Simon Howard

“I really really don't want to die here, among these criminally ugly furnishings.”
― Luke Jennings, Codename Villanelle

“In fact, attempts to deter substance abuse through drug testing in prisons is actually making this gateway effect more severe. Cannabis and its breakdown products can be detected in urine for weeks, whereas heroin clears from the body much faster. Testing positive for drugs can result in an increase in sentence, so prisoners have found a way to reduce the likelihood of being caught: use heroin instead of cannabis. Far from protecting them, imprisoning cannabis users will make them more likely to start using hard drugs.”
― David Nutt, Drugs Without the Hot Air: Minimizing the Harms of Legal and Illegal Drugs

“Even in the less-obviously creative fields of hard science, LSD can be profoundly beneficial. In fact, it played a role in the two biggest discoveries in biology of the 20th century. Francis Crick, who discovered the double helix structure of DNA with James Watson, and Kary Mullis, who invented the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), had both taken the drug, and attributed some of their understanding and insights to it. Mullis has gone so far as to say: "would I have invented PCR if I hadn't taken LSD? I seriously doubt it ... [having taken LSD] I could sit on a DNA molecule and watch the polymers go by. I learnt that partly on psychedelic drugs.”
― David Nutt, Drugs Without the Hot Air: Minimizing the Harms of Legal and Illegal Drugs

“Sima made a space for me to hear that there were depths beneath what I was saying that I hadn't sounded yet.”
― Ben Lerner, The Topeka School