National Geographic features a story profiling a Nepalese honey-hunter that incorporates some amazing photos and considerable mysticism. Getting the honey, which is produced by the world's largest honeybees, is a death-defying venture - they nest high in the Himalayan cliffs, and so the hunter climbs 200 feet or more to get to nests.
Why would a guy undertake such a climb, swarmed and stung, for mere honey?
Because it's special honey; hallucinogenic honey. And it sells for eight times as much as regular honey.
One has to be careful not to eat too much of the honey, says Jangi. Two to three teaspoons is usually the correct dose. After about an hour you are overcome with an urgent need to defecate, urinate, and vomit. “After the purge you alternate between light and dark. You can see, and then you can’t see,” says Jangi. “A sound—jam jam jam—pulses in your head, like the beehive. You can’t move, but you’re still completely lucid. The paralysis lasts for a day or so.”
Zombie honey.
And speaking of zombies, Daily Mail presents a look at the opium dens of the USA, noting that they spread from the west coast to the east coast, beginning in San Francisco during the mid-1800s. They were tolerated as long as it was just the Chinese, but when Americans started smoking the stuff, laws were passed and enforcement began.
Reclining on bunk beds while sucking on opium pipes, these haunting photos provide a rare glimpse into life in America's 19th century opium dens that prompted the country's first crackdown on drugs.
One common characteristic of opium dens is the presence of cots, beds, or couches upon which the smoker can recline. These are needed because the smoker develops the nods; a more or less zombie-like state. A 1909 law banned opium in the USA; paving the way for the introduction of a deadlier substitute: heroin.
I once happened across an opium den during an excursion to a Karen hill tribe village in northern Thailand in the 1980s. The village was in an idyllic location, with a waterfall tumbling from the cliff-side. The Karen women produce intricate quilts, one of which to this day graces our home. But the site was within the so-called "Golden Triangle", and in one of the huts were a number of guys lying on cots, smoking opium and stoned out of their gourds. So they still exist, the opium dens.