Opium Fiend Quotes

“In southern Laos, in the bamboo jungles along what was once the Ho Chi Minh trail, I visited a village whose weavers had produced cotton blankets with motifs that could not be misidentified: American fighter planes and “Huey” helicopters. It was as though I had found the exact opposite of a World War II cargo cult. This isolated culture living along the former Ho Chi Minh trail—one of the most heavily bombed pieces of real estate in history—had produced talismanic blankets in the hope that those wrapped in them would be protected from the terrible rain of bombs and bullets.”
― Steven Martin, Opium Fiend: A 21st Century Slave to a 19th Century Addiction

“Things got used until they were useless and then they were tossed into a heap in a vacant lot that served as the neighborhood dump. There discarded items sat until the scavengers with wooden pushcarts made their rounds, picking through the piles. Anything recyclable—bottles, wire, any kind of scrap—was carted away to a vast and stinking shantytown in another part of the city where there resided what seemed to be a caste of trash pickers who made a living from recycling Manila’s refuse.”
― Steven Martin, Opium Fiend: A 21st Century Slave to a 19th Century Addiction

“Is it possible that a person’s childhood fascination with some object could subtly influence every other decision made during his or her life, a snowballing of interests, propelled by obsession and compulsion, that rolls on long after the initial discovery is forgotten?”
― Steven Martin, Opium Fiend: A 21st Century Slave to a 19th Century Addiction

“To most Westerners, the Philippines suffers from a lack of exoticism. Simply put, Philippine culture is just too accessible. To a young Western backpacker, sharing a bus ride with a saffron-robed Buddhist monk reading the sacred Pali texts is exotic. Sitting next to a Catholic nun reading the Bible is a lot less so. When the Buddhist monk takes out his prayer beads, closes his eyes, and chants under his breath, the Westerner swoons. When the Catholic nun pulls out her rosary and says her Hail Marys, the backpacker squirms.”
― Steven Martin, Opium Fiend: A 21st Century Slave to a 19th Century Addiction

“Willi and I might take turns reading aloud passages from some of our favorite books (David Kidd’s Peking Story and John Blofeld’s City of Lingering Splendour were always at hand), and at least once during each session Willi’s wife would come down to the Chamber to say hello and recline for a pipe or two.”
― Steven Martin, Opium Fiend: A 21st Century Slave to a 19th Century Addiction

“pipe dream.” This term meant the same then as it does today, a way of describing an irrational sense of optimism. Irrational or not, this is opium’s greatest gift to the smoker: boundless optimism—the kind that one rarely experiences beyond childhood. All good things seem possible; problems are easily solvable; obstacles are always surmountable.”
― Steven Martin, Opium Fiend: A 21st Century Slave to a 19th Century Addiction

“Mentally, opium was a welling euphoria followed by a serene sense of well-being. The effects of the chandu were gradual and subtle, washing over me like a succession of tender caresses. A juvenile lust for kicks would not likely be satisfied by chandu’s leisurely and deliciously nuanced mental banquet. This perhaps explains why, in China’s past, high-quality opium was considered an intellectual pursuit and not recommended for young people or the mentally immature.”
― Steven Martin, Opium Fiend: A 21st Century Slave to a 19th Century Addiction

“Opium arrived in China around the seventh century via Arab traders, whose opium-laden camels traveled east over the fabled Silk Road. The Arabic connection is most evident in the Chinese word for opium, yapian, which is probably a corruption of the Arabic word for opium, afiyun. The Arabic word was, in turn, based on Afyon, the name of a province in what is now modern-day Turkey, where the Arabs believed opium originated.”
― Steven Martin, Opium Fiend: A 21st Century Slave to a 19th Century Addiction

“There is nothing like a sanitized present to make one yearn for the wicked past.”
― Steven Martin, Opium Fiend