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.
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 23 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.
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.
In "The Book of the Damned," Charles Fort shows how science damns (i.e. excludes) facts that it cannot assimilate into a system of knowledge. Fort could never have guessed, however, how thoroughly science would eventually "damn" all positive facts about "drugs."
Most substance withdrawal would be EASY if drugs were re-legalized and we could use any substance we wanted to mitigate negative psychological effects.
This is why America is creeping toward authoritarianism -- because of the prohibitionists' ability to get away with everything by blaming "drugs." The fact that Americans still fall for this crap represents a kind of collective pathology.
The fact that some drugs can be addictive is no reason to outlaw drugs. It is a reason to teach safe use and to publicize all the ways that smart people have found to avoid unwanted pharmacological dependency -- and a reason to use drugs to fight drugs.
Imagine if we held sports to the same safety standard as drugs. There would be no sports at all. And yet even free climbing is legal. Why? Because with sports, we recognize the benefits and not just the downsides.
Here are some political terms that are extremely problematic in the age of the drug war:
"clean," "junk," "dope," "recreational"... and most of all the word "drugs" itself, which is as biased and loaded as the word "scab."
National Geo published an article entitled "Coca: a Blessing and a Curse." Coca was never a curse. Most people used it wisely, just as most people drink wisely. Doctors demonized it because it really worked and it could put them out of business. https://abolishthedea.com/sigmund_freuds_real_breakthrough_was_not_psychoanalysis.php
By reading "Drug Warriors and Their Prey," I begin to understand why I encounter a wall of silence when I write to authors and professors on the subject of "drugs." The mere fact that the drug war inspires such self-censorship should be grounds for its immediate termination.
When people tell us there's nothing to be gained from using mind-improving drugs, they are embarrassing themselves. Users benefit from such drugs precisely to the extent that they are educated and open-minded. Loudmouth abstainers are telling us that they lack these traits.
Now the US is bashing the Honduran president for working with "drug cartels." Why don't we just be honest and say why we're REALLY upset with the guy? Drugs is just the excuse, as always, now what's the real reason? Stop using the drug war to disguise American foreign policy.
In "The Book of the Damned," Charles Fort shows how science damns (i.e. excludes) facts that it cannot assimilate into a system of knowledge. Fort could never have guessed, however, how thoroughly science would eventually "damn" all positive facts about "drugs."
