It’s often said that every generation has its drug of choice. Maybe this isn’t the right way of framing it - maybe it’s decades that have their drugs. The 1980s were cocaine - slicked back hair, greasy besuited businessmen, fast cars, and the ruthless individualism of Thatcher and Reagan. The 1990s, then, were MDMA. Jungle, mindlessly blissful raving, and the complete abandonment of any hope for a different future. The 2000s and 2010s were the decades of opioids, as global culture began to sink into a slop-mixture of gruel and hot sauce. These were the years of post-history. The Euro-American liberal world order had emerged victorious once and for all, and any remnants of the old world (whether it was Syrian Jihadism or Venezuelan Socialism) were bombed and sanctioned into oblivion.
Let’s take a step back. What drug, against all others, has risen to prominence in today’s world? I think there’s a good argument to be made that ketamine is the drug of the 2020s. The past five years have been characterised by the complete dissolution of any structural differences between fact and fiction. The international rules-based order is real, until Russia, Israel, and the USA prove that it’s not. Art was real. When you read something online, you could be sure it was written by a person on the other end, no matter how poorly. No longer.
Ketamine integrates perfectly into our new world of AI, crypto, and hyperniche community. The drug, usually a horse tranquiliser, is most effectively characterised as a dissociative. When taking ketamine, users feel the basic categories that they use to understand the world begin to dissolve. Often, this includes the category of “Self”. Ketamine dissociation is akin to the process art or writing undergoes when it becomes regurgitated into AI. The elements that constitute a whole thing still exist, but they are jumbled around in such a way that they are no longer recognisable.
Ketamine also makes users sensitive to patterns, which are also an increasingly prominent element of the disgusting slop world we live in. So much of life in the 2020s is defined by sheer volume - massive amounts of stimulation and signal pushed into every element of life. We no longer live in a world powered by code - instead, code infiltrates every aspect of our lives. Just as we program computers, so too do our own creations program us. Online interactions “code” and mediate real social behaviours. Ketamine dissolves these boundaries, turning man and machine into one.
Whether or not you want ketamine use to have an impact on your life, it probably is having one. Elon Musk, who is currently operating as Donald Trump’s personal executioner, has admitted to using ket on a nearly constant basis. For Musk, ketamine’s dissolution of boundaries probably exacerbates his willingness to dissolve the American welfare state itself. The rest of us, who now live in his ketamine-fueled fantasy, have no choice but to adjust. If we want to fight back, understanding ket is going to be crucial.
Thursday
Galactic Funk Cuba Street Tavern Opening Femme
Join Galactic Funk in their debut gig for an electrifying performance of jazz funk classics, and the incredible jazz-fusion music of Casiopea and enjoy the improvisation of this exciting band.
9PM - Rogue and Vagabond - Free!
Christopher Tubbs, the host of b.Space’s classic “Body Electric” nights, is returning for the opening of a new venue in the heart of Cuba Street.
N Bass
Femme N Bass’s anniversary! Double the bass, double the boss babe energy, double the dancefloor, all powered by the indomitable Bigbada BOOM Soundsystem.
7PM - Cuba Street Tavern - $35 9PM - MOON - $15-$20
Yurt Party Single Release Tour ATOMIC
Enjoyed the music issue? Try out ATOMIC for yourself. It’s the centrepiece of Wellington’s vibrant music scene, and with New Wave tunes from Blondie to Duran Duran, ATOMIC is an electric atmosphere unlike any other.
Known for their highenergy, genre-blending performances, Yurt Party has built a reputation as one of New Zealand’s most exhilarating live acts. Their original sound fuses Balkan, Latin, and dub influences, delivering a mix of deep grooves and raucous rhythms that keep crowds moving.
8PM to LATE - San Fran - $15 8PM - MEOW - $35
REGIONAL SCHOOL STRIKE - Fight The Fast-Track!
Friday, April 11 - Frank Kitts Park - Midday
Join students from around Te-Whanganui-A-Tara to fight back against the corrupt and immoral fast-track bill! While this protest is organised for and by high schoolers, University students are encouraged to join to provide numbers and security to the young activists. Want to know more? Read Fergus’s piece about it in the News this week!
To the editor,
We appreciated the recent coverage of the Hīkoi to Defend Trans Healthcare on 23/03/25. We also wanted to state our thanks for Josh Robinson's comment in the article, and VUWSA's organisation of a walking bus to Waitangi Park.
However we wanted to clarify a few points raised in the article. First, the period for public consultation on proposed restrictions has closed for some time. The Hīkoi was not for "continued access" to puberty blockers and hormones, as there is already restricted access to puberty blockers, and virtually no access to hormones for trans minors. RNZ fairly reliably undercounts protest numbers, so their use of the phrase "hundreds" is a bit misleading (those interested should judge for themselves based on photos). Finally the Hīkoi was not led by QED, but by a coalition of groups that also included several high school Queer Students’ Associations, Pōneke Anti-Fascist Coalition, Wellington Pride Festival, Wellington Pride Parade, and the Bolshevik Club. These clarifications do not detract from our appreciation of the better coverage of protest issues in Salient in recent months.
Yours in struggle, Queer Endurance in Defiance
Kia ora,
I’m writing to voice my thoughts on the cover of the recent issue of Salient.
While I understand that the goal may have been to de-stigmatise discussions and issues around sex and sexual health, putting a photograph of people having sex on the cover of a magazine distributed in a public place was an extremely inappropriate way to go about it.
Many people on campus hold religious and/or cultural beliefs that treat sex and nudity as sacred, beautiful, and extremely intimate and private - not something to be splashed on the covers of magazines and freely distributed around public areas. It is also important to consider that porn has been thoroughly proven to be very psychologically damaging. Research clearly shows the immense harm that porn causes, especially to relationships. There are many people on campus who are already struggling with these negative impacts and potentially trying to end their porn usage. Because of the extremely addictive nature of porn, this is already challenging enough without having blatantly pornographic images on display in areas that they regularly move through at university.
Having the magazines face-down in the stands with a disclaimer is simply not enough to ensure that people will unwillingly see the cover. People were walking around with the magazines, reading them with the cover visible, showing them to their friends, and leaving them lying around face-up. I have spoken with several people who were exposed to this content unwillingly and, given the choice, would never have wanted to see it. I understand that what people do with the magazines are not necessarily your responsibility, but having control of a very publicly visible medium means that much responsibility falls to you to ensure that Te Herenga Waka is a safe space for everyone. Personally, I felt that my (not uncommon) views were neither seen nor respected by Salient, and my boundaries were violated
I ask you to consider acting with sensitivity to other viewpoints on these matters in the future.
Thank you for your time,
Caoimhe Lane
Wellington Students Rally for Protest Against Fast Track Legislation
On the 11th of April, secondary students from the surrounding Wellington region will gather to march on Parliament. Their reason: the recently implemented Fast Track Approvals Act which loosens regulations for mining on seabeds, conservation land, and Māori whenua.
The Fast-Track Approvals Act came into law on December 23rd with the goal of allowing ‘infrastructure and development plans’ to go ahead with more ease. During its select committee process the bill received 27,000 submissions. Simon Upton, the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, stated that the bill deprioritised the environment, posed significant environmental risks, and said that impacts were poorly understood and were potentially being ignored.
The legislation requires the approval of three ministers (NZ First’s Shane Jones, and National’s Chris Bishop and Simeon Brown) to give the go ahead on fast-track projects. This bypasses a wider consensus normally required by the House as a whole.
The protest is the latest in a string of demonstrations against Coalition Government activities. This march follows in the footsteps of Hīkoi mō te Tiriti, which saw over 50,000 turn out against the Treaty Principles Bill.
Salient spoke to Miki InouePalmer, head of comms at School Strike for Climate Wellington (SS4CWellingtion) about the upcoming school strike. She says SS4CWellingtion is expecting thousands of protestors to join the march. “Organising a strike
that large can be pretty stressful” says Miki. “It involves a lot of mahi behind the scenes”.
Miki is also inviting tauira from Victoria University to join their hīkoi. “While we’re primarily run by secondary school students, university students play a massive part within youth-based climate movements, and we are looking forward to seeing as many Te Herenga Waka students as possible.” A sign painting event will be held from 11am to 1pm in the Hub on Thursday.
SS4CWellington has also been in touch with Minister Chris Bishop, who introduced the bill, to invite him to meet with the protesters and discuss the acts implications. “Unfortunately, we have not received word as to whether or not he will attend” says Inoue-Palmer.
Salient asked SS4CWellington what outcomes they hoped would come from this week’s strike. “We hope to see this bill repealed immediately, there’s a lack of long-term sustainability, and the bill exploits whenua for short term profit” says Miki. “It’s also important to us that people (especially rangatahi) understand the destructiveness of this act, and the impact that it will have on our planet so that they can effectively fight against it,” she added.
Protestors will gather at Frank Kitts Park at 12:00pm on the 11th to then begin their hīkoi down Jervois Quay, onto Lambton Quay, and then to Parliament Grounds at 1:30pm. Several whaikōrero will then be given, including some from local MPs. If you’re keen, just rock up!
Fergus Goodall Smith
Student Well-being Toilets in Need of a Well-being Check?
An ironic, and slightly metaphorical, shitshow has been brought to our attention: the women’s bathroom opposite Mauri Ora (Student Health).
It’s a little ironic that the bathrooms are so closely situated to a place of health and wellbeing, as they are in need of some serious TLC. Parts of the ceiling tiles are coming off, others are fully gone. An entire sink is missing, with a hole in the wall left in its place. The sinks only have one working faucet each (no hot water for Student Health urinaters, I guess). There are cracks in the walls, and the paint is peeling off. In essence, it looks like the victim of a Landlord Special (slapping on a new layer of paint, creating a lovely flaking, rippling appearance).
Good news: the university is aware of this problem. A spokesperson has confirmed that ‘Property Services has work planned for these bathrooms later this year.’
Slightly unfortunate news: the spokesperson also explained that the university prioritises ‘bathroom improvements by high traffic areas and this area receives lower traffic compared to other areas.’ This could account for the slightly less amount of urgency in regards to the bathroom’s maintenance.
Over the past 24 months, the university has received a total of six work order requests. Five of those requests were made in 2024: one for cleaning, three for plumbing faults, and one for a lighting issue. This could suggest that the cracks and holes are relatively recent.
If you find any rooms or buildings that are not up to the standard, please write in to us, or to the University. Or both. The more complaints, the less room the university has to look away. We deserve better bathrooms. Bathrooms that are maintained. By
Maya Field
Metlink accused of breaching rights of disabled persons
Vic’s Disabled Students Association is accusing Metlink of breaching the human rights of disabled persons, with on-bus discrimination preventing disabled people from receiving their education.
According to co-president Hope Cotton, since the DSA reformed at the start of the year, treatment onboard Metlink buses has been a constant discussion topic in the group.
Member Michaela Caughley, who uses a wheelchair, said she was battling Metlink multiple times a week. Her struggles included the bus’s wheelchair ramp not being lowered, or getting pushed without her consent.
“Every morning I’m thinking about whether I am even going to be able to get on the bus. Or if I am going to have to advocate for my right to get on and off in a safe way?” said Caughley.
Caughley has no other way of getting to university, and drivers not lowering the ramp for her to get on the bus have made her late for class.
Bus drivers have also refused to put the ramp down for Caughley when getting off, resulting in her having to do a wheelie to get off the bus.
“If I screwed the wheelie up, I would have fallen backwards and potentially hit my head. If I hadn't done the wheelie, my front wheels would have hit the curb and I would have been thrown out of my wheelchair.”
Not everyone has said skill. Copresident Cotton said one student who didn’t have the ramp lowered by the driver got a concussion when the driver tried to wheel them off the bus backwards, despite the student’s protests. This led to an uneven distribution of weight, resulting in the wheelchair tipping. The student hit their head on the curb and got a concussion.
Cotton says Metlink has also failed to stop harassment of disabled students. One student in a wheelchair requested the ramp to be put down, only for another passenger - who the student did not know - to claim they were together. The driver listened to the able-bodied passenger.
“Because the person was in a wheelchair, the driver listened to the passenger who was harassing them and not the wheelchair user. Instead, the wheelchair user missed their stop and was stuck on the bus with someone unsafe for them,” said Cotton.
“In general there seems to be a pattern of drivers ignoring disabled people's agency and their ability to know what's best for them and their bodies.”
Both Cotton and Caughley express the need for better training in Metlink regarding - and in consultation with - disabled people. Because for them, it’s a matter of being able to participate in everyday life.
“This treatment goes against the UN Declaration on the Rights of Persons with a Disability because it impedes on our access to society and education, as well as being a form of discrimination under the Human Rights Act,” said Cotton.
Salient asked Metlink about their processes regarding disabled people, and got a response reportedly much more thorough than VuWDSA’s complaints.
“Metlink is in the process of engaging a specialist training provider to co-design, develop and deliver an accessibility awareness training programme,” said Metlink group manager Samantha Gain in a statement.
“The majority of the panel selecting this provider are people with a range of disabilities.
“In 2023 VuWDSA were invited to apply to have a representative on Metlink’s Public Transport Advisory Group and we continue to welcome feedback from them about how we can improve services for disabled passengers.”
Cotton described Metlink’s response to their complaints as “lukewarm,” and said VUWDSA would be investigating its options. A complaint to the Ombudsman, the government’s chief watchdog, was not out of the question.
By Dan Moskovitz
By Darcy Lawrey
Is Unity the Answer to Division? Nigel McFall Thinks So
Nigel McFall is politics’ new kid on the block, and he has just launched a political party he’s building from scratch. The Unity Party, which launched in January, is hoping to be a contender for your vote come 2026.
After a later-in-life ADHD diagnosis three years ago Nigel started to look at the world differently. In what he calls a “pretty difficult time”, ADHD had made it hard for him to see “below the surface”. In fact, before his diagnosis, he hadn’t given much thought to politics at all.
There had been some politicising moments, such as witnessing a prisoner seeing grass for the first time in ten years when he worked as a corrections officer, an incident which led him to question whether the prison system is really about rehabilitation.
But it was after his diagnosis that things started to leap out at him. Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke’s haka in parliament was a big moment: “there was just this overwhelming amount of hate, and I kinda just sort of thought, wouldn't it be
great if there was someone who could show people how it works?”
The Unity Party can be a little hard to place. Nigel thinks that there’s a lack of parties in the centre of politics who are willing to take ideas from either side, a spot he hopes Unity can fill. He’s pro community organising, strives to honour Te Tiriti in Unity’s policies, and is strongly against blanket policies
Some of Nigel’s policies are pretty outside-the-box, such as funding New Zealand students to study overseas in places like the Philippines, allowing students to access learning support without a formal diagnosis, and using KiwiSaver to fund mental health diagnoses.
But housing is where Nigel’s particularly passionate. Transforming social housing into a community village model with a rent-to-own scheme is a flagship policy for the party. Unity would also see the government offer interestfree loans to purchase low-cost homes. He reckons that housing policy has become stagnant and
needs a new approach, “we need someone who's gonna challenge the status quo, whether it's Labour [or] National, it's been the same thing”
So far, responses to Unity have been mixed, “I've had a lot of good feedback, but certainly, a lot of hate […] I think people want to keep being angry about the same things rather than trying to understand and learn” Nigel says. He wants Unity to be a party that breaks through that division: “That's what I want to do. I want to give some understanding to people, because we divide. Politics is about division”
Unity needs 500 signatures to become registered as an official party, after which Nigel plans to contest Labour’s Reuben Davidson in the Christchurch East electorate. He says he’s hopeful, but he’s in for the long haul.
So why should you vote for Unity? Nigel says, “I think everyone should vote for us because we offer something different […] sometimes it's not about what flavour of ice cream you choose. It's about what you decide to sprinkle on it”.
By Darcy Lawrey
For this week’s eyes on exec, we picked VUWSA
President Liban Ali’s brain on how the year has been going and what’s coming up.
Liban reckons VUWSA’s annual affair of kinky quizzes and chats about consent, Sex Week, went great. He thinks that engaging with a wide range of students has been a strong point this year. “I think that it is still a systemic issue that we need to fix, where we might pander to a certain group, [but] I think we've pretty much engaged with everyone in the right way”.
The exec has recently set their four strategic goals for the year: Clubs and Societies, Engagement, Upholding Te Tiriti, and Improving Academic Representation. This year, VUWSA’s aiming to take over the clubs system from the university. Liban says there was an appetite for VUWSA to take it over in 2023, but talks with the university hit a stalemate; “this year, it's on the list, and we're keen to actually pick it up again.”
Looking to the horizon, he says that engagement with the local elections this year is going to be “massive”, but endorsing any particular candidates is a big no. With this year being many student’s first chance to cast a ballot, VUWSA will be hosting debates and focusing heavily on having conversations around civics, “we want to plant that seed in students' heads and get them thinking about why [they] should vote in the first place.”
Polyfest Celebrates 50th Anniversary
The Auckland Secondary Schools Māori & Pacific Islands Cultural Festival celebrated its 50th year last week. Over 4 days a whopping 291 groups from 77 schools will be showcasing a wide variety of performances including dance, costume, and Kapa Haka. Thousands of performers will take the Māori, Samoa, Niue, Cook Islands, Tonga, and Diversity stages.
The Diversity stage includes acts from all over the world including the Pacific, Asia, Africa, South America. This year’s theme is:
“LEGACY - a treasure handed down"
"He oha nō tua, he taonga tuku iho!”
This event highlights and celebrates the rich cultural history in Aotearoa, as well as our youth - the rangatira of tomorrow.
I te wiki kātahi anō kua pāheke i tū ai te Polyfest, he ahurei ahurea mā ngā kura tuarua tuarua o Tāmaki Makaurau. Ko tēnei ahurei e whakamana ana i te ahurea o te Moana nui ā Kiwa, ā, e whakanui ana tēnei kaupapa whakahirahira i tōna tau 50. I ngā rā e whā, e whakaatu ana te 291 rōpu mai ngā kura e 77 i ngā momo ngāhau, waiata, haka, kākahu ā o rātou iwi. Kutukutu pai ngā atamira Māori, Samoa, Niue, Cook Islands, Tonga, Kanorau, i te mano o ngā tauira kura tuarua. Ko te kaupapa o te tau nei ko ngā “Taonga tuku iho.”
Rotokākahi Updates: Environmental Court Rules Against Mana Whenua
Kātahi anō te Kōti Taiao o Aotearoa i tuku i ngā hua o tā rātou hui tahi ki te Kaunihera o ngā Roto o Rotorua me ngā Kaitiaki o Rotokākahi. I whakahē te Kōti i te hia o ngā Kaitiaki o Rotokākahi kia kāti te hanga paipa paru ki te wāhi tapu o Rotokākahi. Ko te hia o te Kaunihera kia whakamahi te paipa paru kia kāti te parakino o te roto mā ngā tengi ero a ngā whare o tērā wāhi, ā, e tautoko ana te kōti i tēnei kaupapa. Hākoa tēnei, e pōuri ana i tā rātou mōhio i te tapu o te roto. Heoi, e mārama ana rātou ki te tapu? E mea ana te mana whenua, a Tūhourangi rātou ko Ngā Tumatawera, e takahi marika ana tēnei paipa paru i te tapu o te wāhi nei. Kua tapu te wāhi nei i te mea i reira noho ai ētahi tūpāpaku mai i te pupuhatanga o te maunga o Tarawera i te tau 1886. I mea mai te māngai o ngā hunga kaitiaki i pāheke marika te kōti i tā rātou haepapa o te tiaki i te taiao o Rotokākahi. I mea hoki ia ka tiro mārohirohi ai rātou ki te whakautu o te kōti, ā, ka whai pea i te ara o te Kōti Matua.
The Environmental Court has released its decision dismissing the attempts made by mana whenua to stop Rotorua Lakes Council constructing a sewer pipeline right next to Lake Rotokākahi.
The Sewage Pipe scheme aims to reduce pollution of the lake from septic tanks by connecting local properties to the public wastewater network. The Court has said that the improvement of water quality is a given for everyone. The Court has also shared some regret over the decision as they, “understand the cultural offence felt by the applicants and other Māori.”
The Rotokākahi Board of Control, run by mana whenua who initiated the court proceedings, claim that this scheme violates the tapu of the Lake. The scheme lays sewage pipes through wāhi tapu (sacred areas) where tūpuna are buried from the 1886 Mt Tarawera eruption.
Add this to your sesh playlist! kīwaha: hangareka ana! - crack up!
Native Peoples, Global Films at Māoriland
According to a press release by the Rotokākahi Board of Control, spokesperson Te Whatanui Leka Skipwith said that the Environmental Court, “Completely failed in its obligation to assist [Rotokākahi Protectors] in protecting the Rotokākahi environment.” Skipwith has also said that they will be taking a closer look at the decision and will look to proceed to the High Court.
I tū ai te hui ahurei kiriata a Māoriland ki Ōtaki i te 26 ki te 30 o Poutū-te-Rangi. Ko te kaupapa o Māoriland kia whakanui, kia whakamana i ngā kiriata taketake o te ao. Koia ko te ahurei nui o te ao e whakanui ana i ngā kōrero, ngā pakiwaitara, ngā pūrākau anō hoki o ngā iwi taketake o te ao. Ehara nahe ko ngā kiriata e whakanuia ana ki tēnei ahurei, i reira hoki ko ngā momo wāhi toi puni, ngā whakaaturanga toi atu i te toi kiriata hoki. Ko ētahi o ngā kiriata i whakaatuhia ko te urutaunga reo Māori o Shrek, ko te kiriata Kneecap e whakaatu ana i te orokohanga o tērā rōpu hipihope nō Éire, ā, i reira hoki te kiriata Kōkā e whakaatu ana i te pūrākau o te hononga o tētahi Kuia me tētahi rangatahi rararu.
The Māoriland Film Festival was held in Ōtaki late last month. This international indigenous film festival has been running for 11 years now in Ōtaki, and is the biggest celebration of indigenous storytelling in the world. The week-long festival not only held film screenings, but also interactive installation, art exhibitions, and more. Some of the highly anticipated films that were screened included the reo Māori adaptation of Shrek, Kneecap, which follows the origin story of the iconic Irish hip-hop trio of the same name, and Kōka, where, “Māori elder Hamo and troubled teen Jo form an unlikely bond during a transformative road trip.”
MPI Song of the WeekAztechknowledgey by Troy Kingi
Māori and Pasifika News is written by Taipari Taua
STAYING SAFE(R) Your Guide to Online Drug Resources
Ever turned to Google to work out if combining two drugs is a good or bad idea and been presented with nothing but rehabs’ SEO bait, hard to digest primary research, and even the Drug Enforcement Agency’s thoughts on rolling?
Genuinely useful and detailed information on staying safe when using drugs can be hard to come by, especially on Google. And while frank information about drug use may be found on Reddit, this is almost always unverified and anecdotal.
So where can you find accessible, detailed information on harm reduction?
The PsychonautWiki is a godsend for anyone who intends to use substances. An open encyclopedia of “psychonautics” – the exploration of altered states of consciousness – the site provides an extensive database of substances.
From obscure research chemicals like Bromo-DragonFLY, to staples like LSD, it’s hard to come across a substance the wiki hasn’t covered. Each substance’s page includes dosages and typical durations for each stage of the experience, sorted by the different ways you can ingest it.
Particularly useful is the Subjective Effects section. Here, every possible effect that the drug can bring about is listed, with detailed explanations of how the effects are manifested.
Under the Toxicity and Harm Potential section, the wiki lays out the risks involved in using the drug, dangerous interactions with other substances like SSRIs, and safer practices for use. Many pages also provide experience reports from other users, scientific information on how the substance works, and links to other sources.
While most information on the site is cited and reviewed by a team of moderators, as it is a public wiki, crucial information should be double checked with other sources.
Lastly, TripSit provides an anonymous online webchat where you can get urgent advice while you’re under the influence, or just find someone to talk to about your experience. TripSit.me
TripSit provides a super easy to use, interactive drug combination guide. You can toggle the substances you’re considering using and see how they all mix together, with explanations of why they might be risky.
Also extremely useful are TripSit’s concise and well cited factsheets with general advice for safer use, testing, and dosage recommendations.
Know Your Stuff Pill Library
Know Your Stuff’s database of pills that they have tested is not a substitute for getting your “stuff” tested. However, it does provide a way to get a rough idea of whether a pressie contains the advertised amount of a substance, or if it contains it at all. Some pills tested by KYS have contained extremely potent synthetic opiates, cathinones, and toxic non-drug substances.
Know Your Stuff’s website is also a great repository of local knowledge. They regularly update their blog with up-to-date information on how the drugs market is changing and put out warnings on dangerous substances showing up in their testing.
Erowid.org
Visiting Erowid feels like a solar flare has sent your computer back to 1999, but underneath its outdated skin is an amazingly expansive library of both anecdotal and scientific information. Erowid is mostly known for its experience reports, where thousands of users have contributed detailed descriptions of their experiences. Here, you can find a description of almost every possible combination, situation, and hallucination. Anecdotal reports are no substitute for scientific sources, but they can be very useful for researching what you can expect from a substance, and how you can get the desired effects more safely.
By Jay Lee-Guard
Some rare melodicpsychedelic symbioses
LSD is symbiotic to music like no other drug. It has facilitated profound experimentation in musical creation and enjoyment since its synthesis in 1938. The Beatles, Pink Floyd, and the Summer of Love are symbolic of the transfiguration of classic pop-rock into the fluid and surreal musical avant-garde of the late 1960s and early 1970s. But beyond those household names lurk a subset of folk-inspired musicians who made serious contributions to psychedelic sound. I present here a selection of lesser-known psychedelic renderings from Turkey and Britain that are uniquely trippy but take a common inspiration in the traditional sounds of their respective cultures.
Moğollar, Les Danses et Rhythmes de la Turquie d’hier á aujourd’hui (Anadolu Pop), 1971
The 1961 Turkish constitution, developed in the wake of the previous year’s coup d'état, embedded laicism. Islamic institutions were abolished in favour of secular freedom of expression, and leftist thought flourished. This liberal atmosphere, the ubiquity of Western pop radio, and music competitions held by the monolithic newspaper Hürriyet encouraged young Istanbulites to combine traditional Anatolian folk melodies with mid-century transatlantic pop-rock sensibilities. Influenced by Elvis Presley cameos at outdoor cinemas and anyone name-dropped in Jane Birkin’s wistful “Ex-fan des sixties” (“des Shadows, des Doors, des Animals”), a talented group of young men dressed in sheepskin boots and vests over floral shirts brought together the old and the new; Moğollar (“the Mongolians” in Turkish, evocative of wilderness) conceived a new genre of Turkish psychedelic rock.
By the early 1970s, Moğollar were based in Paris, and collaborated with other Turkish folk rock legends such as the Belgium-based Barış Manço (himself a psych pioneer well worth a listen; the band briefly rebranded as Manchomongol).
The grand prize of the Académie Charles Cros, celebrating musical innovation, was awarded in 1970 to Jimi Henrix, 1971 to Moğollar, and 1972 to Pink Floyd.
The band’s debut album, Anadolu Pop, is a delectable capsule of electrified Anatolian folk. To fund studio sessions the band sold their drum sets, amps, and organs; what emerged was a series of intricate instrumental tracks dominated by guitar and folk instruments such as the saz. Anadolu Pop offers the listener abundant warmth and light whether they are tripping or not.
Another military coup d'état in 1980 quashed the liberal vicennium and forced prominent leftie rockers into censorship, imprisonment, and exile, drawing the golden age of Turkish psychedelic rock to an abrupt close and replacing it with gloomy, self-indulgent Arabesque.
Lady June and Kevin Ayers, Linguistic Leprosy (1974)
A shining emblem of the English agrestic psychedelic is Kevin Ayers’ Whatevershebringswesing, released on Harvest Records in 1972. Ayers and Daevid Allen (who spearheaded the psychedelic musical international with Gong) were founding members of the Canterbury scene; temporal contemporaries of Moğollar, these semi-rural aesthetes-on-acid brought spaced-out poetic surrealism to folkish prog-rock.
The young sun-worshipping Ayers couldn’t refuse when he and his flatmate Robert Wyatt were invited by the latter’s namesake and mentor Robert Graves to summer in Mallorca. Graves was an accomplished poet, historical novelist, and Oxonian contemporary of Lawrence, Sassoon, and Owen. Also holidaying on Mallorca was the great British eccentric and “cosmic prankster” June Cramer.
Cramer was involved with Michel Albert, the beautiful artist son of a French right-wing general, who was known for trying to paint his acid trips. She was also friends with Graves, and their bohemian literary-artistic community in Deià is redolent of a technicolour revival of the earlier, less hedonistic Bloomsbury Group. Back in London Cramer’s Maida Vale flat was an open hub for the city’s creatives; it was thus dubbed the city’s “premier smoking salon”, and she “Lady June” (as in “land-lady” – but in a pre-gentrification hippie way). Ayers moved in and it was here, with £400, that the unlikely pair with Brian Eno recorded their Linguistic Leprosy, a deeply trippy collection of tone poetry and hallucinatory sound.
I would recommend to the nascent tripper a virgin experience with this album; play it early on and revel in the bemusement and beauty of a truly unique comedic-poetic trove. Admire Lady June, an unsung English enigma whose quietly brilliant art should not be relegated to the fleetingly whimsical: Linguistic Leprosy stands up in its innovation to Boards of Canada and Chris Morris’ Blue Jam, gifted to us decades years later.
Julian Cope, Fried (1984)
After the drug-fuelled disintegration of his band The Teardrop Explodes (I recommend the fantastic Kilimanjaro), lead singer Julian Cope drifted into the arena of the unwell. Dubbed an acid casualty (alongside Syd Barrett of Pink Floyd), it was felt that Cope had blown his mind on drugs and lost his knack for producing pristine sophisti-pop. These perceptions were amplified when, during a promotional concert at the Hammersmith Palais for his poorly received solo debut World Shut Your Mouth, Cope lacerated his torso with a broken microphone stand in a fit of anarchic self-mutilation.
This episode is relayed in the jaw-dropping opening track of Cope’s glorious sophomore effort (Fried), “Reynard the Fox”. What follows is a collection of disarmingly vulnerable, effortlessly glamorous psychedelic rock. The lead single, “Sunspots”, is nervous, sun-baked romance at its finest; every undergraduate ought to be acquainted. Cope’s proclivity towards the beautiful bizarre is expressed in the album’s artwork, which features the singer naked but for a large turtle shell, crouched atop the Alvecote Mound slag heap.
Cope is a dedicated archaeologist and antiquarian, chronicling stone circles and other ancient English monuments. The prehistoric and the psychedelic coexist not just in his music: in 2001 the British Museum was evacuated when Cope, dressed in five-inch platform boots to lecture on Avebury and Odin, set off fire alarms with his hairspray.
The KLF, Chill Out (1990)
My favourite track on Fried is Bill Drummond Said, a tongue-in-cheek pisstake (or urinary extraction exercise as per Q Magazine’s Andrew Collins) dedicated to the titular Drummond, a Scottish musician who later joined Jimmy Cauty to form the nouvelle avant-garde electronic group the KLF. The KLF were best known for becoming the world’s best-selling singles act in 1991, then promptly deleting their back-catalogue and burning £1 million (over $5 million NZD inflated for today) in a pagan ritual on the island of Jura.
But before the smash hits and the industry antics (which deserve their own Salient article) came Chill Out, a hazy, single-take live audio collage. Samples from Elvis and Fleetwood Mac hits, Tuvan throat singers, and radio reports of fatal motor accidents, are woven together in a post-impressionist melange with ambient desert soundscapes of bushwhacked country road static and bleating sheep. Sheep were a recurring motif for the KLF, featured on the album artwork for Chill Out, making surprise appearances at club PAs, and ultimately going to the slaughter for the band’s music industry exeunt at the 1992 Brit Awards. The pastoral field, with sheep grazing, was of course the morningafter site of the clandestine, euphoric 90s British rave scene temporarily helmed by the KLF.
Ira Robbins of Trouser Press called Chill Out "the pleasantly attenuated soundtrack to a non-existent film that is easily forgotten." This was apt, for the band produced an unfinished ambient road movie, The White Room, comprised of forty minutes of Lynchian footage of the KLF’s 1968 cop car, Ford Timelord, through nocturnal London and the Spanish Sierra Nevada. This is the feeling imbued in Chill Out: suspended in the liminal somewhere between a comedown and the dawn of a new day, this is ideal listening athe a trip’s bookends.
Nekropsi, Mi Kubbesi (1996)
The best-selling foreign language album in Turkish history is Metallica’s self-titled, released in 1991. Decades after Moğollar, innovations in Western music once again inspired a generation of Turkish students to revisit folk sounds.
In 1989 my uncle formed Nekropsi. Alongside bands like Pentagram (now Mazarkabul; my mother used to date their bassist), Nekropsi brought traditional Anatolian sounds into that decade’s dominant genres of experimental industrial, psychedelic, and metal. The mercurial Mi Kubbesi is, like Anadolu Pop, comprised of complex guitar-led instrumentals. Nekropsi’s sound is like water, tumbling rapidly from cold and clear to gargling and murky like a rural brook. Mood, tempo, and form dip and shift like a shopper in a crowded bazaar (“Çarşı”); track lengths vary allowing the listener to lose themselves in their mind’s depth (“Derinlik”). Like the Bosphorus Bridge depicted on the artwork for their follow-up album 2, Nekropsi fed into the Turkish tradition of bringing together East and West.
In March 2025, Istanbul’s mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, the pre-eminent opposition figure to the autocratic Islamofascist Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, had his university diploma (a prerequisite for the presidency) annulled by his alma mater and was arrested on fabricated charges shortly thereafter. Student-led protests have been met with violent policing involving pepper spray, water cannons, and rubber bullets, in the largest public crackdown since the Gezi Park movement of 2013, which took place in reaction to the same tyrant for similar reasons. Like life, British and Turkish politics
By Maya Field TW: Discussions of Mental Illnesses
When I was 16, diagnosed with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and general anxiety, I was prescribed an SSRI. Specifically, sertraline. Starting off with 25mg to adjust to them, then 50mg, then 100mg. After being on it for four years, I decided randomly to go off sertraline, cold turkey style. Now, I’ve been off sertraline for about eight months. I still have anxiety, my OCD and ED crop up in batches occasionally, but unless I get seriously worse, I wouldn’t go back on sertraline.
For those who don’t have the fortune of knowing, SSRIs are Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors. Basically, antidepressants that increase the amount of serotonin in your brain. It’s commonly used for depression and anxiety disorders. According to the Te Tāhū Hauora Health Quality & Safety Commission, ‘around 400,000 people or 8.3 percent of the New Zealand population were dispensed an SSRI or other reuptake inhibitor’ in 2018, and that ‘five percent of the population regularly received an SSRI or other reuptake inhibitor.’ Various studies since then have pointed to an increase in more recent years.
The first months or so where I was adjusting to sertraline were not ideal circumstances. I was in therapy for OCD, I was hiding my eating disorder from my parents, and, two weeks into the adjustment period, my grandfather died. I couldn’t even try to do exposure therapy exercises while I was first adjusting to medication. I knew that at some point, I would be able to touch a doorknob with my bare hands, and I wouldn’t wash my hands so much that they bled from being so dry. Until then, I cried when a bug flew into me on a walk with my parents, and I was only okay with touching surfaces I deemed ‘safe’ - my bed and desk in my room, basically.
I was still in a deep grief, but I managed to adjust to my medication. I think throwing myself into my academics so hard that I forgot about everything else helped somewhat. I was used to having a mind that never stopped yelling at me, and eventually, Sertraline quieted down that mind. It helped me touch doorknobs without having a panic attack; it stopped me from catastrophising about my parents and COVID.
Because it had worked so well in an incredibly dark year, I stayed on it throughout 2022 and 2023. Years where if you had the misfortune of knowing me, I sincerely apologise. When I was recovering from mental illnesses, sertraline gave me the subduedness to follow through on practical strategies, like exposure therapy and rebuilding my relationship with food. Once I had more or less gained those skills, and should’ve started to learn to stand on my own again, my brain stayed quiet, and allowed for other influences to come in. Instead of being able to make my own decisions about what I actually wanted to do, I was basically in a state of limbo - I didn’t know my own mind. In halls of residence, that was possibly the worst state to be in. If someone suggested getting blackout drunk, I would take that as the best idea ever.
Then, the next week, I suggested it, because, well, people did last week. If someone wanted to go to a room alone with me, I didn’t see any potential risk. If someone had a bag of something, I didn’t hesitate. It also didn’t help that for most of firstyear, I had so much alcohol in my system that at some point, the Sertraline just stopped doing its job successfully.
In mid-2024, something changed. I’m not sure what. I still don’t know what brought on the urge to do this. I decided to stop taking my prescribed 100 mgs of sertraline, cold-turkey style. What followed were some of the worst two months of my life. I fell back into some self-destructive behaviours, I was somehow miserable and lazy, while also being insane and hyper. I drank like I was a fresher on a Friday night, except I was in second year on a Tuesday night. I would talk for hours about some guy I was upset about, to anyone who had the misfortune to sit next to me. I was basically how I was in 2023, but dialled up to 100. Around August, after my parents told me how worried they were about me, I realised how much I was spiraling. I think I realised that the guys I liked would never like me back, and my friends were beginning to get tired of it. I decided to quit smoking and vaping, also cold-turkey, and I focused on getting through the rest of the university year.
Even though the adjustment period to go off sertraline was hell, I wouldn’t change my decision (maybe I would try and do a gradual adjustment instead, actually). I was fortunate enough to be in therapy, with a therapist who worked really well with me, and who advised me on real strategies to bring into my life. I was fortunate enough that if things got bad, I had a safety net to fall into. It’s easy to say that I don’t regret it, simply because of how much better I am now: I’m fortunate enough that now, without medication, I can calm myself down, touch doorknobs, be healthy in a relationship, and even drink a normal, full-sugar coca-cola, on occasion.
I’m in a place where if someone suggests something, be it a cigarette or a line, I know where my line in the sand is. I know what I want (and it’s not a cigarette or a line). I know what I’m comfortable with, I know my own mind. I definitely needed SSRIs to help me quieten the bullshit and anxieties when I didn’t know how to differentiate between my mind and my anxiety. But now, with time and with help, I don’t need them, and instead, I can rely on myself to figure out what I’m really thinking.
I hate to sound like a mum against drugs: I’m not a mum, and I’m not against drugs. God knows that I was in desperate need of sertraline when I was first prescribed them. But I do think that, at least for me, that they wouldn’t have been so successful without the supplementing therapy, and that likewise, therapy wouldn’t have been so successful without the supplementing medication. It just came down to the question of if I still needed to be on them. I decided I didn’t.
by Ryleigh Stacy-Smith
A lot people tell you not to mix drinks because it will fuck you up. Drugs are the same.
I won't tell you not to mix drugs because God knows I have done my fair share. I mean I have popped pills; I have smoked and drank. However, when it comes to psychedelics, mixing and matching is a dangerous game.
I remember the first time that I mixed LSD with other substances. It was News Year's Eve. My friend and I were looking to take things to another level. We had popped some concerta and drank the year before and we were planning to do the same this year. We were taking shots of god-awful sambuca and we popped a pill. Didn't feel anything, so we took another. I was starting to feel a lil buzz. I was feeling hyper and energized. But this was only the start of the night, so obviously, I took another shot and pill. By this point, I was yapping about nothing to my mate. We were doing what girls do when they have nowhere to go. We did our makeup drunk and drugged up. Looking back on it now, the makeup was awful. But I felt confident. So confident that when my friend mentioned she had acid, I was ecstatic. Now, neither of us had done acid. We didn't know what to expect. A lil hint though, don't mix stimulants with psychedelics. Within an hour of cutting up the tab and putting it on our tongues, I got major cotton mouth. My mouth was so dry that no matter how much water I was drinking, I could not for the life of me have wet saliva again. Then I started shaking. I didn't know why. It didn't bother me as much as the cottonmouth.
When we had started to settle down, that's when my heart started beating rapidly. Another thing to note, is that mixing stimulants and psychedelics can cause anxiety. However, when my heart didn't stop beating for an hour, it quickly turned into paranoia.
My friend and I did the worst possible thing you could do when you're having a bad trip. We went to Google. Google informed me that I was overdosing. I didn't want to wake my parents and tell them that their dumbass daughter had taken some ADHD medication and acid while drinking. They would never stop giving me shit for that. And don't even mention the family dinners. I would be ridiculed. So, in my drug fueled brain, I was prepared to die.
My friend tried to calm me down and it helped. She asked me what I planned to do after high school, if I wanted to go to University, what I wanted to study, and she asked me about my school mates. She was amazing.
My heart began to beat a million miles per hour. At this point, I was crying, I thought I was going to have a heart attack. But then it stopped, it began to beat at a normal pace. Immediate relief striked me. I finally got to sleep at 5 am.
Another thing to note is that much like a bad hangover, when taking stimulants with acid you will get the sudden urge to shit yourself. It's not like the kind where you fart and then you think to yourself “oh, better go to the bathroom.” No. It's the type of shit that is going to erupt from you.
I immediately run to the bathroom, do my business, and try to flush. But alas, as if this trip couldn't get worse, it would not flush. My shit was so impressive that it could not go down the toilet. Now, I won't speak of what I had to do, but let me tell you, it wasn't beautiful. But what matters is that I made that toilet flush my shit down. However, I was much luckier than my friend. I was in the comfort of my own home. When the shits hit my friend, she was stuck on a bus.
I go back to my bed, try to get some sleep. My friend next to me is like Sleeping Beauty. Then I hear my parents get up and make some coffee. But oh fuck, I forgot about that ominous text I sent my mum before my mini heart attack.
I'm still buzzing from the paranoia when my mum texts me back. So, I face the music. I go to the lounge and I'm met with suspicious gazes from my parents. My mum asks me why I texted her. And I tell her the truth, leaving out the acid. She just laughs.
In an attempt to avoid the foretold prophecy of being ridiculed by my family, I fulfilled the prophecy myself.
This is a funny story now. It's something that my friends and family laugh about. But at that moment, I genuinely thought I was one pill away from overdosing.
So, just a friendly PSA:
• Please eat and drink water before, during and after mixing drugs and/or alcohol
• Do your research! Read about others’ stories with the drugs you’re about to consume, look for medical professionals’ advice, and try to find information from experienced trippers.
• Don't get cocky about it, you always hear about the horror stories of thinking you can't feel another, taking another and then boom... it hits you all at once
• If you have symptoms of overdosing, don't prepare yourself to die to save yourself embarrassment. Call poison control, call the ambulance, go to a trusted person. Pumping your stomach or being put on IV, is much better than risking your life.
• To get your drugs checked, go to Know Your Stuff (233a Willis Street, Te Aro)
• If experimenting with drugs, is turning into a regular occurance and you're feeling worried about yourself, call 0800 787 797
Mixing and matching with drugs and/or alcohol can be a cool experience, but it can also be a horrible experience. So, be smart, be cautious, and be safe.
A large part of student culture is comprised of drinking, getting on the piss, celebrating wins, and drowning out failures, festivities, and flat warmings are marked by house parties. Every Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, and all the days in between are opportunities to get dressed up, go out, and make some memories. A large part of student drinking culture is also starting to drink, overdrinking and then coming to terms with overdrinking. It took me till after I graduated to realise I’d been over drinking for years, and many of my behaviours were textbook signs of addiction. There is nothing wrong with enjoying alcohol or doing drugs. You’re not damned for eternity after starting, but looking out for yourself and others involves having the hard conversations and facing the reality of the situation. The line between being the life of the party and forever uninvited is thinner than you think.
Here are some signs and things to look out for in yourself and others that signal a need for a classic sit down intervention.
1. You only drink alcohol above 6% or buy the highest alcohol percentage you can find - If instead of comparing prices you’re comparing alcohol percentages, trying to find which Hazy IPA, RTD, or bottom of the barrel wine will get you the most fucked up the fastest you aren’t drinking to drink — you’re fast-tracking to drunk. Try and reframe the way you think about drinking. Lean towards alcoholic drinks you enjoy the taste of or take a longer time to drink, and ignore the alcohol percentage.
2. You become a different person - We all become a different person when we drink. Some people get extroverted, sleepy, reserved, elated, but if the person you or others become is violent, offensive and reactive instead of excusing the behaviour, stop and reassess. There is no excuse for laying your hands on someone else under the influence of anything, drugs or alcohol. Seek support like therapy to work through the emotions alcohol is amplifying.
3. House parties are just a second location - If you drink before a house party or event and upon arrival you or others separate yourselves and dive-down a k-hole, your ‘social’ behaviour might actually be anti-social.
If second locations are just a reason to start drinking earlier and gain access to free alcohol it’s likely you’re not a social drinker, just a drinker.
4. Once you start you can’t stop - At house parties you go through the fridge to take others drinks, pull cans out of unsupervised bags and take swigs of abandoned beers at the edge of the bar. If as soon as you pass tipsy you take any drink offered to you and can no longer pass judgement on whether you should continue drinking or if you’re at the ‘perfect level of drunkenness’ (everyone’s perfect level is a different amount, if your perfect amount is black out you need an intervention) then it’s time to take a step back and reconsider how you can learn to stop.
A good sign you can stop is being able to identify when you’ve begun to black out and arrange to get yourself home no matter how fun the party is. This includes asking your friends to order you an uber home and help guide you down the flat steps. Or removing yourself from the party and finding somewhere quiet to sober up (after telling someone where you are and what you’re doing), going to Take 10, or being able to refuse free drinks..
5. You’re beginning to black out earlier and earlier - When I was deep into my ‘party girl era’ (typed ironically — I was a mess), as I continued to get blackout drunk every night I slowly realised I was blacking out earlier and earlier on after fewer and fewer drinks. Despite my alcohol tolerance being high, my brain was shutting down after fewer drinks. I’d drink three cans out of a four pack and lose my vision. When I was sober I’d have trouble remembering basic information, a sign that my brain was damaged and needed time to heal. Blackouts (alcohol-induced amnesia) are dangerous and can trigger long term damage, they should be happening rarely and you should be able to recover quickly. If they are frequent it’s time to seek help.
‘What About You’ has online resources and quizzes you can take to assess your drinking. Drinking responsibly and looking out for yourself and others in the short term will keep you partying more in the long term. Look after your friends, monitor their drinks, speak up if you’re concerned.
Let’s keep the party going xx
About the Centrefold Artist:
I'm Tyler Clifton, I'm an artist based in Pōneke. My work involves using language and symbology to question and challenge how we view and process culture and reality, giving raw thought and emotion form through an old, yet very esoteric language that I've been writing and
speaking for 15 years, and others have been using for much longer in various forms. This piece I've made for Salient represents ripples in water, how our thoughts and actions radiate around us, taking the form of concentric rings of script.
You can find me on Instagram as @t_clifton_
Leo
This is the week of realising, you are going to realise a lot this week. Like realising you’re going to realise, for example.
Capricorn
Stop shooting yourself in the foot and complaining. Make the decisions you know are best for you and free yourself from your homemade shackles. Eat your greens.
Libra
You’re feeling a pull towards someone, a new union between two people is in your future. That might mean you’re finding love, or a screenshot of a hard launch is coming your way.
Gemini
It’s time to celebrate and surround yourself with people. Host a house party, invite all your mates out to town, start the world’s largest blunt rotation.
Cancer
You’ve been writing up a pros and cons list, stuck between two options. This is a sign to ditch both. Take a step back and find happiness in what you have.
Taurus
You’ve been focused on attracting, but it’s time to chase. Leave your ciggies behind and try and poach some from every group of smokers at Eyegum. Post some cryptic memes and outright ask for attention.
Scorpio
It’s time to release past regrets. Forgive yourself for that embarrassing night out, it might’ve been really cringe, but you need to move on. Make the change, it starts with you.
Virgo
Karma is a bitch but she is consistent. You’ve got your karma or it’s about to come. Accept it with grace and continue on.
Aquarius
Don’t take an upcoming disappointment too personally. It’s not you, it’s the universe’s doing.
Sagittarius
You’ve been kinda mean lately, and for good reason. Keep going, your surroundings need a cold hard dose of reality and pessimism.
Aries
Your glass isn’t half empty, it’s full. You’ve been working hard and now it’s time to light a bowl and add a little comfort into your everyday life.
Pisces
Your future is looking bright! You have many good trips ahead of you. Leap outside your comfort zone, let this reassurance get to your head.
How to take VUW-sanctioned psychedelics? Make them the subject of your thesis!
Rebekah Senanayake (BSc (Hons) majoring in Psychology & Cultural Anthropology; MSc in Cross-cultural Psychology) is a current PhD student in the field of Cultural Anthropology. But her thesis: “Plantas maestras and altered states of consciousness: A ritual analysis of inter-species transformation in Peruvian Amazonia,” is so much more than drugs in the jungle. Building on ten years of relationship-building in Peru, her work studies the cultural and medicinal role of psychoactive plants like ayahuasca and the ritual process of dieta.
Ayahuasca is a beverage made with ayahuasca vines and—in Peru—the chacruna leaves, that induces hallucinatory visions and insights. Kilograms of the vine are harvested and then beaten by hand for hours until the tough fibres are as fine as hair. This, together with the chacruna, is then boiled and reduced like a deeply concentrated tea. The whole process takes multiple days of harvesting, preparing, and cooking, all of which is supervised by a maestro curanderos (master healer) and accompanied by much tobacco and icaros (ritual songs).
The main psychoactive compound in ayahuasca is di-methyltryptamine (DMT), found in potent concentrations in chacruna leaves. However, ingesting the leaves on their own is ineffective, because our bodies break down DMT too quickly for it to have an effect. This is why they’re paired with ayahuasca vine. The fibres of the vine contain a monoamine oxidase inhibitor (MAOI), which slows the body’s breakdown of DMT and allows the psychedelic experience to unfold over several hours.
While the use of chacruna leaves is typical to Peruvian tradition, consuming plants high in DMT together with ayahuasca vine has been done by indigenous Amazon communities for over 4000 years. Given the existence of over 50,000 species of plants in the rainforest, knowing to pair these two is astounding. The maestros say, when asked how the Ancient Ones knew to combine ayahuasca and chacruna, that the plants themselves told them.
Because ayahuasca is not a recreational drug. It is consumed as part of a ritual called dieta to commune with the plantas maestras, both for healing and as a form of byond-human apprenticeship. Ayahuasca serves as the integrator between species, those human and nonhuman.
The process of dieta itself is extensive and takes place far from the profanities of daily life. Isolation, a grain-based diet, and strict abstinence purify the body so that one can connect with a master plant, which is consumed frequently during this period. Any contamination of the body during this period often results in vomiting. As a connection with the plant grows, teachings often arrive in the form of visions or songs. Participants might choose one or multiple plants to connect with, which may be prescribed by a maestro, depending on the desired healing or learning. Consuming ayahuasca helps to connect the plantas maestras with the body, though one could also do a dieta with ayahuasca itself.
Rebekah Senanayake’s fieldnotes bear witness to the healing power of dieta, which is only part of a wider ontology regarding health and conceptions of the ‘self’ that is so vastly and fascinatingly different from our Western constructions.
There’s a wealth of information available online about ayahuasca and dieta, however, since Western interest has grown, many sites are rooted in exploitative ‘ayahuasca tourism’. However, for those intrigued, highly recommended is Rebekah’s own blog: Beyond this world: Tales from the field, for firsthand insights from her fieldwork (https://bekplants.wordpress.com).
See overleaf for an interview with Rebekah Senanayake —>
Guy van Egmond in conversation with Rebekah Senanayake
Why the fascination with psychedelics?
I first came across ayahuasca nearly ten years ago. This was my first psychedelic. I was in my second year of uni at the time (which I soon deferred after my first experiences with ayahuasca). I drank ayahuasca in the Peruvian Amazon and I was fascinated by the intelligence of the plant, the ritual, and the ritual literacy of the maestros who knew how to maneuver the plant. I remember thinking that it was truly a fantastic medicine. When I returned back home I saw improvements in my daily life, from how I felt inside to how my relationships were with my friends and loved ones. Since then, I have viewed psychedelics and altered states of consciousness as powerful tools to optimise the human experience.
What makes ayahuasca, specifically, unique? And, of course, can you describe your experience taking ayahuasca?
I remember my second ceremony with ayahuasca, where one of the maestros (there were three) encouraged me to talk to the plant and to ask it questions. I had never considered that I could actually have a relationship with the plant, and that it might even have its own personality and agency. I’m really grateful for that tidbit of wisdom. Now that I’ve gone into academia, this is an ontology that Vivieros de Castro calls multinatural perspectivism. That is, a worldview where more-than-humans (like plants and animals) have personhood and agency.
My experiences with ayahuasca have been varied. I have participated in over 150 ceremonies to date, some of them in dieta, some of them out. I’ve participated in ceremonies that are also only for the transmission of knowledge, that is for people learning the plants and not drinking for healing. So those have been pretty interesting too. Each ceremony is a new experience and a learning point.
Can you (if possible) summarise your time spent in the field in San Martin?
The first time I visited San Martin (and met my fieldsite) was in 2015. This was a complete chance encounter, laid out by a series of fortunate events and people who pointed me in the right direction. My time spent in the field has been beautiful. I feel very grateful to have the opportunity to see a different way of living in a different environment and ecological landscape. I appreciate the perspectives of the people of San Martin and how they relate to the worlds (natural and metaphysical) around them. San Martin is beautiful. There are many great crops that are grown there, like super delicious varieties of coffee, grapes, fruits, and cacao. The unique climate (highland jungle) makes it a really great spot for agriculture. Over the years I have built relationships with my field participants, but also the wider community. It’s a really special part of the jungle with a rich history dating back to Incan times.
What other psychoactive plants have you encountered during your field work?
Too many to count.
Do you think that there is an application for dieta and the consumption of ayahuasca in non-indigenous spaces? Can we engage with these healing processes away from appropriative ayahuascatourism?
Absolutely. Dieta is a process of connecting with the plant and in my understanding, seeks to establish a connection with them in a way that is comfortable for them (them as in the plants). This can definitely be used in a variety of contexts, but I think that it is always important to develop relationships with and also share knowledge with communities where the practices originate from. That’s why I think actually going to visit the communities, and spending time there (beyond just a few days for an ayahuasca retreat) to work on developing relationships, learning, and also sharing can be truly beneficial. I think that there is a huge risk to take in bringing ayahuasca traditions into the West without maintaining a relationship with the communities from which these practices originated. This really runs the risk of appropriating (even accidentally) cultural knowledge. It's a complicated picture because neo-shamanic practices are popping up across the world, but we also have to keep in mind that there is a reason why there is such a strict ritual structure around consuming psychoactive plants; and a big part of that also has to do with safety.
What unique revelations come up from the intersection of your work, being at the nexus of psychology, biology, and cultural anthropology?
One of the parts about my work that I love, and perhaps something that drew me to ayahuasca and psychedelics in the first place, is that it’s where science and spirituality meet. It is also where ritual and science meets. The more I dive into my fieldsite, the more I see the tangible effects of dieta (the restrictions of foods having tangible influences on serotonin levels in the body, which are affected through the ayahuasca brew, for instance), complex chemical engineering in the ayahuasca and other plant brews, and the phenomenal insights into healing and how the body works where psychological health overlaps with physical and spiritual health.
How has your personal conception of ‘the self’ changed through your work with psychedelics (studying ego-dissolution and spiritual, human–non-human relationships)?
I’ve started viewing myself as more permeable. This is a topic that I’m writing about in my thesis right now; a notion of the self with less rigidly-defined boundaries and perhaps a body that is able to be inhabited by myself (a human) as well as the plants that I have taken as part of my learnings in this process of dieta. I’ve noticed my body change significantly through my work in the Amazon, especially from my fieldwork for my doctorate. I had heard about how the plants can alter you permanently after you do the heavy dietas (the dietas used in rites of apprenticeship). I shouldn’t have been surprised at the power of the plants, I mean ayahuasca in and of itself shows remarkable potential for the treatment of mental illnesses, including treatment-resistant depression with remission shown 5 years following a single dose, but I always am. I have noticed my preferences for foods change, and activities even. My field participants say that this is because the plant stays in your system, and never leaves if you do your diets correctly and they, too, have undergone changes in their food preferences after dieting the plants.
It’s been a long journey, but where it sits now is that my body feels like it's inhabited by more than just me, and sometimes I can feel the plants acting through me - it’s a really subtle change in my cognition, but it’s there. I also have seen this in some of my earlier (~20) ceremonies with ayahuasca where the plant showed me how it had influenced my decisions to call me to it (think inception) - but that’s a story for another day.
How do you hope to see your research on altered states of consciousness applied?
Honestly, I love the questions you’ve asked and I’d love if more people wanted to approach psychedelics in this way. I think there’s a lot [that] psychedelics can teach us about personhood, morethan-human species, ecology, and even ourselves. I hope that future research in psychedelics works on relationship building with traditional communities that have long-standing histories and traditions with psychoactive plants, like Amazonian rainforest societies, and I hope that this technical knowledge is centred in the advancement of psychedelic science going forwards from a harm-reduction point of view. I would love to see more forms of cultural exchange happening and the sharing of knowledge. And of course, an increase in conservation efforts in the Amazon. It’s not just ayahuasca, there is a whole pharmacy of phenomenal medicines in the jungle, and we need to do what we can to protect this rich part of Earth’s biodiversity. From my research into psychedelics (specifically the Ego-Dissolution Scale) I found that people experience a unity with nature under the influence of psychedelics which other researchers have found too. I hope that by realising that we are not separate from nature, and that our fates are actually intertwined, we can move towards a better planet and life for all species.
Bibliography:
Liete, M. (2023, June 26). This is how ayahuasca is brewed at a Santo Daime church in Brazil. Chacruna. https://chacruna.net/this-is-howayahuasca-is-brewed-at-a-santo-daime-feitio/ Politi, M. (2018, September 27). Healing and knowledge with amazonian shamanic diet. Chacruna. https://chacruna.net/healing-knowledgeamazonian-shamanic-diet/ Ruffell, S. G. D., Crosland-Wood, M., Palmer, R., Netzband, N., Tsang, W., Weiss, B., Gandy, S., Cowley-Court, T., Halman, A., McHerron, D., Jong, A., Kennedy, T., White, E., Perkins, D., Terhune, D. B., & Sarris, J. (2023). Ayahuasca: A review of historical, pharmacological, and therapeutic aspects. PCN reports : psychiatry and clinical neurosciences, 2(4), e146. https://doi.org/10.1002/pcn5.146
Senanayake, R. (2022, November 29). Cooking the brew. Beyond this world: Tales from the field. https://bekplants.wordpress.com/
Senanayake, R. (2024). Translating states: Methods for investigating altered states of consciousness, ontology, and traditional knowledge systems [Lecture slides]. OneDrive.
CupaDupa ‘25 - What You Missed
CubaDupa during the day encompasses exactly what Wellington is all about. Uni kids chatter energetically, wandering the streets in all kinds of get-up, boxes of beer and Hyoketsu RTDs tucked under their arms. Groups of middle aged women dancing in circles to the live DJs scattered across Cuba Street. Fathers leading their young toddlers in floral dresses or colourful shirts to accept a plastic flower from the local celebrity ‘Wellington Tree.’ Vibrant, musical, artsy and loud. This year's CubaDupa could not have fallen on a more brilliant day, the sun belting on the endless array of crafts and food markets, street performers and 9 official stages, plus an array of other designated performing areas. Not one moment of it stays the same, your exploration interrupted by marching bands, dancing sailors and Urban Tumbleweeds.
While the families tucked up in bed, under the cover of darkness came the swarms of party-goers. And the music this year did not disappoint, with Wellington MP Tamatha Paul pumping the likes of Kendrick Lamar over an ecstatic crowd flooding the street. Hugs were exchanged from scarcely seen friends, brought together by celebration of our beautiful city. At this point in CubaDupa, the streets are all about the music, so keep reading if you missed out on any of the artists below, or simply want to relive the scene.
Vera Ellen
There couldn’t be a better sound to match the solar energy of CubaDupa on this day than the soft groove of Vera Ellen. Introduced by her Taite Music Prize for her indie/alternative beats, the MC talked of her new album and the attached themes of unconventional love and the search for meaning. Strolling onto the stage with her sky blue guitar and cherry red top perfectly encompassed the romanticism of her music. Her fingers strummed her strings, and the stage came to life with “I spend my nights sweating on another bar stage,” singing of love, heartbreak, and everything that fell in the cracks between. After a couple of songs, she grinned into the mic and assured us that “I’m about to make you depressed, but don’t worry… then I’ll make you happy. That’s how life goes.” In the age of this era of music, Vera Ellen masters all there is to being a sad-girl indie artist.
Battle-Ska Galactica
Bring. Back. Ska. For those of us who did not get to experience peak Ska music in the late 70s/early 80s new wave boom, 6-person band Battle-Ska Galactica is the perfect opportunity to get into the scene. Personally, I wasn’t sure what to expect from the New Zealand Ska band with a nerdy name, but from the moment they started playing in a crowded pub of Jack Hacketts, at no point were both my feet on the floor at the same time. The mainly middle-aged crowd were all there for the music, singing and skanking to the rhythmic, upbeat melodies of ska, blasting the horns and abusing the microphone. Despite the volume of their original songs, blending between both old and new school ska, the highlight of the set had to be an epic cover of The Specials'"A Message to You, Rudy" that had everyone transported back to a time of musical revolution. For anyone who likes to dance without reason, I cannot encourage them enough to check out this band.
TOI
Peaking the nightlife scene and closing off the Wellington Airport Ngā Taniwha Stage were the funky, soulful beats of TOI. Right in the heart of Cuba mall, the crowd was bubbling and busy. People were here to dance, and TOI delivered. Their stage presence kept the crowd alive, as they introduced each band member and demanded that the crowd “make some fucking noise!” Apart from a strange moment in the set when everyone crouched for a beat drop that wasn’t exactly what the song was setting us up for, the set was exactly what this crowd needed. To put it plainly, TOI was a fun way to end the night. The band knew how to deliver funk and after the lead singer thanked everyone for “getting down with us tonight,” the vibrancy and vitality of CubaDupa was brought to an energetic conclusion.
Madeleine Peters
---- GEORGIA WEARING
Hiya! I’m Georgia and I’m the columns editor at Salient as well as a Masters student at the IIML. I’m the cupid pairing up the blind dates behind the scenes and I occasionally write articles.
Boybands on your Spotify playlist
Look, there's something about healing your thirteen-year-old self that just makes living out your twenties so much better. I will unironically blast early 2010s boyband music frequently, pole dance to it, and try and fail to keep the indie sleaze revival going. I’m talking 5SOS, 1D (R.I.P Liam) and Reece Mastin. Bring boybands back to your Spotify playlist.
Origami (Cuba St)
I live central so I like to treat Wellington like a mini New York — not go grocery shopping but instead leave my apartment at night and head to a nearby restaurant for dinner or a sweet treat. Origami’s desserts are beautiful, affordable, and delicious.
Johnny condoms and Skyn lube
I’ve tried a lot of different lubes out and through trial and error I’ve found Skyn lube to be the best. The free condoms and lube they hand out on campus are great but the lube sucks. Only a bad artist blames their tools, however. If you want quality and a trendy addition to your bags Johnny condoms are my personal favourite. The travel packs come with small bags to discreetly hide your finishings in your rendezvous flat bathroom trash can.
The online archives of Slutever
An old (and still available online) blog by Karley Sciortino that was updated from 2007 to 2020 which kind of perfectly captures different and developing views on sexuality, relationships, sex work, and other slutty stuff from the perspective of a proud slut. As a fellow proud slut, Sciortino's work is interesting, binge-worthy, and endlessly entertaining.
SHORT FICTION
I HATE PEOPLE who do not refuse to die with haste. Such was the IDIOT lurching behind my mantlepiece in my first foyer as I BADE HIS HEART STOPPED BEATING before the clock struck its familiar mechanical Spanish soulful wail denoting that three numbers had been thrown from my balcony towards my friend’s shack and into beyond the stars before midnight. He decided to leave the muddy Peruvian soul-shack that cried in my backyard before I could even wink a blink. The walk home for him was uneventful, with his creative mind latching on to any glint of furious moonlight that indicated ideas beyond the simpleton’s two-dimensional SEXGRASP money laundering scheme but he cried as he was replaced one by one by an unassuming batch of praying mantises. Manti. Plurals anger me more than academic pluralism as I hope his son who will cry before me begging for forgiveness for his fathers BLATANT STUPIDITY beyond his SEXMOID grasp of money laundering and fascist pole-dancing MONEY LAUNDERING SCHEME. Pluralism. Stop with that racket. I refuse to believe to believe TWO BELIEVE and if that does not already make my opinions on the matter as such I shall have you thrown into the cold street (st.? saint? cold saint?) before your son could cease his diatribe of veiled resentment towards your growing hunger for new money old money and old stories that are tales from caves long sunken and reoccupied with fishlike divas who will act as the sexual muse for Franco-Italian scribblers scrabbling their way to the top of the crag of false destiny as a plot from the Spanish three-thousand years past. The concept of Spaniard-ship is likely as old as capital letters and will be a profound influence on sea-fearing Spaniard-phobes for centuries past the slingshot waterwheel of this crazy timegame of money laundering Spanish homophobic SEXGRASP paid in full and agreed upon by many a consul-general of past years before his untimely deposal by that which your kind calls “Napoleon Bonaparte” but which’s true name is imperceptible therewith. I just heard someone cough. I will follow you home and kill you for interrupting my authorship just you wait. Thank goodness I am not narrating this aloud for then I would be paid in tearful threats by some savage cash evil to never set foot in that which you call “MURPHY BUILDING” for the rest of my sobless days. I have no intention to go to sleep although it is past my bedtime and I will cry if you attempt to send me up that tree in your backyard after the fire department after the cat in some savage perversion of that nursery rhyme you would beg your pipe-smoking shoe-wearing parental cataract catdetract advisors to sing you otherwise how would you get to sleep unentertained? And now in your mature age the oral act of spinning a wee yarn as it such as it such were is not sufficiently grounded in reality despite your refusal to not cling to the margins of a childlike warped bizarre story to go to sleep to proves you haven’t moved an inch since that tender, tender age. Can you go to sleep without me doing it? Will you? Will you cry all night, begging me to recreate the story such as it were? Begging me to recreate the same feeling of your parental cat-cat intact shoe-wearing obliviophones? I don’t even wear shoes. Heavens, I don’t even wear feet. The closest thing to a cat-detract I never could manage was when I got the closest thing to a cat-refract! Such silly things you think me still capable of after four years. And I will not refuse to not elaborate upon that detract-fact. “Oh, come now!” I hear you say. “The fire man is stuck in the tree, the great oaf! You must save him! What an ironic twist that would be! A great oafman calling himself helpman covered in red tadpole tarpoleon best man of “Tadpoleon” needsing help from commoner garded common or garden hose noseman commoner! What an
Gus Lane
embarrassment noseman tadpoleman friend will cry his last —” and such forth until you don’t even realise. You don’t have the faintest idea. I know your tricks. As soon as I am get up that tree I will again be stuck. Is it north? Trees don’t think about up as north or down as south. Trees defy gravity in accordance with wit. Many people defy wit. It fails to evade the holes in their mind where great thoughts slip through barely noticed. You might think about it three years down the road, but you can imagine his shock when the nature of the thinks is that they can only be produced three years later. Right now what I’m thinking and thinking thinking is the good thing think thing is not the good think! How superb! At least especially not the new think. The thing think I said was the new think, now listen carefully because this is what I was getting at the other day if you’ll remember, and three sentences past, because what I think is the new think thing is actually perhaps what my brain produced as such a tender age I threw them out. I want my new thoughts! The real fresh ones that smell nice like finely chopped paper or grass or glass when you get a good look at them. They’re just swimming around, having a ball with Tarpoleon or Tadpoleon or whatever I was. By the time I properly think them they’ll smell all mustly and Tadpoleon will have to make the decision between assuming the style and title of Frogpoleon or Toadpoleon. And anyway he has to get out of that tree before he obtusififfufocates but that’s hardly my concern, and those are your rules anyway! Don’t expect me to fruitlessly climb the tree and appease your fleeting desire for storied entertainment, it’s a waste of money and you’ll probably feel like shit again in a couple minutes; you see, the anticipation is the best part. Why not create something new? Listening to the old classics is only fun in the future, and all that is fun in the past exists in the future! Here’s one: instead of climbing the tree to get whoever was initially up there anyway, that adventurous spirit who started it all, and I’m not even complaining about him, you noticed surely the high praise and compliment I gifted him for his groundbreaking work, but surely if you were there it would have been all fun at the time, but now it is a new and different time and all the fun that man could have had man is all fun been had ham, but instead of summiting the tree to heroically save, why not take axe to hand to grindstone to stump. It’s not a stump yet and WILL YOU STOP SHITTING SO LOUDLY IT’S BEEN FIVE HOURS terribly sorry that’s my neighbour. Anyway it’s not quite a stump but once it is you must make sure it remains and with a heroic crash everyone will fly from the tree and what a magnificent sight it will be! With my sharpened blade of wit and insightful observation I will tear the old tale and with this mere act what was once a serene pasture will morph into a sheer clifface! and you shall cling to it, try to climb it, and there will certainly be a lot of yelling and arguing that I shan’t bother to write down but maybe someone else will bother to, most silly as that just creates a lot more yelling, but it will be too late for you to climb back up anyway yet you will try the rest of your waking life! And how will that feel for a bed-time story! I don’t think you’d like that very much. You’d rather be told a story that will barely inch you beyond waking consciousness and I don’t blame you, I understand that you would hate the idea of this precipice unfolding to the point where you will laugh at me and kill me, because bedtime stories are not made for anything but sending people to sleep, and I would understand that we should probably imprison someone who isn’t so tired, but maybe take this drug and hush and stop complaining. You… homosexual. Incel. I bet your parents don’t love you, fucking incel.
Three Poems
At two a.m.
There’s something in the light so I open the window to let it in my flatmates are smoking on the balcony below so in comes the smoke too but without a gift in hand
didn’t its mother teach it to never cross a threshold empty-handed that’s alright I just put on a fresh pot pull up a chair
At three a.m.
Something stinks around here and it’s not the chicken on the counter it was here before us something stinks not something bodily but certainly something of society should we just wait a few centuries then it’ll be gone like the romans and their sandals marching toes a-wiggle to where all the dead people go oh boy can’t wait to go there but not in that way just curious and
a little curiosity never killed nobody right can’t wait to go to berlin too heard it’s great this time of year and it doesn’t have this smell
At four a.m.
My hair falls weightless I don’t believe it held memories or hid secrets this room smells like urine like old flowers this summer is weightless malignant and weightless and zipping me into its pocket
but it will fall like everything else it will fall leaving tears in the sky and hoof marks on the track oh those deer I saw them unzip their skin and cast off their hooves slippery hands make slow work of buttons and all manner
of fasteners for that matter heat slicks hair or is it fur or fuck it feathers they’re feathers now hollow and prehistoric and keeping the warmth in the skin the warmth is kept inside but what if this isn’t where the warmth belongs or wants to be or
POETRY
Larry McMyler
are those the same thing or probably not this heat is rotting me inside out as in rotting me on the inside and the outside would you climb inside please and see what you can salvage
RECIPE
Habibi, I’m back. Because I know you all loved that hummus recipe, I thought I’d share another few family secrets. My tabbouleh story starts at my aunty and uncle’s take-out, Paasha, which popped up periodically throughout my childhood in a range of locations (but always with the same menu), before they sold each branch on to different owners. Their tabouleh is a little bit mystical to me — it’s only available at certain times, when certain stars align — and, needless to say, whoever took over after they sold could never get it quite right...
Another tabbouleh influence is my mad and brilliant mother. She’s no good with spicy, but demands her salads are dressed to the nines. Many-a-time she’s politely asked waiters for more dressing, and her tabouleh is no exception — bland food is for the dead, bitch (and the very old). But unlike other, leafier salads, tabbouleh’s #ancientgrains survive my mother’s waterlogging.
In fact, I reckon tabbouleh might be the coolest little salad on the block — the wheat gives it chew and weight, while the tomato and onion talk bright bursts of flavour onto the palette; soaking in its zingy dressing, tabbouleh might be the only salad in the world that should be dressed way before you eat (I’d say an hour or two earlier, for maximum soakage). It’s a robust, durable, any-season, budget-friendly delight that will elevate kebab night to the next level or simply stand aside and compliment any grilled protein. Humble. My tabbouleh story starts with my family; yours starts here, habibi.
Ingredients
• It’s all about the balance with tabbouleh, and so it’s all down to your judgement and personal tastes. I’d aim for roughly the same amounts of parsley, tomato, white onion, and bulgur wheat. For four servings this usually looks like a bunch of parsley, four tomatoes, half an onion, and half a cup of bulgur wheat
• Two to three lemons
• Some olive oil
• Salt
• Dried mint
• Water, sugar, and white vinegar (optional; for pickling liquid)
NB: You don’t need to pickle the onions at all, I just think it’s an easy extra step that adds a bit of fun to the final dish!
Method
• Begin by pickling your onion, ideally the day before. Pickling liquid is made by simmering water, vinegar, and sugar until combined, and it’s best in my view in a ratio of 2:2:1 — plus a pinch of salt. You can add whatever aromatics you’d like (black peppercorns and dill are some of my go-tos). Slice up your onion into thick-ish semicircles, pack it in a jar, and pour over the hot liquid. This will keep in the fridge for a while. I don’t know how long; I’m not a food scientist. I’m literally a poet, lol.
• Soak the bulgur wheat in a pot of cold water for 10 minutes to rehydrate, then turn on the heat and simmer for another 10 minutes. Taste to ensure doneness and pour off the cooking water.
• Now you’ve just got to bring it all together. Remove stalks and finely chop your parsley, resisting the temptation to run it through the food processor (this will only ‘bruise’ the herb and leak its delicious oils everywhere).
• Dice tomatoes into little cubes, having scooped out the innards. (Side note: never discard tomato innards; they go well in any pasta sauce, soup, or shish-style marinade.) Dice your onion into cubes of roughly the same size.
• Toss together the wheat, parsley, tomato and onion, and dress the salad with salt, olive oil, lemon juice, and a few pinches of dried mint. There’s no secret, it's just that simple.
Jackson McCarthy (he/him)
ACID TRIP
DOWN
1 Residents (6)
2 Very precise sort (6)
3 Scottish lakes (5)
4 Ferguson formerly on RNZ (5)
5 Protect (5)
6 Animal life (5)
7 Frisbees (5)
11 Wishy-_____ (5)
12 It's game (3)
13 Delights (6)
14 Initial, like for a voyage (6)
16 Deep blue (6)
17 Slow-moving tree dwellers (6)
19 Genetic messenger (3)
20 Cake topping (5)
22 "Well, ___-di-dah!" (3)
24 Pot brownie, e.g. (6)
25 Plot surprises (6)
26 Crack up (5)
27 Butcher's waste (5)
28 Camera and printer brand (5)
29 Donkeys (5)
30 '____ Ring' (5)
ACROSS
1 Cosmetic that shimmers (3, 5)
5 Teed up? (6)
8 Heroin, cocaine and others (5,1, 5)
9 Weird Al's paradise (5)
10 "Good night!" (5, 6)
15 Rests
18 With 21A, substance found in this puzzle's circles (8, 4, 12)
21 See 18A
23 Dispatched (4)
26 What you might drop in a busker's hat (5, 6)
31 Nintendo character (or a hero for the working class?) (5)
32 Like many Vic Deals listings (11)
33 Paris hotel?
34 Jennifer of Shrek 2 (8)
SUDOKUWEB
SUDOKU
by Nil
• First select a number/operator and than apply it to a sudoku cell.
SPECIAL SUBSTANCES
by Holly R.
CONNIPTIONS
Create groups of four!
Beak Deep Act Trapp
Bill Dutch Scratchy Snout
Strep Draft Schnozz Paper
King Smeller Zedlitz Sore
Visit @Salientgram on instagram for the answers
QUIZ
By Maya Field (She/Her)
By Ossian Lynch
1. In an attempt to break a world record, 21 Year old Patrick Cooper recently spent 48 hours in Waitangi Park doing what?
2. What was the name of the sole cosmonaut aboard Vostok 1 which launched in 1961?
3. The Māoriland film festival is held annually in which town on the Kāpiti coast?
4. Which Archipelago belonging to Ecuador is home to well known endemic species including finches, tortoises and marine iguanas?
5. Which New Zealand band was known as Pacifier from 2002 - 2004? a. Shihad, b. Dragon, c. The Mint Chicks.
DOWN
1 Abbreviated name of ADHD medication
2 Nickname for amphetamines
4 A cloudy IPA
5 The sensation caused by drugs
6 Those who can craft joints
7 Lucy in the sky with diamonds
12 Crystal meth slang; cubes sometimes placed in bongs
13 Alternate name for molly
14 The body of knowledge behind drug production
15 THC crystals from cannabis buds; American rapper Chief____
18 Plant native to the Pacific Islands that can induce a buzz
22 Most common way of consuming weed
24 Flicked off a cigarette
27 Wintery alcoholic beverage Hot
28 An LSD adventure
29 Silver sack of wine
30 $20 portions of weed
31 Something you should never break while drinking
IF YOU HAVE TWO CLASSES AT DIFFERENT CAMPUSES ON THE SAME DAY, YOU'RE ELIGIBLE FOR FREE TRAVEL COSTS, THESE COME IN THE FORM OF A SNAPPER PASS THAT WE ADD TO YOUR SNAPPER CARD!
POP BY VUWSA – WE'LL LOAD 10 FREE BUS TRIPS ON YOUR SNAPPER CARD. EASY! ONCE THESE HAVE RUN OUT, YOU CAN COME IN AND COLLECT ANOTHER 10 PASSES, PROVIDED THAT YOU STILL HAVE CLASSES AT MORE THAN ONE CAMPUS!
Bolshie
Stalinism and its Consequences
We were both amused and perturbed to see that the Salient designer decorated the last Bolshie column with pictures of a young Joseph Stalin, which is darkly funny, given that Stalin was the gravedigger of the revolution and the murderer of an entire generation of Bolsheviks.
The October Revolution of 1917—the first nationwide proletarian revolution in history— immediately faced severe challenges. The fledgling workers’ state was isolated, economically underdeveloped, encircled by hostile imperialist powers, and soon plunged into a brutal civil war as counter-revolutionary forces regrouped on all fronts.
By the time the Soviet Union stabilized, war and starvation had hollowed out the organs of workers’ democracy, which were meant to be the foundation of the new society. In their place, a layer of party bureaucrats emerged to administer the state— providing the social base for a decisive split in the international communist movement.
One faction, led by Trotsky, sought to rebuild workers’ democracy within the Soviet Union while fostering proletarian revolutions abroad. While accepting the need to consolidate the state after the failure of revolutions elsewhere, it saw that abandoning support for new revolutionary movements in favour of ‘socialism in one country’ could only lead to defeat in the long term. Another faction, headed by Stalin, prioritized empowering the state bureaucracy, suppressing internal democracy, and securing diplomatic agreements with capitalist powers, all for the sake of short-term security.
Even when Stalinist-led revolutions succeeded, as in China, Yugoslavia, and Vietnam, they did so in defiance of Moscow’s directives, and only after all attempts at alliances with national bourgeois forces had collapsed. These revolutions produced deformed workers' states that retained the basic characteristics of Stalinism: bureaucratic, undemocratic rule and reconciliation with the global capitalist system. After Stalin’s death, his successors in the Soviet Union continued along this path as well.
Stalinism’s legacy runs deep, and to this day portrays itself (and is often accepted) as the sole legitimate expression of communist thought, even after the ultimate fall of the Soviet Union and its satellites. Any communist movement that fails to reckon with this history will inevitably recycle the same failed ideas that have stifled the workers' movement and doomed revolutions.
Stalin’s victory in this struggle had dire consequences not just for the Russian Revolution but for the global working class. The Communist International, originally built to fight for world revolution, became a tool of Soviet diplomacy. In the great class struggles of the 1920s and 1930s—the British General Strike of 1926, the Chinese Revolution of 1927, the Spanish Civil War, and the French mass strikes of 1936— Stalinist parties were ordered to collaborate with bourgeois "allies" rather than pursue independent class struggle. In the colonies, the Stalinists dismissed the possibility of workers’ revolution altogether, advocating for communist parties to merge into ‘national bourgeois’ forces. The results: the massacre of communists in Shanghai, the victory of Franco in Spain, and the defeat of militant workers’ movements in Britain and France.
Some leftists such as the International Socialist Organisation (ISO) are so aware of the counterrevolutionary treachery of Stalinism that they refuse to work alongside them, for fear of fostering totalitarianism. The reality is more mundane: today, Stalinists are far more likely to endanger the left with their conciliatory attitudes to the union bureaucracy and liberal movement leaderships (just like most of their opponents), than with gulags or deportations. Unlike their opponents, Stalinists are often willing to defend workers’ states and oppose imperialist interventions. We seek to join the Stalinists when they participate in good campaigns, to win their followers to a revolutionary perspective. In both their immediate failings in countries like Aotearoa, and their historical legacy of collaboration, bloodshed, and misdirection, Stalinism is neither significantly worse nor better than other dead-ends like social democracy. Refusing to engage with Stalinism and other wrong ideas on moral grounds only ensures that an increasingly radical younger generation, often wellread and motivated, is left to a politics that ultimately neutralizes them.
Bolshevik Club is a space for revolutionary students. Come find us at Red Lunch Hour, our regular discussion group, 12pm every Tuesday in the Hub (look for the banner), or get in touch at vuwbolshevikclub@gmail.
The Salient designer would like to formally apologise for the lapse in judgement.
SOC 101
It’s normally a great idea to ask yourself “why am I taking this substance?”. If it is as a means of escape, a way of coping with discontent or a way of seeking connection, this could be a symptom of ~alienation~. Drugs should be fun and legal, not the solution to systemic problems.
What Is Alienation?
Alienation describes the feeling of being isolated or disconnected from others or from society. It is about estrangement, detachment or nonbelonging. A Marxist understanding of alienation focuses on how our system of labour (capitalism) creates this feeling or condition. This way of thinking does not individualise mental health and wellbeing, but instead allows us to analyse material conditions, the socio-economic environment, and the relationship between labour and the worker. Working is a major factor in why we feel so fn sad.
Work for the majority of the world is not affirming, self-fulfilling, inspiring, or gratifying, rather it is degrading, isolating, using our bodies as a tool to produce often at the lowest possible price. Not only are many workers alienated from the product of their labour, they are also alienated in the act of production. Limbs become tools doing the same action hundreds of times a day and never seeing the end result of their efforts; for instance, some cocoa farmers have never seen or tasted chocolate.
Perhaps being a university student you hope to be the boss of people who do this labour; a middle-man, an administrator, or marketer. Perhaps doing a job you would never otherwise like to do - like making weapons or climbing a never-ending bureaucratic ladder. Spending the majority of your day working a job where your values, needs, and sense of collective good do not align with your actions alienates you from yourself. Work then feels like it doesn’t have meaning, and suddenly life doesn’t have any meaning. Distractions such as drugs become a form of escapism or release from this alienation.
Taking drugs -or other hobbies- in your spare time can feel like the only way to find solace and relief. Opportunities to critically reflect on why you feel like shit can be too exhausting and diving into that new season of MAFS might just be easier. Joining a protest might feel too inconvenient or you just “don’t have the time”.
This is not an individual problem! It is intentional that we feel this way; not in the sense that the illuminati have decided, but rather over time we have settled for this “work/life balance”. Capitalist elites encourage us to feel like our problems are our own fault, because this keeps us from connecting the dots, becoming class conscious and changing the status quo. We have just enough time to stay clean, cook, watch TV and sleep so we can work again. Weekends are long enough so we don’t feel completely cheated but are truly never long enough for the things we want to do. But this can be challenged, and things can change with organising and pressure from workers.
Think about how alienation relates to the way you feel. When you desire connection or escape ask yourself “WHY?” Why is this economic system making us mentally unwell and how can we organise to fight for a better one?
Become a socialist and join ISO.
Resident Expert Editor
Mauatua Fa’araContributing Writer
Saad Aamir Contributing Writer Guy van Egmond Contributing Writer
Walter Zamalis Contributing Writer
Georgia Wearing Columns Editor
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Salient is published by, but remains editorially independent from, the Victoria University of Wellington Students’ Association (VUWSA). Salient is funded in part by VUWSA through the Student Services Levy. Salient is a member of the Aotearoa Student Press Association (ASPA).
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