits). His Controlled Substances Act of 1970 classified cannabis as a Schedule I drug with a high potential for abuse and no medicinal value, and it’s the reason pot is still federally illegal today.

While it’s likely that Forcade would have been excited by the opportunity to create something that would both give a platform to the much-maligned marijuana plant and agitate his foes, it’s hard to believe he could have had any inkling of the almost immediate sensation High Times was about to become. The magazine that was conceived of during a nitrous oxide session was about to rival mainstream titles like Rolling Stone and National Lampoon in sales.

The first issue of High Times debuted in the summer of 1974 and was a massive hit, quickly selling out its initial print run of 10,000 copies. The issue was reprinted twice and sold out each time. The iconic cover of High Times No. 1 had a lot to do with the accomplishment. The image of a young woman tipping her head back in preparation for ingesting a shroom (which, in reality, was a perfectly legal store-bought mushroom) was undeniably eye-catching. As the cover-shoot photographer Robyn Scott explained, it was intended to create the feeling of “Going on a safari, a trip, escape from reality. It was about a journey.” Of course, the content in High Times No. 1 also contributed to the issue’s success. Features touting the medical properties of cannabis and the benefits of hemp were well ahead of their time, and an interview with a “lady dealer” was enough to pique most Stoners’ interest. Clearly, this was content you couldn’t find anywhere else.

On the heels of the success of High Times No. 1, the second issue of HT quickly sold out its 50,000-copy print run. Forcade and his outlaw publication had found an eager audience. Soon, High Times’s circulation would balloon to over half a million.

The 1970s produced some of the most iconic High Times covers, from the bare breast smothered in chocolate (October ’75) to the close-up look at a live cannabis plant (June ’76). Yes, it wasn’t until 1976, the 10th issue of High Times, that a live pot plant appeared on the cover. Cannabis was such a taboo subject at the time that a bare, chocolate-covered breast was considered the safer cover image by staffers. In time, cannabis plants would become a cover-image mainstay for the magazine. As senior cultivation editor Danny Danko puts it, “People love to see what their pot looks like when it’s growing.”

Other notable covers from this period include Andy Warhol with a Coke bottle (August ’77), the bananas cover (September ’78), Dope & Sex (October ’78) and, of course, Bob Marley (September ’76)—you can read more about HTs classic covers on page 54.

The rapid rise of High Times was the “publishing success story of the ’70s,” says former HT contributor Albert Goldman. The magazine was able to showcase celebrities like Marley, Mick Jagger and Peter Tosh as well as important counterculture writers like Charles Bukowski, William S. Burroughs and Terry Southern. According to Goldman, “Forcade would see the circulation double with every issue for years, until at its peak, in 1978, High Times was read by four million people a month [and] grossed five million dollars a year.”

Then, at the height of his success as a publisher, Forcade tragically took his own life in 1978 at the age of 33. His lawyer, Michael Kennedy, would eventually run the company and, indeed, lead High Times during some of its most prosperous years. Kennedy was a fascinating character whose connection to the counterculture was primarily through the clients he ferociously defended, including Huey Newton, Timothy Leary and members of the Weather Underground. While Kennedy would eventually take over as chairman, High Times was put into a trust after Forcade died.

As the magazine continued on without its founder and benefactor, it took a brief detour into hard drugs. Cocaine was often found on the covers and in the centerfolds of the magazine during the early to mid ’80s. Inside, High Times’s famed Trans High Market Quotations (THMQ), which provides readers with pot prices in different locations and has run in every issue of HT, included the going rate for coke, methamphetamines, LSD and more. The king of counterculture magazines was at a crossroads. Would it continue to embrace all drugs, or would High Times kick the habit and stick with cannabis?

Luckily, the magazine’s leadership shifted in the late ’80s, and the editorial team of Steven Hager and John Howell made the wise decision to leave coke and other hard drugs behind, keeping the magazine focused on promoting pot. Around this time, Hager also made the magazine’s first foray into the Dutch cannabis scene, profiling master breeder Nevil Schoenmakers in the March 1987 issue. Hager felt he was on to something in Holland, where, thanks to that nation’s tolerance of cannabis, a robust breeding scene had developed. The following year, 1988, Hager held the first-ever Cannabis Cup in Amsterdam. This was a seminal moment for High Times, as the event would continue to be held for decades, becoming the biggest cannabis competition in the world, and eventually spreading stateside when medical and adult-use legalization laws became a reality in America.

With the magazine back on track, pot remained front and center (along with select celebrities and musicians). Throughout the ’90s and into the new millennium, cultivation articles took on a bigger role in HT along with high-quality cannabis photographs.

However, an insidious DEA investigation nearly brought the company down just as it was hitting its stride. Operation Green Merchant launched in October 1989 in response to the rise in home cultivation at the time. The DEA targeted advertisers in High Times and Sinsemilla Tips magazine, along with Seed Bank of Holland owner Nevil Schoenmakers. The feds tracked shipments of grow equipment sold by these advertisers and busted the recipients in an earnest effort to wipe out the cultivation industry. Green Merchant resulted in over 1,000 arrests and raids of nearly 1,000 indoor grow ops. In the end, Sinsemilla Tips was shuttered and Schoenmakers went on the run. High Times ultimately weathered the storm but the climate of fear and uncertainty created by the operation had a lasting impact. It would be years before the magazine fully recovered.

High Times faced its next challenge in 2004, when new leadership made the decision to remove marijuana altogether from the pages of the magazine. The idea, as best as anyone can tell, was to turn HT into a literary/counterculture/political magazine. And while it might have seemed wise on paper, it did not work in practice as readers were alienated by the new HT. Fortunately, the company realized the mistake and, in 2005, brought cannabis back to High Times with a triumphant cover announcing that “The Buds Are Back!” over a backdrop of Strawberry Cough nugs. Immediately, the magazine regained its audience, and cannabis has been the focal point of High Times ever since.

As High Times heads into a new decade, navigating a digital world, the focus remains fixed on pot. And we hope you, loyal reader, will continue to enjoy the marijuana journalism, photography and cultivation tips you find in the pages of this magazine.

Read the full issue here.

The post From the Archives: A Brief History of High Times (2019) appeared first on High Times.

I hadn’t seen David since I got sent down. He was waiting in the visitor’s room, looking like he was afraid he’d catch bad luck. We went through the preliminary how-you-beens, then I asked him if he’d brought me anything to smoke. He started. He reminded me of the many signs he’d driven by after passing the prison entrance that declared it a felony to bring alcohol, firearms or drugs onto the reservation. “And besides,” he said, “this is a prison. I mean, after all… uh, drugs? In the joint?”

I figured I’d have to show him how it was done. I indicated another prisoner a dozen yards away busily chatting with a pretty young woman. “Keep your eye on him,” I told him. “He’s about to go with something.” And sure enough, not ten minutes later, we watched him shove his arm down the back of his pants and rummage around. The second time this happened Dave asked me what was going on.

“See, he palms the balloons out of his ol’ lady’s bra, picks his shot when The Man isn’t lookin’, and keesters ’em, one at a time.”

Balloons? Keesters? “Yup” I grinned. “Up the ol’ rooty-poop chute, quick as a wink. No muss, no fuss, Burma Shave.”

Still tentative, Dave asked what the guy’s chances were. Did this happen often, or was it a one-shot deal?

“Just business as usual,” I assured him. “It’s probably weed, ‘cuz that’s the biggest seller. But that guy—I nodded at another inmate a bare ten feet away—he’ll be bringin’ in smack. Rougher crowd, y’know.”

Almost any high you can buy on the street is for sale in the yard too: pot and hash and ludes and smack and booze and glue and speed. Sometimes even a bit o’ the blow. LSD, too, if you’re of a mind. What’s more, The Man knows it. I was initially leery of writing about prison traffic, fearful I would be treated as an informer—by both inmates and authorities. And this article is definitely not intended to teach prison officials how to more effectively impede the flow of drugs into their institutions. But very few schemes escape the notice of prison officials for very long anyway usually due to the widespread use of informants. What is so heartening to the schemers, and frustrating to the officials, is that, short of a complete overhaul of the security systems in most prisons, there is little or nothing that can be done to stop this.

Most prisons in the United States follow a basic order of priorities: House the offender securely (which is to say “lock his ass up tight so society can sleep at night”); offer training for the offender so that he can return to society as a “productive member,” though oftentimes training programs are merely a guise to secure ever-larger budgets; and—more important to the prison officials than anything else—never ever allow the offender to use drugs to escape the tedium and monotony of his imprisonment.

About half of the drugs that enter most prisons come in through the visiting room. It should logically follow, therefore, that where there is no physical contact between the prisoner and his visitor, the likelihood of drugs being introduced into that prison is severely reduced.

The procedure at the Texas Department of Corrections, for example, prevents physical contact—but not smuggling. There inmates sit on one side of a room-length table and their visitors sit on the other. Guards sit on elevated platforms at each end of this table. Partitions above and below the table ensure that nothing is surreptitiously passed from visitor to con. The only time this restriction may be breeched is when the visitor buys a soft drink or some fruit juice for the prisoner. The visitor who is sharp eyed and nimble fingered may be able to slip something into the opened can without being seen before handing it to the guard to pass to the prisoner. If so, the “lucky” convict in Texas may go back to his cell having drunk a couple of ‘ludes or maybe some acid. Plainly though, the circumstances hardly conduce to a good high.

Thankfully most prisons are not afflicted with so great a degree of paranoia as the TDC. In New Hampshire, for instance, the visiting policy permits “limited contact”: Inmates and their visitors are separated by an ordinary table, fingertips touching; an embrace is allowed at the beginning and at the end of the visiting period. At the end of the visit the prisoner is not skin-searched—but merely frisked—and his shoes are inspected. Prisons in Washington State conduct visiting in much the same manner, except there is no separation by a table; the prisoner and visitor sit facing each other, holding hands if desired. Again, only a pat-search at the end of the visit.

All California prisons have contact visiting. The word contact is here given a very wide latitude. As one prisoner at the California Men’s Colony near San Luis Obispo (site of Timothy Leary‘s Weathermen-abetted escape) tells me: “Hell, man, babies have been conceived in the visiting room here.” That’s close contact.

Clearly the opportunities to smuggle drugs in situations such as these are almost infinite.

You cannot simply arrive at a prison with a baggie full of marijuana and hope that your convict friend will be able to take it from there. Recently I spoke with a man who had just been released from [name of institution deleted to prevent any harassment of the men there upon disclosure of this information]. His wife packaged pot for him to smuggle back into prison after she visited each week. First, she cleaned all the seeds and stems out of the grass. Then she stuffed an ordinary balloon with cleaned weed until it was about an inch in diameter, making sure to pack it tightly. After tying the balloon closed, she wrapped it in still another balloon and sealed that one, too. He explained that stomach acid is sometimes strong enough to eat through one or even two layers of balloon, so whenever she brought him any substances other than pot, she always gave it at least three wraps. (His caution is understandable. Careless packaging has been responsible for the death of many cocaine and heroin smugglers outside, and the same danger lies for the unsuspecting convict who swallows or keesters a poorly wrapped balloon from an otherwise well meaning friend.) He told me of one prisoner who OD’d right in the visiting room: “Man, he just nodded out and never came back! That’s why I always emphasized to the ol’ lady how important it was to be careful. She always did good, though, God love her. She knew those little balls of pleasure would keep the frown off my face—and they did!”

Adding to the supply feeding high-hungry cons are guards who pack—though it should be stressed here that probably less than 25 percent of the drug traffic in any given prison originates thusly. The reasons a guard would hazard his livelihood, and possible prosecution if discovered, in order to introduce drugs into the place where he works are many: the need for supplementary income, the excitement of risk, and sometimes just plain friendship or compassion. Relates a former California convict: “In ’71 I was at Soledad. Yeah, George Jackson, the Soledad Brothers, the whole thing was happenin’ then. Me, I was just lookin’ to get high. About this time I got in real good with this Chicano guard. After a few weeks o’ listenin’ to him talk about all the dope he was smokin’, I hit on him to bring me somethin’ to smoke, too. At first he was hesitant, but I kept drivin’ on him till he broke down and brought me some grass. What he’d been smokin’ was shit Mexican—he only paid fifteen dollars a bag for it—so after a couple o’ weeks I offered to have my brother send him a quarter-pound of some real kickass; he’d keep an ounce and bring me the other three. Once it arrived and he got a taste of that good, rich Colombo, it was all gravy after that. Until I left the ‘Dad in ’75, ol’ Paco kept me fat. What he didn’t know was that I was selling some o’ them ounces for tall bucks. A forty-dollar bag from my brother brought almost two hundred on the yard. Hell, a balloon the size of an English pea went for five dollars; figure it out for yourself.”

Prisoners who have no family or friends depend on what they can buy or trade for inside the prison. In some institutions the medium of exchange is cigarettes or coffee. Some inmates trade hobbycraft items, such as leatherwork, or paintings. Some men receive visits only from their parents and can get only money from them. As easily as drugs can be smuggled in, green can be smuggled in also. Green will usually net you a larger amount of drugs than an equal value in cigarettes or oil paintings.

Convicts often find the U.S. Postal Service to be the most reliable courier. Most people know that postage stamps are good for more than ensuring that a letter is mailed. Similarly LSD (and in some cases, heroin) can be dissolved and stationery soaked in it prior to mailing. Green can be stashed in greeting cards. The inventiveness of the correspondent is the only limitation.

Many maximum and medium-security prisons have camps nearby for men who are approaching release. These camps seldom have fences and the men there are, in many instances, free and unsupervised. At the federal prison near Lompoc, California, the laundry for camp inmates at one time was done inside the maximum facility. Since the drug situation at the camp has always been very relaxed, the men there had ample opportunity (until the scheme was discovered) to secrete drugs for those inside in their cleaned clothing.

In every institution there are men who receive what is termed “controlled” medication, usually various forms of downers: Thorazine, Dilantin, Mellaril, Prolixin and phenobarbitol. It takes very little practice to learn to palm these pills, which can then be saved up for a real bang or sold.

However, the most ingenious system for copping inside that I’ve ever heard is used by my friend Nick, who is a prisoner in one of the larger prison systems on the East Coast. A few months ago he called me in California and asked—in an informal code we use—if I could send $50 to an address he gave me. I agreed, and as the conversation unfolded, I learned that the money would be going to the family of another convict who received regular visits. As soon as the money arrived, this man would give Nick a prearranged quantity of pot. I put the money in the mail the next day and my friend was smoking later that week. I’ve since done this three or four times for him. What did Nick get for the $50? About a quarter ounce of marijuana. Not much, to be sure, but it is, after all, a prison. And from what he told me, this is about the going rate there.

Far and away the drug of preference in the yard is pot or hash, followed next by downers, then speed, then heroin. Cocaine is almost last, not for lack of desire, but because of the corresponding problems of price and availability. Coke simply is not worth the extravagant cost to most convicts, when the same amount of goods or green will net you a much larger amount of marijuana or hash. (One of those times I mailed money for Nick, he received three grams of hash for $50. And that was a bargain! Usually hash goes for $25 to $30 a gram, he told me.) LSD is also a low-preference drug. While a bit o’ the blow heightens the senses and makes enjoyable an otherwise apathetic day, acid often sharpens the perception of being imprisoned, mutating routine mediocrity into apprehension and paranoia.

Even booze and glue, the bastard children of the drug subset, find a market inside. At any time, in most prisons, someone will have a batch of homebrew going. It’s never very strong, packing about the same alcoholic punch as wine—but in sufficient quantity even prison vintage produces one hell of a buzz. To concoct alcohol, very little is needed that cannot be obtained through regular channels inside a prison. Except yeast. Because of its scarcity many convict brewers make a starting mixture of raw-fruit and raw-vegetable pulp, which is mixed and allowed to ferment for two to three days. This kicker is then added to a premixed base of fruit pulp or juice, sugar and water. The base determines how the end product will taste; however, the choice of fruit is more often the result of availability than desire, since most batches of ”pruno” or ”raisin jack” or “orange wine” are prepared for effect more than taste. Once the kicker is added to the base mixture, the fermentation of sugar into alcohol begins. Within five to seven days, depending on the ingredients, a liquid is produced that is anywhere from 10 to 20 percent alcohol (again, depending on the base). A sizable portion is usually strained off for immediate consumption at this point, fresh fruit pulp and sugar water added, and the whole thing started over. However, neither that step nor a starting mixture is necessary if yeast is available.

The advantage to using yeast is that it cuts the time factor, often critical in a prison setting, by about one-third. In place of actual yeast, a fistful of raw dough may be dissolved in warm water and used immediately in place of a kicker. No matter how well hidden the container, though, smell is the worst enemy of convict pruno makers, who usually “cook up a batch” five gallons at a time. In some cases, a vent hose is forced behind the trap in a toilet and the fumes safely exhausted. Or a sponge soaked in a deodorant can be placed over the vent hole on the container itself, thereby masking the giveaway odor. Inventiveness and ingenuity however, are on the convict’s side. Rarely does The Man bust more wine than is drunk.

I have been told by men at several different institutions that many guards nowadays are reluctant to “beef” you—write a disciplinary report—for reefer. But the same pot-lenient guards will seldom give you a pass for alcohol. Because of its reputation for producing monsters from mild-mannered men, prison-brewed hooch is feared more by staff than any other drug. Witness the brutal bloodiest at New Mexico’s Santa Fe prison in February 1980. Documented evidence now points to a batch of raisin jack as the trigger—although not the cause—of this riot.

Way down on the list of preferences— somewhere between “Fuck that shit!” and “You must be crazy, sucker!—is glue, or any of the petroleum distillates containing toluene or carbon tetrachloride. An interesting aside, which comes from the Federal Penitentiary at McNeil Island, Washington (now closed), is that, of the Indian prisoners there, glue was the drug of preference. Considering its status with the general population, the reader may draw his own conclusions.

Prisons create their own drug market. Drugs bring a sense of relief—relief from boredom, escape from the “dead zone” (as Stephen King calls it) of enforced numbness that encases a man in prison like an insect embedded in amber. Of course, set and setting figure into this to an extraordinary degree in prison.

Virtually all prisons are constructed so that the housing units consist of either multitiered rows of cells, or a dormitory. In most instances, the line officer patrols periodically checking for prohibited behavior and making his presence known to maintain order In the conflict between the desire to get high in a relaxed and comfortable setting—one’s own “house”—and the necessity for precaution in order to prevent a trip to The Hole, the very expenditure of energy to reconcile one with the other detracts from the fullness of the high. Conversely, in a situation where set and setting are complementary an otherwise meager high can blossom into something memorable. Most prisons have a yard where, even under the watchful eyes of the guards in the towers, the careful convict can easily blow a joint with little or no danger of being caught.

Another place of relative security is the auditorium or gymnasium when a movie is being shown. Rarely do guards venture into this area after the lights are dimmed and in many prisons there is a tacit understanding between staff and inmates that smoking will be condoned as long as there is no violence. In the words of one prisoner: “When you know The Man isn’t interested in busting anyone during the flick, it makes getting high there just that much sweeter.”

A good deal of the violence in most prisons is drug related, and although much of this can be attributed to the traffic in heroin, no category of drug is blameless. Because of the ridiculously inflated prices of drugs, and the corresponding scarcity of money or resources available to the average convict, conflicts inevitably arise. In the early ’60s, at the California Medical Facility near Vacaville (which presently houses Juan Corona and Charles Manson), one of the heroin dealers inside the joint was found out to be a rat, supplying information to The Man in exchange for immunity. One day shortly after a visit, he was attacked and killed in his cell. Wasting no opportunity in their bloody business, his attackers slit open his stomach and scooped out the balloons he had earlier swallowed. In 1975, a prisoner at Joliet State Prison in Illinois had his eyes gouged out by a man to whom he owed money for drugs. After he fingered his assailant and was locked up in “protective custody” he was gang-raped for becoming a snitch. Seldom, however, are methods this unusual employed. Most often the offending party is dealt with swiftly and lethally. Convicts have a name for it: steel poisoning. As recently as 1980, in the federal prison at Leavenworth, Kansas, an inmate was stabbed to death because he failed to pay for less than a half ounce of marijuana. The medical report stated that his head was “almost severed from [his] torso” because of the “number and intensity of [his] wounds.” Obviously prison is no place for the deadbeat.

The other side of this coin is that if there were no drugs available at all, the strain of living day to day with so many others in such a butthole-to-bellybutton environment would quickly breed just as much and perhaps even more violence than the drug-related kind. About the only solution that would not create more problems is for the prisons to dispense drugs on demand. Since this is hardly in the works for the near future in any U.S. prison, most inmates will have to be content with whatever schemes they are using presently.

Sometimes I can’t help but marvel at the convoluted maze set up to assure a delivery of drugs. The following story comes to me from a man who is presently incarcerated in one of the federal government’s maximum security prisons: It seems in late ’79 a guard at one of the federal correctional centers (jails) near a major metropolitan area was flashing his paycheck around, taunting the inmates with how much he was sucking up from the government teat. In revenge, one of these men was able to successfully snatch this check right out of the asshole’s shirt pocket without being seen. As soon as the loss was discovered, the entire facility was locked down and every inmate and his cubicle was searched. Nothing was turned up. A few weeks later this check was successfully spirited to the previously mentioned prison. From there it was smuggled out and mailed across the country to a major department store to be cashed. (Uncle Sam’s checks are as good as gold anywhere in the country for up to 90 days.) After being cashed, 60 percent of the original amount was sent back to the convict’s confederates, who used this money to purchase a kilo of marijuana that was then smuggled into the prison. Uncle treated all around. Justice could never have been more poetic.

Read the full issue here.

The post From the Archives: Grass in the Joint (1981) appeared first on High Times.

Brown Gold Coffee, imported and packaged by the Andes Coffee Corporation of Palisades Park, New Jersey, is, as its label points out, “100% Colombian.” A unique blend of Medellin Excelso and the Armenia Excelso coffee beans, the label adds, it is “worth its taste in gold.” Cocaine, on the other hand, a blend of coca leaf alkaloids and neutral crystals, very often 100 percent Colombian, is worth approximately its exact weight in gold—and that is before it crosses the border. The mathematics of this coincidence appealed to Zachary Swan, who over his morning coffee was scanning the travel pages of The New York Times.

“Perfect,” he said.

“Find what you were looking for?” Alice asked.

“Avianca Airlines is offering a ten-day excursion. Santa Marta, Barranquilia and Cartagena. Leaves from New York. It even names the hotels.”

“Lucky you.”

Alice, at this point, was the only person in whom Swan had confided. But to assure the success of this, his most Byzantine move.

Swan would need the help of at least two others. He would use Davis on the New York end and Canadian Jack in Cartagena. He would contact them later. What he needed now was an office. He needed an office, a telephone number, a few jars of coffee, a handful of printed material and a lot of luck. He moved fast.

The office was a small one near Lüchow’s restaurant on 14th Street. He rented it on a month-to-month basis. Into it he moved an old desk, a new filing cabinet, a swivel chair and a coffee percolator. While he waited for a telephone, he worked on getting the printed material he needed. This was not hard. As a former packaging executive (in essence a printing salesman) he had very little trouble coming by the necessary four-color work and stationery. Most of it he ordered from the Andes Coffee people himself—labels, poster ads and packaging paper, all stamped with the Andes logo and address: ANDES COFFEE CORK, S. A. Schonbrunn & Co., Inc., Palisades Park, N.J. 07650. What he did not get directly from Andes, he got from business associates who had access to the Andes printing buyer, and what he did not get from them, he had printed on his own. The most important piece of original printing was a miniature folded brochure stamped with his new office number.

He decorated the office in appropriate bad taste with all the trappings he had accumulated—posters on the wall, coffee cans adorning the desk, subway ads, supermarket art, labels glued to everything—bought the coffee and moved in to work. It was difficult work, but after a while and several containers of coffee, he finally managed to remove the vacuum seal from a four-ounce jar of freeze-dried instant without tearing it. He inserted his brochure, replaced the seal with rubber cement, capped the jar and drove to Queens to put the jar in a grocery store. Before he returned to his office, however, he experienced a head-on collision—running hard up against America’s free-market system. The coffee in Queens was cheaper than the coffee in Manhattan. Bohack was selling it for less than D’Agostino’s. The price tags were different. But Swan was undaunted. In the proud tradition of Yankee know-how and a typical consumer’s respect for our nation’s supermarkets, Swan switched the lids and moved his jar to the front of the shelf. It was as simple as that. He was leaving nothing to chance. He walked out, wondering who had shoplifted whom, returned to his office and waited. For days.

Mrs. Vagelatos called at about 4:30 in the afternoon.

“Brown Gold Company.”

“Hello.”

“Hello.”

“I am Mrs. Vagelatos.”

“Yes, Mrs. Vagelatos.”

“I am number 21-27-37-31-32.”

“Are you calling about the contest, Mrs. Vagelatos?”

“Yes. The contest. Yes, I am.”

“And what is your number again, Mrs. Vagelatos?”

“Number 21-27-37-31-32.”

“Did I hear you correctly, Mrs. Vagelatos? Will you repeat that number?”

She did. (Swan’s filing system was quite simple: there was only one number—it was printed into the brochure, it came with the order. There was only one number, and only one of the brochures was in circulation. If Mrs. Vagelatos had not called, Swan would have waited and tried again—he did not want too many copies of the brochure floating around.)

“Mrs. Vagelatos. Mrs. Vagelatos, you are a winner. You have won a prize. You have won first prize. You have won a free ten-day trip to Colombia.”

Mrs. Vagelatos said she was old and that her husband was retired. He was old too, she said. She spoke English poorly. Mrs. Vagelatos had, however, lived in America for some time.

“Can I have the money, instead?”

Swan explained the rules of the contest to her—essentially, “It doesn’t work that way, lady.” Mrs. Vagelatos said she would think it over. She called back the next day, having talked it over with her husband, and told Swan that she and Mr. Vagelatos would take the trip.

“You will enjoy it, Mrs. Vagelatos. Yes. What? Of course. And in addition to the vacation, there will be many gifts and souvenirs.”

Of course.

Swan opened a checking account in the name of S. A. Schonbrunn & Co., Inc., and bought tickets for the Avianca tour in the Vagelatoses’ name. He enclosed the tickets in a Brown Gold envelope, added a letter of congratulations and an itinerary typewritten on Brown Gold stationery and mailed them to the couple in Queens.

The itinerary: Santa Marta, Barranquilla and Cartagena. Swan knew where the Vagelatoses would be, and when they would be there, all the time they were in Colombia. In his letter of congratulations he had informed them that a representative of the company would meet them in Cartagena to present them with their gifts. He called Armando from New York and told him he would be down in a week. He needed three bottles of Chanel.

“And no fucking around, Armando, I must have it. If you’ve got it there, hold it. I will definitely be down.”

Two weeks later he took $22,000 cash from a safe deposit box on the East Side and flew to Bogotá. (Whenever Swan carried large amounts of currency —and sometimes cocaine—he wore a special jacket, the lining of which had been designed specifically for that purpose by Alice. Essentially the jacket was lined with pockets. They were distributed evenly around the back and sides to prevent bulging, they were invisibly tufted so that the lining itself appeared smooth and they were hemmed with Velcro, that miracle of the Space Age, to facilitate access and obviate the necessity for zippers or buttons. At any time, but especially when Swan traveled South, the jacket was a very expensive piece of tailoring.)

Armando delivered. He charged Swan six thousand a kilo for the three keys, a five-dollar increase per gram, partly for holding the load and partly because at the time the price of cocaine was going up all around the world, Angel and Rudolpho made the fill. Swan tracked down Canadian Jack, give him $200, a few grams of coke and a ticket to Cartagena. The two flew north together, Swan with the souvenirs, and Canadian Jack carrying a brand new Polaroid camera.

El Caribe Hotel, where the Vagelatoses’ tour was booked, is located in Cartagena’s Bocagrande district, at the tip of a peninsula which separates Cartagena Bay from the Caribbean Sea. Remote from the Old Town, decidedly distant in statute and spiritual miles from any of those things which may distinguish Cartagena from the other cities of the world —out there, across the harbor—Bocagrande, on the ocean side, is devoted almost exclusively to tourists. The Caribbean front of the peninsula is covered with neo-Miami concrete-and-Formica firetraps which go by such names as Americar, Flamingo, El Dorado and Las Vegas, every room of which offers Inquisition-in-walnut furniture, a pastel, circular sink in bas relief and a view of the beach.

Under construction when Swan worked out of Cartagena, and now a second thought-provoking reality, these wonders of modern architecture are designed to make South Americans feel they have come a long way and make North Americans feel at home. The principle governing their birth is the same one as that which presumes the drinking of Coca-Cola in Bordeaux. Social historians call it progress.

Tucked away out here in the trees, a lush array and ample variety of trees, on a vast expanse of protected real estate, is the Hotel Caribe. A faithful rendition of Spanish architecture, old, stately, a kind of one-man Environmental Protection Agency, El Caribe supports its own arboretum and tropical gardens as well as an animal population of modest scope. Much of the fruit served here is grown on the grounds, and most of the grounds, obviously, are devoted to nothing more than the simple pleasure of being on them. A back gate opens onto the beach. A marina fronts on a bay to the southeast. The hotel itself, if not as large as some of its treeless and sunscorched upstart neighbors, affords its clientele a greater degree of comfort, and a variety of luxury that all but disappeared with the advent of terrazzo lawns and vertical expansion. Perhaps because it is impossible for a swimmer to drown in an upright position within sight of Cartagena—the Caribbean here is just too shallow for too great a distance out—or maybe because walking the beach at night, like walking anywhere in South America, is taking your life in your hands —the Hotel Caribe was blueprinted around space for an Olympic pool, shaded by palm trees on two sides, bordered by an enclosed restaurant on one and an open-air poolside dining area on the other. It was by the pool, amid these lavish surroundings, that Swan staged his awards ceremony.

Swan and Canadian Jack took a midweek, morning flight from Bogota to Cartagena and checked into the Hotel Caribe. Shortly after he arrived, Swan called the Vagelatoses’ room and asked the couple to meet him at the pool to receive their gifts. While Swan, sporting a full beard and dark glasses, awarded the Vagelatoses their prizes and made a big show of certifying with the waiter that the coffee they were drinking was 100 percent Colombian, laughing all the way, Canadian Jack dashed around with his camera. As usual, Swan and the Canadian were stoned, so it made no difference to either of them that the Polaroid was empty and showed no signs of developing and ejecting the pictures it was presumably takjng.

Swan loaded the Vagelatoses down with rolling pins, statues, wall hangings, hammocks, blankets, ruanas, straw hats, leather bags—about forty pounds of paraphernalia that cost him close to $150 and which would retail in the United States for over $500, all of it dragged out of two great, overflowing plastic bags. In his room, Swan had a duplicate of every one of the souvenirs. He asked the Vagelatoses to sign an agreement by which they were bound to be photographed again with their presents in the New York office. He made an offhand joke, unacknowledged, about Greeks bearing gifts, gave them a copy of the agreement to keep and wished them a safe trip home.

The Vagelatoses were due back in New York two days later. Swan left a day early and made a dry run with his duplicates. They were not examined. The Vagelatoses were supposed to call Swan’s office as soon as they returned. They did not. Swan waited. He worried. He had to call them. They were tired, it turned out—they had arrived on schedule. Swan groaned out loud over the phone. He dispatched a limousine, which he paid for in cash, to pick them up at their home in Queens.

Davis took the New York photos. And while Swan bought the Vagelatoses lunch at Lüchows, Davis made the switch. The Vagelatoses returned to the office, picked up their gifts, Swan wished them health, wealth and happiness, escorted them to the limousine and sent them home. He closed down the office the next day and never saw the couple from Queens again.

Quidquid id est, timeo Danaos et dona ferentis …

The Customs man, obviously, had never read Virgil.

With the Brown Gold move, the supposed foundation upon which Swan had based his entry into smuggling was first called into question. His claim that he would never endanger a carrier or throw an innocent individual to the lions was challenged on the basis of his use of Mr. and Mrs. Vagelatos, a couple who had no idea of the trouble they might be walking into, two innocent Greek immigrants whose faith in America was reflected, for better or worse, by the faith they placed in its institutions, whether these be its supermarkets, its coffee companies or its Treasury Department, and the trust they placed in its citizens, whether they be honest Customs agents, as innocent of the facts as they, or alleged felons like Richard Nixon and Zachary Swan. The evidence in Swan’s favor, however, is significant.

In the first place the Vagelatoses were innocent, which in itself is anyone’s greatest asset to getting by a Customs check. In their favor also was the fact that they were traveling with a tour, a group of Americans who are predominantly middle-class and middle-aged and who are supervised almost every step of their way through a foreign country—their luggage is even handled differently. But it begs the question to say that the Vagelatoses had a better than average chance of making it through Customs without a search. After all, Swan’s idea was to get the coke through—it was what the scam was designed for. In the event of a search, then, and assuming the even more remote possibility that the cocaine was discovered (Customs did not break open Swan’s souvenirs, which were identical to those Mr. and Mrs. Vagelatos were carrying), one must ask how well the Vagelatoses were covered.

Swan claims they were covered well. He had insisted that they save the contest number; he could assume that they still had the coffee jar. In addition to these two items, the Vagelatoses were in possession of two Avianca tickets purchased by a check accounted to S. A. Schonbrunn & Co., Inc., whose office address was on 14th Street. On their persons at Customs they had a letter of congratulations and an itinerary typed on Brown Gold stationery. And in the same envelope they had a signed agreement to appear at the 14th Street office with their gifts upon arrival in the United States. In the absence of everything else, they had at least thirty witnesses poolside in Cartagena. The evidence of their innocence, then, was overwhelming, as Swan saw it. If the Vagelatoses suffered at all, he assumed, it would be principally by way of embarrassment and perhaps temporary detention at the airport while the evidence was examined; and he supposed that the free ten-day vacation and the unconfiscated souvenirs would be sufficient compensation for that. As it turned out, in fact, everyone but Uncle Sam made out on the deal.

Swan was moving fast now. The Brown Gold move was such an overwhelming success, and his confidence in the wake of it so buoyant, that his roiling imagination began to generate more blueprints than he could follow. He had to throw them away. One outline that was carried through to success without his knowledge was one that he threw away in the company of Canadian Jack and Black Dan on a rainy night in Bogotá, when the cocaine express was taking its curves on the high side.

Black Dan had been living at the Oriole for almost two years when Swan first met him. He loved it in Bogotá. He left only once every six weeks, and he was always back fast. His visits to San Francisco were brief. Although he did not open up to Swan until a year after their meeting, it was pretty obvious all along that he was a smuggler. It was what you were in Bogotá if you were not manifestly anything else. And Dan always had cocaine. It was Dan who told Swan about Mannite, the Italian laxative, the cocaine cutting agent of choice and that with which Dan always cut his own coke before snorting. He preferred it that way to pure, for reasons which were unclear to Swan, and he preferred it out of a spoon, a taste Swan attributed to hours in the back rooms of Mission District bars.

Dan’s closest friend in Bogotá was Canadian Jack, a friendship, in Swan’s mind, distinguished chiefly by its sharp contrasts. Beyond the obvious one (Canadian Jack was a blond) was the almost polar difference in their approaches to smuggling. Black Dan was thoroughly professional. He found no need to acknowledge that he was a smuggler, even to Swan, a smuggler himself, whose professionalism was exemplified, if in no other way, by the fact that he never questioned Dan. Black Dan was a pro, and he had been going for years. He moved in quantity, unlike Jack, whose moves were small, and he was consistent. Every six weeks he flew to Mexico City with the coke strapped to his legs. From there he would fly to Matamoros or Tijuana, or whatever border town was convenient to his needs, and walk the load across, reentering the States with the bullfight crowds on the weekends, intimidating every official in his path by his mere presence. He never wasted time, and the closest he ever came to trouble was the trouble out of which he was always bailing Jack.

It was an evening in the early summer of 1971, six months after he had helped load Swan’s press into Rudolpho’s car and still six months before he would open up and apprise Swan of the Mexican route, that Black Dan, Swan and Canadian Jack were doing samples in Dan’s suite at the Oriole, talking about the upcoming Summer Games in Cali.

“That’s going to be a smugglers’ convention,” said Swan.

“You think so?”

“Well, just think about it for a minute. Number one—the pickpockets. Every dipper in the country is going to pack up and leave home. The thieves will be coming out of the woodwork, and they’ll all converge on Cali when the games start. There’ll be a million tourists there and another million people connected with the games in one way or another. Don’t even count the Colombians, and that’s a hell of a lot of money floating around. This country is as famous for its pickpockets as it is for its fucking coffee, and every one of them will be in Cali next month. So a smuggler doubles his money before he starts.”

“I don’t get the connection,” said Jack.

“Can you picture the activity at the American Express office? Everybody and his mother is going to be there replacing stolen traveler’s checks—‘I just got to Cali and my traveler’s checks have been stolen’—and they’re not going to ask them any questions. ‘Of course they’ve been stolen, this is Colombia.’ So what do you do? You sign ’em, sell ’em … use ’em … and then you replace them. You can do it every day, and the banks aren’t going to pick up on it. Barclay’s, Bank of America, First National City, Cook’s, they’re all going to be giving money away. So you double your money … triple it … before you begin.”

“And with all the traffic in and out,” said Dan, “Customs will be that much easier.”

“Or tougher,” said Jack.

“So you hire a jock. Or get a crewcut. Steal a couple of warmup jackets with emblems on them and walk through Customs carrying your equipment. Soccer balls would be perfect. Or javelins, if they’re made of wood, though they might be making those out of metal now. You name it. You know what I’d do?”

“What’s that?” asked Dan.

“Starting blocks. You know, the wooden blocks they use for the dash. Perfect. Who would think of cracking a starting block? And you can get a couple of kilos in there easily. It’s perfect.”

“It is perfect,” Dan agreed.

“Let’s have another blow,” said Jack.

Canadian Jack told Swan that the Brown Gold move was the most beautiful piece of business he had ever witnessed. It inspired him to christen Swan with a nickname, one that stuck, and one which gained immediate currency among the borderline elite. From then on Swan, because Jack thought he was sly and because everyone thought he was old, was known as the Silver Fox.

“The feeling after putting one over is indescribable. In the beginning, they all laughed at me, at all my long, intricate plans, my maps, my charts—my overdevelopment, they called it—Vinnie, Mickey, all of them, they all thought I was dumb … but pretty soon they all ended up working for me… eventually they were all either investing in me or working for me. After that one I had so many ideas, I couldn’t use them all. I gave them away. [Some, like the flourish he worked on Adrian, he sold, but he did, in fact, give many of them away. One of these was the Duplicate Bag Switch, which he gave to Canadian Jack on his next trip to Bogotá.] I wanted to keep moving, and I wanted that boat move.”

Before leaving Colombia to await the Vagelatoses in New York, Swan bumped into two old friends. Somehow having drifted down from Santa Marta, at the whim of whatever currents prevailed, Jane and April had ended up on the beach in Cartagena, and they were as loose as ever—Swan was always reminded of Halloween when they were around. Assuming that they had eaten little but mushrooms since he had last seen them, he smuggled them past the guard at the back gate of the Caribe and bought them dinner. He tried to get as much protein into them as he could.

Jane was looking particularly unwell. April’s voice seemed to have dropped about an octave in the past six months, but Jane was strung out to the limit. Swan saw tombstones in her eyes. She had found a pair of old walking shoes and a broken conch shell on the beach and was carrying them around with her wherever she went. They were for her brother. For his birthday. He lived in Brooklyn, she said.

Swan offered to take her home.

“No,” she said. She wanted her brother to come down and get her.

“Tell him where I am and tell him to come down and get me.”

Swan said: “Please.”

“No.”

She gave him a note and the old shoes and the shell. He carried them back to New York with the Vagelatoses’ souvenirs. He called her brother in Brooklyn, and when her brother came to pick up his birthday presents, Swan told him he had better go down soon.

“Well,” he said, “you know what kind of girl she is. She ran away when she was fifteen, doesn’t give a shit. And I don’t give a shit. Did you give her money?”

Swan just stared.

“She probably spent it on dope. That’s what kind of girl she is.”

“You’re not going?”

No.

This is an excerpt from Robert Sabbag’s Snowblind: A Brief Career in the Cocaine Trade (Bobbs-Merrill, 1976)

Read the full issue here.

The post From the Archives: Snowblind (1977) appeared first on High Times.

But we failed, and so there we were sitting in our rental car in the parking lot, listening to the show on the radio. There was only one word for our collective state: bummed. I decided to confess.

“I probably should have told you that I generally don’t have very good luck on New Year’s. In fact, I have a history of bad New Year’s Eves—ever since the parties we had. Those were the best New Year’s Eves.” (Ed and I grew up together in New York. We threw a series of deranged New Year’s parties when we were in college.)

“You’ve had bad New Year’s Eves since?” Ed asked.

“Ever since,” I said. Ed couldn’t hold back a big laugh. “Can’t remember a good one.” And he laughed again.

“Since you were 17?”

“Right. Forgot to tell you that.”

“Now you tell me.”

We didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I came up with the plan to hop the airbus and join our Deadhead family in Mecca for the New Year’s shows. Ed immediately fired out a money order for tickets. I called another friend who lives in the Bay Area and asked him to make ticket inquiries on our behalf. Then I went to HIGH TIMES editor Steve Hager and suggested the magazine send me out to California to cover the shows. “Got tickets?” Hager wondered. “Not yet,” I said. “We’re taking care of that. Don’t worry.”

Ed’s ticket request came back empty, but my friend was able to score a pair for the Friday night show. (New Year’s Eve was Monday.) We were in. We were booked.

Friday morning, December 28, Ed and I took off for Cali. It had snowed pretty heavily the night before, but the runway was clear. We landed in Oaktown three hours before showtime. It didn’t take long for us to run into the hemp folks on the vending lot—Jack Herer in one corner, Cannabis Action Network in the other, both doing their own thing.

The highlight of a rather laid-back show was “China Cat Sunflower,” which opened the second set (amazingly, Maria and Rick of CAN both predicted this would happen). We hung out in the hallways with the space dancers and spinners, with children and their folks at a makeshift Rainbow-style Kid Village. The mellowness—quite a change from East Coast harshness—was contagious.

The news that Branford Marsalis—the brilliant jazz saxophonist who guested with the Dead in April ’90-would be opening the New Year’s show topped off our heady day. I’ll keep this story short. A few years back, I interviewed Branford for an article about his more-famous brother, Wynton.

Since then we’ve become friends, chatting at Knicks games, even throwing a football around one Saturday afternoon in Brooklyn. When I heard Branford was in town, I figured I was in. Miracles do happen.

The next day, I tracked Branford down at a nearby jazz club where his quartet was jamming nightly. After staring at me quizzically (like, “What the hell are you doing here?”), he asked, “What’s wrong with the Knicks, man?” In between sets, Branford explained that “Dark Star” is his favorite Dead song and the main thing he likes about the Dead is “their vibe.”

About the upcoming New Year’s gig, Branford told me, “We go on sometime around eight. Other than that, I don’t know jack. I think I’m playing with [the Dead]; It’s up to the cats.” Would Branford be my miracle passage into the Coliseum?

“It’s gonna be tight,” he cautioned. “I’ll help you if I can. If I can’t….”

On New Year’s Eve day, Ed and I visited HIGH TIMES’ Guru of Ganja, Ed Rosenthal, who lives in Oakland.

He gave us a tour of his magical cactus garden and some words of advice about attending New Year’s shows without tickets. “I won’t do it,” he said. “It’s too depressing if you don’t get in.” What bothered me as we searched for the freeway was if the Guru of Ganja couldn’t cop a New Year’s ticket, what made us think we could?

We had two plans: The Branford plan, and another that involved hooking up with Brett, a friend’s brother who had promised me his spare ticket. Both fell through. Apparently, I didn’t make Branford’s ticket cut. Adding insult to injury, Denis McNally, the Dead’s publicist, scolded me for relying on a musician for tickets. “There isn’t a spare ticket in the house,” he said, walking away. As far as the other plan was concerned, we never did find Brett.

Depression quickly overcame us. Slowly, we walked back to the lot, where thousands of ’heads were celebrating the beginning of the show. Suddenly, it dawned on me that we weren’t exactly going to miss the concert. Every colorful car, van and bus in the lot was tuned to KPFA, the local station broadcasting live New Year’s Dead to the entire country and probably a few others. The squeak of Branford’s soprano sax tweaked my brain. We walked on.

There was only one way to salvage the situation: acid and burritos. We surveyed the lot, checking for the familiar sight of Lee’s double-decker, veggie-chow wagon. It didn’t take long to spot it. Lee, Keith and others inside were partying hard. They invited us in (we stayed for most of the night). As the seven-hour show progressed, we drew solace from the ’heads around us. They too had been shut out, but “bummed” and “depression” didn’t seem part of their vocabulary—at least, not on this special night. We banded together—as those inside undoubtedly were doing—raising our spirits to rare heights.

The music certainly helped. After a surprising electric set that featured guitarist Robin Eubanks, Branford joined Jerry, Bobby, Phil, Bruce, Vince, Mickey, Bill and guest drummer Olatunji for two spectacular sets. “Eyes of the World,” “Dark Star,”

“Drums,” “Space,” “The Other One,” “Not Fade Away” (great tribal dance/chant, closed the show), “The Weight,” “Johnny B. Goode” (encores). Jerry, Phil, Branford and Bruce got lost in the stars, improvising most of the night. An unwieldy, complicated fusion of styles, New Year’s Dead reveled in the past, present and future. It left me hopeful that this sort of musical summit can happen more than once a year.

But I still wished we’d gotten in. The CAN crew didn’t even bother trying; they went to the Red Hot Chili Peppers show in San Francisco instead. Now I know that acquiring New Year’s Dead tickets takes almost fanatical advance planning. There’s something painfully democratic about having to compete for tickets like everyone else. If only I’d listened to ticket maven David, who advised me to start scouting for tix the moment we touched down in Oakland….

Well, that’s all bongwater under the wharf now. Wish me better luck next year. Even if it is New Year’s Eve. 

Read the full issue here.

The post From the Archives: New Year’s Dead (1991) appeared first on High Times.

Brand-building is big business, particularly in cannabis where customer loyalty reigns supreme when it comes to success. Whether it was in making new types of cannabis, growing quality flowers, or crafting terpy and potent concentrates and delicious edibles, here are our picks of some of the brands that defined 2022.

WEST

Compound Genetics 

Compound Genetics went into 2022 riding on a high and just kept on sailing along. Massive seed drops and a variety of people taking home trophies all over North America with their gear are seemingly commonplace for them at this point, but it’s still impressive.

We’ve had a front-row seat to their breeding efforts since the move to San Francisco a few years ago and then the eventual partnership with Node Labs where they phenohunt and stress test the new gear to make sure it’s commercially viable. From that work we’ve seen names like Jokerz, Red Bullz, and Pave explode onto the scene.

“2022 has been a year of adapting to my surroundings, opportunities, and adversities,” founder Chris Lynch says. “High levels of success bring new challenges that constantly test your ability to perform and stay consistent. I’m grateful for where I am in this industry and what I’ve achieved with Compound Genetics. Being in my position is something I take seriously, it’s a unique responsibility that’s driven by my passion for quality. I’m excited for the next chapters with this special plant and where they take me.” 

Don’t expect anything to slow down in the near future. This year for The Emerald Cup Compound is releasing the Jokerz line. The pairing of Jet Fuel Gelato and White Runtz was one of the strains that Compound used to launch their flower line earlier this year. The community is thirsty for a new round of crosses from it. 

It’s also fair to expect Compound’s international profile to continue to build. There are a few factors contributing to that including their collaboration efforts with Green House Seed Co. and their partnership with Paradise Seeds to facilitate European distribution.

As for what strains to keep an eye on, we saw a phenotype of Apples & Bananas x Pave that was batshit heat, but we’re sure you can expect a few more than that in 2023. -JD

Blueprint

As we mentioned in our strains of the year write-up, few have ever had a year similar to the one the Blueprint team had in 2022.

Even a couple months before they hit shelves in the summer of 2022, the hype was percolating hard. A lot of the biggest names in Sacramento, and hence elite cannabis in general, were saying to keep an eye out for what Blueprint had in store. They were not wrong.

The first drop featured names like P90 and Triple Lindy. They are still top of the food chain heat a year-and-a-half later as we noted in our favorite strains of 2022 where we highlighted the Triple Lindy.

One of the things that we got a kick out of about Blueprint was how close they’ve kept the cards to their chest when it comes to genetics. Most of the time lineage has a lot to do with what gets people excited. A lot of the hype we see in weed in general comes from the next generation of something with a known pedigree. Unlike these companies that push their genetics lines and work as the basis of their ethos, the fire behind Blueprint is pure heat. And the community figured that out quickly. Never will you hear anyone complaining because they don’t know the makeup of Blueprint’s genetics, they’re just happy they got to smoke it in the first place.

Blueprint sifts through roughly 140 new flavors every couple of months. We will continue to be wildly excited to try what they find and grow to some of the highest quality levels on the globe. We expect 2023 to see the same level of heat that won them the second edition of Zalympix and what a lot of people thought was the best flower at the industry mega show Hall of Flowers where they could be compared directly against the rest of the pack. -JD

Backpack Boyz 

Since its founding as a delivery service in the Prop 215 era between cannabis powerhouses San Francisco and Sacramento, the Backpack Boyz have had a complete dedication to the absolute flame.

“So what I was trying to do at the time, was I was trying to get all of the buds that everyone wanted to smoke but didn’t have access to,” Backpack Boyz founder Juan Quesada told High Times. “I wanted to get that all under one banner and kind of be that one guy that you can see and can get everything from. So, long story short, that was kind of really where it started.”

When he first got the ball rolling he had a lot of deep connections on the cultivation side, but a lot of the product he was moving was white label heat from Sacramento. Eventually, the people coming for that Sac heat started asking Quesada about the flavors he was curating more locally. It was a big confidence booster for him.

Most famously, he would pop Lemon Cherry Gelato from bag seed in 2017. (We go into the full tale in our strains of the year section.) This would catapult the Backpack Boyz into California’s elite. They would eventually open their first retail location in early 2021. Two more would follow by the end of the year.

The brand has done particularly well in making inroads in Southern California after its initial founding up north. Quesada says having the heat helped but he gave his SoCal partners a lot of credit for helping him handle all the local hurdles that came with expanding the company’s footprint across the state.

In 2023, you can definitely expect the Backpack Boyz to keep stocking all the most elite cannabis in the state while continuing to curate a few exceptional flavors of their own. -JD

Fidel’s 

The third and youngest son of L.A.’s favorite weed family (his older brother Serge is behind Cookies Maywood and his other older brother Aram is behind Gas No Breaks) saw one of the most epic 2022s of just about anyone and his new cultivation facility didn’t even open until the end of the year.

Helping backbone the big year was the rise of the hash hole, arguably the most exotic pre-roll currently available in California. Fidel first encountered the hash hole in Barcelona years ago at Spannabis. The locals would roll up an eighth with some rosin in it to celebrate the weed making it from California—or just to flex.

Back then, Fidel was already growing heat. After spending six years in Beirut from age 12 to 18, he returned to Los Angeles where he spent many years working in a hydro shop. Those years at the grow shop was where he dialed in his game and earned the name Fidel Hydro.

On a trip back to visit friends and family in Lebanon, one of his friends designed the now well-known logo. After that, the race was on. Things have gone so well with his brand that he’s even got his parents in on the act these days. He bought a printer for their house where they do quality control on all his packaging.

Earlier this year at Spannabis, he hosted one of the event’s most popping parties, the Hash Holes and Donuts event at Cookies Barcelona. Later in the summer, Fidel’s would take home top honors at The Transbay Challenge IV: Hollywood with his pairing of Kush Mints and Zkittlez.

And we can’t emphasize enough that all this happened before his facility was even open. Expect to see Fidel’s flower on even more dispensary shelves across California soon. Until that day, you can still get your hands on hash holes—if you see them on a menu, pull the trigger quickly. They don’t last long since they’re worth big money outside the state, they are one of the few packaged products there is true value in moving compared to bulk flowers in big quantities. -JD

710 Labs 

The name 710 Labs is synonymous with small batch quality with myopic attention to detail. Every good concentrate must begin with a good strain, and the company’s cultivation operations are steadily growing. 710 Labs attributes that growth to their commitment to integrity in the cultivation process.

“We’ve had a lot of growth in the past year, which wouldn’t be possible if we didn’t stay true to what got us here: quality focused small batches with a wide variety of flavors,” says Richard Sciascia, vice president of cultivation.

Even though 710 Labs has expanded from its homebase in Colorado to California, they still adopt the same principles they’ve observed since the beginning when they launched as a much smaller operation a decade ago. Part of that is allowing the unique and individual traits of cultivars to shine. That can’t happen when producers pump out mass amounts of a single strain. 

“We aren’t monocropping rooms with one genetic, we flower rooms with one cultivar per bench,” Sciascia says. “Other companies—a fraction of our size—are growing batches many times larger with one genetic. That doesn’t excite us.”

Some of that quality is lost when companies bank on strain yields alone, or other aspects that don’t necessarily benefit the consumer.

“We love this plant and all her expressions, and want to see cultivar diversity in our offerings to the consumer,” Sciascia says. “Palate is subjective, and if we limited ourselves to the 10 hottest strains of the year, we’d be doing a disservice to the connoisseur and casual smoker alike.”

710 Labs houses a genetic library that varies between 150-200 unique cultivars, rotating between old, new, experimental, and the tried-and-true. Some classics associated with 710 Labs—Ghost Hulk #25, Black Mamba #6, and Randy Watzon—are grown regularly, sometimes shelved for six months, and others are discarded quickly to make way for new additions. Over 80% of their library has been selected by the 710 Labs team from seed. Pheno hunting is part of the agenda and selections depend on whether the end result is hash or dried flower.

Currently the focus at 710 Labs is finding rare terp combos in newer cultivars.

“The never ending terp quest is what excites us, and we hope you feel the same,” Sciascia says.

Beyond flower, 710 Labs live resin pens passed the bar among highly critical vape reviewers. Their solventless water hash, rosin, and rosin sap are no joke, as they begin with flavorful flowers. Persy sauce is also a squishy new addition to their concentrate lineup, as the trichomes are preserved in the first wash to maximize flavor. -BA

Veritas 

“Veritas” is Latin for “the truth,” and it’s all about transparency at this Colorado-based operation. The Veritas team is currently working with Node Labs to produce new genetics, and with that, they will be producing healthy clones set to be released to the public in early 2023.

Narrowing down those clones is a long, meticulous process, and incorporating the right technology is key in keeping things organized and avoiding losing track of special genetics.

“We take about 400 different cuts, and then those have been removed from the mom and manicured [and placed] into our cloners,” says Jordan Plunkett, marketing director of Veritas. “And from there, it takes about 14 days.”

Part of their operations incorporate equipment that is exactly what you’d expect, while other processes are unique to the company. Veritas plants flower in atmosphere-controlled environments under high pressure sodium lights. The crew then adds as many as 100 bamboo stakes to help spread out branches and maximize trichome development.

“We have bamboo stakes that we use in our plants,” Plunkett says. “This is something that we have not seen any other cultivators doing. The reason behind it is that we believe it gives more stability. And then they actually utilize these stakes to track where it’s at in the process. So this is a very unique kind of opportunity to really take care of our plants the right way. It’s definitely not an easy process; We don’t take the easy approach to this by any means, but we do believe that this will give us a better quality.”

Veritas recently released infused joints, containing 1 gram of Veritas flower and 0.25 grams of ice hash. In 2021, they also released a limited-edition half-ounce offering that resembled a drink holder you’d get from a fast food joint and contained a four-pack of eighths. Stay tuned for more unusual products that you won’t find anywhere else. -BA

Viola Brands 

Al Harrington’s Viola Brands, named after his grandmother who turned to medical cannabis to battle glaucoma, is a blueprint for success in the world of cannabis. You can tell by the company’s high-end promotions, packaging, and most of all—their consistent quality flower.

This isn’t by accident. No spur-of-the-moment decisions are made when it comes to narrowing down cultivars at Viola. The company’s cultivation team will grow new genetics several times over before deciding if it makes the cut.

“When bringing in new genetics, we grade each on bag appeal, yield, and testing both THC and terpenes,” says Tanner Steele, Viola’s vice president of operations. “Generally, we like to grow new genetics three to six times before releasing them to market. This ensures everything we produce thrives in our environments to provide a consistent customer experience.”

Both cultivation and processing take place at Viola’s original 12,000-square-foot facility in Colorado. The company has expanded well beyond the limits of Colorado, however. In Falls City, Oregon, Viola operates an 80,000-square-foot facility. In Detroit, Michigan, Viola operates a 46,000-square-foot cultivation facility as well as a provisioning center. In Detroit, 40 cultivars are rotated each year. The process begins with the seed.

“When we look to bring unique or different genetics to the market, we start with seeds,” Steele says. “Most Viola strains are a result of several rounds of pheno hunting to get the best genetics for our environment.”

Clone mothers are rotated and replaced on a regular basis. “When re-populating our flower rooms we clone from moms whose genetics have already been proven to provide yield, appeal, and testing for THC and terpenes,” Steele says. “We keep our moms alive for two to three months maximum before replacing them with a new mom from the genetic line.”

Beyond cannabis, the Viola Cares community engagement branch works to reinvest in struggling communities and promote social equity inside the cannabis industry. Last year, the company launched the Harrington Institute of Cannabis Education, with the help of the Cleveland School of Cannabis to provide an online curriculum designed to prepare students to work in the cannabis industry. Viola also launched an accelerator to help cannabis start-ups get a foot on the ground, and it has a very specific goal: to create 100 Black millionaires within the cannabis space. This is because they believe Black business owners face the most challenges in this industry. -BA

Freddy’s Fuego 

Pirate-themed Freddy’s Fuego, a Tier 3 producer/processor in Washington state, adopts a more interactive way of narrowing down the finest fire in the state from an assortment of breeders. Freddy’s annual pheno hunt called “The Hunt” is a spectacle, as the public judges new cultivar cuts on the Hunt Scorecard with questions about visual aspects, taste, aroma, and overall appeal. It’s almost like hunting for booty and gold.

“Freddy’s embodies the pirate archetype—the fearless soul of exploration and a loyalty to evolution as we navigate the uncharted waters of the industry,” says Freddy’s Fuego Marketing Director Blake Stango. “Always on ‘The Hunt’ to find the freshest and rarest genetics.”

Freddy’s Fuego was founded in 2013 by Ben Davis and Tim Haggerty. Since then, Freddy’s has won numerous awards including Best Indoor Grown Hybrid Flower for a fire batch of LA Cookies at Dope Cup Washington in 2018 and three awards in one year at the 2019 High Times Cannabis Cup Seattle for Larry Cake flower and pre-rolls, as well as Guava Jelly, named after a sensual Bob Marley song.

Like High Times People’s Choice Cannabis Cups, during The Hunt, they don’t limit the judges to exclusive experts. Anyone can login, fill out a Hunt Scorecard and begin judging.

“This year in August, we popped 520 different seeds from about 10 to 15 different breeders—40 different strains,” Freddy’s Fuego Director of Cultivation Roger Hale says of the event that generates a fair amount of excitement in the Northwest region.

“Our process for running through the pheno hunt is we pop all those seeds out of the rockwool, grow them for X amount of time until they’re large enough to basically go into flower,” Hale says. “At that point, we take a bunch of clones from them to produce moms stock, throw them into flower, flower those babies out, get strain notes on them: how they grew, what the yield is, the output inside of our environment, how our feed was, everything.”

Judges choose their favorites in the Hunt Scorecard based on flavor, uniqueness profile, all the good things that everybody’s looking for.

The first iteration of The Hunt begins in January every year, with subsequent judging rounds taking place in the following months. “We release all of those flavors to the public right around January and let everybody try them out,” Hale says. “Everybody gets to vote on which strains they want to have go into the next iteration of The Hunt.”

They continue to narrow down strains in subsequent rounds going into the summer. Freddy’s Fuego then takes that information and advances to the next step of The Hunt, the harvest, when the team gets the strain data back. “The last iteration of our hunt, we run those through the end of summer, choose our top four to six cultivars that we’re going to put into finalists based on what the public chooses,” Hale says.

Then Freddy’s throws a big party at the end of the year and lets everybody check out the new strains and vote on their favorite phenos. The company then takes those and begins producing them for the next year under their exclusive Freddy’s Finest label which is basically their black label collection. This allows the public to take part in the cultivar selection and judging process. 

Consumers can buy limited edition eighths of The Hunt selections. -BA

Exotic Genetix 

Few companies have racked up as many Cannabis Cup wins as Exotic Genetix. This seed bank, based in Washington state, has produced so many classic cultivars that if you haven’t smoked at least one, you better start the roll up right now. A standout includes the 2018 classic Rainbow Chip, a winning combination of Sunset Sherbert and Mint Chocolate Chip. With Kush and Cookies in the family tree, Rainbow Chip has gas.

“That was pre-Runtz people wanted the gasses, the fuels,” breeder Mike explains of the older Rainbow Chip release. “They range in aromas, the gassy fuel to some of the Rainbows are kind of funky, soggy. Some of them have like a nice ice cream/sherby/gas element to it.”

Founded in 2008, Exotic Genetix also gave the world Kimbo Kush and Grease Monkey. In 2022, we tried a lovely version of Funky Charms, Rainbow Chip x Grease Monkey, grown by Wood Wide High Craft.

In 2022, Exotic Genetix released a line of Red Runtz crosses in feminized seeds, a follow-up to the success of a 2021 Red Runtz line release.

“It was super popular, it erupted,” Mike says of the 2021 release. “I told myself after that release, like I’m only going to once, I’m not trying to stick around on Runtz because, you know, it’s the hype thing. And don’t get me wrong, Runtz is hype, but also there’s a reason for it because it’s good shit.”

He says Runtz, when paired with his genetic line-up, gave it a different edge by providing that “Runtz flair candy” taste the market was craving.

“Now, I’m going to try not to do any more Runtz. It’s hard, because people ask me every day like when’s the Greasy Runtz going to drop and I’m like ‘Fuck. I’m not doing Runtz anymore,’ but I do have a Greasy Runtz line-up just waiting to be released,” he says with a laugh.

Working with feminized seeds has been a key in his success.

“When you do feminized seeds, you take an amazing strain in female form and you manipulate a few things and you can reverse that female and make it release male pollen,” Mike explains. “When you do that, and you use that pollen on your receiver, so to speak, all your other strains, it makes all those seeds that you made feminized. So, now you end up with seeds that you don’t get any males from.”

When creating new kinds of cannabis the results generally either suck or are amazing, there isn’t much in between, he says.

“Ever since I started reversing things that started awesome and making feminized seeds with those amazing starting plants, or the starting plant that I reverse, most of the things they come out amazing,” Mike says. “I don’t mean that like I’m full of myself. I mean like when you choose a male that you can’t see how it’s expressed in female form. It’s hard for you to get a predisposition of how that’s going to breed until you do it a couple times and see what your offspring do. But with the female that you reverse, you already know… it’s kind of a cheating step, but it’s there for a reason and ever since it’s been a told that I’ve used I haven’t turned back because it saves you a lot of time of hunting, going through stuff that isn’t what you’re looking for.”

Mike gained the nickname “Big Stimmy” during the pandemic for Instagram live broadcasts during the time of government stimulus efforts in which he was giving away seed packs. Big Stimmy hosted the “Milk Show” which was full of people pouring milk on unsuspecting victims for prizes.

In the future, look out for the next release of Gary Poppins, Gary Payton x Red Pop. -EH

Archive Seed Bank

Ask a legendary cannabis breeder what they’re smoking and they’ll likely flip the question around to the one thing that is ever-present in their mind: selecting, creating, and cultivating new types of flowers. That was the case when we caught up with Archive Seed Bank breeder Fletcher Watson as he drove to his grow room to continue sifting through what will become a new line of genetics, the Flavour Pack reversal feminized line. The journey breeders go through to bring new cultivars into our lungs are immense. When we speak, Watson’s getting down to the final stages of selection. He’s taken the Flavour Pack cultivar he created and reversed the plant to produce male pollen. Next, he took that male pollen and combined it with 60 different varieties of cannabis. He’s grown out 30 types from the seed stock so far, this is only the initial run. 

“I’ve got about 150 to 200 seed plants of those Flavour Pack hybrids with all kinds of other stuff that I’m literally on my way driving to right now, to go through the samples and start picking through the population,” he says over a phone call in early fall. 

Flavour Pack, which is only one of the seed lines Watson is working on simultaneously with others, blends together old and new genetics in the cannabis family tree. It’s a cross of Hollywood Pure Kush, an OG Kush cut, with a newer one of Watson’s creations, Moonbow (Zkittlez x Do-Si-Dos).

“Essentially what we do is try to improve certain cultivars that are either popular in the market—the terpene profile is popular in the market and I just like it personally a lot—and mix it with a bunch of old weird stuff that may not have market appeal,” Watson says. “The reason I breed cannabis is I want to, in one way or another, improve upon a variety.” 

Watson was 16 when he started growing weed and career-wise, it’s all he’s ever done. His nickname “ThaDocta” comes from a screen name he chose back in those days, one he gained from his time at the skatepark, where he hurt himself so often he started carrying a medical kit.

Archive was founded in Oregon in 2011 and has since blessed the world with many award-winning strains. Archive’s OGKB was one of the parents of Do-Si-Dos. Rainbow Belts (Moonbow x Zkittlez) came out in 2017 and is still crushing the competition scene. Watson sent out Rainbow Belts genetics to about 50 people in 2020 and once it reached the clone-seller market it exploded. It has the fruity Zkittlez terps that people love, combined with a kushy dankness. 

“The reason you don’t see too much Zkittlez on the market is it’s such a difficult plant for most people to grow,” Watson explains. “By expanding a line that has that terpene profile really well stabilized within the population, people are able to take advantage of that market that wants that smell and flavor, but get better plants, with better yields and higher [THC] tests making it more marketable to the broader consumer.”

And when an Archive cultivar reaches that stage it can really pop. In 2022, Archive Seeds released Dark Rainbow 2.0. On its website Archive explains the first generation, Dark Rainbow 1.0, used GMO combined with Moonbow and carried the gassy flavors of the GMO alongside the lime candy taste of Moonbow. The second generation is GMO combined with Planet Purple, the offspring of which is generally not sweet, but “raunchy stank breath rotten meat gas tank stank.” Watson says this one is great for hash, which Archive also makes and carries in its Portland, Oregon shop along with house flowers and clones.

“My breeding is less of knowing exactly what I’m trying to make, it’s more of throwing darts at the wall and seeing what sticks,” Watson says. -EH

Sunday Goods 

Sunday Goods (owned by its parent company The Pharm) is based in Arizona and focuses on producing quality cannabis combined with feel-good vibes.

Although Arizona is often associated with brutally hot temperatures, Sunday Goods and The Pharm’s flower is grown in a 7-acre, 300,000-square-foot Dutch glass greenhouse in Willcox, Arizona. The climate in Willcox is mild compared to other parts of the state and often sees more rainfall than Phoenix or Tucson, making it a good place to grow quality cannabis (although many other agricultural goods thrive there as well).

Some of the brand’s most high-demand products include high-potency THC strains, including one called Bangers x Mac.

“That’s a cross between Headbanger and Miracle Alien Cookies (MAC), and it’s a super dank, very diesely, piney strain,” says Matt Daley, vice president of marketing for Sunday Goods.

Not only does Sunday Goods flower take advantage of the mild climate, the location of the grow is also home to a geothermal well that The Pharm uses to reduce heating needs during the colder months, helping to reduce energy consumption.

Alongside its own flower Sunday Goods offers a wide variety of other local cannabis brands, all of which align with the brand’s desire to offer consumers with the best products to help them feel their “Sunday best.”

Sunday Goods is dedicated to the support of the cannabis community, having partnered with the Last Prisoner Project to raise funds and help the organization continue to fight against cannabis injustice. In November 2021, Sunday Goods joined with Arizona NORML to host expungement clinics for those who have low-level cannabis offenses on their records.

“We’re just looking to provide relief, a pathway to creativity, an outstretched hand to an elevated sense of being because I think all of us here at Sunday Goods believe that everyone stands to benefit from what this plant can deliver,” Daley says. -AK

Wyld 

Wyld is one of the most recognizable and popular cannabis edibles brands. Praised for its consistency across multiple markets (it began in Oregon but has since spread to Arizona, California, Colorado, Michigan, Nevada, Oklahoma, and Washington), Wyld earned its place as a top brand by producing a line of fruit-forward gummies.

According to Wyld Corporate Communications Specialist Rachael Smith, there are three flavors in particular that consumers have fallen in love with.

“Our top three national bestsellers are elderberry 2:1 THC:CBN indica-enhanced, raspberry sativa-enhanced, and huckleberry hybrid-enhanced gummies,” Smith says. “Most states follow this same trend with elderberry leading the pack. Recent sales data shows Wyld leading the country nationally with the top six edible products in the U.S. and with nine products in the top 20—more than any other single brand.”

The Wyld supply team goes to great lengths to ensure that each product includes the advertised amount of potency.

“We use a three-test process to ensure a high-quality end product,” Smith says. “Test one: cannabis extract is tested before we receive it to ensure quality and potency. Test two: Our cannabis-infused coconut oil is tested again in house to ensure appropriate dosing in our products. Test three: Once made, the edibles are tested again to certify they are consistent with our exacting potency standards. The last test also includes random selection of products for testing by a third-party lab. All of our third-party testing is conducted by state-certified lab partners.”

Wyld is also dedicated to sustainability, going as far as providing an annual social and environmental impact report (data for 2022 is set to be released during the first half of 2023).

“We’ll be launching our new solventless hash rosin gummy brand in select markets in the fourth quarter of this year,” Smith says. “In 2023, in addition to rolling out compostable packaging in the U.S., our plans include expanding further into the Midwest and East Coast and, as always, we look forward to offering new real fruit flavors with innovative cannabinoid content—keep your eyes on Wyld, we’ve got so much more to offer.” -AK

High Road Edibles 

Montana is known for its vast landscapes, pristine natural beauty, and as of Jan. 1, 2022, adult-use cannabis.

High Road Edibles predates this monumental shift from medical to adult-use sales, having established itself in 2019. The brand was founded by Michael Zens and Ben Miller, two college roommates who enjoy spending time outdoors and sought out to develop a cannabis brand exclusive to their home state.

All of High Road Edibles products are made with full-spectrum cannabis extract. Hybrid cannabis strains come from Sacred Sun Farms, and indica- or sativa-leaning strains come from Collective Elevation, both of which are farms based out of Bozeman, Montana, located in the southern part of the state. High Road Edibles is also partnered with a local dispensary, Dancing Goat Gardens.

The brand features an assortment of gummies, chocolate bars, and mints.

“We started with kind of trying to pick flavors that we thought match the mood state and the strain types we were using,” Miller says. “So more kind of bright, energizing flavors for things like sativa, and more kind of deep, rich flavors for the indica. And then for the hybrid, we kind of just tried to hit those quintessential candy flavors that we all really enjoy, you know, peach and green apple on the gummies, cinnamon on the mint, and then that coffee almond on the chocolate bar.”

Zens adds that their sativa-leaning strawberry flavor gummy sells the best in the Bozeman/southern Montana area, where people tend to be more active. However, in the northern part of the state, around Kalispell and Whitefish, there are more older consumers who prefer the indica-leaning blood orange gummies. This summer, High Road Edibles released a huckleberry flavor, in honor of the berry of the same name that populates the northern parts of the U.S. and is a celebrated summertime ingredient (Zens and Miller joke that huckleberries are a prominent food source for wild bears, as well as tourists).

While the state’s medical cannabis program was restrictive, Montana’s adult-use program has helped open things up. According to Zens, it has allowed the local cannabis community to develop and grow.

“It’s been really kind of fun to actually like, get out there and meet everyone,” Zens says. “Because in the restrictive market, everyone was kind of competing against each other a little bit more. We’re in this wholesale recreational market, everyone can kind of specialize in something and support each other and link up, and kind of create a community that wasn’t there before as much.”

Both Miller and Zens enjoy floating in the various rivers in Montana, but agree that cannabis consumption can be an enjoyable companion for numerous other outdoor activities including hiking. The founding duo alluded to new flavors and products coming out in 2023.  -AK

Aether Gardens 

Located in the northeast corner of Las Vegas, Nevada, Aether Gardens’ state-of-the-art facility covers 120,000 square feet divided into numerous sections including cultivation, extraction, manufacturing, and distribution. It was recently ranked #10 on a list of MJ Unpacked’s hottest Nevada-based cannabis brands, which is no surprise since it won two placements in the Cannabis Cup Nevada: People’s Choice Edition in 2021: 2nd place for best indica with Slurricane #7, and 1st place for indica concentrates with Banana ice water indica live rosin. Aether Gardens also has a 2019 High Times Cannabis Cup Nevada 1st place win for hybrid concentrates with Zweet Insanity.

According to Aether Gardens Cannabis Officer Justin Hernandez, consumers should keep an eye out for the popular strain MAC that has been thriving in the facility. Strains like Blue Cheese, Banana, and Blue Java are also popular. Online, Aether Gardens recently showcased its ultra-sweet, flavor-packed strains Mimosé (Mimosa x Rosé) and Terple (Tropicana Cookies x Slurricane #7).

Aether Gardens has been producing cannabis out of its facility since 2018, and, over the years, has continued to develop its tissue culture lab, which now houses 400 cannabis varieties. All of the strains are grown in a structure that takes advantage of sunlight through the use of glass panels. The company also formulates its own nutrient line.

Other areas of the facility are dedicated to the creation of numerous extraction products, from concentrates to edibles. Aether Gardens’ production also serves many other brand partners, such as house brand The Fifty Five as well as STIIIZY, Binske, Huni Labs, Pro Canna, and Hervé. -AK

Mountaintop Extracts 

Mountaintop Extracts has been helping patients gain access to clean, effective cannabis medicine since 2012, but now that adult-use sales is legal in New Mexico (effective as of April 1, 2022), the brand continues to offer quality cannabis products to a wider market.

The Mountaintop Extracts logo features a towering mountain inspired by the Sandia Mountains, which overlooks the city of Albuquerque where the brand is based. Mountaintop Extracts is 100% family-owned, and founder Eric Merryman holds his brand to the highest standard when producing cannabis products for consumers.

“At Mountaintop [Extracts] we really focus on clean, consistent safe medicine and are committed to the educational process so much needed in our industry,” Merryman says. “We are extremely passionate about what we do and have been very fortunate to attract like-minded employees who are making a difference in our industry.”

Joel Krukar, director of business development and marketing at Mountaintop Extracts, explains that the brand utilizes proprietary methods and techniques, which it’s been perfecting for years, to ensure that all of its products are of the highest quality.

“That’s what makes our edibles different. Our vape cartridges are live resin true full spectrum…We don’t cut it with anything. Nothing is reintroduced,” Krukar says. “And our diamonds became a huge success, [they were] really big in the beginning because we were one of the first [in the state] to actually really master growing large grade diamonds. I believe the largest diamond, it was like 7 grams, actually. So we have techniques to really grow very rich, large diamonds.”

And Mountaintop Extracts has the accolades to prove it too. At the 2018 Essie Awards hosted by Kurple Magazine, Mountaintop Extracts took home awards for best infused product, best edible, and best concentrate.

A longtime favorite of medical cannabis patients, Krukar says that the brand’s gummies are one of their biggest sellers.

“Our gummies are by far the highest velocity products we have. We are producing more units of gummies per month than anything else,” Krukar says. “But it’s also sometimes a condition of the market. And I personally love our vapes, and people love our vapes as well too, because we’re the only ones providing that live resin, true full-spectrum, full-integrity vape cartridge.”

In the very near future, Mountaintop Extracts has plans to reveal a new logo, new packaging, and a new patent-pending product to add to its current lineup. –AK

EAST

3rd Coast Genetics

There’s a reason behind why Michigan-based 3rd Coast Genetics calls itself “the swank of dank.” As purveyors of some of Michigan’s finest cannabis, 3rd Coast Genetics focuses on the strange and the unique. The team behind 3rd Coast Genetics are the creators of Smorez, Butterfingaz, and many other strains that are sought after in the Midwest. 3rd Coast Genetics cultivar names will grab your attention, and they’ll stand out from the typical strains that you see every day.

“I am the creative force behind 3rd Coast Genetics,” Max Yields tells High Times. “The 3rd Coast is the shore of beautiful Lake Michigan—the place where I call home.”

Yields is the creator of Oreoz, Pure Michigan, Tagalonz, and many other strains, armed with a passion for breeding and love for pushing the boundaries of quality. “3rd Coast” generally refers to the Great Lakes area in the Midwest. It’s too easy to ignore the fire that comes out of Michigan when it’s overshadowed by countless other brands.

Some of these rare finds include crosses like Walfredo (MAC 1 x Peanut Butter Breath) or Thick Strawberry Goo (Red Pop x Pure Michigan) with 10 beans per bag.

Some other strains that caught our attention—with a little help from the creative names—were Spock’s Brain (Grease Monkey x Peanut Butter Breath) and Wolverine (Animal Cookies x Pure Michigan). But don’t get distracted by the names, because 3rd Coast Genetics retains the quality you want, preserving those subtle traits.

“I feel the most important thing that I do, the one thing at the epicenter of all of my hard work, is the practice of selecting unique and amazing traits,” Yields says. “Everything is dependent upon genetics and being able to recognize the component that makes something so special or unique, even if those traits are subtle.” -BA

Pure Options/Pro Gro 

What makes Pure Options unique? Perhaps it’s the company’s connection to the local community in Michigan. “Our success ultimately is deeply rooted in our community here in Lansing,” says Pure Options Director of Pro Gro, Jacob Nelson.

Pure Options has been in operations since 2011 and has become a staple source of craft cannabis in Michigan. One of the team’s long-term goals has been to make it into the spotlight and operate a craft cannabis business at a larger scale.

“We built our foundation as a very small team operating in the traditional market taking great caution to keep our heads down and stay focused on this mission,” Nelson says. “It was during this time that we built our culture in preparation for our future. So, when people ask us what makes Pure Options unique our answer is always the same, it’s our team and it’s culture.”

Pure Options’ uniqueness isn’t defined by any particular special process or “secret sauce.” The entire team Pure Options are students of cultivation. Small details matter, and cutting corners for profit is never an option, Nelson says. Every day is an opportunity to learn, refine processes, and improve the final product. This mindset is fueled by passion for the plant.

“Thankfully for us our love for the craft and attention to detail hasn’t gone unnoticed,” Nelson says. “Our team’s passion and culture has helped us deliver high quality cannabis to the Michigan market at scale and along the way we’ve been able to secure some amazing partnerships by proxy.”

Some of Pure Options’ partnerships include collaborations with Archive Seed Bank, DEO Farms, Wizard Trees, and Skunk House Genetics. This has given the team the opportunity to raise their platform with exclusive strains from some of the best breeders in the industry.

“The entire Pure Options team is excited for what the future holds,” Nelson says. “We cannot wait to operate on the national stage next and are thankful for everyone who has helped reach our goals along the way. It was all a dream, and teamwork truly does make the dream work.” -BA

Aerīz 

Aerīz, pronounced like “arise,” is the producer of aeroponically grown flower, as well as full-spectrum hash oil, sugar, diamonds and sauce, budder, and many other products. They are “the largest aeroponic cannabis cultivator in the world,” according to their website. The company probably focuses on root health more than most typical producers.

Roots are misted in Aerīz’s custom-fitted tables, where cultivators have full control over nutrient uptake. The closed-loop system helps the team to minimize nutrient waste. While it’s a system that would cause a novice grower to most likely fail, the team at Aerīz have perfected the practice.

“We grow aeroponically, for basically two main reasons,” Aerīz Senior Producer Ian Krass tells High Times. “One is the quality of the flower. And the second is the environment. So the easier thing is the environment, which has an aeroponic growing process.”

Krass went on to say that the grow medium is recyclable, and that they’re not using any soil, so there’s a lot less waste. “Our water nutrient solution that the roots get nested with is recycled in a closed-loop system,” he explains. “So, you know, basically, it’s the least waste you could possibly generate growing cannabis. And, you know, being environmentally friendly is definitely at the core of our mission.”

Aerīz’s aeroponically grown flower is sometimes converted into full-spectrum hash oil, distillate, sugar, shatter, budder, and infused honey sticks.

Aerīz is currently partnering with a company called Pachamama, that does carbon offsets. Quality is achieved using a closed loop, computer-controlled nutrient delivery system. The team is very precise in terms of giving the plants exactly “what they need, when they need it.”

Aerīz has expanded beyond Illinois with operations in Arizona as well. Be sure to check out their powerful cuts of Jenny Kush (generally accepted as Amnesia Haze and Rare Dankness #2) and Pink Kush (King Kush x King Kush). -BA

Helios Hash

Helios Hash, a solventless hash producer based out of Maine, rocked the hash world in 2021 with a win at the Ego Clash. The winning entry, a mix of Rainbow Belts with a small amount of Ice Cream Cake, represented a major victory for the family-run brand. After all, they won the well-respected hash event with sungrown plants from their first commercial harvest, and 2022 was only their second season growing.

“It’s your classic Zkittlez,” Stav Anagnost says of the Ego Clash-winning entry. “It’s one of the more sought-after type of terps. We hit it at a good time. A lot of people are growing Rainbow Belts.”

Anagnost runs the company alongside two of his brothers, Alex and Demetri, and believes their Rainbow Belts edged out the competition because of their growing style, which he describes as “West Coast.”

“We grow sungrown and our entire operation is based off of sustainable regenerative farming,” he says. “What we do is we are resin farmers so we strictly grow outdoor plants one time a year, seasonally done for resin and our resin is for hash.”

Hash produced from the resin of sungrown flowers is incomparable and is more flavorful than hash made with indoor flowers, Anagnost says. In sunny California, sungrown flower is decidedly more common than in Maine, where the weather is colder and harsher. But Anagnost argues the weather challenges in Maine contribute to the quality of the hash.

“Resin is a defense mechanism to the plant,” he explains. “So the more that the plant gets certain stressors in its environment allow the plant to produce a better quality and more luscious resin.”

The goal at Helios is always full-melt.

“At the end of the day there’s nothing that can compete with the sun,” Anagnost says. “We’re strictly a hash-based company. Everything we do is sungrown and we believe that’s the best representation of the plant and of the resin.” 

Looking ahead, Helios is hoping to start a breeding project. Their hash, only produced once a year, mirrors the successful wine industry model of select year limited releases. -EH

Kolektor 

When it comes to building a brand built on hype, heart, and heat, Kolektor’s got it down. The only things this Bronx-based underground cultivator says he won’t put out is the stuff that you can find everywhere. Don’t look to Kolektor for Gelato or Runtz; he came up in the era of Platinum Girl Scout Cookies and started growing after getting tired of seeing the same old flowers. “I feel like the market is so oversaturated with those things. You can get them anywhere so there’s no point in me growing those cultivars,” he says over a phone call. “Everybody else is doing it and I’m trying to create my own lane.”

Right now, his lane seems wide open as he looks towards licensing and continues to mingle with California cannabis elite heading across the country to explore the burgeoning New York scene. He’s got West Coast growing experience and, through Instagram marketing, has already met a few major players in California cannabis.

“California knows that New York is a bigger market,” Kolektor says. “California has always been at the top of the game in production, and New York has been just buying. So now you have a bunch of local growers popping up, which is really cool.”

When we speak in early fall, Kolektor has just got through the last of other breeders’ genetics and popped 100 seeds of his own to grow out. The male he’s currently working with is a Black Mamba crossed with four different female cultivars. The results are just unnamed crosses for now, Candy Cane x Black Mamba, a Honey Banana x Black Mamba, a Grape Pie x Black Mamba, and an unrevealed fourth. Kolektor’s also creating his own genetics with Purple Taipan (Grape Pie x Black Mamba) pollen and says the hope is that the brand can create a menu “fully curated, bred, and grown by us.” When we connect, he’s just harvested a Sherb Breath, Sunset Sherbert x Mendo Breath.

“It’s super heavy on the Mendo Breath so you get a lot of that like savory terps, almost like a beef soup, beef stew or something, it’s real weird,” he says.

Kolektor grew up in the South Bronx and never thought he’d be able to grow cannabis. Serving in the Army in Afghanistan he saw acres and acres of weed growing in the desert and it hit him that growing it himself might be a possibility. After he got out of the Army, he took some seeds back with him to New York and started experimenting. He’s making plans in terms of gaining official state cultivation licensing and wants to stay close to the Bronx.

“That’s where we can serve the community the best,” he says. “A lot of investors want us to go upstate, but if we go upstate we’re just going to service a bunch of white folks, like our social equity plan will be shit at that point, you know? I’m from the Bronx apartments in Yonkers so we understand how bad the communities have got due to the War on Drugs and the Stop and Frisk era so we want to be able to offer some good opportunities to people in the city that we love.” -EH

Solar Cannabis Co. 

Solar Cannabis Co. grows indoors in its main facility in Somerset, Massachusetts within a 67,000-square-foot space. Its solar production allows the company to operate completely energy independent; solar panels cover the entire facility roof as well as an adjacent 4-acre lot. The cultivator also utilizes two high-efficiency CHP (combined heat and power) generators, making natural gas the only utility that Solar Cannabis Co. is hooked up to. It cycles through 10,000 gallons of water a day, but reclaims 90% of that water to be recirculated back into their fertigation watering system (a process which adds fertilizer into an irrigation system).

Solar Cannabis Co.’s Director of Marketing and Communications Derek Gould says the company is constantly striving to reduce its energy footprint.

“A lot of these states where you can only cultivate indoors, at least all year round, it’s definitely important to take a look at the energy footprint and the carbon footprint that we’re leaving, because, it’s huge, it’s massive, and we really just want to do it the right way,” Gould says. “We want to do it upfront, and be a model for other operators, whether current or upcoming, to take a look and identify that, hey, we have a corporate responsibility to operate in a sustainable way.” 

Solar Cannabis Co. is a vertically integrated company, but they also grow vertically to fully take advantage of their facility space. Cannabis plants are cared for on a three-tier rack system, allowing Solar Cannabis Co. to house anywhere between 2,200 to 2,400 plants per room. 

“The way that we have designed our facility is for constant production, we are harvesting a room every week-and-a-half and we’re pulling down. I would say close to 350 to 400 pounds of dried flower per room every one-and-a-half to two weeks. So, you know, we are constantly in mass production,” Gould explains. 

Solar Cannabis Co.’s Vice President of Cultivation Brendan Delaney has a background in cultivation in Trinity County, California and has helped make connections with West Coast cultivators like Compound Genetics and Humboldt Seed Company. A few of their current best sellers are recognizable cultivars like Cherry Punch, Gas Truffle, Hella Jelly, Jelly Runtz, Pink Certz, The Bling, Waffle Cone, and Wedding Cake. 

“What we’ve brought from the West Coast here to the East Coast, they’ve been game changers, everything’s been home runs, for the most part,” says Gould. 

In Massachusetts, vertically integrated cannabis companies are limited to having three retail licenses, and with Solar Cannabis Co. having two in operation and one coming soon to Dartmouth, the brand is expanding its ethos into other markets and holds a retail-only dispensary license in Rhode Island. -AK 

Good Green 

Using cannabis as a way to support Black and brown communities that have been disproportionately affected by the War on Drugs is a worthwhile commitment. Good Green (owned by Green Thumb Industries) strives to sell affordable cannabis flower while also providing funds to worthy nonprofit organizations.

Split between sativa, hybrid, and indica offerings, Good Green is in several markets: Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.

Earlier this year, Green Thumb Industries was one of seven multi-state operators to participate in New Jersey’s first day of recreational sales which began on April 21. As a vertically integrated company, Green Thumb has its own grow facility in New Jersey that supplies an “ever-growing portfolio of strains.” Strains like Banana Cream, Animal Face, L’Orange, Jack Herer, and Rebel Sour are a handful of popular strains in New Jersey.

Good Green isn’t just a flower producer though, it also offers its Good Green grant program to help support worthy nonprofit organizations (hence the brand motto “Green that does Good”). There are currently eight nonprofits that have been chosen to receive the Good Green grant, based in various locations such as Illinois, New York, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. 

Jai Kensey, director of social impact at Green Thumb Industries, explains why it’s so important that cannabis brands give back to the community.

“It’s an obligation and I always say as multi-state operators, it’s our duty to give back to the communities,” Kensey says. “This industry has been built on the backs of Black and brown people, and who have been the most harmed by it. Black people are four times more likely to be arrested for cannabis use. And so it’s definitely something where I say it’s very unique for our industry, where it should be part of every bit of our operation in terms of giving back to the communities that have been impacted by it.”

With an extensive, thorough, and rigorous review process, Kensey, along with Social Impact Program Manager Alyssa Estrada and the Good Green brand team, sift through many applicants and score them based on a number of factors. They closely examine each one, scoring them fairly based on three areas: expungement, employment, and education, as well as geographical location and the organization’s financial records to ensure that their funds go toward various programs.

When High Times spoke with Kensey, she shared that they were currently in the process of reviewing over 70 applications for the third round with the intention of choosing four, which will receive a split of $200,000 which was announced in November 2022. This amount helped the brand meet its goal of granting a total of $1.3 million to nonprofits by the end of the year. -AK

The post 22 Best Brands of 2022 appeared first on High Times.

I ended up with only about seventy-five bucks. Not much of a take for a full house at a Christmas show. But even seventy-five bucks was a wad too big to pocket. So after I got out of my red suit and rubber snoot I drove off to seek a worthy recipient. I spotted a likely assortment of candidates in the 7-Eleven parking lot, on the corner of Sixth and Blair. I swung in and held the bucket out the window.

“All right. Who’s the hardest-luck case in this lot?”

The candidates looked me over and edged away—all but one guy, pony-tailed and slope-shouldered, his chin tucked down in the collar of a canvas camouflage jacket. “I got a streak of hard luck runs all the way back to New Jersey,” he said. “What about it?”

“I’m on a mission from St. Nicholas,” I told him. “And if you are, in fact, the least fortunate of the lot”—in the spirit of the season, I refrained from saying “biggest loser”—”then this could be your lucky night.”

“Right,” he said. “You’re some kind of Holy Roller? Where’s the string? What’s the hustle?”

“No string, no catch, no hustle. I’m giving. You’re getting. Get it?”

He did. He took the money and ran, taking Faye’s egg bucket into the bargain. The last I saw of him, he was scurrying away, looking for a hole.

Since then, I’ve wondered about him. Did that little windfall make a difference? Did he rent a cheap room? Get a bath? A companion? Every time I found myself passing through one of Eugene’s hard-luck harbors, I kept half an eye peeled for the sight of a long tail of black hair draggling down the back of a camouflage jacket. Last week, a year later to the day, I made a sighting.

I was in town with Faye and our daughter, getting in some Christmas shopping before we rendezvoused with my mom for supper. We’d done a couple of hours in the malls, and I was shopped out. I announced that I wanted to make some private purchases, and slipped off into the rainy cold—alone. I was headed for the liquor store on Eighth, thinking the spirit could use a little fortification. But the trusty peppermint wasn’t powerful enough. These hometown streets are just too strange, too vacant, too sad. Corner of Sixth at Olive: empty. The great Dangold Creamery that my dad built up from a little Eugene farmer’s cooperative: bulldozed down. I ducked my head and kept walking in the rain.

The street in my memory was the clearer path anyway: John Warren’s Hardware over there, where you could buy blasting powder across the counter; the Corral Novelty Shop, where you could buy itching powder; the Heilig Theater, with its all-the-way-across-the-street arch, flashing what we all took to be the Norwegian word for “hello,” so big it could be read all the way from the windows of the arriving trains: “Heilig, Heilig, Heilig.” All gone.

When I reached the city center, I noticed that the thing people had finally given up trying to call a fountain was newly disguised with pine boughs and potted plants. But to no avail. It still looked like the remnants of a bombed-out French cathedral. Then, when the rain eased up, I was surprised to discover that the ruins were not quite deserted: I saw a loose black braid hanging down the back of a camouflage jacket. That seemed right. He was in the old fountain’s basin, bent in a concealing crouch at one of the potted pines.

I came up from behind and clapped my hand on his shoulder. “Whatcha doin’, Hard Luck? Counting another bucket of money?”

He wheeled around and had my wrist clamped in a bone-breaking grasp before I could finish the word. I saw then that this wasn’t a chinless street rat standing down in the basin after all. This was a block-jawed American Indian built like two fireplugs, sitting in a wheelchair.

“Ouch! Man! Let go! I thought you were somebody else!”

He eased the hold, but kept the wrist. I told him about last year’s longhair and the matching jacket.

He listened, studying my eyes. “OK. Sorry about the twist. I was taking a leak. You surprised me. Let’s get out of the rain and see what kind of medicine you’ve got sticking out of your pocket.”

We retired under some scaffolding. He was less than enthusiastic about my choice of pocket medicine. “I’d rather drink something like Southern Comfort if I have to choose a sugar drink,” he said. But we passed the pint back and forth and watched the rain.

He leaned to spit and a folded Army blanket slipped out of his lap. His legs were as gone as the main gut of my poor hometown.

He was a part-time fillet man from the Pike Place Market, up in Seattle, on his way to spend Christmas with family on “the rez,” outside of Albuquerque. His bus was laid up for a couple of hours: “I think they’re getting the Greyhound spayed before she gets to California.”

When the pint was about three-quarters gone, I screwed on the lid and held it out. “I gotta meet the women. Go ahead and keep it.”

“Ah, I guess not,” he said.

“You’re pretty choosy for a thirsty man, aren’t you? What would be your best druthers?”

“To have the money and make my own choice.”

I reached for my wallet. “I think I got a couple of bucks.”

“And a quarter? If I had two bucks and a quarter, I could get a pint of Ten High. With four and change I’d go on to a fair-to-middlin’ fifth. Cream of Kentucky.”

I hesitated. Was I being hustled? “OK, Let’s see what we’ve got.” I emptied the wallet and pockets onto his blanket. He added a few coins and counted the collection.

“Nine seventy-five. If I come up with another two dollars, I can get a bottle of Bushmill’s Irish. Think I can panhandle two dollars between here and the liquor store?”

“Without a doubt,” I assured him. “With both panhandles tied behind your back.”

We shook hands goodbye and headed off in our separate directions, strolling and rolling through the rain. At the restaurant, my mother wanted to know what I was thinking about that gave me such a goofy grin.

“I was just thinking, if beggars can’t be choosers, then it must follow that choosers, by definition, are not beggars.”

This year for the Christmas show, Santa’s got himself a classier outfit and wrangled some holiday helpers out of the high-school choir. God bless ’em. And we’re gonna work all the aisles. Come on out here you helpers, come on out. Get down there and panhandle! And you guys in the audience start passing your money to the aisles here. This is no time to nickel-and-dime, for Chrissakes! It’s Christmastime.

Ken Kesey, one of the Merry Pranksters, is the author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Sometimes A Great Notion.

Read the full issue here.

The post From the Archives: A Christmas Story (2000) appeared first on High Times.

Thirty years ago, when High Times was in its infancy, I did a long interview with Norman Mailer that was published in two parts in Rolling Stone magazine. Mailer and I first met in Provincetown, MA, in the winter of 1970 and have been close friends ever since. At one time we owned property together in Maine, which was put up as collateral for bail when I got busted for smuggling marijuana in the early ’80s. The Feds were all over the connection between Mailer and me; he testified for the defense at the trial of my partner in Toronto, Rosie Rowbotham, who ended up doing over 20 years for importing hashish. Mailer later testified at my trials in Maine and New York. The government became convinced that he was some sort of hippie godfather to the sprawling marijuana trafficking organization Rowbotham and I ran, along the lines of Timothy Leary’s figurehead status with the Brotherhood of Eternal Love conspiracy out of Laguna Beach, CA.

But Mailer was more a friend of the cause than a co-conspirator. He certainly had what to an assistant United States attorney might qualify as “guilty knowledge.” He knew what I was up to. I remember standing with him on the balcony of his Brooklyn Heights apartment one night, looking out at the glittering behemoths of the Lower Manhattan financial district, then down at the containers stacked on the Brooklyn docks below like mini-skyscrapers and telling him, “Right down there, Norman, in those containers, there’s seven million dollars’ worth of Lebanese hash. All I have to do is get it out of there without getting busted.” The novelist in him was intrigued, but the criminal in him would always remain subservient to the artist. The government put tremendous pressure on me to give them Mailer, as though he were some trophy I could trade for my own culpability. They were star-fucking: John DeLorean had been busted in a set-up coke case; Mailer’s head would have looked good mounted on some government prosecutor’s wall.

When I went to prison in 1982, Mailer became—after my mother—my most loyal visitor and correspondent. And when I was released in 1990, I stayed in his Brooklyn Heights apartment while the Mailer family summered in Provincetown. I’ve known Mailer’s youngest son, John Buffalo, since he was born and turned to him when I needed someone to act in my stead here at the magazine while I finished work on the TV show I produced for Showtime.

But, as with my criminal enterprise, Mailer has no financial stake in the outcome of the High Times mini-media-conglomerate conspiracy. He’s an interested observer and adviser.

All this by way of saying there’s real history here, so much so that there was never any pretense at making this a typical interview; it’s more like a master speaking to an apprentice about what he has learned. I’d read Mailer extensively before I met him. His writing, in essays such as “The White Negro” and “General Marijuana,” his nonfiction The Armies of the Night and The Executioner’s Song, and the novels The Naked and the Dead, An American Dream, Why Are We in Vietnam? and Ancient Evenings, to mention just a few Mailer works, have reshaped post-World War II American literature. Mailer’s whole notion of the existential hipster living in the crucible of his orgasm probably contributed as much to my fascination with the outlaw life as the cannabis plant itself.

I’ve smoked pot with Mailer on a number of occasions and have always been impressed with where it took him: to the outermost reaches of the universe and back to the murky depths of the human psyche. But I had never really sat with him and got his thoughts on pot until we met, almost 30 years to the day of that first interview, and I asked him to expound on his views of the plant that became the inspiration for this magazine.

Norman Mailer: Looking back on pot—is it 30 years since I smoked?—by the ’70s I began to feel it was costing me too much. We’ll get to what I got out of it and what I didn’t get out of it—but by the ’80s, I just smoked occasionally. And I don’t think I’ve had a toke—and this is neither to brag nor apologize—in 10 years. But I look back on it as one of the profoundest parts of my life. It did me a lot of good and a lot of harm.

What I’d like to do today is talk about these dimensions of pot. People who smoke marijuana all the time are, as far as I’m concerned, fundamentalists. Their one belief is that pot is good, pot takes care of everything—it’s their gospel. I think they’re about as limited—if you want to get brutal about it—as fundamentalists. Fundamentalists can’t think; they can only refer to the Gospels. Pot people can’t recognize that something as good as that might have something very bad connected to it—which is not to do with the law, but what it does to you. That’s what I’d like to talk about. The plus and minus.

The other thing I’d like to talk about is the cultural phenomenon of pot. That is rarely gone into. Instead, people are always taking sides—pot’s good, pot’s bad; pot should be outlawed, pot should be decriminalized—there’s always this legalistic approach. But I think marijuana had a profound cultural effect upon America, and I wouldn’t mind seeing this magazine exploring all that pot did to the American mentality—good and bad.

Richard Stratton: Marijuana is already a huge cultural phenomenon. In the 30 years High Times has been around, pot has gone from a marginal anomaly in our society to something that’s almost mainstream.

Mailer: Yeah, only not mainstream yet. Too many attitudes have settled in on pot, and there’s too much dead-ass in the thinking of pot smokers now. Some 30 years ago when it was all new, we really felt we were adventurers—let’s say 40 years ago—we really felt we were on the edge of startling and incredible revelations. You’d have perceptions that I still use to this day—that’s part of the good. When I first began smoking, I was a typical liberal, a radical rationalist. I never believed in a Higher Power. I still dislike those two words—Higher Power. I didn’t believe that God was there. I couldn’t explain anything, because when you’re an atheist, you’re living without a boat on an island in the Pacific that’s surrounded by water: There’s nowhere to go.

It’s hard enough to believe in God, but to assume there is no God, no prime force—how can you begin to explain anything that way?

I was a socialist, more radical than most liberals, but I was altogether a rationalist. I was also at the point of getting into one or another kind of terminal disease, because my life was wrong. My liver was lousy and I wasn’t even drinking a lot. My personal life was not happy and I was congested, constricted. I couldn’t have been tighter. Then pot hit.

In the beginning, I remember that pot used to irritate the hell out of me, because nothing would happen when I smoked.

I’ve noticed that intellectuals with highly developed minds usually have trouble turning on. The mental structure is so developed, so ratiocinative. So many minefields have been built up to protect the intellect from pot, which is seen as the disrupter, the enemy. The first few times I smoked, I just got tired, dull and irritated. I was angry that nothing had happened. It went on like that for perhaps a year. Three, four, five times I smoked, and each occasion was a blank.

Then one night in Mexico I got into a crazy sexual scene with two women. We were smoking an awful lot of pot. Then one of the women went home and the other went to sleep and I felt ill and got up and vomited. I’d never vomited like that in my life. It was exactly as if I was having an orgasm of convulsive vomiting. Spasmodically, I was throwing off a ton of anxiety. I’ve never had anything like that since and I wouldn’t want to. Not again. Pretty powerful convulsive experience.

Afterward, I rinsed my mouth out, went downstairs to where my then wife was sleeping on one couch, and I lay down on the other and stayed there. Then it hit—how that pot hit! I don’t know if it ever hit any harder. It was incredible: I was able to change the face of my wife into anyone I wanted. It went on before my eyes. I could play all sorts of games in my mind. Whole scenarios. It went on for hours. When it was over, I knew that I was going to try this again.

A couple of days later, I was out in the car listening to the radio. Some jazz came on. I’d been listening to jazz for years, but it had never meant all that much to me. Now, with the powers pot offered, simple things became complex; complex things clarified themselves. These musicians were offering the inner content of their experience to me. Later, when I wrote about it, I would say that jazz is the music of orgasm. Because that was what it seemed to me. These very talented, charged-up players full of their joys and twists and kinks—God, they had as many as I did—were looking for the musical equivalent of an orgasm. They would take a song, play the melody, then go into variations on it, until they got themselves into a tighter and tighter situation with the take-off on the melody.

I can’t speak musically, but I can tell what was going on in that odyssey. They were saying: This is very, very hard to get out, it’s full of knots—but I’m going to do it. And they’d climb a tower of music looking to reach the gates at the top and break through. It wasn’t automatic; very often they failed. They’d go on and on, try more variations, then more. But often they couldn’t solve the problem they’d set themselves musically, whatever that problem was. And sometimes, occasionally, they would break through. Then it was incredible, for they would emerge with you into a happy land just listening to music. Other times they’d stop with a little flair, a sign-off, as if to say: That’s it, I give up. All that was what I heard while high, and I loved it. I became a jazz buff.

Over the next couple of years, I went often to the Five Spot, the Village Vanguard, the Jazz Gallery. I’d hear the greats: Thelonious Monk, Sonny Rollins, Coltrane, Miles Davis. Those were incredibly heady years, listening to those guys for hours on pot, or without it, because once pot had broken into my metallic mental structure, it had cracked the vise, you might say, that closed me off from music. I had become such a lover of pot that I broke up with a few friends who wouldn’t smoke it. At the end of a long road—10 years down that road—I committed a felony while on pot.

That didn’t stop me, but I did smoke a little less as the years went on.

I’m a writer: The most important single element in my life, other than my family, has been my writing. So as a writer, I always had to ask: Is this good for my writing? And I began to look at pot through that lens. It wasn’t all bad for editing—it was crazy. I’d have three or four bad ideas and one good one, but at the same time I was learning a lot about the sounds of language. Before, I’d been someone who wrote for the sense of what I was saying, and now I began to write for the sound of what I was writing.

Stratton: Like a jazz musician.

Mailer: Well, I wouldn’t go that far, but to a degree, yes. I’d look for the rhythm of the long sentence rather than the intellectual impact, which often proved to be more powerful when it came out of the rhythm. So occasionally the editing was excellent. But it was impossible to write new stuff on pot.

The experience was too intense. On pot, I would have the illusion that you need say no more than “I love you” and all of love would be there. Obviously, that was not enough.

Stratton: Let’s talk about the detrimental aspects of pot, how you feel it worked against you.

Mailer: Well, the main thing was that I was mortgaging time, mortgaging my future. Because I’d have brilliant insights while on pot but could hardly remember any of them later. My handwriting would even break down. Then three-quarters of the insights were lost to scribbles. Whenever I had a tremendous take on pot, I was good for very little over the next 48 hours.

But if you’re a novelist, you have to work every day. There are no easy stretches. You do the work. Marijuana was terrible for that. So I had longer and longer periods where I wouldn’t go near pot—it would get me too far off my novelistic tracks. When it hit, three or four chapters of my next book would come into my head at once. That would often be a disaster. The happiest moment you can have when writing is when a sense of the truth comes in at the point of your pen. It just feels true. As you are writing! Such a moment is most certainly one of the reasons you write. But if I received similar truths via pot, I was no longer stretching my mind by my work as a novelist.

In fact, with the noticeable exception of Hunter Thompson, who has broken—bless him—has broken every fucking rule there is for ingesting alien substances…indeed, there’s nobody remotely equal to Hunter—I don’t know how he does it. I have great admiration for his constitution and the fact that he can be such a good writer with all the crap he takes into himself. Unbelievable, unbelievable—but no other writer I know can do it.

Stratton: So you believe that, if you were to smoke some good pot right now, you’d let your mind go—and you might see the rest of the book in your head, but you might not have the impetus to sit down and write it?

Mailer: That’s right. One mustn’t talk about one’s book. For instance, I’m doing one now where I haven’t even told my wife what it’s about. She’s guessed—she’s a very smart lady, so she’s guessed—but the thing is, I know that to talk about this book would be so much more stimulating and easy and agreeable than to write it that I’d end up talking to people about what a marvelous book I could have done. I believe pot does that in a far grander way—it’s the difference between watching a movie on a dinky little TV set and going to a state-of-the-art cinema.

Stratton: Most of the writing I’m doing these days is screenwriting. And because of the nature of the material I’m working on, I usually have a detailed outline. I know where I’m going, I’ve already seen the movie in my head. So when I write, after having smoked some pot, I find that what it does for me is I can just sit back and watch the scene play out in my mind. And I don’t have to worry about getting lost, because I’ve got the structure of the screenplay holding me in check.

Mailer: I can see that would work for screenplays, but in a novel you’ve got to do it all.

Stratton: What about sex on pot?

Mailer: Sex on pot was fabulous. That was the big element. I realized I hadn’t known anything about sex until I was able to enjoy it on pot. Then again, after a few years, I began to see some of the negative aspects. Once, speaking at Rice High School—I had a friend, a priest named Pete Jacobs, who’d invited me to speak there; it’s a Catholic high school run by the Christian Brothers in Manhattan, and it’s a school well respected by a lot of Irish working class all around New York, Staten Island, Queens, because they give you a very good, tough education there. The Christian Brothers are tough. But Pete told me, “Say what you want to say. These kids will be right on top of it.” They were. They weren’t passive students at all. One of them asked me, “How do you feel about marijuana and sex?” And I gave him this answer: You can be out with a girl, have sex with her for the first time on pot and it might be fabulous—you and the girl go very far out. Then two days later you hear that the girl was killed in an automobile accident and you say, “Too bad. Such a sweet little chick.” You hardly feel more than that. The action had exhausted your emotions. On pot, you can have a romance that normally would take three to six months to develop being telescoped into one big fuck. But over one night, there’s no loyalty or allegiance to it because you haven’t paid the price. About that time, I realized that fucking on pot was crazy because you’d feel things you never felt before, but on the other hand, you really didn’t attach that much loyalty to the woman. Your feelings of love were not for the woman, but for the idea of love. It was insufficiently connected to the real woman.

It bounced off her reality rather than drawing you toward it. Other times, you could indeed get into the reality of the woman and even see something hard and cold and cruel in her depths, or something so beautiful you didn’t want to go too near it because you knew you were a lousy son of a bitch and you’d ruin it.

One way or another, I found that pot intensified my attitudes toward love, but it also left me detached. It was a peculiar business. So there came a point where I began to think: Who gave us pot? Was it God or the devil? Because by now, I was my own species of a religious man. I believed in an existential God who was doing the best that He or She could do.

God was out there as the Creator, but God was not all powerful or all wise. God was an artistic general, if you will—a very creative and wonderful general—better than any general who ever lived. By far. But even so, generals finally can’t take care of all their troops. And the notion of people praying all the time—begging for God to watch over them, take care of them—so conflicted with what I felt. I felt that God cannot be all good and all powerful. Not both. Because if He’s all good, He is certainly not all powerful. There’s no way to explain the horrors of history, including the mid-century horrors of the last century, if He is all good. Whereas if God is a great creator—not necessarily the lord of all the universe, but let’s say the lord of our part of the universe, our Creator—then God, on a grander scale, bears the same relationship to us that a parent does to a child. No parent is all wise, all powerful and all good. The parent is doing the best that he or she can do. And very often it doesn’t turn out well. That made sense to me. I could see our relation to God: God needs us as much as we need God. And to me, that was exciting, because now it wasn’t a slavish relationship anymore. It made sense.

Stratton: You feel marijuana helped you discover this existential God?

Mailer: No question. That was part of the great trip. But I began to brood on a line that I’d written long before I’d smoked marijuana, a line from The Deer Park. The director who was my main character was having all sorts of insights and revelations while dead drunk, but then said to himself, “Why is my mind so alive when I’m too drunk to do anything about it?” That came back to haunt me. Because I thought: Pot is giving me so much, but I’m not doing my work. I don’t get near enough to the visions and insights I’m having on pot. So is it a gift of God—pot? Or does it come from the devil? Is this the nearest the devil comes to being godlike? It seemed there were three possibilities there: One could well be that marijuana was a gift of God and, if so, must not be abused. Or was it an instrument of the devil? Or were God and the devil both present when we smoked? Maybe God needed us to become more illumined? After all, one of my favorite notions is that organized religion could well be one of the great creations of the devil. How better to drive people away from God than to give them a notion of the Almighty that doesn’t fit the facts? So, I do come back to this notion that maybe God and the devil are obliged willynilly to collaborate here. Each thinks that they can benefit from pot: God can give you the insights and the devil will reap the exhaustions and the debilities. Because I think pot debilitates people. I’ve noticed over and over that people who smoke pot all the time generally do very little with their lives. I’ve always liked booze because I felt: It’s a vice, but I know exactly what I’m paying for. You hurt your head in the beginning and your knees in the end, when you get arthritis. But at least you know how you’re paying for the fun. Pot’s spookier. Pot gives so much more than booze on the one hand—but on the other, never quite presents the bill.

Stratton: I’m not sure that’s true of everyone who smokes pot.

Mailer: I’m sure it’s not.

Stratton: A lot of people are motivated by pot. I am, for one.

Mailer: What do you mean, “motivated”?

Stratton: I mean that it doesn’t debilitate me. I don’t want to sit around and do nothing when I’m high. I get inspired, energized.

I don’t subscribe to the theory of the antimotivational syndrome. If anything, when I’m straight, I’m often too hyper and too left-brain-oriented. I go off on tangents and I don’t stop to look around and try to find a deeper meaning in what I’m doing. Marijuana will slow me down and allow me to connect with the mood of what’s going on around me. And that, in turn, inspires me to go further into what I’m trying to do.

Mailer: I ended a few romances over the years because when I got on pot I couldn’t stop talking. And finally I remember one girl who said, “Did you come to fuck or to knit?”

[Laughter]

Stratton: That’s one of the interesting things about marijuana—how it affects everyone differently. It seems to enhance and intensify whatever’s going on in the person at any given moment. Let’s say that we were going to do some stretching right now and we did it straight. We’d be like, “Oh, man, this hurts. This is an ordeal.”

Now if we smoke a little pot and then stretch, it would feel good and put us more in touch with our bodies and the deeper sensations of the activity.

Mailer: I learned more about my body and reflex and grace, even, such as I have—whatever limited physical grace I have, I got it through pot showing me where my body, or how my body, was feeling at any given moment. Here, I can agree with you. Dancing—I could always dance on pot. Not much of a dancer otherwise, but on pot, I could dance. There’s no question it liberated me. All of these good things were there. All the same, when it comes to the legalization of pot, I get dubious. Pot would be taken over by media culture. It would be classified and categorized. It would lose that wonderful little funky edge that once it had—that sensation of being on the edge of the criminal. All the same, the corporate bastards who run most of America will not legalize it in a hurry. Pot is still a great danger to them. Because what they fear is that too many people would no longer give a damn about the corporation—they’d have their minds on other things than working for the Big Empty. To the suits, that makes pot a deadly drug. The corporation has a bad enough conscience buried deep inside to fear, despite their strength, every type of psychic alteration that they haven’t developed themselves.

Read the full issue here.

The post From the Archives: Norman Mailer on Pot (2004) appeared first on High Times.

This year, we’re upgrading the categories in the High Times Hemp Cup by welcoming three legal psychoactive groups that will make the selection of offerings even more irresistible.

COMPETITION CATEGORIES:
(LIMITED SLOTS AVAILABLE PER CATEGORY, WITH A MAXIMUM OF 3 ENTRIES PER COMPANY PER CATEGORY)

Hemp-Derived CBD Edibles: Gummies & Fruit Chews (NON-PSYCHOACTIVE ONLY) 
Hemp-Derived CBD Edibles: Non-Gummies (NON-PSYCHOACTIVE ONLY) (No Liquids above 1 FL OZ allowed)
Hemp-Derived CBD Tinctures + Capsules (NON-PSYCHOACTIVE ONLY) (No Liquids above 1 FL OZ allowed)
Hemp-Derived CBD Topicals (NON-PSYCHOACTIVE ONLY)
Hemp-Derived CBD Flower and Pre-Rolls (NON-PSYCHOACTIVE ONLY)
Hemp-Derived CBD Concentrates and Vape Pens (NON-PSYCHOACTIVE ONLY)
Hemp-Derived CBD Pet Products (NON-PSYCHOACTIVE ONLY)
Legal Psychoactive Flower and Pre-Rolls (D8, D10, HHC, THCO, THCV, etc)
Legal Psychoactive Concentrates and Vape Pens (D8, D10, HHC, THCO, THCV, etc)
Legal Psychoactive Edible: Gummies  (D8, D10, HHC, THCO, THCV, etc)
Legal Psychoactive Edible: Non-Gummies (D8, D10, HHC, THCO, THCV, etc)(No Liquids above 1 FL OZ allowed)
*NON-PSYCHOACTIVE IS DEFINED AS CBD, CBG, CBN PRODUCTS ONLY

A competition of this magnitude takes some serious coordination, and the sheer amount of interest means that we’re planning this competition months in advance. As such, the following deadlines are subject to change, but here’s the deal:

Competitors will have between Jan. 30, 2023-Feb. 3, 2023 to submit their products for consideration. After that, judge kits will go on sale starting on Feb. 10. Unlike our market-specific competitions, the Hemp Cup kits will be available for online ordering in every state. Judges will have two months (between Feb. 10-April 2) to explore the wide variety of products they receive. We tally the scores and celebrate another successful High Times Hemp Cup: People’s Choice Edition on April 16—just in time for 4/20!

There are a few things that potential competitors should know. First, slots are limited. With a pool of products coming from all 50 states, it’s best to get your stuff submitted soon if you want to be considered. Second, there’s a cap of two entries per company, per category. Third, for each entry you must submit 80 samples of the same sku. Also, note that flower and pre-roll submissions should be limited to 3.5 grams maximum, and 3 grams maximum for concentrates and vape pens (anything submitted with more will not be accepted). Those are some of the important components to qualify, but we’ll send more info after you’ve been confirmed for participation.

While there is a $500 non-refundable deposit for each entry, we are offering a deal with submissions: If you submit three to four entries, you get one more free. Submit five to seven, get two more free, etc. If you have any questions about this, check out cannabiscup.com. 

In the past, participants have extended some of the best hemp products in the nation—showing the rest of the world how it’s done. Originally we announced our first High Times People’s Choice Hemp Cup in December 2020, with winners announced in May 2021. Among the best were brands such as Grön, Myriam’s, Drip CBD, Hometown Hero, Windy Hill Hemp Co., and many more.

Winners of the Hemp Cup: People’s Choice 2022 were equally extraordinary, with winners coming from brands such as Sweet Sensi, 3Chi, Rove Remedies, Buddy’s Chocolate Haus, Horn Creek Hemp, and even Martha Stewart.

What will 2023 have in store for us this time around? Who will be honored as one of the nation’s next best brands in hemp? Will our new “legal psychoactive” categories impress the judges? Only time will tell.

A big thank you to our sponsors!

The Hemp Doctor – Presenting Sponsor

Indacloud – Silver Sponsor

CannaAid – Bronze Sponsor

The post Announcing the Highly Anticipated High Times Hemp Cup: People’s Choice Edition 2023 appeared first on High Times.

Remember how much fun art was in the ’60s? There was more freedom, more humor and more drug-crazed energy in the art world during that decade than in any other recent time. That is, until a group of renegade art students in New York began reliving the era by dropping acid, go-go dancing and holding impromptu “happenings” at a Polish social club in the East Village.

The revival, which started in 1979, was led by a 21-year-old painter named Kenny Scharf, who was later known for spray-painting Hanna-Barbera-inspired cartoons (The Flintstones, the Jetsons) on the tenement walls of New York City’s Lower East Side. At night, Scharf would return to his slum apartment and work on his private day-glo environment—where he occasionally consumed magic mushrooms while listening to Jimi Hendrix records. Scharf was born ten years too late to fully experience the ’60s, but he was determined not to miss out on them altogether.

In the beginning, public reaction to Scharf’s art work was mostly negative. He was accused of ripping off Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera. He was dismissed as a revivalist. He was ignored while several of his art student pals from the School of Visual Arts (SVA) became international art celebrities. Recently, however, it has become clear Scharf’s influence on the current generation of painters has been enormous. He has an impressive list of collectors waiting to buy his work (which has soared in price in the last two years), prestigious museums are negotiating to buy his paintings, and critics like Kay Larson (New York magazine) are suddenly calling him “the best painter in the urban-punk wing of the new American Surrealism.”

“It has changed the way other people look at me, but it hasn’t changed the way I look at myself,” says Scharf, a handsome, engaging presence with close-cropped hair, blue eyes, a chipped front tooth, and a pair of jaunty, three-inch sideburns. He is dressed in jeans and a self-decorated T-shirt. “Success is a responsibility,” he says reflectively. “The good part is it allows my work to get bigger. Instead of customizing broken machines from the street, now I can customize Cadillacs.”

There’s a certain poetic justice in Kenny Scharf being born in Hollywood, California. He was raised, however, in the somewhat less glamorous San Fernando Valley—home of the Valley girls. His father is a successful businessman from New York who ran his own knitwear business before retiring to independent projects. “Kenny had a traditional Jewish upbringing,” says his father, Roy. “He was into drawing and art since he could hold a pencil.” “He had an imagination that wouldn’t quit,” adds Rose, his mother. “He was a lot of fun as a child. He never shut his mouth and he always had something going on. He got good marks except once when he was in the third grade and his art teacher gave him an ‘F.’ The teacher wanted him to draw a house the way she wanted and Kenny refused. He was livid. Kenny would only draw his own way.”

Kenny had two older brothers who were closer in age, so much of the time he was left to himself. “I had two personalities,” he says. “At school the whole social thing was being good at sports. I was a chubby preteen so I always got picked last. Every summer I went to camp, where everyone loved me. I lost weight. I was the best at sports. Then I’d come back to school and nothing would have changed. Once you get pegged, you can’t get over it.

“When I was 15, my parents moved to Beverly Hills. They wanted me to go to the local high school, which is the richest school in California. The school has its own oil well, TV station and observatory. I hated it. It was full of the worst brats. I grew up in the Valley, so I wasn’t one of them. When I was 16 I got into the groovy cocaine and quaalude set. It was fun, but I always felt I was playing with it, almost using them. They were all spoiled. They’d smash up their Porsche and daddy would buy them a new Ferrari.”

Scharf spent most of his time painting and his early work included several Rousseau-style jungle scenes. René Magritte, the Belgian surrealist (whose work has appeared on such album covers as Jeff Beck’s Beckola and Jackson Brown’s Late For the Sky), was also an early influence. At the time, Scharf had a reputation as a party boy, and his house on Camden Drive was the location of several wild bashes while his parents were conveniently out-of-town.

After graduation Scharf entered the University of California at Santa Barbara, where he took an art history class with Eileen Guggenheim. “She told me about the Soho art scene and that kind of made me decide to move to New York. I knew Santa Barbara wasn’t happening.” In 1978, after two years at Santa Barbara, he came to New York and moved into an apartment on 55th Street and 7th Avenue. Although he applied to several art schools, he was accepted only at SVA, which at the time had a reputation for taking just about anyone.

“I was doing mostly paintings of outer space,” says Scharf.

“I’d also pick up broken appliances and machines in the street, glue them together and paint them.” Scharf applied to the illustration department and it wasn’t long before he had an exhibit at Fiorucci’s, a fashionable new wave clothing boutique. “Then I decided to leave illustration and go into fine art,” he says. “My teachers told me I was crazy. ‘You’re a star in illustration,’ they said ‘and they’ll hate you in fine art.'” The prediction proved true. Scharf was never able to convince the fine art department he was a serious student. He built a miniature space city out of found objects and used it as a set for a video project. “You’re not doing art,” they told him. “You’re just playing.” At the time, a new art scene was developing in Soho, and many young painters were scrambling to occupy positions in hot new galleries like Mary Boone’s. Many of these painters had backgrounds in conceptual art and were fairly solemn and serious about their work. Needless to say, Scharf’s work was anathema to many of them.

In 1979, the church fathers of one Holy Cross Polish National Church decided to turn their basement into a community center for local youth. When former theater student Ann Magnuson took over the job of running the center in May, it was dubbed “Club 57” (after the address at 57 St. Marks Place in New York’s East Village) and immediately turned into a cross between a ’30s Berlin cabaret and a ’60s sock hop. “I first met Kenny at his Fiorucci show,” says Magnuson. “He was just the sort of person we were interested in having at Club 57. He was energetic, imaginative and could dance a mean Watusi.” Scharf was invited to exhibit at Club 57 and soon began spending most of his spare time hanging out at the club with fellow SVA student Keith Haring. “We were really outrageous at the time,” says Scharf. “We’d wear funny clothes and were groupies for the B-52’s [who had just arrived from Athens, Georgia with an independent cult single called “Rock Lobster”].

We went to all their shows and gave the band presents. Keith gave them plastic fruit once and they loved it.”

In 1980, after graduating from SVA, Scharf went into a deep depression. “On most days I didn’t get out of bed until 3 o’clock,” he says. “I thought about leaving New York.” It was during this period he began work on his first “closet,” a blacklight environment that was to profoundly affect the direction of his paintings. “Every day I’d collect junk in the street, paint it fluorescent and put it in the closet,” he says. “I never painted on mushrooms and I don’t do them anymore, but I really got a lot of inspiration from them. On the ceiling I painted a fluorescent blue and orange spiral. I used to take mushrooms, lie on my back and stare at the spiral until it slowly dropped from the ceiling. I’d leave my body, go inside the spiral and float around in endless space. After that, I always stared at the spiral when I took mushrooms.”

“The best thing about Kenny, he’s always had the ability of taking his life to the limit without censoring or editing it,” says Stefan Haves, his oldest and closest friend. “It’s the same way with his art.”

In June 1980, the Club 57 artists were invited to exhibit at the Times Square Show, which was being organized in an abandoned massage parlor near 42nd Street. The result was a chaotic mixture of erotica, graffiti, punk art and political manifestos. A number of black and Hispanic graffiti writers, who were illegally spraypainting murals on the sides of subway cars, were also in attendance. Scharf and Haring became friends with the graffiti writers and were soon influenced by their work. On blank subway ads, Haring began drawing simple, primitive sketches dominated by faceless human forms. The chalk drawings also included crawling babies, barking dogs, space ships, telephones, TV sets and atomic explosions. Almost overnight, Haring became famous.

“Keith and I were living in a loft together,” says Scharf, “and all these collectors were coming by to look at his work. My paintings were up but it was like a blank wall to them. I was nonexistent. It was kinda hard on me.” In an aggressive attempt to establish his career, Scharf wrote an article for the Soho Weekly News, offering to customize home appliances in his distinctive psychedelic style. “I thought it would be the answer to boring useless art,” he says. “Here was art that was fun, improved your life and was in constant use. I thought it would be a real big business—that everyone would have to have one. Most people took the article as a joke, but I was really serious. I included my phone number, but I only got one call and nothing came of it.”

It was around this time that a friend visited Scharf with a Jetson coloring book. “At school I’d made videotapes using the Jetsons,” says Scharf. “I was really into their style. I flipped through the book and said, wait a minute… I’ll just copy this…”

Scharf’s first Jetson-influenced show was held at a pioneering gallery which had just opened in the East Village. Run by Bill Stelling and underground film star Patti Astor, the gallery had had one previous show and did not yet have a name. Scharf suggested they call it the “Fun Gallery.” Although the name stuck, Scharf’s paintings were not very popular, except with his friends. “People asked me why I copied Hanna-Barbera,” says Scharf. “But I never just copied them—I always changed the characters around and put them in my own situations. And anyway, I thought that question had already been answered 20 years ago with Pop art.”

Later that year, Scharf was given a temporary studio at PS. 1, a former school in Long Island City that had become an important center for experimental art. By this time, he was incorporating the Flintstones into his paintings and was spray-painting the Hanna-Barbera figures on buildings in the Lower East Side. He converted his studio into an enormous blacklight version of his closet. Although the studio was a success, Scharf’s paintings still failed to attract the interest of any collectors.

However, when Scharf had his next show at the Fun Gallery in 1982, it was apparent his work had matured considerably. The paintings were bigger, bolder and more confident. Included in the show was a remarkable 5′ x 6′ painting titled “Whoa Nelly,” which had the familiar cartoon figures, but also contained some new characters from Scharf’s imagination. A swirling mass of color dominated the painting, which somehow conveyed the wild emotional intensity of a trip on mushrooms. Tony Shafrazi, an art dealer who was representing Haring, brought a collector to Scharf’s apartment who immediately offered $800 for a painting.

In the following two years, Scharf’s paintings grew increasingly complex and his fondness for contrasting opposites became more noticeable. He often crammed canvasses with as many conflicting elements as possible. Last year, Scharf dropped the Jetsons and Flintstones entirely and began painting characters that employed elements of both cartoon strips, adding references to Felix the Cat. He called it his “El Fredix” phase. He also painted allusions to classical art and began adding three-dimensional effects in the form of hollow cubes, balls and bulbous, cartoony noses.

“I like to mix it all together,” he says. “European sources and the mass media. I feel the world is like that— a complete mixture of everything. If my figures didn’t have eyeballs and mouths, they’d be abstract paintings.

I guess I’m doing abstract paintings and making them a little less abstract by putting faces on them.”

Scharf took a vacation in Brazil in 1983 and when he returned he had married a Brazilian woman and bought a house on the Atlantic Ocean. “It’s just like Kenny to do that,” says Min Thometz, a frequent dance partner of Scharf’s during the Club 57 days. “He’s a carefree person who always has his own world around him. You especially feel it now when you visit him in Brazil. When you get close, you leave the real world and enter Kenny’s world, where he’ll just grab you and say, ‘Let’s dance.’ It’s great until you realize you have to eventually go back to the real world.” Thometz was recently hired as Scharf’s assistant, with the unenviable task of putting the artist’s business life in order. “Kenny can get pretty messy and disorganized,” she says. “You’re just as likely to find his passport in the cornflakes box as anywhere else.”

Last year, Scharf’s wife Tereza gave birth to a baby girl, Zena, and subtle references to pregnancy and Scharf’s feelings about fertility now appear in the artist’s work. His life is more stable now. There are fewer parties and more business appointments. Scharf is also somewhat dismayed over the current state of affairs in the East Village, where he seems to have spawned several imitators.

“Like everyone else, I’m waiting to see what will happen next,” he says, “but I’m not sure it will come out of the East Village. I think our scene peaked in 1980. I had a New Year’s Eve party that year and I remember everyone was sprawled out in a pile in one corner. We were all drunk on champagne. At the time, everybody was dating everybody else, regardless of sex, color or whatever. It was one big communal family. Today the East Village has really changed. It seems most of the artists just want to get into galleries. That’s just the sort of attitude we were rebelling against.”

Read the full issue here.

The post From the Archives: Mutants from Outer Space (1985) appeared first on High Times.

You say you’ve never been hypnotized and, in fact, you regard yourself as too strong-willed, with such a towering intellect that you never could be hypnotized? Despite your overbearing ego, chances are that you have been zapped into a hypnotic trance many times… and completely without your knowledge or permission.

A large percentage of people are very prone to suggestion, which is what hypnotism really is, and can be triggered into a hypnotic state by nothing more than telephone poles whizzing past as they ride in a speeding automobile. Music also has powerful hypnotic influence, particularly rock ‘n’ roll, and it is not unusual for disco dancers to lapse into a semitrance. The CIA and other noble national institutions have been experimenting with involuntary hypnosis for years and have turned out innumerable “Manchurian candidates” such as the famous model and radio personality, Candy Jones Nebel, and, possibly, Jack Ruby. Candy’s schizoid escapades as an unwilling zombie for the CIA came to light when she was hypnotized by the late Long John Nebel and her story was turned into a book by Donald Bain [The Control of Candy Jones, Playboy Press, 1976). Some experts think that Jack Ruby’s peculiar behavior on the day he shot Lee Harvey Oswald was triggered by a mysterious phone call he received before he headed for the Dallas police station, that he had been preconditioned to lapse into a trance and carry out orders.

Hypnotism is becoming a big business today, with professional hypnotists collecting fees for helping you to stop smoking, overcome a fear of flying, or have bigger and better orgasms. Modem psychiatrists use hypnotism routinely to cure amnesia and explore hidden parts of the mind. Many dentists have abandoned standard anesthesia for hypnotism. What was once considered to be nothing more than a stage entertainment has now become an important tool for medicine, the law, and even for flying-saucer investigators. Those who aren’t openly paying for the privilege of sleeping through the 20th century via hypnosis are being entranced in other ways. Some zonk out in the presence of fluorescent lights, while many millions ingest daily a mountain of pills that are known as “hypnotics” because they are sleep inducers. Sit in front of a flickering TV set long enough and they can sell you anything because of the patholesiac effect (impairment of willpower). Entire audiences have flipped in movie theaters when the flickering image on the screen pulsed at just the right frequency and produced mass hypnosis (a very rare phenomenon). Hypnosis was a curiosity in the last century, embraced by occultists and debated by science. Today it has become a part of our daily lives.

Anybody can learn and practice hypnosis. The cartoon image of the sinister hypnotist with blazing eyes, wearing a long cape, belongs to another age. You don’t need to look deep into your subject’s eyes to induce a hypnotic trance. There are, and always have been, a few people who are natural hypnotists and can entrance suggestible persons with nothing more than a glance. Usually, natural hypnotists also have highly developed psychic abilities. One famous Russian psychic was able to hand a railroad conductor a blank piece of paper and he would study it carefully and punch it, thinking it was a real ticket. Some show-business personalities, and a random few politicians, have also been gifted with this “animal magnetism.” Al Jolson had it, as did Adolf Hitler. If you have this ability yourself, you are probably reading this article while riding in your private jet or fighting off naked starlets in the bedroom of your penthouse.

As you read this literary masterpiece by a famous Pulitzer prize loser, you will begin to feel drowsy. Literary master pieces often have that effect on scabrous readers, but in this case your drowsiness will be part of a sinister conspiracy to deslroy your mind and render you an unwilling slave. Even as you read these words your brain is turning into oatmeal.

Basically, the hypnotized state is a form of sleeping while the body remains conscious. The mind transfers many of its normal functions, such as judgment, to the hypnotist. Patholesia, the loss of willpower, is one result. (In fact, an early word for hypnotist was pathetist.) While entranced, the subject may be handed an onion and the hypnotist will tell him that it is an apple. The subject will know that it is an onion but will take a bite of it just to please the hypnotist. To his surprise, he will find it tastes exactly like an apple. This type of reaction is common because a hypnotized subject often does not believe he or she is really hypnotized. The mind is operating on two levels. On one level, the subject thinks he (or she) is fully conscious and fully in control of the situation. He thinks he’s just “playing along” with the hypnotist. But on another, deeper level, the subject has surrendered most of the perceptive equipment of his body and all of the decisionmaking apparatus of his mind.

There are three stages of trance. The first is a form of shallow sleep in which the subject is convinced that he is really fully awake and in full control. The second stage is a deeper sleep in which the conscious mind is less active. And the third is a very deep sleep in which the subject is totally unconscious and completely under the control of the hypnotist. For thousands of years hypnotism was a closely guarded secret of secret cults, exalted priesthoods, witches and warlocks, and oracles. The hideous assassin cults of the Far East used hypnosis (along with drugs) to brainwash the members into committing suicidal acts. While it is true that no hypnotized subject will do anything that is against his normal sense of morality, it is easy for the hypnotist to trick him. For example, the hypnotist could hand the subject a loaded pistol and say, “This is a harmless squirt gun. Let’s play a joke on good old Charlie. Go up to him and squirt him in the face.” Scratch good old Charlie.

Relax. Don’t fight it. Settle back in your chair and let your body go limp. Your two big toes feel very heavy. Your feet seem to weigh a ton. Just relax completely and let your body ride on the tide of weariness which is washing over you.

In secret societies everywhere (from Africa to the American Indian tribes), hypnosis was induced through dancing and music. Heavy bass sounds, i.e., drums, together with flickering fires, would produce almost instant trance in many of the participants. They would then hallucinate and see gods and demons, or have prophetic visions. We rediscovered this in the 1960s, with hard rock and the pulsating psychedelic lights of discos. Young people, on their way home from discotheques, often had frightening encounters with giant hairy monsters, little people in silvery suits, gruesome birds and assorted chimera. Repeated exposure to this conditioning produced hallucinosis in some, making them susceptible to trance just by listening to the car radio. The result has been a library filled with books documenting a wide assortment of visions and hallucinations that seemed very real to the subjects—so real that they reported them to newspapers and police—but that were really excursions into the inner reaches of the entranced and baffled human mind. As styles of music changed, and the psychedelic light fad passed, the quantity of such reports diminished.

Since the pristine minds of the young are more open to suggestion than the tired, cynical brains of the mature, it was natural that the youth-oriented 1960s also became the age of hypnotism. The explosion of belief in the occult and reincarnation led millions to submit to hypnotism to explore their alleged past lives. One of the uneasy facts about hypnotism is that once you have been hypnotized you can be rehypnotized with little effort. You become a potential robot waiting for the right buttons to be pushed.

You are very sleepy. So very sleepy. Your whole body is very tired. Relax. Your legs feel very heavy. You want to go to sleep. You can’t fight it. You will sleep. Sleep. Sleep.

There are several simple methods for testing someone’s suggestibility. One is the coin test. Here’s how it works. Ask your potential subject to extend his or her open hand. Place a coin in their palm while gazing steadily into their eyes. Never joke or clown around. You must always have a serious demeanor when you are experimenting with hypnosis. Slowly fold the subject’s fingers over the coin while giving him the following instructions:

“I want you to hold this coin as tightly as you possibly can. Hold it so tightly that no one could possibly remove it. Tighter. Your fingers are locking into place. You can feel them becoming rigid. They are locking tightly into place around the coin. You will not be able to open your hand until I tell you that you can. Your fingers are locking around that coin. You cannot open your hand. The muscles are frozen in place. You cannot open your hand.”

While saying the above, you should clench the subject’s hand in your own, squeezing it tightly. Now remove your hand and ask him to try to open his. If the subject is highly suggestible, he will be surprised to find that he cannot force his hand open. He is not in a hypnotic trance. He is fully conscious and aware, but you have suggested—convinced him—that he can’t open his hand. He won’t be able to unlock his fingers until you gently stroke his hand and tell him, “Now you can open your hand. You can feel the muscles in your fingers unlocking and you can open your hand.”

When you find someone who responds to the coin test, you know you have found a perfect subject for more elaborate hypnotic experiments. Experienced hypnotists can usually pick such people out of a large audience just from their general appearance and behavior. Hypnotism remained a forbidden secret of black magicians and witches until about 1772, when Friedrich Anton Mesmer, an Austrian physician, started to experiment with it. He developed a theory about the effect of magnetism on the human body, contending that numerous ailments could be cured by making passes with the hands and/or rubbing the affected parts of the body with the fingers while telling the patient that the pains were leaving. The technique became known as mesmerism and practitioners of the strange art called themselves magnetists. Mesmer and his followers actually did cure rheumatic pains, chronic headaches and other stubborn ailments of the nervous system. They were relearning things that had been known to primitive witch doctors and shamans for many centuries.

A wealthy Frenchman, the Marquis de Puységur, paid Mesmer 100 gold louis coins for a crash course in animal magnetism and quickly earned a place in history by hypnotizing a dull-witted peasant boy named Victor. He made many fascinating discoveries, most of which seemed utterly incredible in that far-off year of 1784. When ”magnetized,” Victor’s IQ skyrocketed and he displayed phenomenal powers. Among other things, Victor was able to respond to unspoken commands. Puységur later wrote: “I have no need of speaking to him. When I think in his presence he seems to hear me and replies. When someone comes into the room Victor sees him only if I will him to, when Victor converses with him he says only what I will him to say, not exactly what I silently dictate but what the meaning requires…”

The Marquis de Puységur, and Victor, had discovered telepathy and extrasensory perception (ESP). Magnetists began to spring up all over Europe, performing miraculous medical cures and demonstrating such psychic wonders as clairvoyance-at-a-distance (the subject could describe events taking place miles away at that moment).

The establishment took a dim view of the growing fad and in 1785 the French government appointed a special commission of doctors and scientists to investigate the claims of the magnetists. It didn’t take the learned committee long to decide that Dr. Mesmer and his cohorts were a bunch of charlatans. Animal magnetism fell into disrepute and Mesmer plummeted into obscurity, where he remained for the last 30 years of his life.

The French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars paralyzed further research in magnetism. Some of the magnetists fled Europe altogether, while others, including Puységur, languished in prison. But around 1815, the hypnotic experiments were resumed and by 1825, according to Prof. Clark Hull of Yale, all the major phenomena of hypnotism had been discovered and studied. Yet doctors who dared use hypnotic anesthesia in those days were drummed out of the medical societies. In one famous case in 1842, a surgeon was accused of fraudulent practice in England when he hypnotized a man and amputated his leg. Britain’s leading medical journal, the Lancet, soberly stated that the amputee was part of the fraud and had only pretended to be in a hypnotic trance while his leg was being sawed off!

Medical science flatly refused to recognize hypnotism for almost 200 years.

Phrenology—determining a person’s character by studying the bumps on his head—was a popular pseudo-science in the 1800s and traveling phrenologists were quick to recognize the possibilities of animal magnetism. By the 1840s, phrenomagnetists, as they called themselves, were attracting huge audiences all over the United States. They would read the bumps on your head and magnetize you for only ten cents a trance. Soon half the country was hypnotizing the other half.

One of the most famous hypnotists of all time was LaRoy Sunderland, a Methodist minister who apparently had great natural ability. Although he was only five feet tall, he had a resonant voice and powerful stage presence. While delivering a sermon in Dennis, Massachusetts, in 1824, 20 people in his congregation fell into a state of somnambulism and a magnetist was born.

In his book Pathetism, Sunderland expressed some surprisingly modern ideas. He knew that hypnotic trances were produced by the power of suggestion, and that the subject’s susceptibility was dependent on his or her belief in the magnetist’s reputation. So he made sure that he acquired one hell of a reputation. He merely had to walk into a restaurant and a dozen diners would fall over, their faces in their soup.

The phrenomagnetists did not regard Sunderland’s theories too kindly. They raged and railed at each other in public and in print, calling their competitors frauds and liars. When they had chance encounters in the street, fists flew and canes raised new bumps on heads.

Interestingly, the animal-magnetism fad of the 1840s served as a prelude to an even greater fad—spiritualism. The latter began in 1848 when two young girls, the Fox sisters, began communicating with the spirit world through mysterious rappings on doors and tables. But soon thousands of people were going into self-induced trances and producing all kinds of alleged spirit phenomena. The men and women who had sat in Sunderland’s audiences only a few years before were now adept at self-hypnosis. Religious fervor was running high in those days, with dozens of new religions appearing each year, and it was understandable that this fervor would spill over into the hypnotic sessions. The negative and positive hallucinations, discovered by the French experimenters earlier in the century, now became an integral part of the séance rooms. (A negative hallucination is not seeing something that is there; a positive hallucination is seeing something that is not there.)

The telepathic effect of hypnotism undoubtedly contributed to the growth of spiritualism. “Mediums” entranced at séances were able to pick up thoughts from the sitters. What Freud would later call hyperamnesia also played a part. Totally forgotten or emotionally blocked memories can be brought to the surface in a hypnotic trance. The unconscious mind can play wonderful tricks when the conscious mind is in the altered state of hypnosis. Elaborate fantasies are created and disgorged by the unconscious, drawing on all kinds of forgotten material—everything the subject has ever read or heard. So we have re-creations of heaven and hell, and other worlds, laced with just enough traces of our recognizable reality to make it all convincing. These confabulations, as they are called, form the basis for much of our folklore, religious beliefs, and the modern UFO mythos.

It is probable that the great spiritualism fad of the 1800s would not have sprung into existence if it had not been preceded by the nationwide animal magnetism hysteria. Mr. Sunderland and his cohorts paved the way for a series of new belief systems.

You are becoming sleepier. So veiy sleepy. Your whole body is very heavy. You are very tired. You can’t keep your eyes open. You want to sleep. You will sleep. Sleep. Sleep.

A man named Ralph Slater became famous in the 1940s by hypnotizing people every week on a network radio program. He was an accomplished hypnotist and had to be very careful, otherwise thousands of people listening to him in their own homes would fall into a trance. He would select a group of suggestible subjects from his audience and hypnotize them before the show went on the air. While they were asleep, he would give them a post-hypnotic suggestion. You can give a subject only one such suggestion at a time. For example, you might tell the subject: “Fifteen minutes after you wake up you will stand on a chair and crow like a rooster.” Then you bring the subject out of the trance. Fifteen minutes later he will suddenly have an uncontrollable urge to stand on a chair and crow like a rooster. He will be fully conscious and will have no idea why he is doing this. When Slater and other professional hypnotists entrance subjects before a performance, they leave them with a post-hypnotic suggestion such as, “When I say the word bingo you will go to sleep instantly.” Later, during the performance, the hypnotist will turn to the fully awake subject and shout “Bingo,” and the person will go into an instant trance.

The key to hypnosis is the fact that the subject actually hypnotizes himself. You merely suggest that he wants to go to sleep. So you have to be something of an actor, posing as a deadly serious, authoritative figure. You have to convince the subject that you know what you’re doing and that he is in good hands. Assure him that there is no danger, and that you won’t make him do anything embarrassing, illegal or immoral. Winning the subject’s confidence is the first step.

Be sure that you are both comfortable. If you are sitting in a straight-backed kitchen chair, you could have a sore back and aching butt by the end of the session. The most direct method is to have the subject concentrate on a bright object such as a watch or ring, which you hold about a foot in front of his face and slightly above eye level. You want to produce the greatest possible strain on the eyes and eyelids. Contrary to all the movies you have seen, it is not necessary to swing the object back and forth. The subject must concentrate on it while you tell him how drowsy he is.

For the next ten minutes to an hour you must mindlessly repeat the suggestion that he is very tired, wants to sleep and is falling asleep. Your voice should be a dull monotone. (If you have a high squeaky voice, perhaps you should take up another line of work.) You are literally going to bore him into a stupor. Tell him how his eyes are getting heavier and he is going to sleep.

If you are dull enough, his eyelids will soon begin to flutter and he will settle back in his chair with a sigh. Tell him to relax his body completely and hope that he falls asleep before your hand holding the watch does. Once the subject has nodded off, you will want to test him before proceeding—to make sure he has really gone under. Your monologue can go something like this: “Nothing will wake you. Nothing can hurt you. You can open your eyes, but you will stay asleep. Now I am about to raise your arm, but you won’t wake up. Nothing will wake you.” Lift one of his arms straight up and rub it gently. “Your arm is becoming rigid. It is locking into place. You can’t lower it. Try it. See, you can’t lower your arm. You are sound asleep and you will do everything I tell you to do. But you will not wake up. You can’t wake up until I tell you.”

If the subject is really in a trance, he can hold his arm rigid for the next hour without wavering. Nor can you force the arm down. If he’s faking, you can tell in a short time. Once you are certain he is really asleep, you can lower the arm by saying, “Now the muscles in your arm are unlocking. Now you can lower it. Lower your arm.”

Your subject is now completely under your control. If you want to cure him of a bad habit like biting his nails, you just need to explain to him why nail-biting is a rotten habit, then demand that he “promise, promise, promise, never to bit your nails again.” After he wakes up, he will never be a nail-biter again. Unfortunately, amateur hypnotists with no knowledge of psychology can cause more harm than good. There may be a reason why the subject bites his nails and by making him give up that habit you may cause him to become a chain-smoker. If you order him to give up smoking, he may take to the bottle. Likewise, if he has been suffering a pain somewhere on his body, you can easily make the pain go away. But pain is a signal that something is wrong and, unless you are a trained doctor, you should not suppress that signal.

There are other more entertaining things you can do with a hypnotized subject. You can repeat the early experiments with telepathy. It is possible for you to merely think instructions to the subject (“Get up, close the door and open the window”) and he will silently carry out your mental commands.

Books on hypnotism are often sold on the premise that you can use it to have your way with the opposite sex. But, of course, if a woman trusts you enough to let you hypnotize her, she’s probably also a willing sex partner. However, a well-trained hypnotist can cure some cases of frigidity or impotence. It is not recommended that amateurs tamper with such delicate problems.

When you want to wake the subject up, you need only give a sharp command: “Wake up!” If that shouldn’t do it, tell him that you are going to count to ten and when you get to nine he will wake up completely. If he still doesn’t awaken, ask him what you must do to snap him out of it. Remember, he has really hypnotized himself and is now under his own control. He might tell you that he wishes to sleep for an hour. So let him sleep, and at the end of the allotted time order him to wake up.

If you plan to use the same subject for later experiments, give him a post-hypnotic suggestion, telling him that when he hears a certain key word from you only he will go to sleep instantly. You can then hypnotize him over the telephone if you wish… just by repeating the magic word.

People who practice meditation have magic words of their own called mantras. Meditation is really a form of self-hypnosis and enjoyed great popularity a few years ago. The reason that it was so relaxing was that the mind was entering the alpha state, only a step away from total hypnosis. A computer expert who is into meditation uses as his mantra the old computer saying, “Garbage in, garbage out.” Repeat that phrase endlessly for several minutes and you are bound to slip into a state of altered consciousness.

Self-hypnosis is the ultimate high and, if nothing else, is a sure cure for insomniacs. If you want to brainwash yourself into believing, for example, that you are a superman capable of almost anything, you need only make a special tape recording to play while you are hypnotized. Leave the first 15 minutes of the tape blank, beginning your message with the usual admonition to “sleep… sleep… sleep…” Then say, “You are the world’s greatest human being, keen of intellect, superior in every way, capable of saving the human race from its own folly.” This tape will terminate your inferior manner and make you a leader of men. Or you can dictate a tape that will order you to stop biting your nails, or give up smoking. Rewind the tape to the beginning and relax in a high-backed chair so you can lean your head back comfortably. Hit the button on the tape recorder and relax while the blank part runs through. Let your muscles relax completely and close your eyes, turning your thoughts inward and concentrating on your breathing, mentally watching your inhaling and exhaling. This is called transfixion. After a few minutes you will experience a sinking sensation and will be powerless to move a muscle. Soon after that, you will drop into a hypnotic sleep. Then your taped message will begin. When you eventually wake up you will feel very refreshed and your mind will be invigorated. Incredible though it may seem, if you have other persons question you while you are asleep, you may prove to be clairvoyant, able to foretell future events in your own life, as well as incidents in the lives of others. No one understands exactly how this works, but apparently the human mind when in an altered state can make contact with a force field or intelligence that transcends space and time. The future already exists in another space-time continuum and when our minds are properly tuned we can perceive it. Hypnotism is a shortcut across the barriers of space and time, and self-hypnosis is a system for stimulating our latent psychic abilities.

In the 1960s and ’70s, hypnosis finally gained recognition and today a third of all American dental and medical schools offer courses in the subject. After two centuries of being ignored and scoffed at, hypnotism suddenly fell into the hands of the doubletalking academicians. “Hypnotism is not a magical phenomenon—not a matter of simply making suggestions to change someone’s behavior,” Dr. Milton V. Kline, director of the Institute for Research in Hypnosis, said recently. “Rather, it’s a complex way of getting into a person’s ego functions, perceptions and physiological reactions. It requires careful evaluation of patients, their problems, and their total life situations. It is most effectively used by someone well trained in psychological and physiological processes.”

Have we really traveled very far since Anton Mesmer was branded a charlatan by his colleagues? In 1785 Tardy de Montravel wrote, “If the spirituality of the soul needs a fresh proof, magnetic somnambulism furnishes one such as even the most obstinate materialist can scarcely refuse to recognize.”

You are now fully asleep. Sleep… sleep… sleep. You are grateful to the author of this illuminating article. You are so grateful that you will get out your checkbook, write a check for your full bank balance, and mail it to the author in care of this magazine.

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