This is Amy Winehouse.

This is Amy Winehouse on drugs.

I finally got ahold of the “Frank” album. It’s amazing to hear her talent and motivation she had on that LP, only to be forwarded the video that The Sun somehow got a hold of, which shows Amy smoking crack and searching her drug-riddled home for her lost kitten which she rambles on aimlessly about. The Amy on “Frank” was in love, although troubled, but hopeful and thirsty for fame. This Amy won’t be around for much longer.

I miss her,

Autopsy results for Hawthorne Heights guitarist Casey Calvert, who was found dead on the band’s tour bus last month, were released today, with cause of death being attributed to “acute combined effects of opiate, citalopram and clonazepam intoxication.”

The autopsy listed Calvert’s death as accidental, though it added that it was brought on due to “substance abuse.” Both citalopram (also known by the brand name Celexa) and clonazepam (also known by the brand names Klonopin and Rivotril) are prescription drugs, the former an antidepressant and the latter used to treat seizure disorders and panic attack.

Klonopin and Celexa are definitely a powerful combination, but are still fairly routine in the treatment of anxiety/depression/existential angst/etc. The X-factor in the equation is of course the as-of-yet unnamed “opiate” which could be anything from OxyContin to Vicodin to Heroin, but the moral of the story is that Casey Calvert died from depression, or at least the drugs he used to try to treat it. Thus is makes it all the more fitting that the folks over at To Write Love On Her Arms, a nonprofit dedicated to combatting depression, addiction, self-injury and suicide, are currently offering a Casey Calvert Memorial Shirt, with 100% of proceeds going towards Casey’s family. RIP CASEY CALVERT

Photo by Zack Arias / Used Film

UPDATE: Hawthorne Heights bassist Eron Bucciarelli has just released a statement to Absolutepunk.net about today’s autopsy results:

From the time of the incident we suspected a possible drug interaction as the cause. Casey wrestled with depression for as long as we knew him. He saw numerous doctors and took an ever-changing array of medicines to get better. To our knowledge, Casey never knowingly took more than that which was prescribed. It’s a possibility that he mistakenly took too many of one medicine while under the affects of another. We shouldn’t even have to say this, but people’s minds will wander if we don’t…Casey never took anything illegal and certainly didn’t intentionally abuse anything that was prescribed to him.

What toxicology reports don’t show is that prior to us leaving for tour, Casey had a root canal, and was POSSIBLY prescribed some sort of opiate based painkiller (ie, Vicodin, Oxycotin, etc). We’re not certain of this at the moment and this report simply raises more questions than it really answers. If the opiate in his system was given to him due to his dental procedure, its safe to say there was a breakdown in either his doctors communications with one another in regards to Casey’s meds and/or the pharmaceutical databases should have red flagged a potentially dangerous drug combination. We stick by our initial statement. Casey was not involved in anything illegal and we don’t want his memory to be tarnished by this report. Please be respectful as we deal with this news.

Sincerely,
Eron

From Daily Kos:

This Florida based Gulfstream II jet aircraft # N987SA crash landed on September 24, 2007 after it ran out of fuel over Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula it had a cargo of several tons of Cocaine on board now documents have turned up on both sides of the Atlantic that link this Cocaine Smuggling Gulfstream II jet aircraft # N987SA that crashed in Mexico to the CIA who used it on at least 3 rendition flights from Europe and the USA to Guantanamo’s infamous torture chambers between 2003 to 2005.

Question, so now that it is out in the open that the war in drugs is nothing but a sham (and has been, um, since the beginning). Who is going to go to jail for this incident? And when are they going to let out the hundreds of thousands of people who fill our prisons for selling drugs? In reality, good ole USA street slangin’ wouldn’t haven’t been possible without the CIA’s successful attempts to flood our country full of mind numbing narcotics and create a generation of addicts.

Another question, why do we pay our taxes? was our tax money used to fly this jet?

I’m not guilty. *You’re* the one that’s guilty. The lawmakers, the politicians, the Columbian drug lords, all you who lobby against making drugs legal. Just like you did with alcohol during the prohibition. You’re the one who’s guilty. I mean, c’mon, let’s kick the ballistics here: Ain’t no Uzi’s made in Harlem. Not one of us in here owns a poppy field. This thing is bigger than Nino Brown. This is big business. This is the American way.
- New Jack City

“How fortunate for governments that the people they administer don’t think.”
-Adolf Hitler

Wake up!

Researchers are trying to prove that ecstasy can be used for more than dancing to mind-numbingly awful techno.This Washington Post article on Research into the medical use of MDMA, aka ecstasy, is pretty interesting. It talks about treatments in post-traumatic stress disorder, double-blind studies, and includes the views of important figures on both sides of the debate over medical use of ecstasy.

It also introduced me to my hero of the day, Alexander Shulgin (formerly of Dow Chemical).

“I understood that our entire universe is contained in the mind and the spirit,” he wrote. “We may choose not to find access to it, we may even deny its existence, but it is indeed there inside us, and there are chemicals that can catalyze its availability.”

Shulgin made it his business to find those chemicals. In a New York Times profile in 2005, when Shulgin was 79, he estimated that he’d synthesized 200 psychoactive compounds and tested them on himself. Their effects ranged from paralyzing him with fear to granting him ecstatic visions. With MDMA, he was convinced that he’d found something special.

“I feel absolutely clean inside, and there is nothing but pure euphoria,” he wrote in his field journal. “The cleanliness, clarity, and marvelous feeling of solid inner strength continued . . . through the next day. I am overcome by the profundity of the experience.”

Sadly, the possibility of future medical use will forever be tarnished by this guy:

Montana Meth Project
(It’s worth watching)

The Montana Meth Project is a large-scale exercise in prevention, aimed at significantly reducing Meth use in Montana. The integrated program consists of an ongoing, research-based marketing campaign—supported by community outreach and public policy initiatives—that realistically and graphically communicate the risks of methamphetamine to the youth of Montana.

The Meth Project was conceived and founded by businessman and Montana rancher, Thomas Siebel. The purpose is to inform potential Meth consumers about the product attributes and actual risks associated with methamphetamine. The goal is to substantially reduce methamphetamine use.
-montanameth.org