ADDERALL ZOLOFT:Welcome to Rat Out Your Neighbors. I'm DEA field agent Adderall Zoloft, joined today in Washington by bureau chief Paxil Buspar. How are you today, Paxil?
PAXIL BUSPAR: I'm drug free, Adderall. How about you?
ADDERALL ZOLOFT: Drug free and proud of it.
PAXIL BUSPAR: I've made some coffee. Help yourself.
ADDERALL ZOLOFT: Fantastic!
Wait, aren't you having any?
PAXIL BUSPAR: Are you kidding me? I'm already buzzing like a top, thanks to these Red Bull Colas I've been throwing back all morning.
Oh, pardon me.
ADDERALL ZOLOFT: Sounds like an angel just got his wings.
PAXIL BUSPAR: Or a DEA agent just got his first M-4 assault rifle.
ADDERALL ZOLOFT: Primed and loaded, baby.
PAXIL BUSPAR: Kicking down America's doors since 1973.
ADDERALL ZOLOFT: Let's go straight to the phones now. The number, as always, is 1 800-RAT-BAIT. That's 1 800-RAT-BAIT. Call right now to rat out your friends and loved ones for using substances of which our government disapproves.
PAXIL BUSPAR: Wow, that was fast. Looks like we've got a caller already.
ADDERALL ZOLOFT: Hello there. You are on Rat Out Your Neighbors. Who are the scumbags that you would like to report?
CALLER: Yes, I'd like to report my creative writing teacher at college.
ADDERALL ZOLOFT: I see. And what evil substance have you seen them using? I'm guessing coca or pot, right?
CALLER: Worse yet. It's opium.
PAXIL BUSPAR: Ex-squeeze me?
ADDERALL ZOLOFT: What? You mean they're using the substance whose name must not be spoken?
CALLER: Well, I haven't yet actually caught them in the act of using opium yet, but...
PAXIL BUSPAR: Please, don't use that word.
ADDERALL ZOLOFT: Yes, caller. You see, here at the DEA, we call it "the substance whose name must not be spoken."
CALLER: But he keeps going on about how opium can be used wisely to engender creativity.
PAXIL BUSPAR: What?
CALLER: And telling us how the stories of Poe and Lovecraft, for instance, are full of so-called opiate imagery.
ADDERALL ZOLOFT: And what imagery would that be, exactly?
CALLER: You know, like in the short story "Celaphais" by HP Lovecraft, in which the protagonist, and I quote, wanders through...
"the spectral summer of narcotic flowers and humid seas of foliage that bring wild and many-coloured dreams."
PAXIL BUSPAR: Blasphemy.
CALLER: I know, right?
PAXIL BUSPAR: But I'm afraid that you really have to catch this professor with the goodies before we can kick down his door and scare his children and elderly grandmother to death.
ADDERALL ZOLOFT: I feel for you, caller, but it's not yet quite illegal to speak about positive uses of evil substances like... like... you know what.
CALLER: You mean like opium?
PAXIL BUSPAR: Stop saying that word!
ADDERALL ZOLOFT: Yes, caller, like the substance whose name must not be spoken.
CALLER: Sorry about that.
PAXIL BUSPAR: It's all good. Just keep an eye on this professor of yours and maybe even record his classes for us.
ADDERALL ZOLOFT: Yeah, then send us the tape when he incriminates himself.
CALLER: But isn't that illegal?
PAXIL BUSPAR: Illegal? That's a good one.
ADDERALL ZOLOFT: You're talking to the DEA, caller. Where there's a will, there's a way, right?
PAXIL BUSPAR: Yeah, haven't you seen those movies like "Running with the Devil," where we hang suspects from meat hooks and shoot them in cold blood at point-blank range?
CALLER: Oh, right.
ADDERALL ZOLOFT: That's why we're overseen by a drug czar, baby, so that everyone will know that we're going to play fast and loose with the U.S. constitution.
ADDERALL ZOLOFT: But join us next time for Rat Out Your Neighbors.
PAXIL BUSPAR: Brought to you by America's DEA.
ADDERALL ZOLOFT: Who reminds you to just say no...
ADDERALL AND PAXIL: Just say no...
ADDERALL ZOLOFT: ...to all of Mother Nature's godsend medicines. Now, come on, Paxil. Let's take them out of here.
ADDERALL AND PAXIL: Because we're bad, we're bad, shamon, shamon!
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.
Health is not a quality, it's a balance. To decide drug legality based on 'health' grounds thus opens a Pandora's box of different points of view.
Democratic societies need to outlaw prohibition for many reasons, the first being the fact that prohibition removes millions of minorities from the voting rolls, thereby handing elections to fascists and insurrectionists.
That's so "drug war" of Rick: If a psychoactive substance has a bad use at some dose, for somebody, then it must not be used at any dose by anybody. It's hard to imagine a less scientific proposition, or one more likely to lead to unnecessary suffering.
I knew all along that Measure 110 in Oregon was going to be blamed for the problems that the drug war causes. Drug warriors never take responsibility, despite all the blood that they have on their hands.
Being less than a month away from an election that, in my view, could end American democracy, I don't like to credit Musk for much. But I absolutely love it every time he does or says something that pushes back against the drug-war narrative.
Drug prohibition represents the biggest power grab by government in human history. It is the state control of pain relief and mental states.
The Drug War is based on two HUGE lies: 1) that prohibition has no downsides, & 2) that drug use has no upsides.
I never said that getting off SSRIs should be done without supervision. If you're on Twitter for medical advice, you're in the wrong place.
Mad in America publishes stories of folks who are disillusioned with antidepressants, but they won't publish mine, because I find mushrooms useful. They only want stories about cold turkey and jogging, or nutrition, or meditation.
I thought mycology clubs across the US would be protesting drug laws that make mushroom collecting illegal for psychoactive species. But in reality, almost no club even mentions such species. No wonder prohibition is going strong.
Health is not a quality, it's a balance. To decide drug legality based on 'health' grounds thus opens a Pandora's box of different points of view.