Thanks to DCP for the heads up.

David Holthouse spent 72 hours with a group of people going on a Shabu binge.

On this Thursday afternoon in late summer, Nick is preparing the second-floor recreation room of his fashionably appointed Highland home for what has become a twice-a-month ritual of extreme indulgence for a revolving group of five to ten fellow hip, young and successful citizens of Denver.

“Basically,” he says, “we blast off Thursday night and don’t pull the chute until Sunday.”

During their 72-hour run, he and his friends will eat little solid food save fruit, so Nick’s fridge and freezer are stocked with the makings for smoothies. Along with yogurt, organic apple juice and frozen blackberries, strawberries and mangoes are five bottles of Moët champagne, a dozen bottles of Italian sparkling water, four cases of microbrew, two bottles of chilled New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc and a discount-warehouse carton of 400 Otter Pops.

Holthouse’s retelling of this weekend is so intense that I felt physically drained after reading the article.

The article is at turns funny. The pack leader, Nick, referring to the Shabu:

This is the shit JFK was getting jacked in his ass during the Cuban missile crisis. I shouldn’t even be calling this shit ’shit,’ because it’s disrespectful.

And at turns sad:

Depleted of lightbulbs [ed. note: they were using broken lightbulbs to snort the Shabu.] and either unwilling or unable to head out to the Strip at dawn to buy more, they resort to snorting lines of crushed Shabu off the metal toilet-paper dispensers in the casinos restrooms. On the plane ride home, Nick, Ike and Bonnie all bleed from the nose.

I was thrilled to see that the auctioning off of of Dr. Martin Luther King’s papers to the highest bidder was averted. It looks like the papers are going to Morehouse.