"A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what's going on. "
— William S. Burroughs

"If you're going to kick authority in the teeth, you might as well use two feet."
— Keith Richards (Keith Richards: In His Own Words)

"Reality is just a crutch for people who can't handle drugs."
— Robin P. Williams

"I have absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants in which I sometimes so madly indulge. It has not been in the pursuit of pleasure that I have periled life and reputation and reason. It has been the desperate attempt to escape from torturing memories, from a sense of insupportable loneliness and a dread of some strange impending doom."
— Edgar Allan Poe

"I don't do drugs. I am drugs."
— Salvador Dali

"After a few months in my parents' basement, I took an apartment near the state university, where I discovered both crystal methamphetamine and conceptual art. Either one of these things are dangerous, but in combination they have the potential to destroy entire civilizations. "
— David Sedaris

"It's only in drugs or death we'll see anything new, and death is just to controlling."
— Chuck Palahniuk (Survivor)

"Every gathering has its moment. As an adult, I distract myself by trying to identify it, dreading the inevitable downswing that is sure to follow. The guests will repeat themselves one too many times, or you'll run out of dope or liquor and realize that it was all you ever had in common."
— David Sedaris (Naked)

"They lie about marijuana. Tell you pot-smoking makes you unmotivated. Lie! When you're high, you can do everything you normally do just as well — you just realize that it's not worth the fucking effort. There is a difference."
— Bill Hicks

"Even as a junkie I stayed true [to vegetarianism] - 'I shall have heroin, but I shan't have a hamburger.' What a sexy little paradox."
— Russell Brand (My Booky Wook)

"People are strange . . ."
— Jim Morrison

"There was a thing called Heaven; but all the same they used to drink enormous quantities of alcohol."
...
"There was a thing called the soul and a thing called immortality."
...
"But they used to take morphia and cocaine."
...
"Two thousand pharmacologists and biochemists were subsidized in A.F. 178."
...
"Six years later it was being produced commercially. The perfect drug."
...
"Euphoric, narcotic, pleasantly hallucinant."
...
"All the advantages of Christianity and alcohol; none of their defects."
...
"Take a holiday from reality whenever you like, and come back without so much as a headache or a mythology."
...
"Stability was practically assured."
— Aldous Huxley (Brave New World)

"We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold."
— Hunter S. Thompson (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream)

"The amount of money and of legal energy being given to prosecute hundreds of thousands of Americans who are caught with a few ounces of marijuana in their jeans simply makes no sense - the kindest way to put it. A sterner way to put it is that it is an outrage, an imposition on basic civil liberties and on the reasonable expenditure of social energy."
— William F. Buckley Jr.

"Your kiss is bitter with cocaine."
— Aleister Crowley (Diary of a Drug Fiend)

"Imagine a society that subjects people to conditions that make them terribly unhappy then gives them the drugs to take away their unhappiness. Science fiction It is already happening to some extent in our own society. Instead of removing the conditions that make people depressed modern society gives them antidepressant drugs. In effect antidepressants are a means of modifying an individual's internal state in such a way as to enable him to tolerate social conditions that he would otherwise find intolerable."
— Theodore Kaczynski

"Federal and state laws (should) be changed to no longer make it a crime to possess marijuana for private use."
— Richard Nixon

"Say no to parking lots!"
— John Bytheway

"There seems to be an inborn drive in all human beings not to live in a steady emotional state, which would suggest that such a state is not tolerable to most people. Why else would someone succumb to the attractions of romantic love more than once? Didn’t they learn their lesson the first time or the tenth time or the twentieth time? And it’s the same old lesson: everything in this life—I repeat, everything—is more trouble than it’s worth. And simply being alive is the basic trouble. This is something that is more recognized in Eastern societies than in the West. There’s a minor tradition in Greek philosophy that instructs us to seek a state of equanimity rather than one of ecstasy, but it never really caught on for obvious reasons. Buddhism advises its practitioners not to seek highs or lows but to follow a middle path to personal salvation from the painful cravings of the average sensual life, which is why it was pretty much reviled by the masses and mutated into forms more suited to human drives and desires. It seems evident that very few people can simply sit still. Children spin in circles until they collapse with dizziness."
— Thomas Ligotti

"A Short Alternative Medical Dictionary
Definitions courtesy of Dr Lemuel Pillmeister (also known as Lemmy)

Addiction - When you can give up something any time, as long as it's next Tuesday.
Cocaine - Peruvian Marching Powder. A stimulant that has the extraordinary effect that the more you do, the more you laugh out of context.
Depression - When everything you laugh at is miserable and you can't seem to stop.
Heroin - A drug that helps you to escape reality, while making it much harder to cope when you are recaptured.
Psychosis - When everybody turns into tiny dolls and they have needles in their mouths and they hate you and you don't care because you have THE KNIFE! AHAHAHAHAHAHA!"
— Nikki Sixx (The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star)

""Whether you sniff it smoke it eat it or shove it up your ass the result is the same: addiction." "
— William S. Burroughs

"Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself; and where they are, they should be changed. Nowhere is this more clear than in the laws against possession of marijuana in private for personal use... Therefore, I support legislation amending Federal law to eliminate all Federal criminal penalties for the possession of up to one ounce [28g] of marijuana."
— Jimmy Carter

"KNOW YOUR DOPE FIEND. YOUR LIFE MAY DEPEND ON IT! You will not be able to see his eyes because of the Tea-Shades, but his knuckles will be white from inner tension and his pants will be crusted with semen from constantly jacking off when he can't find a rape victim. He will stagger and babble when questioned. He will not respect your badge. The Dope Fiend fears nothing. He will attack, for no reason, with every weapon at his command-including yours. BEWARE. Any officer apprehending a suspected marijuana addict should use all necessary force immediately. One stitch in time (on him) will usually save nine on you. Good luck.
-The Chief"
— Hunter S. Thompson

"The smell of opium is the least stupid smell in the world."
— Jean Cocteau

"There are no differences but differences of degree between different degrees of difference and no difference."
— William James

"...The efficacy of psychedelics with regard to art has to do with their ability to render language weightless, as fluid and ephemeral as those famous "bubble letters" of the sixties. Psychedelics, I think, disconnect both the signifier and the signified from their purported referents in the phenomenal world - simultaneously bestowing upon us a visceral insight into the cultural mechanics of language, and a terrifying inference of the tumultuous nature that swirls beyond it. In my own experience, it always seemed as if language were a tablecloth positioned neatly upon the table until some celestial busboy suddenly shook it out, fluttering and floating it, and letting it fall back upon the world in not quite the same position as before - thereby giving me a vertiginous glimpse into the abyss that divides the world from our knowing of it. And it is into this abyss that the horror vacui of psychedelic art deploys itself like an incandescent bridge. Because it is one thing to believe, on theoretical evidence, that we live in a prison-house of language. It is quite another to know it, to actually peek into the slippery emptiness as the Bastille explodes around you. Yet psychedelic art takes this apparent occasion for despair and celebrates our escape from linguistic control by flowing out, filling that rippling void with meaningful light, laughter, and a gorgeous profusion."
— Dave Hickey (Air Guitar: Essays on Art & Democracy)

"I had someone at the Houston police station shoot me with heroin so I could do a story about it. The experience was a special kind of hell. I came out understanding full well how one could be addicted to 'smack,' and quickly."
— Dan Rather

"I feel very privileged to hear how somebody used to run around stickin' people up and stealing cars, and now they're gettin' their life back together... I just love the stories. The stories of the fallen world, they excite us. That's the interesting stuff." "
— Denis Johnson

"I've tried everything. I can say to you with confidence, I know a fair amount about LSD. I've never been a social user of any of these things, but my curiosity has carried me into a lot of interesting areas. "
— Dan Rather

"Jordan, it's the Grinch who stole Christmas! Secure Charlotte, Jannie, and Mr. Schminkman!"
— Liz Schuster

"It's spring, it's sixth grade, anything can happen."
— Ms. Judith Cochrane

"To demand that a person pee in a cup whenever you wish him to, without a documented reason to suspect that he has been using an illegal drug, is intolerable in our republic. You are saying to him, "I wonder if you are not behaving in a way that I approve of. Convince me that you indeed are.
Outrageous.
Intolerable."
— Alexander Shulgin (Pihkal: A Chemical Love Story)

"MDMA, it was beginning to be apparent, could be all things to all people."
— Alexander Shulgin (Pihkal: A Chemical Love Story)

"How long will this last, this delicious feeling of being alive, of having penetrated the veil which hides beauty and the wonders of celestial vistas? It doesn't matter, as there can be nothing but gratitude for even a glimpse of what exists for those who can become open to it."
— Alexander Shulgin (Pihkal: A Chemical Love Story)

"I don't know if you realize this, but there are some researchers - doctors - who are giving this kind of drug to volunteers, to see what the effects are, and they're doing it the proper scientific way, in clean white hospital rooms, away from trees and flowers and the wind, and they're surprised at how many of the experiments turn sour. They've never taken any sort of psychedelic themselves, needless to say. Their volunteers - they're called 'subjects,' of course - are given mescaline or LSD and they're all opened up to their surroundings, very sensitive to color and light and other people's emotions, and what are they given to react to? Metal bed-frames and plaster walls, and an occasional white coat carrying a clipboard. Sterility. Most of them say afterward that they'll never do it again."
— Alexander Shulgin (Pihkal: A Chemical Love Story)

"Use them with care, and use them with respect as to the transformations they can achieve, and you have an extraordinary research tool. Go banging about with a psychedelic drug for a Saturday night turn-on, and you can get into a really bad place, psychologically. Know what you're using, decide just why you're using it, and you can have a rich experience. They're not addictive, and they're certainly not escapist, either, but they're exceptionally valuable tools for understanding the human mind, and how it works."
— Alexander Shulgin (Pihkal: A Chemical Love Story)

"I had thought about cocaine in a kind of day-dream."
— Sigmund Freud (The Interpretation of Dreams)

"I was making frequent use of cocaine at that time ... I had been the first to recommend the use of cocaine, in 1885, and this recommendation had brought serious reproaches down on me."
— Sigmund Freud (The Interpretation of Dreams)

""It wasn't a love story." -Tar's dad
"It was a love story. Me, Gemma, and junk." -Tar"
— Melvin Burgess (Smack)

"The habit is now confirmed in me of spending the greater part of the day in sleep, while by night I wander far and wide through the city under the sedative influence of a tincture which has become necessary to my life"
— Matthew Phipps Shiel (Xelucha and Others)

"What do you think he saw?" Damn--I regret the awed way I phrased that and the hushed voice I used. As if I think acid is a "religious" experience, a visionary thing.
"Himself," Josh says. "You always see your true self on acid. You just usually see more than you want to see. So it all seems disorted."
See what I mean? He's not your normal stoner. The guy should become a poet, a psychologist, a scientist.
We pull up near Greg's house and stare at it like it's a damn fortress.
"You don't think he needs to go to the hospital?" I ask.
"Nope," Josh says. "For a while, I thought maybe, yeah. But he's good now, he's off it, he's not hallucinating anymore."
"You're sure?"
"Yeah."
"'Cuz you can die on LSD-"
"That's such anti-drug propaganda bullshit, Dan," Josh interrupts. "Nobody's ever died from an LSD overdose. Ever. As long as you keep people from doing stupid things while they're tripping, it's all good man, man. Why do you think I babysat him?" He reaches into the backseat and punches my shoulder. "LSD isn't your dad's smack. So stop worrying."
I scrunch down in the seat. How'd he know about that? "Right. What's the plan?"
"I'd ask him if ther was a key hidden under a rock," Josh says, "but he's not gonna be much help. Watch." He pokes Greg in the leg, prods him on the shoulder, grabs his cheeks and smushes them together, the way parents do to a baby, and says, " Ootchi googi Greggy, did ums have a good trippy? Did ums find out itty-bitty singies about oos-self zat oos didn't likeums?"
Yup... Greg was in his own little world..."
— J.L. Powers (The Confessional)

"How he could be a good user of LSD," I asked, "And know about the spiritual dimension - all that sort of thing - and still be a crook? I don't understand."
"Then it's time you did. Psychedelic drugs don't change you - they don't change you character - unless you want to be changed. They enable change; they can't impose it..."
— Alexander Shulgin (Pihkal: A Chemical Love Story)

"...Some part of me can't wait to see what life's going to come up with next! Anticipation without the usual anxiety. And underneath it all is the feeling that we both belong here, just as we are, right now."
— Alexander Shulgin

"Everyone should eat hashish, but only once."
— Salvador Dali

"The government are tightening up on ID for sales of tobacco and alcohol son i recommend that young people take more drugs."
— Robert Clark