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 1914.
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. (Gee, thanks, folks, for censoring academia. Don't worry, though, I'm not going to call you prohibitionists 'fascist bastards' on THAT account. Mom just didn't raise me like that.)_
But that's the whole problem with Robert Whitaker's otherwise wonderful critique of Big Pharma. Like almost all non-fiction authors today, he reckons without the drug war, which gave Big Pharma a monopoly in the first place.
People say shrooms should not be used by those with a history of "mental illness." But that's one of the greatest potential benefits of shrooms! (They cured Stamets' teenage stuttering.) Some folks place safety first, but if I did that, I'd die long before using mother nature.
ME: "What are you gonna give me for my depression, doc? MDMA? Laughing gas? Occasional opium smoking? Chewing of the coca leaf?" DOC: "No, I thought we'd fry your brain with shock therapy instead."
I can think of no greater intrusion than to deny a person autonomy over how they think and feel in life. It is sort of a meta-intrusion, the mother of all anti-democratic intrusions.
"My faith votes and strives to outlaw religions that use substances of which politicians disapprove."
Prohibition is a crime against humanity. It forces us to use shock therapy on the severely depressed since we've outlawed all viable alternatives. It denies medicines that could combat Alzheimer's and/or render it psychologically bearable.
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.
That's my real problem with SSRIs: If daily drug use and dependency are okay, then there's no logical or truly scientific reason why I can't smoke a nightly opium pipe.
I'm told antidepressant withdrawal is fine because it doesn't cause cravings. Why is it better to feel like hell than to have a craving? In any case, cravings are caused by prohibition. A sane world could also end cravings with the help of other drugs.
I've been told by many that I should have seen "my doctor" before withdrawing from Effexor. But, A) My doctor got me hooked on the junk in the first place, and, B) That doctor completely ignores the OBVIOUS benefits of indigenous meds and focuses only on theoretical downsides.
Buy the Drug War Comic Book by the Drug War Philosopher Brian Quass, featuring 150 hilarious op-ed pics about America's disgraceful war on Americans
You have been reading an article entitled, Rat Out Your Neighbors: brought to you by America's DEA, published on November 6, 2022 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)
You have been reading an article entitled, Rat Out Your Neighbors: brought to you by America's DEA, published on November 6, 2022 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)