"Inasmuch as we have words to describe medicine as a healing art, but have none to describe it as a method of social control or political rule, we must first give it a name. I propose that we call it pharmacracy, from the Greek roots pharmakon, for 'medicine' or 'drug,' and kratein, for 'to rule' or 'to control.'1"
I experienced the desire to laugh hysterically at what I could only describe as the completely ridiculous state of the entire world.
I learned a great deal about myself and my inner workings.
I acknowledged a rapture in the very act of breathing.
The feeling was one of great camaraderie, and it was very easy to talk to people.
The line drawn between recreational and medical use is wishful thinking on the part of drug warriors. Recreation, according to Webster's, is "refreshment or diversion," and both have positive knock-on effects in the lives of real people.
Our government treats drugs like uranium and spends hundreds of billions of dollars trying to scare us about them.
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.
Kids should be taught in grade school that prohibition is wrong.
Outlawing opium was the ultimate government power grab. It put the government in charge of pain relief.
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.
I have yet to find one psychiatrist who acknowledges the demoralizing power of being turned into a patient for life. They never list that as a potential downside of antidepressant use.
To say that taking SSRIs daily is better than using opium daily is a value judgement, not a scientific one.
Drug warriors think only about young people misusing drugs. They never think about the millions of the depressed whom they're condemning to a lifetime of totally unnecessary misery by outlawing drugs.
Smart people in America are like Don Quixote. They are sane on every subject on earth, but mention the subject of "drugs," and they start talking politically correct blather.
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