I think that taking, drinking, eating, smoking or injecting drugs is like someone blowing his brains off in an extreme slow-motion sequence.
The Drug War has fried American brains by convincing them that they can't even say the word 'opium ' without raising eyebrows. Do you know how many TV shows 2 and movies 3 portray opium and cocaine use in a positive light? Zero. It's Drug War censorship at work.
There's nothing moral or scientific about renouncing our right to medical godsends of Mother Nature. But the Drug Warrior spouts lies that make us think otherwise. The "frying pan" ad by the Partnership for a Drug Free America 4 is the biggest lie in advertising history. Drugs like cocaine 5 6 focus the brain -- as Sigmund Freud knew. Opium conduces to creativity -- as Benjamin Franklin knew. Psychedelics inspired Francis Crick to visualize the DNA helix.
But we've been taught in the west to think of Mother Nature as a drug kingpin rather than as a dispenser of godsend medicines. The Drug War is Christian Science, telling us that we must not treat our conscious mind with "drugs".
Until 1914, we judged people on their actual behavior. Now we judge them on what they have in their digestive systems. It's all a sick and superstitious way of looking at the world. And it's hypocritical. If any drugs "fry" the brain, it's modern antidepressants 7, to which 1 in 4 American women are addicted. Many SSRIs and SNRIs are harder to quit than heroin. (source: Julie Holland).
I "take" Effexor8 -- paying dearly for it every month of my life, helping finance Maseratis for Big Pharma execs -- and my shrink says not to bother trying to get off it since its recidivism rate is so high. Yet America's Drug War cult refuses to even RECOGNIZE that addiction. Because the Drug War has nothing to do with America's health -- it's all about fomenting violence via prohibition and thus empowering the police and the military to crack heads -- and to take America's mind off of social problems (like the Drug War itself) that lead to drug abuse.
It's sad to see so many comments here panning "drugs" when drugs are nothing but the plant medicines that grow at our very feet. Those plant medicines are ours by birth under natural law. Only America decided in 1914 that the government would determine what plants we can have access to.
That's tyranny. It's a clear violation of the natural law on which America was founded.
The Drug War is just a nature-hating Christian Science cult. It is the establishment of a religion. Drug law enforcement is Christian Science Sharia.
Even the title of this page demonstrates Drug Warrior bias. It hypocritically uses the word "dependence" as if it was some kind of character flaw. How many of us are "dependent" on coffee, sugar and salt? How about alcohol and tobacco? And how many of us are "dependent" on Big Pharma meds? Why not create a page showing all the famous Americans who are "dependent" on antidepressants?
America wants to moralize and medicalize the subject of substance use rather than judging people like everyone in the world did before 1914: by HOW THEY ACTUALLY BEHAVED and by what they actually accomplished in the world.
In America, we no longer judge a person by the color of their skin, we judge them by the contents of their digestive system.
And so the anemic epitaph of the Drug Warrior reads: "May not have accomplished much... but gladly gave up his/her right to all of Mother Nature's godsend plant medicines!"
If America cannot exist without outlawing drugs, then there is something wrong with America, not with drugs.
"The Harrison [Narcotics] Act made the drug peddler, and the drug peddler makes drug addicts.” --Robert A. Schless, 1925.
If NIDA covered all drugs (not just politically ostracized drugs), they'd produce articles like this: "Aspirin continues to kill hundreds." "Penicillin misuse approaching crisis levels." "More bad news about Tylenol and liver damage." "Study revives cancer fears from caffeine."
If opium were legal, then most of the nostrums peddled by drug stores today would be irrelevant. (No wonder the drug war has staying power!)
It's funny to hear fans of sacred plants indignantly insisting that their meds are not "drugs." They're right in a way, but actually NO substances are "drugs." Calling substances "drugs" is like referring to striking workers as "scabs." It's biased terminology.
MDMA legalization has suffered a setback by the FDA. These are the people who think Electro Shock Therapy is not used often enough! What sick priorities.
The outlawing of opium eventually resulted in an "opioid crisis"? The message is clear: people want self-transcendence. If we don't let them find it safely, they will find it dangerously.
Laughing gas is the substance that gave William James his philosophy of reality. He concluded from its use that what we perceive is just a fraction of reality writ large. Yet his alma mater (Harvard) does not even MENTION laughing gas in their bio of the man.
Imagine educational documentaries showing how folks manage to safely incorporate today's hated substances into their life and lifestyle.
When Rick Strassman and Michael Pollan call for continued prohibition to protect young people, they ignore the ENORMOUS fact that prohibition has destroyed inner cities around the world. Wake up, guys! Prohibition is evil, not drugs! Ignorance is evil, not education!
(up)