Normally, I would consider it bad form for essayists to tell you that they are "feeling down today." It would be a case of what we used to call TMI as kids: "too much information." But this admission by a drug-war philosopher is highly relevant to his essays given that the lack of motivation referred to has been brought about by drug policy, which outlaws all substances that could help one to transcend this feeling and so be productive in life. This is why I call drug prohibition a meta injustice, because it does far worse than censor you as to what you can talk about: it seeks to limit the amount of passion and zeal that you can devote to your cause as a naysayer against the status quo.
It is far better to "treat the symptoms" than to irreversibly modify brain chemistry in one particular way based on the theories of a financially-motivated biochemical determinist working for a pharmaceutical company.
Kids should be taught beginning in grade school that drug prohibition is wrong.
Drug use is judged by different standards than any other risky activity in the western world. One death can lead to outrage, even though that death might be statistically insignificant.
Someday those books about weird state laws will be full of factoids like: "In Alabama, you could be jailed for 20 years for conspiring to eat a mushroom."
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."
"The homicidal drug is booze. There's more violence on a Saturday night in a neighborhood tavern than there has been in the whole 20-year history of LSD." -- Timothy Leary
The U.S. government created violence out of whole cloth in America's inner cities with drug prohibition -- and now it is using that violence as an excuse to kick the people that they themselves have knocked down.
Laughing gas inspired the philosophy of William James. Outlawing N20 is outlawing academic freedom. Laughing gas should be available for the suicidal. Drug prohibition is not a victimless crime.
The drug war is a whole wrong way of looking at the world. It tells us that substances can be judged "up" or "down," which is anti-scientific and blinds us to endless beneficial uses.
A lot of drug use represents an understandable attempt to fend off performance anxiety. Performers can lose their livelihood if they become too self-conscious. We only call such use "recreational" because we are oblivious to the common-sense psychology.
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