A Short History of Vomit: Part 3

A Short History of Vomit: Part 3

 Part 3

How the Ancient and Classical Civilizations deciphered dreams with vomit motifs will probably remain an enigma. Modern dream interpretation,however, is rife with possible explanations for vomit motifs. For example, if vomit is present in your dreams then this could be an insight into your deepest feelings signaling the subconscious need to get rid of something. However, if in your dream you witness a person vomiting, then this might indicate that a relative or a close friend is actually an enemy. Would that be a wretched frenemy or retching kinfolk?

Dreams have always been closely associated with creation myths and the origins of a people. Birth through vomit as a culture is purged into life is a reoccurring theme of particular societies. These cultural groups have exalted vomit beyond the profane and made it a realm of the gods. In Ancient Greek mythology vomit has the distinction of protecting the existence of the some of the major Gods. The story goes, that when Kronos, the youngest of the Titans, revolted against his father, Ouranos, he became the supreme ruler of the cosmos. After his marriage to Rhea, who begat him several Gods, he summarily ate his children. By eating his children Kronos was attempting to bulwark himself against the same trickery he used to usurp his father. This tactic worked until the birth of his last son, Zeus. Rhea, his mother, rushed to hide the child God away on the island of Crete; out of site from his father Kronos. When Zeus felt he was old and capable enough he stood up to his father and compelled him to puke out his siblings Gods: Hestia, Hades, Demeter, Poseidon and Hera. More often than not, the denouement of vomit tales is not a joyful birth but an ugly death.

Vomit induced asphyxiation (aspiration pneumonia)is reported by the National Institute of Health to be the cause of death in US of 36,997 people annually as noted on death certificates. The pall of vomit has been cast over pop cultural icons throughout the modern era. Most people might assume that asphyxiation by vomit is the comeuppance of a sybarite's foray into the excesses of humanity like alcohol and drugs. Although this scenario has been the downfall of many hedonistic pop music stars, it will be surprising that it even spills over into the realm of innocuous and unthreatening pop icons. No profession within the pop culture world provokes a “saw that coming” response to a self-indulgent life style like that of the musician.

The pop musician's ethos occupies an artistic landscape of calculated aloof observation and poetic contemplation while simultaneously adhering to a bardic filled life of itinerancy. Rock stars like Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham and AC/DC singer Bon Scott were known to be heavy alcohol drinkers. When it was reported that they had vomited in their sleep due to an evening of heavy binging, no one was truly awestruck. Almost a decade earlier, Jimi Hendrix, the legendary rock guitarist, was rushed to hospital after asphyxiating on barbiturate induced vomit. He died shortly after arriving at hospital. As a musician Tommy Dorsey, trombone playing jazz band leader was an atypical vomit victim. According to coroner's records, before retiring for the night, Dorsey had eaten a big meal and then sedated himself with pharmaceutical sleeping pills. His wife recounted that her husband began choking in his sleep, but because of the severe sedating effect of the sleeping pills, she was unable to wake him as he choked to death.

Hopefully it has been made clearer that vomit elicits a duality which is essential to fully appreciating the precariousness of balance within and outside the body.

Public Health versus the Ship of Fools

Let's jump right into it; shall we? The use of illicit and prescription drugs are not and should not be considered criminal. They should not clog our justice and penal systems. Abuse of both illicit and prescription drugs is a public health problem which demands attention but not detention.  

The drug war is a nebulous and misleading war which finds most of it's pitted battles fought on the premise to send addicts to jail. Mention of pharmaceutical abuse and the billion dollar corporate pharmaceutical empire is wholly omitted. Institutions like the Center for Disease Control (CDC )and the World Health Organization (WHO) have each weighed in on the scourge and attempted to reclassify a succincter and more befitting label to the psychosocial phenomenon drugs. They unanimously conclude that it in the realm of public health and not a criminal problem. Moreover, the overarching theme of their research implies that the resources of our morality and finance are withering on the vine with no hope of even vinegar being made from the rotting grapes. We will all suffer the socioeconomic and psychosocial repercussions of this malaise. The choice we have is simple. We collectively pay either on the front or the back end. But pay we shall.

In the industrialize world we have established a morality code which allows us to disengage our conscience by institutionalizing our shortcomings. It's tantamount to the practice during the middle ages in Europe when the ship of fools was ushered down the waterways. A ship laden with degenerates, reprobates, mentally ill and the devilishly insane meandered the rivers of Europe until they stranded on an unsuspecting hamlet. Then they disembarked and fanned out across the village until they moored up again in a large town or city where they were de facto given a travelers respite because of the size of the municipality they found themselves. Soon the populace would discover their misfortunate tidings and the play of ill fecundity would begin again and the unwanted would be corralled and coerced to gain passage on the next ship of fools. Locking away addicts of socially and legally forbidden substances is like condoning a vacuity of empathy; even psychopathic at its extreme.

Michel Foucault details the emergence of the insane asylum with it's relocation of the unwanted, like rubbish, to the outer edges of society and disposing of them in an institution. He outlines his take on the history of western collective moral philosophy in his book “Madness and Civilization”. Foucault chronicles the transition of societal ethos concerning the mentally infirm. There is a disconnect, as he sees it, through etymological changes in how we define madness and insanity. These aberrations allow for the collective moral “ok” needed to legitimize incarceration. Not unlike the ship of fools.

In the WHO's 'Guidelines for the Psychosocially Assisted Pharmacological Treatment of Opioid Dependence' (2009) the problem of drugs is viewed tangibly as a public health concern which has far reaching effects on the economy by way of things like comorbidity. However, the take-away message is summed up here (author's highlights);

“Substance dependence per se should be regarded as a health problem and not a legal one. Given the multiple medical problems associated with opioid dependence and the nature of pharmacological treatment, provision of pharmacological treatment for opioid dependence should be a health-care priority.”

Perhaps the loss of mysticism in everyday life. The shift from sacred to profane as the blinkers of the Enlightenment narrowed our vision. A profundity gleaned from an increasingly detached and spiritually aloof relationship with the deviations of nature. This was one of the root causes. “We can fix it” became the zeitgeist motto. Not because we need to fix it but because we felt it can be fixed. Breaking down the whole into parts which can be modified meant there was a golden ratio both physically and metaphysically in which everything needed to correspond.

The “village idiot” was no longer seen as a wayward court jester. A character among many who had a polished piece of sagacious insight. He would impulsively regurgitate this insight back into the world; bookending it with his disjointed rants.

This was the sacred; much like epilepsy in the west was perceived and recorded as a divine soothsaying gift as far back as Hippocrates. Both petit and grand mal seizures produce vivid and descriptive hallucinations. Of course, this is not an endorsement of nor an advocation for seizures; that would be morally corrupt and ethically perverted. Yet, if we carefully comb through the tangles of what is being said and begin to erect a broader picture of the what is happening socially, we stumble headlong into a public health epidemic of the sacred and the profane.

Unfortunately, The America National Institute of Health (NIH) still maintains that the spearpoint of their campaign to reduce the negative impact drugs have on society is because they spuriously link drugs to crime. Of course, there are those who are recidivistic and are a palpable burden. Largely these people are also without adequate therapy because drug addiction is viewed as a crime and not a public health problem. Ironically, the NIH doesn't feel it necessary to mention the rampant abuse of pharmaceutical opioids, which each community feels viscerally and any law enforcement agent worth his salt tells you engulfs too many resources and too many man hours.

Clearly, this view misses the mark. By suggesting that a significant amount of those incarcerated have substance abuse problems but neglects to address the millions incarcerated for possession of illicit drugs. It is the same old threadbare empty rhetoric of the “stepping stone” or “gateway” hypothesis. Yes, some people behind bars are substance abusers but not all people behind bars who are substance abusers are criminals. Of course they have committed an act of defiance against a particular law but they are prosecuted for a victimless crime. A crime which does not afflict the “personal property” (e.g. body) of another. The repeal of antiquated and draconian sodomy laws by the Supreme Court should have elucidated that principle. Unfortunately, that has not seeped in to the collective pathos of the United States of America.  

America's Painful War on Drugs

A Trip Down Malady Lane

The innate desire and almost biological necessity to manipulate our perceptions has been part of the evolving DNA of the human species for thousands of generations. Ethnobotanist and philosopher Terence Mckenna postulated that ingesting magic mushrooms was the quantum leap which afforded proto-humans to develop a personal sense of cosmos. This event according to McKenna reacted with our brain chemistry thereby creating an awareness of the supernatural: religion.

Drugs, either occurring naturally (e.g. psilocybin mushrooms, san pedro cactus, bufo alvarius toad) or rudimentarily fermented like banana beer or mede have played an integral and important role in directing human history. All living creatures, even the curiously odd coral like organisms which thrive on the ocean floor near toxic volcanic vents, have evolved specific cannabinoid receptors. Cannabinoid receptors, simply put, are the genetic protein receptors which process cannabinoids that are generated in the body or introduced into the body. All living creatures, thusly, are predetermined and equipped to utilize cannabinoids. In other words, the grand design of evolution has included the effective use of, among others, marijuana.

However, a socially constructed taboo has been invoked to delineate which chemicals are accepted for use to alter our perceptions and which ones are labeled profane. The now empirically bankrupt supposition that drugs inexorably form a stepping stone path to harder drugs and full blown addiction; still holds sway over the acceptance and accessibility of perception altering drugs.

This doesn't mean to discount that there are large numbers of people who are either socially or genetically susceptible to the disease of addiction. Addiction is a serious clinical disease and not a crime and should be treated as such. The war on drugs has failed miserably and should be re-evaluated and recalibrated in order to handle the ailment as a disease and not a crime. The obscene growth of our penal system as illustrated by the amount of incarcerated diseased addicts is morally and ethically grotesque. Would we consider throwing other diseased and sick people behind bars with no plan for executing a rehabilitation process? A succinct and apropos saying reveals the true ideology motivating the war on drugs; “If you can't be part of the solution, then there's a lot of money to be made prolonging the problem.” The clear indicator which gives this saying currency is the fact that the government on state and local levels have privatized many of the jails and detention centers. It was remarked in the media recently that decriminalizing marijuana would be catastrophic to the workers employed by these job creators which run the privatized jails. This is a blatantly false argument at best and at worst an inhumane, psychopathic and amoral reasoning.

The Western world has ipso facto determined that alcohol is the only legal drug we can buy and use recreationally and medicinally without a jumping through legal hoops like acquiring a medical prescription. Why? The ubiquitous emergence of The “pill mills” and pain clinics are rife with abuse and have aided in skewing our collective moral stance on perceiving the world differently. We have created a frankenstein of cultural and social atrophy. There are now opiate addicts who are hooked on Oxycontin and are putting a significant burden on the health care system as well as the social and cultural life of modern western society.

The myopic western position on drugs is erroneously founded on the believe that there is an inherent seedy quality of drugs which hauls the user into a dysfunctional quagmire. However, if we take the drug methamphetamine as an example then that theory begins to fray and unravel like a cheap Persian rug.

Speed has played a central role in politics, literature and science during the 20^th century helping to weave our shared culture fabric. Here are 5 people who contributed to the history of the modern world through Methamphetamine.

Lazar Edeleanu, a Jewish Romanian chemist (1861-1941), first synthesized amphetamine in 1887 at Universität Berlin. Originally it was given the name phenylisopropylamine. The synthetic was buried in scientific archives and more or less forgotten for the next 40 years. He was bestowed the title of Doctor in Chemistry following the publication of his thesis "On the Derivatives of Fatty Phenylmethacrylic and Phenylisobutyric Acids" (German title: "Ueber einige Derivate der Phenylmethacrylsäure und der Phenylisobuttersäure"). The thesis described phenylisopropylamine, a stimulant which effects the nervous system, better known as amphetamine or benzedrine.

Theodor Gilbert Morell (July 22, 1886 – May 26, 1948) was Hitler's personal physician. Morell was a General Practitioner in Germany who was notorious for utilizing unorthodox methods to treat illnesses, most notably, syphilis. Initially Morell was employed by Hitler to prophylactically ward off syphilis, which Hitler linked to the Jews. It's assumed that when Hitler had difficulties with grogginess and disorientation in the morning, Morell would inject him with a cocktail of water and an unspecified substance he emptied from gold-foiled packets. The secret substance, which Morell called "Vitamultin", would apparently refresh and invigorate Hitler. Heinrich Himmler, the Commanding Officer of the SS, clandestinely had one of these gold-foil packets analyzed in a laboratory. The conclusion was that it was found to contain Methamphetamine. A week before Hitler suicide in April 1945 he dismissed Morell. As of April of 1945 Morell was injecting Hitler with Methamphetamine everyday. The exact amount of the daily injections is lost to history. Morell's nickname throughout Germany at the time was Der Reichsspritzenmeister (The Injection Master of the Third Reich) and was purportedly given to him by Hermann Göring.

Max Jacobson has been deemed the original Dr. Feelgood. He was born in Germany and studied to become a physician. Jacobson was famous/infamous for his "miracle tissue regenerator" shots which were a concoction of amphetamines, vitamins, painkillers, and human placenta. John F. Kennedy was first treated by Jacobson in September 1960, preceding the1960 presidential election debates. It is a public secret that Kennedy suffered from chronic back pain. During the Vienna Summit in 1961 Jacobson injected Kennedy with his potpourri of chemicals to help reduce Kennedy's worsening chronic back pain. As of May 1962, it's reported that Max Jacobson had visited the White House a total of 34 times in order to treat the President.

Philip K Dick during his most prolific and arguably most thematically interesting period was known to lock himself away for 2 weeks straight on an amphetamine induced writing frenzy. He then emerged having written 2 complete novels. In an interview conducted by Uwe Anton & Werner Fuchs and transcribed by Frank C. Bertrand into English [from: SF EYE, #14, Spring 1996, pp. 37-46] Dick openly confessed to the necessity of using to amphetamines in order to be productive; “Ah, well, my writing falls into two degrees, the writing done under the influence of drugs and the writing I've done when I'm not under the influence of drugs. But when I'm not under the influence of drugs I write about drugs. I took amphetamines for years in order to get energy to write. I had to write so much in order to make a living because our pay rates were so low. In five years I wrote sixteen novels, which is incredible. I mean, nobody, I don't think anybody's ever done it before. And without amphetamines I couldn't have written that much. But as soon as I began to earn enough money so that I didn't have to write so many books, I stopped taking amphetamines”. According to a 1975 interview in Rolling Stone Magazine, Dick wrote all of his books published before 1970 while on amphetamine. On his own admission of sobriety during the writing process, 1977 marked the publication his book A Scanner Darkly about his experiences and hallucinations while on amphetamines.


Paul Erdős was a hungarian born and naturalized american who fled Europe before WW2 because of the mounting anti-semitism. He was a prolific scientist who published more scholarly papers than any other mathematician in history. Although a brilliant scholar he was also notorious for his eccentric behavior. He accepted his first American position as a scholarship holder at Princeton University in 1938. Close to this time he began to indulge in wanderlust and started traveling from campus to campus. This was a habit which continued until his death in 1996. Somewhere around 1971 Erdős began using methamphetamine. His friends were concerned and alarmed at his increasing dependance on methamphetamine; betting him he couldn't quit for a month. Erdős wa the bet but lamented to his friends that the month without the aid of methamphetamine critically delayed his research.

Historical Blinders: The Roaring 20's Redux

America in the year 2012 resembles the America of the 1920's more than we realize or should accept. The revisionists have yet to take their first awkward steps on the slippery terrain of reexamining the historical paradigms. Today's political pundits and social trend watchers are recording their versions of eyewitness accounts as history unfolds. Logically they are not graced with the ability to reflect objectively on the aggregate of the events but they should delve into history for less prosaic insights than they are offering us now. Until an introspective glance into the past America will continue to be tethered to collective historical amnesia. The enigmatic quote from the Spanish born and American educated philosopher George Santayana sums it up best; “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”.

History is always subjective because it is always written by the victors. It usually is imbued with all the hallmarks of a winner's propaganda. The historiographies written long after the initial histories have been canonized illuminate the motivations and cultural ethos of that era. Those histories, much like mythologies, reveal a cultural and sociological necessity to support and legitimize the means employed in order to construct a historical paradigm. History isn't an exact science. It generally relies on other social sciences to construct parameters which can be quantified and mathematically fact-checked. In other words, the manufacture of history is characterized by the Machiavellian axiom “the end justifies the means.”

America during the antebellum of the 20^th century is referred to as The Roaring 20's. It is often seen as a boon period in modern US history. This era in America history was characterized by tremendous economic affluence and the burgeoning of a cultural transformation. Wall Street was alit with trading; jazz music had become a distinct American innovation; some of American's greatest literary figures were honing their craft; the Harlem Renaissance was hitting a critical mass; women were now a viable political force; yet there were discernible cracks in the foundation. To paint the Roaring 20's as a pax americana would be to fall prey to a rhetorically feeble semantics game. History is a classic exercise in cause and effect. The act of writing a history is contingent on realizing that events don't mysteriously appear in a vacuum.

Despite the demagogic rhetoric tossed back and forth between Republicans and Democrats as they play ideology “keep away” from other political third parties, the US of 2012 is still a world leader in key areas. The digital and nanotechnology industries in places like Silicon Valley almost singlehandedly dictate trends and innovation over the entire world. The film industry has been injected with new vigor from independent film makers. Coupled with that there is a resurgence of documentary films which are both culturally and economically relevant. Scientific and academic enterprise continue to be hallmarks of an elite educational system. However, we are all bitterly aware that the fabric of American society is becoming threadbare. Now that the combat portion of the war in Iraq has been quelled and America enters into a phase of introspection the cracks in foundation of modern America are more evident.

Here follows a short list of parallels between America of the Roaring 20's and America of 2012. The list is not meant to be exhaustive. Rather it's purpose lies more with culling examples from the past. Reflecting on and discussing those lessons from the past will ensure that we aren't repeating the same mistakes over and over and over again.

US: Roaring 20's                                           US: 2012

Segregation                                                    Immigration

ghetto forming upheld by the                          Show me you papers laws in Alabama and 

Supreme Court decision                                  Georgia

Corrigan v. Buckley(1926)

Poll Tax and Jim Crow Laws                      Voter Picture ID

24^th amendment ending poll tax                      Poll Tax

not until 1962

Americanism                                                  Americanism

militarized xenophobia                                    anti-LGBT marriage laws

the heyday of the modern                                (Defense of Marriage Act), anti-moslem

Klu Klux Klan. Anti-immigrant                       sentiment reflected in the                                               

zeitgeist typified in a mistrust                           ungrounded fear of Sharia Law

for anything divergent from

white anglo-saxon culture

Prohibition                                                    Prohibition

a costly and losing war primarily                   a costly and losing war on drugs, primarily

on alcohol. Repeal by congress                     marijuana. Federal crack down on  

with the 21st Amendment                              dispensaries at the State level