Search results
Ch a pter 6 ECSTA SY A S TH ER APY a woman with autism, first took Ecstasy in 2007. She was at a party in Sarasota, at the New College of Florida. Using a testing kit she’d bought from an organization named Erowid—a harm-reduction nonprofit that educates people about the risks of psychoactive substances—she confirmed, as best she could, her drug was pure. She swallowed it and waited to see what happened. As she later told a journalist, the disjointed, difficult-to-process jumble of thoughts she’d grown used to, which she attributed to her autism and had
This article explores the reception and transformation of William Blake’s countercultural legacy by focusing on the neo-Romantic resurgences within maelstrÖm reEvolution, an experimental performance and arts collective based in Brussels but with heavy transnational affiliations. In relation to the company’s neo-shamanic and therapeutic conception of poiesis, Blake is an inspirational figure amongst a broader family of mentors ranging from Beat Generation writers to Arthur Rimbaud and Alexandro Jodorowsky. The Blake–maelstrÖm connection is here examined for the first time. Blending classical reception studies with a broader interest in the intersections between poiesis and the ‘sacred’, this article approaches countercultural Blake as the archetypal embodiment of the shamanic poet. More specifically, it reflects on how, as the poet of ‘double-edged madness’ and ‘Spiritual Strife’, Blake’s subversion of alienation into ecstasy feeds maelstrÖm’s own ‘therapoetic’ experimentalism and psycho-aesthetic endeavours to restore the lines of communication between the ‘visible’ and the ‘invisible’.
In 1995, at a birthday party in Bristol, eighteen-year-old Leah Betts took an ecstasy tablet and drank approximately seven litres of water within a ninety-minute period. Shortly afterwards she fell into a coma from which she would not recover. Leah’s death sparked a controversial new anti-drugs campaign when the family gave the press a harrowing photo of her. Ecstasy, a
. While this chapter will conclude, out of chronological sequence, with a detailed commentary of Trapeze , which I consider an unjustly neglected film, preliminary remarks on The Key, The Running Man and The Agony and the Ecstasy will, I hope, demonstrate that even what are on balance rightly considered flawed films contain many remarkable moments. The Last Warrior (1970) and Follow Me brought his career to an end with
groups. Manchester is a blinder of a booze city, and it can be judged somewhere on the spectrum from harmless relaxation all the way through to personal addiction and social damage. During the spring and summer of 1988, however, thousands of young people stopped drinking alcohol as black-and-white lives turned technicolour. What might have formerly been a night out getting plastered had become an intense, supercharged experience, thanks to a new mood-enhancing illegal Class A drug. Ecstasy was the street name for
folk song or country music, but for the occasion of dancing – a frantic and sometimes violent mode of dancing, headbanging and moshing. Extreme heavy metal is essentially live music that generates an intense experience outside the home, outside the clubs and the malls, at extreme volume. In the mosh pit, beneath the ‘hell-hop polydrumming and nail-bomb showers of soprano-drone guitar and sampled squeal’ (Udo, 2002: 127), Slipknot’s audience are a mass of swarming maggots writhing in ecstasy. Slipknot themselves are noted for their high-energy, frenzied yet ritualised
despair at the end of a match, the more extreme emotions are displayed. Yet humans have a wide range of emotions, some of which can be conflictual (Doidge and Sandri, 2018b). Within the cauldron of the football stadium, there is a whole range of emotions on display. Fans and ultras can produce their own moments of ecstasy even when their team is losing. There can be concern for an injured star player even when winning, or frustration at a coach substituting a player that an individual fan sees as vital to the team. Even with hooliganism, anger may not be the motivating
In Bernini's statue The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa , she is lying back in a swoon with her mouth wide open. An angel stands over her. In one hand he holds an arrow, directed at her heart; the other teases the hem of her robe. Beams of light erupt from the sky. You can tell she is in both kinds of ecstasy. When I look at that sculpture, the folds of her marble dress, I can feel her lightness. Breathing life into stone. This is what it means to float
fabulist; the two Barkerian (re)fabulised and fabulising characters; and all present and future directors and actors that may transfer the play to the stage).20 Barker is very fond of the word ‘ecstasy’ (in Greek ‘ecstasis’), which in its philosophical use (ec-stase) means moving off the normal position: a dislocation R&G 15_Tonra 01 11/10/2013 17:25 Page 165 The Dying of Today and the meta-stases of language that also brings in a new vision of the world. My own borrowed term, ‘metastasis’, additionally means a relocation, a reappearance, which also bears the notion
Is there a pill for love? What about an anti-love drug, to help you get over your ex? This book argues that certain psychoactive substances, including MDMA—the active ingredient in Ecstasy—might help ordinary couples work through relationship difficulties and strengthen their connection. Others may help sever emotional ties during a breakup, with transformative implications for how we think about love. Oxford ethicists Julian Savulescu and Brian D. Earp build a case for conducting research into "love drugs" and "anti-love drugs" and explore their ethical implications for individuals and society. Why are we still in the dark about the effects of common medications on romantic partnerships? How can we overhaul scientific research norms to put interpersonal factors front and center? Biochemical interventions into love and relationships are not some far-off speculation. Our most intimate connections are already being influenced by drugs we ingest for other purposes. Controlled studies are already underway to see whether artificial brain chemicals might enhance couples' therapy. And conservative religious groups are already experimenting with certain medications to quash romantic desires—and even the urge to masturbate—among children and vulnerable sexual minorities. Simply put, the horse has bolted. Where it runs is up to us. Love is the Drug arms readers with the latest scientific knowledge as well as a set of ethical tools that you can use to decide for yourself if these sorts of medications should be a part of our society. Or whether a chemical romance might be right for you.