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Tag: drugs

fig: 4may26

Published May 4, 2026 by Warren Ellis

This is going to be a fig.

  • I am very much sick of people sticking -maxxing on the end of words, just like I’m sick of -punk as a suffix, but the looksmaxxer pentastack is worthy of note, the “enhancement” cocktail consisting of Adderall, dextromethorphan, pregabalin, ketamine… and an industrial solvent called BDO.
  • Cellular rejuvenation for life extension may actually have some possibilities
  • 4000 year old magical texts from Syria preserved on clay tablets! There’s an anti-witchcraft ritual in there, and get this:
  • “The purpose extended beyond personal protection. These rites aimed to stabilize political authority, ward off misfortune, and neutralize perceived supernatural dangers that could undermine a king’s rule. This reflects a broader Mesopotamian worldview in which cosmic order and political stability were inseparable. A threat from witches or malevolent forces was not merely spiritual—it was a potential crisis of governance.”
  • “A new study explores the role of sound in medieval English imagery. Employing a combined approach that integrates neurobiology and the framework of the “sound milieu,” the researcher argues that early medieval images were never “silent.” Instead, they could evoke imagined acoustic environments, allowing immersive, multisensory interaction with the scene.”

Accessions:

HOLLYWOOD HAUNTS THE WORLD was gifted me to the author, for which I am very grateful because it looks very much My Shit. BLANK SPACE had conflicting reviews, but when it showed up on Kindle for 99p, I figured I may as well find out for myself.

HOLLYWOOD HAUNTS THE WORLD, Robert Guffey (UK) (US+)

BLANK SPACE, W David Marx (UK) (US+)

OPERATIONS: Crash week. By Friday night I want to have moved at least eighty pages of material out of the office.
STATUS: Major reset. I’ve booked two gigs to go and see on the 16th and currently wondering where I can fit some small amounts of travel in. Inbox at 100, but a ton of those are delivery notifications
READING: THE REVOLUTIONISTS, Jason Burke (UK) (US+)

But despite the defeat of the Arab armies in 1948 they, like most of the approximately 750,000 Palestinian refugees scattered across the region, still believed they would one day regain their villages, land, businesses and property. The nakba, meaning simply ‘catastrophe’, as it became known, prompted feverish debate among the refugees and throughout the Middle East.


LISTENING: SONGDREAMING, Saadet Turkoz & Nils Wogram (UK) (US+)

MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter.

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ghost of a useful computer: 13mar26

Published March 13, 2026 by Warren Ellis

Leipzig, Germany-based artist Alexander Endrullat has traded traditional Intaglio printing plates for discarded laptops. His ongoing series titled Off the Grid emerged from a familiar yet annoying scenario: owning an older device that can no longer be updated, rendering it practically unusable. Endrullat’s frustration led him to a moment of impulsivity as he pushed his device through a printing press, coincidentally discovering the distinctive technique.

I’m fascinated by the Eleusinian Mysteries, and have followed for years various theories about what was in the drink that was consumed there. Ergot has often been floated as the active ingredient, but ergotism fucks people up and can easily be fatal:

The Eleusinian Mysteries were secret religious rites in ancient Greece honoring the goddess Demeter and her daughter Persephone, and aimed to remove the fear of death. The ceremonies included days of fasting, rituals and the drinking of kykeon, a concoction associated with profound mystical experiences.

While written records list ingredients such as barley, mint and water, some scholars have proposed that the potion also contained hallucinogenic substances derived from ergot (Claviceps purpurea). Now, scientists have new experimental evidence that priestesses may have used this highly toxic fungus to create psychedelic hallucinations.

Briefly opened IG and decided that’s a bad idea. If IG is a drug, it’s a crap one. Rediscovering following the brush to some extent. From the Kluge book I’m currently reading:

Commentaries are not linear narratives. They work vertically. They are mines, catacombs. The working form of commentary is closer to the idea of collecting than to that of shaping. Closer to the poetics of the Brothers Grimm than the dramatic or novelistic form. Putting this particular form of narration to the test excites me.

Not least respect for the principle of FRAGMENTATION, respect for the particular and for the individual (and its defence against the merely generally available), speaks for attempting something like this over and over. Observing our ‘torn reality’ grants permission to the incomplete message.

To keep up with the algorithmic behemoths of the Big Five in Silicon Valley, any modest means will do.

A combat-unit commander told non-commissioned officers at a briefing Monday that the Iran war is part of God’s plan and that Pres. Donald Trump was “anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth,” according to a complaint by a non-commissioned officer.

From Saturday morning through Monday night, more than 110 similar complaints about commanders in every branch of the military had been logged by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF).

The complaints came from more than 40 different units spread across at least 30 military installations, the MRFF told me Monday night.

Accessions:

This has been sitting in my wishlist for a while, and last night I decided to pull the trigger, because sometimes you’re just in the mood for a great writer writing about writing.

WRITING, Marguerite Duras (UK) (US+)

OPERATIONS: across several things today
STATUS: Today’s watch is the Dan Henry, which is a strong signal that I’m going to be pretty disconnected
READING: THE BOOK OF COMMENTARY / UNQUIET GARDEN OF THE SOUL, Alexander Kluge (UK) (US+)
LISTENING: great episode of Night Tracks

MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter.

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hung up: 24feb26

Published February 24, 2026 by Warren Ellis

Woke up, hung out with the mancub a bit, sat outside with coffee reading the news, ate berries and honey, did a couple of pages on the laptop, walked up to the coffee shop, worked in the notebook over a couple of double espressos, had a chat with the Italian ice cream man who lives at the top of the road. I feel like 90% of myself at this point, and like my 2026 has finally gotten started.

TODAY:

Lily Taylor

STATUS: inbox 116 but an embarrassing number of those are delivery notifications
READING: THE BIG THREE: SOCRATES, PLATO, ARISTOTLE, Neel Burton (UK) (US+)
LISTENING: New Music Show
LAST WATCHED: the new series of MOCK THE WEEK

MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter.

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doorway: 18feb26

Published February 18, 2026 by Warren Ellis

Shoplifter, “Chromo Sapiens” (2019).

Taking off the Fitbit and the Apple Watch, putting on the Maven watch, setting up the third stage of the new notebook system (with a fourth stage to come) – it’s rapid disconnection time. More on that tomorrow because I’ve just been told I’m apparently going out for lunch.

TODAY:

STATUS: first day in a few weeks that I’ve felt even half-human
READING: I’m faintly annoyed with what I’m reading right now – last night I started a book about maximalist novels and it was so whiny (and obsessed with the word “transversal” that I gave up, and the Walsingham book is mired in “we have absolutely no idea what he dd in these years but here’s some random speculation” – so I picked up THE BIG THREE: SOCRATES, PLATO, ARISTOTLE, Neel Burton (UK) (US+)

It can be no coincidence that the hierarchical, anti-democratic Spartans, who privileged military might above all else, prided themselves on the pithiness of their speech. According to Plutarch, when an Attic orator accused the Spartans of being ignorant, Pleistoanax, the Spartan king (r. 458-409 BCE), replied: “What you say is true. Of all the Greeks, we alone have not learnt your evil ways.”


LISTENING: New Music Show

MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter.

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telemetry 1nov25

Published November 1, 2025 by Warren Ellis

On All Hallow’s Eve, Jennifer Lucy Allan turns the cards and listens for what they reveal, tracing sonic lines across the tarot deck. From the ghostly atmospherics of William Basinski’s Wheel of Fortune, to the arcane explorations of early electronic pioneer Ruth White and Swiss krautrock mystic Walter Wegmüller, the spread unfolds in unexpected ways, its order uncertain, its juxtapositions surprising. Expect new sounds from Argentinian artist aylu, whose spiritually-charged album journeys from personal struggle to collective resistance, as well as slow-motion noise conjured by New Zealand’s drone trio Surface of the Earth.

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Berserker Coke Spoons

Published November 29, 2024 by Warren Ellis

In ancient conflicts, courage and resilience were essential qualities for warriors venturing onto the battlefield. However, a recent study has uncovered evidence suggesting that these attributes did not always rely solely on physical strength or emotional fortitude. Recent research published in the journal Praehistorische Zeitschrift suggests that Northern European barbarian warriors during the Roman period may have used stimulants to enhance their performance in combat.

At various archaeological sites in Scandinavia, Germany, and Poland, researchers have discovered small spoon-shaped objects attached to belts, dating back to the Roman period. These objects, featuring handles between 40 and 70 mm in length and cavities just 10 to 20 mm in diameter, lacked any practical purpose for the belt but were found alongside other war-related artifacts.

According to the study led by archaeologist Andrzej Kokowski and a team of biologists from Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin, Poland, these small spoons might have been used to measure precise doses of stimulant substances before battle.

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Drugs And Skulls

Published November 24, 2024 by Warren Ellis

Marius van Boordt, “The Consecration”

A team of cognitive neuroscientists at the University of Zurich, has found that ancient Aztec “skull whistles” found in gravesites are able to instill fear in modern people. In their study, published in the journal Communications Psychology, the group recorded the neural and psychological responses of volunteers as they listened to the screams produced by the whistles.

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In digging up ancient Aztec graves dating from the years 1250 to 1521 AD, archaeologists have found many examples of small whistles made of clay and formed into the shape of a skull. These whistles still work today as they did when they were buried next to a person in a grave. They produce sounds most often described as a scream of sorts.

An international group of researchers led by the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria have uncovered the earliest evidence of Ephedra use from the charred remains of the plant in a 15,000-year-old human burial site in northeastern Morocco.

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Ephedra is a genus of shrubs native to arid regions that produces alkaloids like ephedrine and pseudoephedrine, substances utilized in traditional medicine across many cultures. Archaeological evidence of its use during the Paleolithic era is rare due to the fragile nature of plant remains.

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Dramatising The World: Toronto, 2005

Published July 11, 2024 by Warren Ellis

This is the text of a talk I gave at the Hacienda bar in Toronto on 28 April 2005. I wandered off-script and expounded/freestyled/rambled more than once — to say the fucking least — so this should probably be seen more as the original blueprint for the thing.

The literary critic Harold Bloom once said that we weren’t fully human until Shakespeare began writing: that Shakespeare completed our sapience. Which is both interesting and stark, utter bullshit. Stories are what make us human. They’re an advanced form of play. Cats have play. Sometimes very sophisticated, dramatised forms of play. But they’re not communicated or externalised. So far, only humans use stories to dramatise the way they see the world.

And we’ve always had them.

Go out to the ancient standing stones at Callanish in the Orkney Islands, at sunrise. You stand in the middle of the stone circle and turn to follow the sun. From that position, the sun is alternately occluded and revealed by the curves of the surrounding hills. The sunrise is dramatised as a struggle. As a performance. Shadows fall and twist around you like spokes, until the sun claws free of the hillside and sends light right down the middle of the circle and on to your face.

Continue readingDramatising The World: Toronto, 2005
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Published April 15, 2024 by Warren Ellis

Patrick Winn’s Narcotopia is reportage of the sort that shrinking foreign news budgets have made scarce. It is the story of the Wa, a people who once proudly collected the heads of their enemies, and who came to preside over one of the world’s most important narco-states in their homelands in the mountains of Burma. The author describes the culture of the Wa, who kept both the British and the Burmese military junta at bay, as being that of the “warrior-farmer, an anarchist who did as he or she pleased”.

https://app.the-tls.co.uk/tls_article/heroin/pugpig_index.html

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An Injection For Hunger

Published February 3, 2023 by Warren Ellis

In which writer Paul Ford tries a new drug for Type 2 diabetes management and discovers it completely switches off his previously hyperactive hunger signal and basically goes crazy-wall for a while:

“Something’s happened,” I told my wife. She is a veteran of watching me try to fix my body. I told her: Where before my brain had been screaming, screaming, at air-raid volume—there was sudden silence. It was confusing. Would it last?

I went alone that night to a Chinese restaurant, the old-school kind with tables, and ordered General Tso’s. I ate the broccoli, a few pieces of chicken, and thought: too gloopy. I left it unfinished, went home in confusion, a different kind of sleepwalker. I passed bodegas and shrugged. At an office I observed the stack of candies and treats with no particular interest.

Decades of struggle—poof. Apparently the Mounjaro molecule targets the same hormone as Ozempic, plus a second one, so it doesn’t just stimulate insulin production but also boosts energy output.

“I urgently need,” I thought, “an analog synthesizer.” Something to fill the silence where food used to be. Every night for weeks I spent four, five hours twisting Moog knobs. Not making music. Just droning, looping, and beep-booping. I needed something to obsess over, to watch YouTube videos about. I needed something to fail at every night to feel normal. And I was also manic, dysregulated, and wide-eyed, sleeping five hours a night, run-walking, with pressured speech; my friends, happy for me but confused, called me “cocaine Paul.” I bought more synthesizers off a guy from Craigslist, meeting him in Bushwick, Brooklyn, with a grand in cash. A body is not designed to lose 25 pounds in eight weeks, starting during the holidays. Beep. Boop.

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