The Colonel Might Be A Junkie

that’s the rumor from Ground Control…

“I’ve molded people’s ideas about me so much that I think it’s almost impossible to know me. And I want it to be impossible, even for people I love deeply. I don’t want to be real in other people’s lives. I want to be an apparition. I appear, then disappear. I don’t want to have reality in anyone’s life, because I don’t want it [their reality] in mine”.

- Karl Lagerfeld

A Tale of Opium

Opium, also known as, White Lotus, Yam-yam, Shanghai Sally, and the Chinaman’s Nightcap, was used by the privileged elite of China as early as 1483. It was "mainly used to aid masculinity, strengthen sperm and regain vigor, enhancing the art of alchemists, sex and court ladies"

photo: A Chinese opium house, photograph 1902

By Juan Mencarini Pierotti - Mrs. Archibald Little, The Land of the Blue Gown, London 1902, Public Domain

My first experience smoking opium (in the traditional manner - from an extravagantly carved wooden pipe, was in 1979, in Amsterdam). This, when I was 14 years old.