COUNSELOR RICK: Kids, gather around, I have a good horror story for you.
KIDS: Oooh!
COUNSELOR RICK: That's right, ears in the full upright position. This one's downright eerie.
Now then, once upon a time, there were these godsend plants that could help people get over depression and conquer loneliness.
ANTOINE: THAT'S not scary!
COUNSELOR RICK: Oh, just you wait, Antoine. See, these plants grew all around us, they were our natural birthright as Earthlings, but then these bigoted people known as "Drug Warriors" decided that these plants were somehow evil.
SALLY: That's silly, Counselor Rick. Plant medicines can't be evil, only people can be evil.
ANTOINE: That's right. Medicines can be good OR bad: it all depends on how they're used.
COUNSELOR RICK: You know that, kids, and I know that, but these people were... well, how should I put this...?
ANTOINE: Dumb as crap?
COUNSELOR RICK: Well, let's just say they were superstitious.
SALLY: Sounds like they were regular cretins to me.
COUNSELOR RICK: Now, now, Sally, be nice.
ANTOINE: Counselor Rick! Counselor Rick!
COUNSELOR RICK: Yes, ANTOINE?
ANTOINE: I think I've heard this one before.
COUNSELOR RICK: Oh, really?
ANTOINE: Oh, yeah, you're talking about that science-fiction story called "Fahrenheit 452," where the government burns plants in order to stop citizens from improving their mental focus and expanding their minds!
COUNSELOR RICK: Antoine shoots and scores!
SALLY: Ooh, Counselor Rick, I don't want to hear that story. It scares me.
ANTOINE: Me too, Counselor Rick. Just imagine a government that is so evil that it bars its own citizens from accessing the plants and fungi that grow at their very feet. I don't think I'm gonna be able to sleep tonight just thinking about it!
COUNSELOR SUE: Now you've done it, Rick, the kids are all going to have nightmares about DEA fascists kicking down their doors in order to rob them of naturally occurring godsends.
COUNSELOR RICK: Relax, kids. We're living in the 22nd century, remember? The DEA was abolished over a hundred years ago.
[kids crying]
COUNSELOR SUE: Rick, exactly how long have you been a camp counselor?
COUNSELOR RICK: Sorry, Sue. I guess I forgot just how scary the old Drug War days really were.
COUNSELOR SUE: You think?
COUNSELOR RICK: Well, it could have been worse.
COUNSELOR SUE: How's that, Rick?
COUNSELOR RICK: I could have told them about the bad old days when all the big corporations forced employees to undergo the indignity of drug testing 1 without any probable cause, all in order to enforce the government's Sharia against the use of naturally occurring substances.
COUNSELOR SUE: Brrr! Now that really IS scary!
COUNSELOR RICK: I know, right?
COUNSELOR SUE: Thanks for bringing that up, Rick. Now I too won't be able to get to sleep tonight!
COUNSELOR RICK: That is pretty lame indeed, the government essentially forcing people to become Christian Scientists when it comes to psychological healing.
COUNSELOR SUE: You're not helping matters, Rick.
What Have We Learned?
Select the appropriate takeaway message from the above admittedly charming satire.
Some plants are just plain bad and kids should be taught that from the git-go!
Submitting to a drug test is a patriotic responsibility.
The therapeutic needs of the suffering must be ignored so that we can carry on a full-scale Drug War. Grrr! (This answer recommended by the National Association of Prison Guards)
Plant medicines can be good or bad, depending on their specific use.
Answer: That's right, kids, the answer is 4: "Plant medicines can be good or bad, depending on their specific use." Unfortunately you'll never learn this from the Drug Warriors, whose patronizing MO is to insist that plant substances are bad in and of themselves. That's why we have no godsend medicines today for depression and other psychological maladies: because the unscientific Drug Warriors believe that plants are bad without regard to how they're used... which is a fib, kids, okay? And you can tell those typically Caucasian anti-scientific so-and-so's that I said so, too! Humph!
This is why America is creeping toward authoritarianism -- because of the prohibitionists' ability to get away with everything by blaming "drugs."
The FDA will be accepting comments through September 20th on the subject of ways to fight PTSD.
PTSD@reaganudall.org
Ask them why they support brain-damaging shock therapy but won't approve drugs like MDMA that could make ECT unnecessary.
The drug war outlaws everything that could help both prevent addiction and treat it. And then they justify the war on drugs by scaring people with the specter of addiction. They NEED addiction to keep the drug war going.
When psychiatrists write about heroin, they characterize dependency as enslavement. When they write about antidepressants, they characterize dependency as a medical duty.
Almost all of today's magazine articles about human psychology should come with the following disclaimer:
"This article was written from the standpoint of Drug War ideology, which holds that outlawed substances can have no beneficial uses whatsoever."
Now drug warriors have nitrous oxide in their sights, the substance that inspired the philosophy of William James. They're using the same tired MO: focusing exclusively on potential downsides and never mentioning the benefits of use, and/or denying that any exist.
A Pennsylvanian politician now wants the US Army to "fight fentanyl." The guy is anthropomorphizing a damn drug! No wonder pols don't want to spend money on education, because any educated country would laugh a superstitious guy like that right out of public office.
Mariani Wine is the real McCoy, with Bolivian coca leaves (tho' not with cocaine, as Wikipedia says). I'll be writing more about my experience with it soon. I was impressed. It's the same drink "on which" HG Wells and Jules Verne wrote their stories.
"Chemical means of peering into the contents of the inner mind have been universally prized as divine exordia in man’s quest for the beyond... before the coarseness of utilitarian minds reduced them to the status of 'dope'." -- Eric Hendrickson
"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
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