Live from the Second Church of the Eleusinian Mysteries1 -- at a location that the DEA has been torturing suspects to discover for the last ten years...
Let's all turn to hymn #355, "Plants Divine, All Plants Excelling." And a one, and a two, and a one, two, three, four...
Verse 1
Plants divine, all plants excelling
Not a gift for man to shun
Psychoactively restoring
Weary souls a sense of fun
But the prudish claim this bounty's
From a source we should not tap
So they outlaw Mother Nature
What a pile of bovine crap
Verse 2
Age-ed souls in homes of sadness
Shorn of meaning and of hope
Find in psilocybin's madness
Ways to prosper and to cope
Yet the narc with IQ zero
Seeks to keep the status quo
Forcing sick and dying patients
To encounter needless woe
Verse 3
Thank we now the forest shaman
Who dispenses sacred balm
Plants and fungi from the jungle
Sure to teach us as they calm
Yet the despots slander nature
Curse the plants that ease the brain
Check our urine at the job site
To ensure we all refrain
Verse 4
Bursting with ungrateful chutzpah
Tyrants outlaw healing plants
Drugs that when provided rightly
Make the suicidal dance
Yet, the heartless politician
Claims that "drugs" are just the pits
Yet they never give up liquor
What amazing hypocrites
Verse 5
Ayahuasca's non-addictive
Grows new neurons in the brain
Makes the most besotted drinker
From his poison to refrain
Yet, the shrinks from here to Parma
Make it clearly understood
We must buy pills from Big Pharma
Till we're hooked upon them good
Okay, you may all be seated. Thanks for that rousing performance of hymn #355, "Plants Divine, All Plants Excelling," a paeon of praise to the therapeutic power of rain forest plants, both known and yet to be discovered. Let's all take one complete silent minute to thank God for providing us with such. And... begin!
[one minute transpires]
Good thing that we don't outlaw those plants and try to burn them almost any chance we get, right, folks? I mean, wouldn't that be stupid? The work of a real jackass, in fact!
Oh, wait a minute, I forgot: that's exactly what we "do do," isn't it, Ben, in this so-called scientific country of ours? We confiscate and burn those psychologically therapeutic plants. And then we monitor the country's piss to make sure that no one dares apply to nature for psychological healing and perfection. Am I right or am I right?
Ben Stupidson, ladies and gentlemen, DEA agent, third pew from the back. Oh, sorry, apparently that's STUARTSON.
I don't wanna call Ben on the carpet, but he's so seldom in church, I can't pass up this opportunity to make him squirm.
No, just kidding, Ben. Just kidding. All do offend. I say all.
Mind you, we don't all go out of our way to burn and confiscate plants that improve consciousness, give us an inkling of divinity, and even have the potential to cure Alzheimer's by growing new neurons.
Where are you going, Ben? I repeat: we're all sinners. It's just that your sin of choice happens to align with the subject of today's sermon.
OK, well, if you have to go. I trust we're still going to see you at tonight's pot luck.
Ben's like: "Right. I'm gonna be there, if only to make sure that you're not using actual pot!"
Just kidding, Ben, come back here.
Let's pause for a moment and pray for Ben's soul. That's right: let's forgive him for permitting over 40 years of needless suffering by outlawing plants, especially those non-addictive psychedelics that can pack the benefits of five years of psychotherapy into one afternoon.
God, we come before you today, saddened that Ben Stupidson - sorry, God, I mean STUARTSON - is determined to block mere research, let alone actual use, of your mind-improving natural plants. Please don't be too harsh on him. Remember that he lives in a country that has scapegoated plants for many decades, thus giving dirty politics and lame social policies a free pass. Amen.
We've forgiven you, Ben, if that helps any. No, I think he's gone now. Fiddlesticks. Well, I guess you can't save everybody, especially on MY salary.
No, seriously, folks.
And now my sermon, based on the hymn of the same name: "Plants Divine, All Plants Excelling."
As always, if there are any penitent Drug Warriors in the room, feel free to come up during the sermon, kneel here at the altar, and receive forgiveness for your role in preventing the therapeutic use of Mother Nature's godsend plants.
We've got a two-fer going on today, by the way, folks: I will forgive you not simply for blocking valuable drug research, but also for callously locking up millions of Americans for the mere possession of.... horror of horrors... NATURALLY GROWING PLANTS!!!
Comedy
The Drug War is laughable -- or it would be if the Drug Warriors hadn't deprived us of laughing gas, the substance that William James himself used to study alternate realities.
Meanwhile, no imaginable downside could persuade westerners that guns and alcohol were too dangerous. Yet the DEA lies about almost all psychoactive drugs, saying there are no good uses. That's a lie! Then they pass laws that keep us from disproving their puritanical conclusion.
"The homicidal drug is booze. There's more violence on a Saturday night in a neighborhood tavern than there has been in the whole 20-year history of LSD." -- Timothy Leary
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.
Musk and co. want to make us more robot-like with AI, when they should be trying to make us more human-like with sacred medicine. Only humans can gain creativity from plant medicine. All AI can do is harvest the knowledge that eventually results from that creativity.
Today's war against drug users is like Elizabeth I's war against Catholics. Both are religious crackdowns. For today's oppressors, the true faith (i.e., the moral way to live) is according to the drug-hating religion of Christian Science.
"Dope Sick"? "Prohibition Sick" is more like it. The very term "dope" connotes imperialism, racism and xenophobia, given that all tribal cultures have used "drugs" for various purposes. "Dope? Junk?" It's hard to imagine a more intolerant, dismissive and judgmental terminology.
It's rich when Americans outlaw drugs and then insist that those drugs did not have much to offer in any case. It's like I took away your car and then told you that car ownership was overrated.
It's a category error to say that scientists can tell us if psychoactive drugs "really work." It's like asking Dr. Spock of Star Trek if hugging "really works." ("Hugging is highly illogical, Captain.")
We live in a make-believe world in the US. We created it by outlawing all potentially helpful psychological meds, after which the number-one cause of arrest soon became "drugs." We then made movies to enjoy our crackdown on TV... after a tough day of being drug tested at work.
If any master's candidates are looking for a thesis topic, consider the following: "The Drug War versus Religion: how the policy of substance prohibition outlaws the attainment of spiritual states described by William James in 'The Varieties of Religious Experience.'"
Meanwhile, no imaginable downside could persuade westerners that guns and alcohol were too dangerous. Yet the DEA lies about almost all psychoactive drugs, saying there are no good uses. That's a lie! Then they pass laws that keep us from disproving their puritanical conclusion.