Search Results for: drugs

Bringing Them Back to Life

Longreads Pick

Scientists have made advances in cloning procedures that would conceivably allow them to bring back extinct species. But is “de-extinction” something humans should be doing?

“Other scientists who favor de-extinction argue that there will be concrete benefits. Biological diversity is a storehouse of natural invention. Most pharmaceutical drugs, for example, were not invented from scratch—they were derived from natural compounds found in wild plant species, which are also vulnerable to extinction. Some extinct animals also performed vital services in their ecosystems, which might benefit from their return. Siberia, for example, was home 12,000 years ago to mammoths and other big grazing mammals. Back then, the landscape was not moss-dominated tundra but grassy steppes. Sergey Zimov, a Russian ecologist and director of the Northeast Science Station in Cherskiy in the Republic of Sakha, has long argued that this was no coincidence: The mammoths and numerous herbivores maintained the grassland by breaking up the soil and fertilizing it with their manure. Once they were gone, moss took over and transformed the grassland into less productive tundra.”

Published: Mar 17, 2013
Length: 14 minutes (3,657 words)

Miami Heist: The Brink’s Money Plane Job’s Messy Aftermath

Longreads Pick

How a group of thieves stole $7.4 million from Brink’s guards in a warehouse at Miami International Airport, and were caught by FBI investigators:

“Monzon’s plan, naturally, was to lie low. The crew sealed the money in vacuum packs and split up. Monzon stashed some of his money in PVC pipes and buried them under his family’s house in Homestead, a rural area halfway between Miami and the Florida Keys. Some went into the attic. He didn’t hide it all, though: He bought a Suzuki Hayabusa motorcycle worth about $14,000. But the everyday dramas of ordinary life continued. Monzon kept his job at the rental company. Cinnamon kept working as well, as a receptionist at Vista magazine. ‘I get up every day at six in the morning to come work like a slave,’ she complained months later in a phone conversation tapped by the FBI.”

“Boatwright took a different approach. He bought a Rolex and a set of gold caps for his teeth and began days-long drug binges at strip clubs. He dropped thousands of dollars partying with friends. Rumors spread to Monzon that he was doing drugs right out in the street.”

Source: Businessweek
Published: Feb 22, 2013
Length: 12 minutes (3,185 words)

Flynt Family Values

Longreads Pick

Jimmy Flynt has had a falling out with his infamous brother Larry, and is now striking out on his own:

“Jimmy doesn’t sugarcoat his time with Larry. His brother is narcissistic, a micromanager, and a publicity hound, he says. Does he feel liberated to no longer have to deal with such a difficult personality? He pauses for a few seconds and then says, ‘I miss him. I enjoyed that brotherly connection.’

“Theirs is a complex relationship, forged under extreme duress during years that encompass Larry’s struggles with drugs, prison, paralysis, and mental illness. Sure, Larry was a piece of work, Jimmy says. But his brother also was his hero. ‘When he cut me off,’ Jimmy says, ‘he cut off his best friend. He cut off his number-one fan.'”

Author: Dave Ghose
Published: Feb 1, 2013
Length: 19 minutes (4,968 words)

A Sin City Savior’s Quest To Cure The Common Hangover

Longreads Pick

An enterprising anesthesiologist is offering hungover people in Las Vegas an intravenous treatment:

“Burke set up an IV bag in his office and inserted a catheter into his foot. ‘That’s really the only place that’s easy to start an IV on yourself,’ he says. ‘I let probably 300 or 400 cc’s of fluid in.’ The hydration offered some relief, but not enough to declare victory over his hangover. ‘I said, “OK, it’s time to put the drugs in. Let’s see what’s going to happen with this.”‘

“First, he added Zofran, an anti-nausea medicine. ‘After about 10 minutes, the nausea started melting away.’ Then, he added Toradol. ‘When I get hangovers, it feels like there’s a vice on my head.’ The impact of the Toradol was dramatic, however. ‘Literally, within three minutes, it was like someone had unscrewed the vice. I was like, ‘Good God, I can’t believe I’ve been suffering all these years when I could have been done with it in 30 minutes.'”

Author: Greg Beato
Source: BuzzFeed
Published: Feb 1, 2013
Length: 25 minutes (6,490 words)

Do We Really Want to Live Without the Post Office?

Longreads Pick

The U.S. Postal Service is losing $25 million per day—but its leadership is not giving up:

“The investment in the shipping and trucking and sorting infrastructure has already been made, so they’re exploring whether there are ways to get more value from it. Postal carriers already deliver one million packages of drugs and contact lenses per day. For an aging, longer-living, and ever-more-medicated population, Rx by mail could be vastly expanded. Delivery is confidential, tamper-proof, and utterly dependable. In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, when subways and many drugstores in the Rockaways and elsewhere were shut down, the postal service was still delivering medicine to many of the elderly in the worst-hit areas.

“But there may also be other opportunities outside of mail and packages. The main battle in retail right now is over the ‘last mile.’ Amazon, Walmart, and eBay all want to be able to deliver their goods almost instantly. The postal service is uniquely suited to offer this. The idea would be that if you order a new toaster or jacket in the morning, your mail carrier would bring it to your door by dinner. According to Leon Nicholas, an analyst at consulting firm Kantar Retail, there have been high-level discussions between the postal service and Walmart over such an arrangement.”

Source: Esquire
Published: Jan 26, 2013
Length: 39 minutes (9,958 words)

Theater of Pain

Longreads Pick

A look at the culture of playing through your injuries in the NFL:

“But when you’re always hurting, how do you know when you’re hurt?

“You don’t. Not always, anyway. ‘A lot of times you don’t know exactly when the injury happens, because you’re taking drugs like Toradol or another kind of anti-inflam, so you’re feeling good,’ says Tennessee Titans quarterback Matt Hasselbeck. ‘Or maybe you’re dealing with a previous injury, like an ankle, and you’re taking Toradol, so you’re feeling a little bit better, but now all of a sudden everything is feeling a little bit better. Plus, you have the rush of adrenaline — so the injury might hurt a little, but you don’t really realize it. You might not feel it till the next day, or you may feel it that night. Because your mind-set is to play through everything you can, unless you cannot. And usually, it’s been my experience that when you come off the field after an injury, the trainer or the team doctor is meeting you. They’re like, ‘You haven’t moved your arm in thirty seconds. What happened?’ And you’re like, “I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine — leave me alone.”‘”

Author: Tom Junod
Source: Esquire
Published: Jan 19, 2013
Length: 23 minutes (5,947 words)

But Never a Lovely So Real

Longreads Pick

On the life and career of writer Nelson Algren, one of the most prolific—yet underappreciated—writers of the last century:

“For my money, no book more elegantly describes the world of men and women whom the boom years were designed to pass by. In the decades after Golden Arm, the country obsessed over the behaviors and fates of women and men like Algren’s characters—and dedicated millions to altering them through wars on poverty and drugs—but in 1949 Algren was nearly alone in reminding the country that having an upper class requires having a lower class. For the skill and elegance of its prose, its compassion, and its prescience, I’d rank Golden Arm among the very best books written in the twentieth century. Before Algren’s fall from favor and the onset of his obscurity, many people agreed with that assessment. The book received glowing reviews from Time, the New York Times Book Review, the Chicago Sun-Times and Tribune, even the New Yorker. Doubleday nominated it for the Pulitzer, and Hemingway, who had declared Algren the second-best American writer (after Faulkner) when Never Come Morning was published, wrote a promotional quote that went too far for Doubleday’s taste but pleased Algren so much he taped it to his fridge:

Into a world of letters where we have the fading Faulkner and that overgrown Lil Abner Thomas Wolfe casts a shorter shadow every day, Algren comes like a corvette or even a big destroyer… Mr. Algren can hit with both hands and move around and he will kill you if you are not awfully careful… Mr. Algren, boy, are you good.

Source: The Believer
Published: Jan 1, 2013
Length: 35 minutes (8,997 words)

Operation Delirium

Longreads Pick

Colonel James S. Ketchum oversaw years of research into new methods of chemical warfare—which included testing on U.S. soldiers:

“Today, Ketchum is eighty-one years old, and the facility where he worked, Edgewood Arsenal, is a crumbling assemblage of buildings attached to a military proving ground on the Chesapeake Bay. The arsenal’s records are boxed and dusting over in the National Archives. Military doctors who helped conduct the experiments have long since moved on, or passed away, and the soldiers who served as their test subjects—in all, nearly five thousand of them—are scattered throughout the country, if they are still alive. Within the Army, and in the world of medical research, the secret clinical trials are a faint memory. But for some of the surviving test subjects, and for the doctors who tested them, what happened at Edgewood remains deeply unresolved. Were the human experiments there a Dachau-like horror, or were they sound and necessary science? As veterans of the tests have come forward, their unanswered questions have slowly gathered into a kind of historical undertow, and Ketchum, more than anyone else, has been caught in its pull. In 2006, he self-published a memoir, ‘Chemical Warfare: Secrets Almost Forgotten,’ which defended the research. Next year, a class-action lawsuit brought against the federal government by former test subjects will go to trial, and Ketchum is expected to be the star witness.

“The lawsuit’s argument is in line with broader criticisms of Edgewood: that, whether out of military urgency or scientific dabbling, the Army recklessly endangered the lives of its soldiers—naïve men, mostly, who were deceived or pressured into submitting to the risky experiments. The drugs under review ranged from tear gas and LSD to highly lethal nerve agents, like VX, a substance developed at Edgewood and, later, sought by Saddam Hussein. Ketchum’s specialty was a family of molecules that block a key neurotransmitter, causing delirium. The drugs were known mainly by Army codes, with their true formulas classified. The soldiers were never told what they were given, or what the specific effects might be, and the Army made no effort to track how they did afterward. Edgewood’s most extreme critics raise the spectre of mass injury—a hidden American tragedy.”

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Dec 11, 2012
Length: 57 minutes (14,350 words)

A writer visits the home of Bryan Saunders, an artist known for his self-portraits created under the influence of a variety of drugs:

We turn to the next one. ‘Whoa,’ I say. This one could not be less Xanax-like. The drawing is spindly and paranoid, and the page is patterned with real-life bullet holes. They pepper Bryan’s stomach and neck. I ask Bryan how they got there and he explains that he used a gun borrowed from a friend. He propped up the page from the sketchbook and repeatedly shot it. ‘I remember bouncing into the walls like a fly going bong, bong, bong,’ he says. The drug that elicited this reaction was called Geodon.

‘Geodon?’ I say.

Bryan Googles it. ‘It’s for symptoms of schizophrenia,’ he reads, ‘so it’s an anti-psychotic agent, I guess.’

‘Did you get it from somebody with schizophrenia?’ I ask.

‘No, I got it from a doctor,’ Bryan says. And this is when Bryan tells me the other way he acquires many of his drugs. He sometimes visits psychiatrists, tells them about the art project, and asks them for ‘samples of some pain pill or sedative I’ve never tried. I say, ‘Can you write me a prescription for just one so I can do my drawing?’ And I take my book with me and show them my art project. And they always give me some crazy, crazy anti-psychotic pill instead.’

“Bryan Saunders: Portrait Of The Artist On Crystal Meth.” — Jon Ronson, The Guardian

Bryan Saunders: Portrait Of The Artist On Crystal Meth

Longreads Pick

A writer visits the home of Bryan Saunders, an artist known for his self-portraits created under the influence of a variety of drugs:

“We turn to the next one. ‘Whoa,’ I say. This one could not be less Xanax-like. The drawing is spindly and paranoid, and the page is patterned with real-life bullet holes. They pepper Bryan’s stomach and neck. I ask Bryan how they got there and he explains that he used a gun borrowed from a friend. He propped up the page from the sketchbook and repeatedly shot it. ‘I remember bouncing into the walls like a fly going bong, bong, bong,’ he says. The drug that elicited this reaction was called Geodon.

“‘Geodon?’ I say.

“Bryan Googles it. ‘It’s for symptoms of schizophrenia,’ he reads, ‘so it’s an anti-psychotic agent, I guess.’

“‘Did you get it from somebody with schizophrenia?’ I ask.

“‘No, I got it from a doctor,’ Bryan says. And this is when Bryan tells me the other way he acquires many of his drugs. He sometimes visits psychiatrists, tells them about the art project, and asks them for ‘samples of some pain pill or sedative I’ve never tried. I say, ‘Can you write me a prescription for just one so I can do my drawing?’ And I take my book with me and show them my art project. And they always give me some crazy, crazy anti-psychotic pill instead.'”

Author: Jon Ronson
Source: The Guardian
Published: Nov 30, 2012
Length: 11 minutes (2,942 words)