Harry Pothead
I’ve never been the biggest fan of the Harry Potter franchise, but I’ve seen all the films at some point and I’ve read the first book when I was about *this* big. So, this week, me ‘n’ the misses went to see the new Harry Potter film at the IMAX in Birmingham, where the effects were special and there were 150% the usual amount of dimensions (at least for the beginning of the film).
I’m sure we’ve all seen this “Harry Pothead” picture (you should have, it’s about as old as the Internet), but this latest film was jam-packed with drugs references all by itself. Firstly, they all got pissed down the pub, at which point Hermione got frisky and a million parents all cried out at once… and were then suddenly quoted in a New York Times article, but that wasn’t even the best bit. Some time later on, this girl that fancies Harry leaves some chocolates on his bed, but then Harry’s mate Ron (who looks exactly like my brother, I shit you not!) eats them all. Unbeknownst to Ron, these chocolates contain some kind of love potion. 
When Harry finds Ron later on, Ron is completely off his tits, as though he’d snorted 300 mg of MDMA about half an hour before. He tells everyone how much he loves them, hugs cushions and generally makes an arse of himself. It’s odd that none of the aforementioned parents seemed to mind about this, but a little bit of underage drinking is a moral outrage. If only that mindset transferred over to real life…
Yet another parallel between magic and drugs was drawn when Harry consumed some of his “luck potion”, which magically seemed to make him feel rather coked up – talkative, inappropriate and overly confident. Perhaps there’s some deeper message here, showing us that everyone gets up to this kind of shit once they’re old enough? Or perhaps, JayKay Rowling was just battered when she wrote it?
The final point worth mentioning is when Harry’s new teacher suspiciously harvests some leaves and mentions their potential black market price, while reminding us all that such topics of discussion are hypothetical. Even if he was talking about their usefulness as a magic reagent, I still like to think he might roll one up at the end of a hard day’s teaching.
Spiritplants Radio
My mix on Spiritplants Radio is now online in their archives in case you missed it the first time round. You can listen to it right here:
Drugs Forum
Drugs-Forum is currently making a few changes, ranging from the entire structure of the site, to a bit of spring cleaning. Somewhere in there falls the task of designing a new logo, which I’ve had a crack at. It seems a real possibility that it might get used, pending a few minor changes. Here’s the current version:
Unfortunately, it’ll be much smaller if it’s actually used, so a big part of the design process has been taken up by trying to make it look clear at a smaller size. I’ve shown it here bigger because it looks even better.
As usual, comments & criticism welcome!.