Black Opium
Ecstasy of the Forbidden
Interest in heroin is surging back after years of dormancy. Why? Supply and demand! Drug cartels have increased the supply of heroin, so that it is cheaper and purer than ever before. Secondly, the Federal government’s recent crack down on popular prescription opiates like OxcyContin, Percocet, and Vicodin so they are increasingly hard and costly to obtain on the black market. A recent study reveals that people who had recently abused prescription opiates are 19 times more likely to try heroin.
Fueled by a boom in supply and a decline in cost, heroin use is up around the nation and spreading to segments of the population once considered unlikely users. “Cool people are doing it!” Remember the old slogan: “Sex, Drugs, and Rock ‘n Roll”? Heroin has a sexy side—very sexy. Black Opium: Ecstasy of the Forbidden brings heroin’s sexy visions to life.
The world of black opium is a forbidden world where human bodies find themselves possessed and driven by desires which consume them in the flames of hot-blooded ecstasy, Black Opium describes every aspect of an opium smoker’s life in lurid detail.
Often compared to James Joyces' Dubliners, Farrère’s Black Opium consists of seventeen compelling tales delineating six periods in the history and use of opium. This edition of Black Opium is a reissue of And/Or Press’ 1974 Fitz Hugh Ludlow edition, which features salacious illustrations by Alexander King, and the addition of a foreword by Dr. Moraes.
Claude Farrère, a pseudonym of Frédéric-Charles Bargone (1876–1957), was the author of several sensational novels set in exotic locations like Istanbul, Saigon, and Nagasaki. Known as a "grand connoisseur" of opium smoking who sometimes puffed down twenty to thirty pipes in a session, Farrère introduced his contemporary French literati, artists, and musicians to the pleasures of fume d’opium. Farrère, a large man, is reputed to have smoked his own weight in opium during his life. He enjoyed "pipes" until his death at ninety years old.
Pierre Louÿs, (1870–1925) was a French poet and writer, most renowned for lesbian and classical themes. He is known as seeking to express pagan sensuality with stylistic perfection.
Michael Horowitz is Timothy Leary's archivist and actress Winona Ryder's father. (Tim is Ryder's God-father). He founded the Fitz Hugh Ludlow Memorial Library,the largest library of drug literature. It is rumored that Horowitz and actor Leonardo DiCaprio are planning a "biopic" — biographical movie — about Leary to be written by Craig Lucas.
Francis Moraes, PhD, a research physicist and chemist, was a physics professor at Portland State University in Portland,Oregon where he studied the heroin subculture. He is author of Heroin User's Handbook, and Little Book of Heroin and was a philosophy professor at University of Oregon.
Alexander King was a story illustrator, figure painter and author with an eye-brow raising lifestyle. Time magazine described him as "an ex-illustrator, ex-cartoonist, ex-adman, ex-editor, ex-playwright, ex-dope addict. For a quarter-century he was an ex-painter, and by his own bizarre account qualifies as an ex-midwife. He is also an ex-husband to three wives and an ex-Viennese of sufficient age (60) to remember mutton-chopped Emperor Franz Joseph. When doctors told him a few years ago that he might soon be an ex-patient (two strokes, serious kidney disease, peptic ulcer, high blood pressure), he sat down to tell gay stories of the life of all these earlier Kings."
