To help you decide if BP mag is something you’d be interested in, here are some excerpts from the available issues…
Issue 14 – Our new issue out now
Sebastian Horsley in one of his last ever interviews
A Modern Day Libertine: Back in April, BP spent a long Sunday afternoon interviewing Sebastian Horsley; a rare romantic; rule breaker of our times. The most decadent of Dandies. Yet only weeks later, he is found dead. Overdosed at 47. BP pays tribute..Written by E O’Mara
Sebastian Horsley, London’s own Dandy. The newspapers have called him many things, but we shall say something different; Think Oscar Wilde and Quentin Crisp, but with the sexual proclivities of Byron; a Dandyfied Romantic with a celebrated wit, a performer and poseur with a devilish charm that left you either reeling in horror or demanding an encore! Outrageous certainly, he was even banned him from promoting his book in the States for ‘Crimes Against Moral Turpitude’! How perverse, how Horsley!
Delightfully honest, (some might say brutally) always direct, fabulously authentic, an iconoclast to the last…His style was original, colourful and in your face; on the ground he was a shimmer that would shammy along the streets of London, a challenge to the gray suits and dreariness of 9 to 5ers – declare your desires or get out of my way.
“I’m a romantic nihilist” Sebastian once told me. “People laugh at me in this country for being a romantic but to me its brave – and it always goes wrong. And the nihilist thing is not a cynical rejection of belief it is the positive courage to live without it. We have to turn nihilism into the arrow of longing; our anger into wit, our pain into humour and embrace life as a great big metaphysical joke”. He then declared “People think I’m absurd, but given that life is completely absurd, then to mirror it with an absurdest dance which is what Dandyism is, is in many ways taking up a real position, who cares if people think I’m insane, they just cant hear the music”. ….Continued issue 14
BP's Lung Health Series
Maintaining Lung Health
Your LUNGS; Your tree of life, it’s branches ensure oxygen reaches every part of your body, keeping your brain and bodily organs fed and functioning and your energy levels up. BP introduces our Lung Health Series: Part 1, starting with the problems affecting those of us who smoke drugs. L.Innes & E.O.
At BP over the last few years in particular, we have witnessed what seems to be a growing number of drug users suffering from lung (pulmonary) disease and/or complications that arise from smoking, and sometimes injecting – drugs, including long term tobacco smoking. So our new series entitled Maintaining Lung Health hopes to shed some light on an area that is rarely discussed but is becoming more relevant, especially as we get older and have smoked longer. In addition, evidence now shows the emergence of new complaints such as ‘crack lung’ a controversial, though now recognised syndrome affecting crack and stimulant smokers. Tuberculosis -another lung disease (BP issue 4) is also on the rise (London has amongst the highest rates in Europe) though our knowledge and attitude towards it is old fashioned and should be updated (stay tuned). Irritating our airways with smoke, bacteria (and foreign bodies via injecting drugs) over the years can all contribute to a range of lung problems. Heroin smoking is also being attributed to shortness of breath, allergies and higher incidence of impaired lung function….Research into drug user specific lung complaints is not very easy to conduct and so has been slow to emerge. Many drug smokers/injectors are also tobacco or marijuana smokers (and many dope smokers also use tobacco) so teasing out what does what damage is difficult. Research studies are also difficult to control; the purity of drugs being smoked, depth of an individuals inhalation, patterns of smoking, number of puffs taken, adulterants in drugs used and the devices used to smoke ones drugs all make studies difficult to regulate and control….(continued page 18, issue 14)
and an excerpt from our Reader’s Contributions
I Predict a RIOTT…..
One woman, her boyfriend, two drug habits and rapidly failing health. Until
diamorphine hydrochloride
that is, she took up the offer of heroin on prescription from London’s only diamorphine trial, The RIOTT. By Hannah
RIOTT is the name of the government’s research trial for injectable opiate treatments, which runs an ‘injecting clinic’ at (London’s) Marina House. It was set up to test the efficacy of prescribing pharmaceutical heroin to reduce consumption of street heroin, test it’s affect on criminal behaviour and to see if it could have role in treatment in the UK for those who have proved as yet to be ‘untreatable’. I first heard about it at Stockwell Drug Project in 2007 after ‘yet another’ unsuccessful rehab programme. I remember being quite cynical thinking that it sounded defeatist ‘what’s the point in taking prescribed heroin, that’d be giving into it’. I thought it would lead to nothing but a life on gear, how depressing. So thinking I knew better I stuck my nose in the air and pronounced that I was going to go on Subutex and detox in the community. Within two weeks I’d overdosed in my flat, paralyzed my left hand, a huge cellulitis infection took over one of my legs, I’d lost my home and was told I may or may not get the mobility back in my left hand. (As a musician this would destroy any chance of a future in music)…(cont issue 14)
Black Popy continues to include well written and comprehensively researched articles on issues of interest to the drug using community. We are always interested in your ideas and your stories. We pay for what we publish. Or to read the contents of the current issue, No.14 click here
