Weekend Guide: 11.19.2021
❄️snow blind❄️
You won’t catch me out here condoning the use of drugs. No way! But. Free market. Free will. Freedom of Choice. Freedom by Richie Havens. Peace and love!
I just finished Snow Blind: A Brief Career in the Cocaine Trade by Robert Sabbag and I have yet to come down.
🛩 “To snort cocaine is to make a statement. It is like flying to Paris for breakfast.” 🛩
**There is something mystical about these little mass market paperbacks from the 70’s. I always think of the hands they passed through over the years. My copy has a few select passages outlined that led me to believe it was read by an aspiring cocaine dealer — someone who was reading ‘Snow Blind’ as a how-to guide. Fun!**
Back to the text at hand. Snow Blind is the story of the (very) short lived drug running career of Zachary Swan — ostensibly a pacifist Scarface.
Sabbag portrays drug smuggling as a quasi-hippie, almost romantically amateurish undertaking without any real ramifications. Swan is charming and reckless. Partaking, at will, in his own product. He is everything you want your drug dealer to be!
Trips to Columbia. Poolside. White suits. Guns. Sex. Espionage. Intrigue. Airport security. We’ve got it all, folks.
Oddly enough the writing is plain, but with some real matter-of-fact lucidity. Reading this in 2021 was interesting. It reads as the study of an unknown. Something that we as a culture/society are not quite sure about yet. Blissful ignorance.
It could be argued that Snow Blind was the first pop cocaine book, and that it predicted the drugs impending takeover of the United States in the early 80s.
Either way, this isn’t for everyone. But, I have always put my trust in Robert Stone.
"One of the best books about drugs ever written."
What else needs to be said?
Thank you for tapping in again. I love hearing from you. If you are reading something you think I should try — bring it, baby. Anytime you share Weekend Guide with a loved one, an angel gets its wings.