"Excellent feelings. Tremendous opening of insights and understanding. A real awakening."
"This feels marvelous, and a whole new way to be much more relaxed, accepting, being in the moment. No more axes to grind. I can be free."
"I felt an enriched emotional affect, a comfortable and good feeling, and easy sleeping, with colorful and important dreams."
"Er... um... I feel... eeee.... shh... I'm sorry, what was the question again?
"The substantial reason for rejecting a philosophical theory is the 'absurdum' to which it reduces us."
ARGAN: But doctors themselves must believe in the truth in their science since they use it on themselves.
BROTHER: That's because there are some in their number who suffer from the same delusion by which they profit.
--The Imaginary Invalid by Moliere, produced by Yuri Rasovsky
Prohibitionists have the same M O they've had for the last 100+ years: blame drugs for everything. Being a drug warrior is never having the decency to say you're sorry -- not to Mexicans, not to inner-city crime victims, not to patients who go without adequate pain relief...
America created a whole negative morality around "drugs" starting in 1914. "Users" became fiends and were as helpless as a Christian sinner -- in need of grace from a higher power. Before prohibition, these "fiends" were habitues, no worse than Ben Franklin or Thomas Jefferson.
Ann Lemke's case studies make the usual assumptions: getting free from addiction is a morality tale. No reference to how the drug war promotes addiction and how banned drugs could solve such problems. She does not say why daily SSRI use is acceptable while daily opium use is not. Etc.
Americans love to hate heroin. But there is no rational reason why folks should not use heroin daily in a world in which we consider it their medical duty to use antidepressants daily.
It is a truism to say that we cannot change the world and that therefore we have to change ourselves -- but the drug war outlaws even this latter option.
William James knew that there were substances that could elate. However, it never occurred to him that we should use such substances to prevent suicide. It seems James was blinded to this possibility by his puritanical assumptions.
When it comes to "drugs," the government plays Polonius to our Ophelia:
OPHELIA: I do not know, my lord, what I should think.
POLONIUS: Marry, I'll teach you; think yourself a baby!
Americans are far more fearful of psychoactive drugs than is warranted by either anecdote or history. We require 100% safety before we will re-legalize any "drug" -- which is a safety standard that we do not enforce for any other risky activity on earth.
Drug warriors are too selfish and short-sighted to fight real problems, so they blame everything on drugs.
In an article about Mazatec mushroom use, the author says: "Mushrooms should not be considered a drug." True. But then NOTHING should be considered a drug: every substance has potential good uses.
