'Brain Doctor Explains Rhythm and "Reefer" Tie-Up'

This is a real article from The Daily Express in England dated 28 November 1951. For a bit of fun just swap the word ecstacy for reefer and techno for jazz and suddenly its eerily like a Herald Sun story...
Is there a link between dope and hot jazz dancing - apart from that coloured men who peddle reefer can meet susceptible teenagers at the jazz clubs?
URGE TO MOVE
Reefers and rhythm seem to be directly connected with the minute electric "waves continually generated by the brain surface. When the rhythm of the music synchronizes with the rhythm of the 'brainwaves', the jazz fans experience an almost compulsive urge to move their bodies in sympathy. Dope may help the brain to 'tune in' to the rhythm more sharply, thereby hightening the ecstacy if the dance.
This theory is based on brilliant brain research carried out chiefly by Dr Grey Walter at the Burden Neurological Institute, Bristol. He has proved that when some people watch a light flickering at a rate which matches the rhythm of their 'brainwaves' they undergo a deep emotional disturbance. Their muscles jerk so violently that the flickering light sometimes causes convulsions.
Dr Grey Walter suggests that a steadily repeated sound, like the rapid beating of a drum, may have the same effect if it happens to synchronize with the 'brainwave' rhythm. He believes that this is why a nicely timed tune automatically sets us a toe-tapping. And why a sustained tom-tom beat will seend susceptible dancers into ecstatic movements.
In jungle and in jazz club, dancers close the eyes to enhance the pleasure of the music as they sway. Grey Walker's researches also offer a possible explanation.
INCREASED THRILL
They have proved that closing the eyes immediately causes almost the whole brain surface to generate special waves at a regular rhythmic rate. The pattern of the 'brainwaves' is also affected by dope. So reefers may increase the thrill of the music by strengthening the jiver's 'rhythm reaction'. It is surely more than a coincidence that primitive peoples dope themselves with narcotic drugs before beginning their frenzied tribal jigs.
cool huh? dig it... notice how the word ecstacy/ecstatic was used? spookily prescient...
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.... he who makes a beast of himself, rids himself of the pain of being a man...

im going to show this to my mum
-Av

"This is a real article from The Daily Express in England dated 28 November 1951" Where the fuck do you find this stuff jb?? I mean, do you sift through English newspapers from the 50's? hehe, nice article though, made me laugh!

hehehe me too

oh shit i forgot to say its from the book "artificial paradises" a drug reader published by penguin books.
altho id love to say i found it after digging thru 60 years of english newspapers..

ha! you scammer you.

re: moral panics etc etc
found these illuminating quotes in "Drugs, Morality and the Law" (Murphy, 1975):
According to Sir (Professor) Clifford Allbut, Cambridge ;
"The sufferer is tremulous and losses his self control: he is subject to fits of aggitation and depression. He has a haggard appearance and, as with other such agents, a renewed dose of the poison gives temporary relief but at the cost of future misery."
And according to one of his contemporaries, Dr. W. E. Dixon (an eminent pharmacologist):
"...it produces a strange and extreme degree of physical depression. An hour or two after breakfast ... a grievous sinking referred chiefly to the epigastrium may seize upon the sufferer so that even to speak is an effort... confusion and giddiness may add to his troubles. By miseries such as these the best years of life may be spoilt."
Guess what they were refering to: Tea and coffee respectively... Written back in 1906 no less...
Its not the 'scene' going up in flames, its just the light at the end of the tunnel...

[This message has been edited by yossarian.lives (edited 01 May 2000).]