The high life...

Oh, those were the days.

For those of you too young to remember, The High Times Encyclopedia of Recreational Drugs (c. 1978) was published by Stonehill Publishing, a division of Trans-High Communications (I'm not making this up). I sold their magazine High Times in the bookstore I managed.

In quasi-conservative 2009, I cannot imagine this book in a mainstream bookstore. Importing it to Canada now would likely be considered some kind of illegal activity.

It is quite impossible to convey to those who weren't around in the 60s and 70s how fluid and almost socially acceptable drug use could be. (For example, a friend brought weed to my bookstore office, and cajoled me to share it, and I did. Another time when we were having a book-signing of a children's book author, he brought cookies laden with hash into the store!)

It was everywhere. I have never been a big user of recreational drugs (or pharmacy drugs, for that matter) but did have a healthy if cautious curiosity. I've not even had weed since about 1981, but I did use this book to get the scoop on the various relaxants of the day.

If someone came up to me today and said that they were smoking weed, smoking hash, eating magic mushrooms, taking mescaline, doing a hit of acid (all things I've done, but over a long time-frame), I'd likely think they were some kind of loser or freak. And I've never even seen cocaine, except in the movies - so that should put my minor activities into context. Now there are so many basement chemists and so much money involved in dangerous and frequently impure drugs such as meth or ecstasy, being adventurous is more dangerous than it used to be.