The Hookah Pipe:

While travelling overland to Kabul on Gertie, our rattle trap of a bus, we stopped in the middle of the night at an old two-storey wooden building in the middle of nowhere. The only light in the building—a single kerosene lamp. There was no furniture so everyone sat on the floor encircling the lamp. That’s when the hookah pipe began to make the rounds. Not only was it the middle of the night and we were in the middle of nowhere, we were outnumbered by Afghan men—who seemed quite friendly. When the hookah pipe arrived, I gave it a pass.

Other members of the bus must have felt equally threatened by the setting. After using the flashlight to locate the washroom, three women from the bus insisted on staying with me until we returned to the group.

A Conversation About Drugs:

One night while rumbling along in Gertie under a starry desert sky, I had a conversation with Gretchen, the leader of the hippie family we were travelling with. We talked about drugs. Gretchen was curious why I wasn’t into drugs. I was curious why she was.

Gretchen, although interested in discovering a higher consciousness admitted to enjoying the high. When I told her that I only had to look at a flower to get high, she laughed. Like most hippies, Gretchen felt taking drugs was a personal choice, not something that everyone had to do. I decided to stick to flowers.

“Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out”

The term “Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out” was coined by Timothy Leary in 1966. Leary, a lecturer in psychology at Harvard University, along with Richard Alpert, an assistant professor, started the Harvard Psilocybin Project where they explored the effects of psychotropic substances on the human mind. Leary felt that the taking of psychedelic drugs led to a higher level of consciousness. After Leary and Alpert were both fired from Harvard for using students in their research, they went on to becoming icons of the psychedelic drug counterculture.

Surprisingly the biggest pressure to experiment with drugs wasn’t coming from the intellectual component of the counterculture. As I recall, back in the 60s except for the hippies, most young people weren’t reading the works by Ken Kesey or Allen Ginsberg. Instead, they were listening to The Beatle’s Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.  In the song “A Day in the Life” John Lennon sings “I’d love to turn you onnnnnn….” It may have been a masterful piece of music but everybody knew it was about turning on with drugs. Jefferson Airplane chose not to beat around the bush with lyrics. In the song “White Rabbit” they told youth to “feed your head”.

More About the Hookah Pipe: Its Use and Safety

Street scene in 1971 in Kandahar, Afghanistan with hookah pipes.

The hookah pipe is an instrument used for heating, vaporizing then smoking either tobacco, cannabis, hashish or opium. Although originally designed to make smoking safer for consumption it does not filter out toxic chemicals. According to the World Health Organization, a full session which can last up to eighty minutes is the equivalent of smoking 100 cigarettes. Yikes!

The Nobility: Influencers of Their Day:

Once the hookah pipe became popular amongst the nobility it became widely accepted.

An Object of Beauty:

When I saw hookah pipes in the market in Kandahar, Afghanistan I wanted to buy one. Not for smoking pot but because to my eye they were beautiful. I didn’t want to chance sending one through the mail. It would probably break before it arrived, if it arrived at all. Carrying it all the way across Asia on my back was also not an option. The idea of possessing a hookah pipe, one that I could display on the shelf as an object of beauty would remain a pipe dream.