On gin and laudanum.

Madison.

I'm ever so cheered to see folks rooting for the gin martini. There's even a point - albeit small - scored for vermouth. Then again, I spent much of college drinking sweet vermouth, on the rocks with a twist¹, as an after-dinner drink. Dry vermouth's a bit much for regular drinking, but if you don't like it, don't order a martini. Ask for gin or vodka, straight-up. Most bartenders don't care what sort of glass you want it in, and it's not like they're keeping tabs on the number of olives left in the jar.

Sometimes I feel like a college indie kid again. Yes, I want good gin to be popular enough that I can be assured of finding it in liquor stores and bars, but I don't want it to be so popular that I feel silly ordering it. Then again, I'm fully creeped out by the notion of sugary-sweet "martinis," those of the chocolate, or raspberry, or whatever persuasion. Couldn't they have latched onto some moniker that wasn't something I genuinely like?

Oh, I'll just get it out of my system. As far as I'm concerned, there should be several ground rules for the martini:

• A martini requires gin. If it's made with vodka, it's a vodka martini. You can't make a margarita with rum or vodka or bourbon, at least not without pointing that out ahead of time.
  
  
• A martini requires a significant portion of vermouth. Dry, preferably one-sixth to one-quarter, so you can actually taste it. This may depend on your preferred gin and vermouth.
  
  
• The only sweet drink you can call a martini is a sweet martini, which swaps out the dry vermouth for sweet. Garnish with a strip of orange peel rather than an olive. Still gotta be gin.
  
  
• Anything hewing close to the martini recipe - gin + dry vermouth - can be called a martini, but only when its name spells out the modification. For example, a dirty martini gets a little olive brine added in, if that's your thing.
  
  
• The Gibson is cool enough to have its own, un-messed-with name. You may not fiddle with the Gibson as you would the martini. Something has to be preserved.

But enough about booze. What's more exciting? Opium!

Yeah, opium. As in, that very pretty flower that can get you stoned out of your mind if properly prepared. You can grow this at home, assuming you don't know that you can use it to make illicit drugs. If you do know, growing it is illegal. If you just think they're nice flowers - and they really are - you're probably okay.

Sound crazy? Take the time to read Michael Pollan's 1997 article on the subject. It's all sorts of maddening.

The high points, as I recall them:

• The seeds of "opium poppies" - primarily Papaver somniferum, among other poppy species - are readily available from gardening catalogs. Also from the spice section of your average grocery store. Perhaps on bagels, but I'd expect they might have trouble germinating after being baked.
  
  
• Seeds: legal. Plant: possibly legal, possibly not, depending on how many you have, how much you know, and who's asking. Seedpod sap and other extracts: all sorts of illegal.
  
  
• You want to buy some really out-there books? Until recently, the go-to place was Loompanics Unlimited. If no one else was willing to publish your book on, well, just about anything, Loompanics was the publisher of choice.
  
  
• Opium tea is a standard thing at certain Middle Eastern funerals². Marijuana is also perfectly acceptable in many cultures in that part of the world. Alcohol, though... not a chance. I guess you pick your poison.³
  
  
• Despite what some would have you believe, it's entirely possible to cultivate poppies in places other than southeast Asia. You can grow them here in Wisconsin, although I'd suppose illicit drug manufacture would require a suspiciously large flower garden.
  
  
• The Bill of Rights doesn't seem to apply in drug cases. You know, that whole "due process" thing? Get caught doing something illegal and drug-related in your home, and the authorities can seize your house, land, etc., then sell or use them as they see fit. Regardless of whether or not you're ultimately convicted of any crime. If you rent, you can be evicted, again, without actually being found guilty of a crime. Or even charged. Fun, huh?
  
  
• Opium sap is fiercely bitter. Add this one to the list of consumables that it's hard to imagine anyone discovering in the first place.⁴
  
  
• Rational behavior does not seem to come naturally to the drug enforcement authorities in this country. Or to drug-related taboos in just about any culture, anywhere, anytime. I quote Pollan, because it's hard to paraphrase his summary:
  

  The war on drugs is in truth a war on some drugs, their enemy status the result of historical accident, cultural prejudice, and institutional imperative. The taxonomy on behalf of which this war is being fought would be difficult to explain to an extraterrestrial, or even a farmer like Matyas. Is it the quality of addictiveness that renders a substance illicit? Not in the case of tobacco, which I am free to grow in this garden. Curiously, the current campaign against tobacco dwells less on cigarettes' addictiveness than on their threat to our health. So is it toxicity that renders a substance a public menace? Well, my garden is full of plants—datura and euphorbia, castor beans, and even the stems of my rhubarb—that would sicken and possibly kill me if I ingested them, but the government trusts me to be careful. Is it, then, the prospect of pleasure—of "recreational use"—that puts a substance beyond the pale? Not in the case of alcohol: I can legally produce wine or hard cider or beer from my garden for my personal use (though there are regulations governing its distribution to others). So could it be a drug's "mind-altering" properties that make it evil? Certainly not in the case of Prozac, a drug that, much like opium, mimics chemical compounds manufactured in the brain.

• My favorite nugget of ironic humor: many of the hatchet-wielding hardliners of the Women's Christian Temperance Union were said to unwind at the end of a long day with their "women's tonics." Primary ingredient: laudanum, also known as tincture of opium. An alcoholic extract of the opium poppy. I find that all sorts of funny.

Suffice to say, I probably won't be growing poppies anytime soon.

Incidentally, my personal favorite high is from chillis. Eating enough seriously spicy food will get you feeling very, very good, presumably from all the endorphins the brain's pumping out to deal with the onslaught of capsaicin.⁵ Just thought I'd share.

* * * * *

¹Yeah, the drink from Groundhog Day. Benefits for college students of legal drinking age: is perfectly drinkable at low prices, unlike wine; keeps indefinitely^a and is ready-to-drink at room temperature, unlike beer; won't get you too intoxicated to do something useful, should you feel like it, unlike spirits^b.

^aRelatively, anyways. It's not like we were saving this for special occasions.

^bScotch is lovely and all, but I consider my evening effectively complete by the time I sit down with a glass.

²Opiates are powerful painkillers, true, but they also help eliminate depression. Though I can't substantiate it, I've heard that morphine works, not by reducing pain, but by making you no longer care. If the pain exists, but you're completely non-plussed about it, you might as well not have any.

Then again, you could have the great fun of withdrawal in your future. Whee!

³Or, rather, your culture and associated law-enforcement bodies pick it for you.

⁴Also: coffee, chocolate, huitlacoche, other delicious mushrooms that look a lot like poisonous ones, and so on.

⁵The accompanying beer to mediate the burn doesn't hurt.