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Could Kratom End the Opioid Crisis?

(AP Photo/Mary Esch, File)

At BuzzFeed, Azeen Ghorayshi reports on kratom, a plant-based substance that has helped some opioid abusers to overcome addiction. When users ingest kratom, it latches on to the same brain receptors as heroine and fentanyl, blocking the crippling withdrawal symptoms that prevent many users from breaking their habit. The problem is, because it does latch on to those same receptors, the US government’s not sure if they should classify it as an opioid and restrict it as a Schedule I controlled substance, even though it comes without a high.

By the time Courtney True found the Reddit thread about kratom in December 2016, she hadn’t touched an opioid for 48 hours. She was in bad shape — stomach cramps, diarrhea, jitters, hot sweats, cold sweats, and body aches that made even her teeth hurt. Sitting at her kitchen table hunched over a laptop, she recalled, “I felt like I wanted to rip my skin off and step out of it.”

True had been dependent on opioids since she was a 14-year-old growing up in Mississippi, when a doctor prescribed her Percocet to treat chronic migraines. By the age of 24, she was shooting OxyContin. A decade after that — after moving to Maine, becoming a nurse, and having two kids — the Drug Enforcement Administration cracked down on sketchy online pharmacies that sold pills, and True started on heroin.

Her husband drove her a half hour to a smoke shop in downtown Portland. She bought a little of everything: a small bag of crushed kratom leaves, some capsules, and two tiny bottles of extracts, all for about $100.

Back in the car, heater blasting, she swallowed some of the capsules and downed a bottle, then sat waiting, skeptically, to feel something like a high. She never did, but within 20 minutes her withdrawal symptoms had faded away. “It was like a fog had cleared,” True said. “They were just gone.”

Now 18 months have passed, and True has been heroin-free for 17. She drinks a murky kratom-grapefruit juice mix several times a day, and credits the plant for saving not only her own life, but also her family’s.

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Johnny Depp: We Are Concerned

GLASTONBURY, ENGLAND - JUNE 22: American actor Johnny Depp introduces his film "The Libertine" on day 1 of the Glastonbury Festival 2017 at Worthy Farm, Pilton on June 22, 2017 in Glastonbury, England. (Photo by Ki Price/Getty Images)

You’d think, after years as Jack Sparrow, not to mention roles in 36 movies, that Johnny Depp would be swimming in a sea of dubloons. A penchant for spending, generosity, and a laissez-faire approach to the fine details of his accounts has left Johnny’s treasure chest nigh on empty. At Rolling Stone, Stephen Rodrick attempts to see through the haze of hash to try and understand why Johnny Depp’s ship is sinking.

“So are you here to hear the truth?” asks Depp as Russell brings him a glass of vintage red wine. “It’s full of betrayal.”

We move to the dining room for a three-course meal of pad thai, duck and gingerbread with berries. Depp sits at the head of the table and motions toward some rolling papers and two equal piles of tobacco and hash, and asks if I mind. I don’t. He pauses for a second. “Well, let’s drink some wine first.”

This goes on for 72 hours.

Over the past 18 months, there has been little but bad news for Depp. In addition to the financial woes, there were reports he couldn’t remember his lines and had to have them fed to him through an earpiece. He had split from his longtime lawyer and agent. And he was alone. His tabloid-scarred divorce from actress Heard is complete, but not before there were persuasive allegations of physical abuse that Depp vehemently denies. Depp’s inner circle had begged him to not wed Heard or to at least obtain a prenup. Depp ignored his loved ones’ advice. And there were whispers that Depp’s recreational drug and alcohol use were crippling him.

During my London visit, Depp is alternately hilarious, sly and incoherent. The days begin after dark and run until first light. There is a scared, hunted look about him. Despite grand talks about hitting the town, we never leave the house. As Depp’s mind leads us down various rabbit holes, I often think of a line that he recited as the Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland: “Have I gone mad?”

I want to go home, but feel reluctant to leave. One of the most famous actors in the world is now smoking dope with a writer and his lawyer while his cook makes dinner and his bodyguards watch television. There is no one around him who isn’t getting paid.

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On Saving the Cuban Crocodile from American Invasion

The Cuban crocodile, C. rhombifer (Getty Images)

At Hakai Magazine, Shanna Baker reports on the ongoing bid to preserve C. rhombifer, the breed of Cuban crocodile beloved of Fidel Castro, who was known to send living and embalmed versions of the animal to allies around the world. The Cuban croc is endangered, not only due to shrinking habitat, but also to hybridization as its gene pool gets polluted by natural encounters with the bigger, shyer American crocodile.

Beside a spit of land jutting into a swampy enclosure, a female crocodile breaks the waterline, the bony ridges on her back jagged like an electrocardiogram. Her eyes track six sweat-soaked men standing in a haphazard semicircle, gripping poles twice their own height, as mosquitos orbit their straw hats. Another man works quickly with a hoe, leveling the dried grasses of her nest and chewing up the earth until he finds her unborn brood, laid just three days ago. The crocodile thrashes and lunges forward, but two men raise their weapons, ready to deliver a hard thump to the snout if she approaches.

She sinks back as the man in the middle of the mob loads her few dozen eggs plus a second set from a nearby nest into a plastic pail, cushioning them between layers of dirt. At the top, he places four last eggs—the rejects—each the size of a small mango. They feel like unpolished marble and all bear a sizable dent. The tiny would-be Cuban crocodiles (Crocodylus rhombifer) inside are goners—the membranes are too damaged—but the others are destined for an incubation room, where air conditioners humming round the clock will hopefully hold them at a steady temperature. If all goes as planned, in 75 days or so, hatchlings will emerge and help move the needle on C. rhombifer’s prospects for survival.

Conserving the Cuban croc was one of Fidel Castro’s first priorities after he steamed into power in 1959. Just months into his rule, he ordered the creation of the Criadero de cocodrilos, Ciénaga de Zapata—or Zapata Swamp Captive Breeding Facility—a cluster of ponds, rows of concrete-block pens, and a couple of narrow one-story buildings split into modest offices and workspaces for staff two and a half hours south of Havana. Castro always had a predilection for wild spaces and things, says environmental historian Reinaldo Funes-Monzote of the University of Havana. Whether he cherished endemic species because they fit with his hypernationalistic sensibilities, or he related to their untamed energy, or he was just enlightened to the inherent value of wildlife is a guess, though crocodiles must have become a point of pride for him at some stage—he eventually developed a habit of gifting them, either living or embalmed, to foreign allies.

The Cuban is bolder and hunts during the day. It has a stubby snout, a reputation for jumping, and a tendency to walk with its belly high off the ground. The American is bigger, more apt to hide, searches for prey at night, sports dark bands on its back and sides, and has a long, pointed snout and extra webbing on its hind toes. The differences are as distinct as red from blue.

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Meet Spitty, the Whippet Who Holds Five World Records

NEW YORK - AUGUST 04: Purina Dock Diving Dogs visit the "Late Show With David Letterman" at The Ed Sullivan Theater on August 4, 2008 in New York City. (Photo by Joe Corrigan/Getty Images)

For Outside, Christopher Solomon profiles the little-known sport of dock diving and one incredible athlete who already has five world records under his belt, or rather, collar: a 5-year-old whippet named Spitfire, Spitty for short.

About 20 years ago, a marketing guy recruited some dogs to leap into the water as a time-filler during ESPN’s forgettable Great Outdoor Games. The diversion, though, was a hit. This, in retrospect, should not have come as a surprise to anyone. It is a truth universally acknowledged that no pleasure is so cheaply bought, and so unmarred by complexity, as the simple joy of seeing a dog hurl itself into a pond in pursuit of a slobbery stick. Science has proven the impossibility of the human brain to register self-pity, or maunder on about the generally sorry state of things, while in the presence of canine bellyflops.

Today, more than 1,000 dock-diving competitions are held annually around the U.S., estimates Kristi Baird, who is Spitty’s trainer, with competing organizations that have names such as DockDogs and North America Diving Dogs. These competitions can attract big crowds, and booming soundtracks, and booming emcees often lured from monster-truck shows. The largest events have total purses of $30,000 cash. One group’s dock-diving rulebook now runs to 60-plus pages.

The athlete wandered up and gave a perfunctory sniff of hello to a stranger, then wandered away again. He has a whippet’s thin, patrician snout, a brief, upturned tail, and bulging brown eyes, as if the maker did not think to leave room for them in his small whippet skull. His coloring is a formal gray, with patches of white on his prosternum and rear pasterns that, along with the reserved mien that he shares with others of his kind, lend the sense that he is wearing a tuxedo. Spitty is a racing whippet, Sydney explained. There is not a pinch of fat on him. Slats of ribs showed on his sides, like flannel over bone. His rear legs shifted with muscle. “Firm, proud buttocks,” as Mr. Burns said approvingly of the family greyhound in “The Simpsons.” This was an athlete. Whippets are a sighthound, originally bred for chasing down game such as rabbits, and their speed is explosive. From a dead stop, a whippet can reach nearly 35 miles per hour in seconds. Spitty now walked around the pool deck with the stiff yawing gait of a sprinter, relaxed yet coiled.

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Sign O’ The Times: Paisley Park Offers A Public Tour

Prince performs during the halftime show at Super Bowl XLI on February 4, 2007 at Dolphin Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida. (Photo by Jed Jacobsohn/Getty Images)

For The New Yorker, Amanda Petrusich tours Paisley Park, the home and recording studio of the late Prince. What she learns is that no matter how close you may get in physical proximity, even in death Prince maintains a carefully curated distance between him, his fans, and the world.

Mostly, the tour made me feel lonesome. Absent its owner, Paisley Park is a husk. In 2004, when Prince briefly rented a mansion in Los Angeles from the basketball player Carlos Boozer, he redesigned the place, putting his logo on the front gate, painting pillars purple, installing all-black carpet, and adding a night club. (Boozer threatened to sue, but Prince restored the house before he moved out.) Yet Paisley Park feels anonymous. His studios are beautiful, but unremarkable. There are many photos of him, and his symbol is omnipresent, but I was hoping for evidence of his outsized quirks and affectations—clues to some bigger truth. I found little that seemed especially personal. Paisley Park presents Prince only as a visionary—not as a father, a husband, a friend, or a son.

Although Prince’s estate has disregarded some of his preferences—his discography is now available on Spotify, a platform he pulled his music from in 2015, in part because he believed that the company didn’t compensate artists properly—there’s something profound about how Paisley Park insists on maintaining Prince’s privacy. It does not need to modernize him (which feels unnecessary), or even to humanize him (which feels impossible). In 2016, the most common response to Prince’s death was disbelief. His self-presentation was so carefully controlled that he never once betrayed his own mortality. He’d done nothing to make us think he was like us. During parties, Prince sometimes stood in a dark corner of the balcony and watched other people dance. Visiting Paisley Park now evokes a similar sensation—of being near Prince, but never quite with him.

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Come for the Crullers, Stay for the Community

(Photo by Chris Hondros/Getty Images)

In a bid to get to know the people in her neighborhood, Laura Yan spends 24 hours in the Nostrand Avenue branch of Dunkin’ Donuts in New York City. As she reports at The Outline, what she discovered was that the lovely people she met and the new friends she made more than made up for sleep deprivation, stale croissants, and watery oatmeal.

Before I spent the day in Dunkin’ Donuts, I had the feeling that it would be a lonely place, a modern-day “Nitehawks” in Brooklyn. But my 24 hours there was full of delight. Instead of loneliness, I founded an unexpected community.

Weeks later, I walk past the Dunkin’ and look for familiar faces in the window. I can recognize the rotating staff, and situate them in the rhythm of shop: the morning rush, the indulgent afternoons, the evening lulls, and the late nights, when everything became a little more unusual. One afternoon, I ran into Mr. Hawkins, the accounting teacher. Another time time I saw Justin, the Guyanese vegetarian, who beamed when he saw me. “It’s good to see you!” he said, and it was wonderful to see him too.

It’s funny, how a seemingly soulless franchise started to feel like an old friend, once I spent enough time there.

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Lettuce Try to Grow Dwarf Tomatoes Next

Commander Scott Kelly and lettuce grown and eaten in space. Image courtesy of NASA.

How do radiation and a gravity-free environment affect plant growth? How do we keep the plants free of microbes? How does fresh food affect astronaut morale? At Popular Science, Sarah Scoles writes about how learning to grow food in space is a critical milestone to furthering space exploration, because astronauts simply can’t haul all the food they’ll need to thrive during long absences from Earth.

On August 9, (Commander Scott) Kelly snapped a picture, standing in front of the unfurling greens. His brow was furrowed, faux serious. “­Tomorrow we’ll eat the anticipated veggie harvest on @space_station!” he tweeted. “But first, lettuce take a #selfie.” Soon he crunched the harvest live on NASA TV. It might seem like no big deal, but a single leaf can make a big difference to someone who’s been eating rehydrated fare for months. During a later harvest, astronaut Peggy Whitson would use them to wrap a reconstituted lobster salad. “Even with a really good diet with hundreds of items, there’s dietary fatigue,” Massa says. “People get bored. Adding a new flavor or texture—like something crisp and juicy—could spice up your regular meal.”

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Dorothy Allison on how Shame Defines Class

Author Dorothy Allison (AP Photo)

At Guernica, Amy Wright interviews novelist, activist, and feminist Dorothy Allison on class, how poverty can influence a life’s path, the definition of a working-class heroine, and the role of women writers in literature.

A social activist deeply invested in the early feminist movement, Allison met head-on the dangers of free expression. If her courage to keep raising her voice empowers others, she is not so naïve as to imagine our right to speak will ever be equal. Nor, I realize after spending several weeks with her, would she deprive anyone of the fight, her sentences often undercutting someone else’s surety, or her own. Having written genius works of resilience, she recognizes the favor you do a person to unsettle her.

Guernica: How does your conception of class differ from that projected on you?

Dorothy Allison: You know those famous pictures of the South in which dirty-faced kids are standing there with a finger in their mouths? They are not speaking because they aren’t sure what to say or how to behave. You are aware absolutely that you are not as valuable or as human as people who speak easily and who are comfortable.

Learning that is class is actually a huge empowerment. When I read Marxist theory, it was like being handed a shovel. You could do something. You could dig out of the hole. You could defend yourself, because what not being as important as others really means is that you’re always in danger.

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Why Brands Should Stay out of Body Politics

(Photo by Ilya S. Savenok/Getty Images for Dove)

At Racked, Amanda Mull considers the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty and suggests that brands have no place in shaping public discourse or opinion about how women should feel about their bodies.

When you peel back all the layers of infantilization that Dove and its marketing progeny have heaped on us, though, you get something that’s pretty simple: A lot of people are genuinely sick of being pushed to feel bad about themselves all the time, and they probably also don’t want to expend the energy required to performatively love themselves in the body positivity mode preferred by the idea’s advocates online.

They probably just want to buy and use soap that works, have access to clothing in their size, and not think about their physical selves so much. They also probably don’t want to be denied job opportunities or refused lifesaving medical care because of what they look like. None of that requires a body wash brand to weigh in on anyone’s self-worth, and maybe the most helpful thing brands could do for all of us is shut the fuck up.

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Anthony Bourdain: 1956-2018

American Chef Anthony Bourdain in the Liberdade area of Sao Paulo, Brazil. (Photo by Paulo Fridman/Corbis via Getty Images)

Forget about four-star hotels or luxury spa treatments: Bourdain is on a mission to illuminate underappreciated and misunderstood cultures, whether it’s Myanmar or Detroit. He regularly takes viewers to the sorts of places–Libya, Gaza, Congo–that most Americans know only from grim headlines about political strife and body counts. Bourdain does all of this with vivid narrative reporting, stunning visuals, palpable empathy, and a relentlessly open mind.

As with Bourdain’s previous programs, A Cook’s Tour and the long-running No Reservations, the premise is simple: he goes somewhere interesting and hangs out with the locals. “We show up and say, ‘What’s to eat? What makes you happy?’” Bourdain says. “You’re going to get very Technicolor, very deep, very complicated answers to those questions. I’m not a Middle East expert. I’m not an Africa expert. I’m not a foreign-policy wonk. But I see aspects of these countries that regular journalists don’t. If we have a role, it’s to put a face on people who you might not otherwise have seen or cared about.”

— “Anthony Bourdain Has Become The Future Of Cable News, And He Couldn’t Care Less,” by Rob Brunner, Fast Company, September 24, 2014.

What do I like to eat after hours? Strange things. Oysters are my favorite, especially at three in the morning, in the company of my crew. Focaccia pizza with robiola cheese and white truffle oil is good, especially at Le Madri on a summer afternoon in the outdoor patio. Frozen vodka at Siberia Bar is also good, particularly if a cook from one of the big hotels shows up with beluga. At Indigo, on Tenth Street, I love the mushroom strudel and the daube of beef. At my own place, I love a spicy boudin noir that squirts blood in your mouth; the braised fennel the way my sous-chef makes it; scraps from duck confit; and fresh cockles steamed with greasy Portuguese sausage.

I love the sheer weirdness of the kitchen life: the dreamers, the crackpots, the refugees, and the sociopaths with whom I continue to work; the ever-present smells of roasting bones, searing fish, and simmering liquids; the noise and clatter, the hiss and spray, the flames, the smoke, and the steam. Admittedly, it’s a life that grinds you down. Most of us who live and operate in the culinary underworld are in some fundamental way dysfunctional. We’ve all chosen to turn our backs on the nine-to-five, on ever having a Friday or Saturday night off, on ever having a normal relationship with a non-cook.

In America, the professional kitchen is the last refuge of the misfit. It’s a place for people with bad pasts to find a new family. It’s a haven for foreigners—Ecuadorians, Mexicans, Chinese, Senegalese, Egyptians, Poles. In New York, the main linguistic spice is Spanish. “Hey, maricón! chupa mis huevos” means, roughly, “How are you, valued comrade? I hope all is well.” And you hear “Hey, baboso! Put some more brown jiz on the fire and check your meez before the sous comes back there and fucks you in the culo!,” which means “Please reduce some additional demi-glace, brother, and reëxamine your mise en place, because the sous-chef is concerned about your state of readiness.”

— “Don’t Eat Before Reading This,” by Anthony Bourdain, The New Yorker, April 19, 1999.

Anthony Bourdain, an influential American chef, author, and television host, died in Strasbourg, France, on Friday June 8, at age 61. Bourdain, whose rise to fame started with his book, Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly, used his influence to campaign for kitchen workers’ rights and for the marginalized communities he encountered as part of his television show travels. While he was best known for his nonfiction, Bourdain also wrote crime and graphic novels.

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