They used to laugh at him, said he'd never be a stand-up comedian. Well, they're not laughing now. Give it up, please, gang, for Johnny O'Clonapan.
[applaud]
Oh, I'm sorry. Was that my cue?
[laughter]
That's far too subtle for me to pick up on.
[drum]
[laughter]
Thanks for coming out. I should warn you, however, that there will be a drug test at the end of my gig.
[gasp]
So pay attention.
[laughter]
Of course, I myself have already taken a drug test before coming on tonight.
WOMAN: Uh-huh.
^{This is the DEA Lounge, after all, where you're judged not by the color of your skin, but by the contents of your digestive system.}{
[drum]
[laughter]
I'm happy to say that I passed the drug test with flying colors.
[applaud]
Oh, thank you very much.
Oh, my government would be so proud of me.
CROWD: Awww!
The drug-testing lab didn't find so much as one single naturally occurring godsend in my system.
ANGELS: Praise God!
That's good because according to Christian Science Sharia, I am not allowed to work in America if I use plant medicine to improve my psychological condition.
Sounds like we have some Drug War heretics in the house.
MAN: Yeah.
Speaking of which, it's a good thing that Freud got his psychotherapeutic work out of the way before America's Drug War began. Otherwise, he'd be smoking his trademark cigars in the San Quentin prison yard.
[laughter]
Freud would be like:
FREUD: Yo, homie. You're in this joint because you had a bad relationship with your father. Wanna talk about it?
And the homeboy would be like:
HOMEBOY: Do you want me to bust your head, yo?
[laughter]
Listen to this here cokehead, talkin' about my father? That [bleep] is whack, yo.
And then there's Ben Franklin, who used to liberally avail himself of opium 1 . Just think: If he had lived in the age of the Drug War, he would have been a mere unemployed scumbag. Benjamin Franklin would be panhandling on the street, talking about:
FRANKLIN: Hey, dude, I just invented a lightning rod.
And the guy on the street would be like:
GUY: And you know where you can PUT that lightning rod, you damn junkie.
[laughter]
Here's an idea for a Drug War: Let's criminalize tobacco and alcohol and throw everyone in jail who partakes of them. That's a Drug War that I could get behind because it would give the hypocritical Drug Warriors a taste of their own medicine.
[applaud]
We'll have drug tests, too, and anyone who has drank or smoked within the last three weeks won't be able to get so much as a job at Taco Bell.
[laughter]
I was about to say you've been a great audience, but I really won't know that until I've learned what you guys have got in your respective digestive systems.
[gasp]
So let's take a short break while you all provide urine samples to our lab technicians.
[boo]
What's the matter? Are you guys anti-American or something? ^{Drug testing is as American as... as... as invading other countries to burn plants that other cultures have been using responsibly for thousands of years.}{
[boo]
You do realize that this is the DEA Lounge, right? I'm sure that the powers that be are taking note of your anti-American reaction to my drug-testing proposal.
MAN: Uh-oh.
Uh-oh is right. Is there not one patriot in the house who is willing to take a patriotic piss for America?
[crickets chirping]
I'll take that as a no... as well as a sign that this lounge has a serious insect problem.
[drum]
[laughter]
I'm going to be generous, though. On behalf of the United States government, I'm going to allow you to continue seeking gainful employment in the United States despite your failure to take my drug test.
[applaud]
Aren't I magnanimous?
WOMAN: Ah, yes.
Just remember: if you ever happen to ingest a natural substance that promotes happiness or motivation and provides you with psychological insight, chances are you are in violation of American Sharia.
WOMAN: Ah!
So, spit that substance out at once.
[spits]
WOMAN 2: Disgusting!
And kindly report yourself to the nearest DEA office.
MAN, siren wailing: Clear the way, folks: drug scumbag coming through!
[tires squeal] [brake engages] [car door opens & closes] [feet walking on gravel] [knock on door] [door creaks open]
FEMALE AGENT: Welcome to the DEA! [agent cackling]
They will then handle all the pesky details of ruining your life by consigning you to the nearest massively overcrowded penitentiary.
[cell door clangs]
FEMALE AGENT: Sleep tight! [agent cackling]
[laughter]
You've been a great audience... as far as I can tell. You sure you're not gonna piss for me?
[boo]
OK, relax. There's no harm in asking. That's a shame, though, because I paid a pretty penny to have these lab technicians come along.
CROWD: Awww!
I guess they'll just have to go back to their labs to continue removing marijuana users from the American workforce.
Even prohibition haters have their own list of drugs that they feel should be outlawed. They're missing the point. We should not drugs "up or down" any more than we should judge penicillin or aspirin in that way.
If Americans cannot handle the truth about drugs, then there is something wrong with Americans, not with drugs.
A pharmacologically savvy drug dealer would have no problem getting someone off one drug because they would use the common sense practice of fighting drugs with drugs. But materialist doctors would rather that the patient suffer than to use such psychologically obvious methods.
What attracts me about "drug dealers" is that they are NOT interested in prying into my private life. What a relief! With psychiatry, you are probed for pathological behavior on every office visit. You are a child. To the "drug dealer," I am an adult at least.
Drug prohibition began as a racist attempt to prevent so-called "miscegenation." The racist's fear was not that a white woman would use opium or marijuana or cocaine, but that she might actually fall in love with a Chinese, Hispanic or Black person respectively.
Alexander Shulgin is a typical westerner when he speaks about cocaine. He moralizes about the drug, telling us that it does not give him "real" power. But so what? Does coffee give him "real" power? Coke helps some, others not. Stop holding it to this weird metaphysical standard.
When we place the FDA in charge of deciding whether a psychoactive drug should be re-legalized or not, we are asking them to decide on things like the relative importance of appreciating a sunset, a task for which the FDA has no expertise whatsoever.
Let's pass a constitutional amendment to remove Kansas from the Union, and any other state where the racist politicians leverage the drug war to crack down on minorities.
"All these anti-opium articles... are based upon the same model. They assume certain statements as existing and acknowledged facts which have never been proved to be such, and then proceed to draw deductions from those alleged facts." --William Brereton
Unless otherwise indicated, no AI is used in the creation of site content. These essays represent the original ideas of their author and not the ideas that the author SHOULD have based on an algorithmic parsing of existing data. For more on this subject, consider the AI-related viewpoints to which the author subscribes as delineated in the New York Times opinion piece entitled "What 370,000 College Essays Tell Us About A.I.’s Effects on Creativity" by Rebecca Winthrop of the Brookings Institution.
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