Travel Tales Monthly

No 6 DEC 2014

The December issue of Travel Tales Monthly samples ‘drug tourism’ — the quest to achieve the sorts of brain-states that travelers avidly seek out for the purposes of recreating, vegetating, meditating, cogitating, experimenting, exploring, or seeking enlightenment and personal growth.

Such tales as Snake Wine, The Full Moon Party, and Magical, Mystical Marrakesh illustrate how travelers wander the world to experiment or explore by ingesting, injecting, imbibing, chewing, eating, snorting, and smoking a variety of drugs, substances, plants, and even ‘medications,’ in order to morph from the normal, oft boring, mundane, ordinary, conscious waking-state into the brainless or the superconscious in the attempt to achieve various mental states of being that range somewhere betwixt and between the 'mindless' and the ‘mindful.’

It is one thing to dabble in a limited way with substances at home; it's another matter, altogether, to venture into a vast world of the exotic — a world that is a veritable ‘candy store’ of magical, mystical drugs and substances that are there for the taking.

Some travelers are lured to the hypothetical mysterious so-called ‘blue’ pill or the ‘red’ pill. They can not only choose one of these pills to satisfy their exploring, their inquisitiveness, their mental journeys piled on top of their physical travel journeys — they can choose both, as well as a panoply of other substances.

But what are the consequences of ‘doing’ drugs and substances in a foreign land? In one of our featured stories for this month, Snake Wine, our traveler toys dangerously with drinking, willy-nilly, a concoction of blood and venom of a deadly poisonous snake in a Taiwan night market.

And even worse, and unbelievably, in The Full Moon Party, our storyteller describes how a couple of hippies get in over their heads by spiking the drinks of two Spanish policeman with LSD! How safe or sane is that? 

Next, several of our stories describe how travelers seek out the jungles of South America (and also South Africa) in order to drink a horrid, vile tasting concoction — called “ayahuasca,” — perhaps throwing all caution to the wind and often throwing up violently in the process — for what? — evidently to engage with some sorts of unknown forces, energies, spirits, or entities, even, that seem to take over and ‘intervene’ in their bodies, minds, and spirits, presumably on their behalf!

Acting in ways often contrary to good common sense, we have in this month’s issue a number of travelers who dare to taunt fate via taking unknown drugs and substances, often in the face of possible dangerous and disastrous consequences due to the unknowns involved in doing so.

All-in-all, you will also see some aspects of travel that you, yourself, may not ever have even considered before.  

And, once again, you will certainly experience vicariously those odd vagaries of travel-life that can await you and can suddenly appear just around the corner at about any turn along the way.

Winding up this month's issue is Michael Wiese, our guest contributor, an acclaimed author, filmmaker, and world traveler, who describes his own bouts with the wild, wacky, and mysterious world of ‘Mother Ayahuasca.’