"As I lay there, I could feel the medicine take over my entire body, as if an extraterrestrial had entered my bloodstream and was taking over. I could feel it doing its work on my brain, repairing the virus known as addiction."

Says a user of Ibogaine, quoted in "Silicon Valley’s psychedelic wonder drug is almost here/A new startup called MindMed could have the key to providing the upsides of psychedelic drugs for both focus and addiction treatment—while cutting out the downsides of tripping" (Fast Company).

Ibogaine is found in a woody West African shrub that sprouts orange fruits like upside-down tear drops. In Gabon and Cameroon, members of the Bwiti religion eat rootbark from the Iboga Tabernanthe bush as part of a ceremonial confirmation of their faith. Americans have sought out this rite of passage for decades in hopes of enlightenment. In blog posts and on Reddit threads, ibogaine enthusiasts detail how the rootbark renders intense visions, hallucinations, and deep vortexes of memory followed by introspection. It can take days to go through.

Ibogaine? Isn't that the drug Hunter S. Thompson said Ed Muskie was on... back in the days when fake news was trippy and funny — a way to smoke out the squares who couldn't see a joke:

While in Wisconsin covering the primary campaign for the United States presidential election of 1972, gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson submitted a satirical article to Rolling Stone accusing Democratic Party candidate Edmund Muskie of being addicted to ibogaine. Many readers, and even other journalists, did not realize that the Rolling Stone piece was facetious. The ibogaine assertion, which was completely unfounded, did a significant amount of damage to Muskie's reputation, and was cited as a factor in his loss of the nomination to George McGovern. Thompson later said he was surprised that anyone believed it.

I have that text. Excerpt:

The Muskie nightmare is beginning to look more and more like a major political watershed for the Democratic Party....  Big Ed was supposed to be their ticket to Miami, where they planned to do business as usual once again, and keep the party at least livable, if not entirely healthy. All Muskie had to do, they said, was keep his mouth shut and act like Abe Lincoln.

The bosses would do the rest. As for that hare-brained bastard McGovern, he could take those reformist ideas he’d been working on, and jam them straight up his ass. A convention packed wall to wall with Muskie delegates—the rancid cream of the party, as it were—would make short work of McGovern’s Boy Scout bullshit.

That was four months ago, before Muskie began crashing around the country in a stupid rage and destroying everything he touched. First it was booze, then Reds, and finally over the brink into Ibogaine … and it was right about that time that most of the Good Ole Boys decided to take another long look at Hubert Humphrey. He wasn’t much; they all agreed on that—but by May he was all they had left.

Not much, for sure. Any political party that can’t cough up anything better than a treacherous brain-damaged old vulture like Hubert Humphrey deserves every beating it gets. They don’t hardly make ’em like Hubert any more—but just to be on the safe side, he should be castrated anyway.

Castrated? Jesus! Is nothing sacred? Four years ago Hubert Humphrey ran for President of the United States on the Democratic ticket—and he almost won.

It was a very narrow escape. I voted for Dick Gregory in ’68, and if somehow Humphrey manages to slither onto the ticket again this year I will vote for Richard Nixon....

Well … as much as I hate to get away from objective journalism, even briefly, there is no other way to explain what that treacherous bastard appears to be cranking himself up for this time around, except by slipping momentarily into the realm of speculation....

"The rancid cream of the party" —  I wonder who's the rancid cream of the party now. If you Google the phrase, you'll only get 4 hits — and all are the full text of Thompson's essay. I'm (apparently) the first person to quote that phrase on the internet. The rancid cream of the party. I think it deserves widespread usage. We tend to say "the elite" more than "the cream" these days, and we miss out on a good deal of metaphorical fun. There's still literal cream:



But once there was vivid imagery:



And by the way, when you were reading about the Democratic Party in 1972 deciding "to take another long look at Hubert Humphrey," didn't you think about today and the prospect of the Party taking another long look at Hillary Clinton? Did you see that a new Harvard/Harris poll has her ahead of Biden and the rest — the frontrunner!?

She wasn’t much; they all agreed on that—but by May she was all they had left.

The italicized text is just a little twinge of a premonition of mine — just me, high on 2 cups of coffee at 5 in the morning.