Opium: Yuppie Wonderdrug

[prole]

When do we get the :: [font:Arial Black]DEATH PANELS[/font] :: again?

The Touraine Sauvignon Blanc would have been enough—or the carved wooden platters with their arrays of tabbouleh, hummus, and fruit. But the thing that's really setting this cocktail party apart is the cucumber water—a big glass pitcher of filtered ice water with a few wafer-thin slices of the vegetable bobbing around the surface.

 

"Nice, isn't it?" Steve asks (the names in this story have been changed). He's a 33-year-old medical student with frameless glasses, dressed in a crisp white American Apparel polo shirt. "It just gives it that little added something." Steve and his wife, Cindy, a 32-year-old journalist with long, coffee-colored hair, are hosting this gathering at their cozy two-bedroom house in Richmond, Virginia. The lights are low, and some chill-out music with a Brazilian vibe is wafting out of the Bose speakers. Cindy's talking real estate and gardening with Stella, an elegant redhead in a lacy black top who's clutching a glass of that Sauvignon Blanc. James, a dating coach, is inquiring about the art hanging above the sofa. Steve tells him it's a recent acquisition. "We love it," he says. And Brian, a local author, is talking about his pants, which look something like pink seersuckers, except the stripes go sideways.

 

"A guy in San Francisco makes them," he says. "They're called cordarounds. They're so comfortable!"

 

At around 10:30, the party takes a turn. Brian sets his wine down and produces a small silken pouch. He extracts a folded wine label, and displays the contents on a table beneath a vintage lamp: about 10 grams of tar-colored opium—a Tootsie Roll-size chunk worth about $750.

 

Nobody gasps. They knew it was coming. In fact, it's the reason they're here (the cucumber water was just a bonus). Tonight, this small cadre of educated, successful young suburbanites is here to chase the dragon.

 

...For people like Steve and Cindy, though—who get their vegetables delivered weekly from a farmers' co-op and who would sooner hold up a convenience store than jab a needle in their arm—opium has become the Whole Foods heroin, an illicit gourmet treat to be consumed with the same reverence as a bottle of Barolo...

 

...that mystique is exactly what opium has over similar drugs they've avoided not because they're dangerous, but because they're distasteful.

 

"Heroin is like Wonder Bread," says Steve, who's up first. "Opium is like seven-grain."

 

..."It's not fast food," he continues. "It's almost part of the slow-food movement."

 

"I could really go for some cucumber water."

 

--from here.

[Ponderosa]