Where are the conspiracy theorists when we need them? They could at least open our minds to some disturbing possibilities. Like, for instance, I sometimes wonder if Prozac wasn't designed to turn folks into neo-liberals. I know my own politics veered right after a few years of Prozac use. This was the same time that my musical skills decreased, at least when it came to playing in natural sync with my fellow musicians. There suddenly seemed to arise a new brief but destructive mental step of conscious reflection between the impulse and the act, rendering me nervous and uncertain in circumstances in which the thought of nervousness had never occurred before.
Of course, unlike the Drug Warrior, I know that one swallow does not make a summer, so perhaps the mental changes described above can be explained without reference to Prozac. My only point here is that no one seems to be considering the possibility that antidepressants 1 are changing personalities in ways that are not necessarily consistent with the interests of the antidepressant user. Of course the silence is to be expected, since the moneyed interests support a media narrative that turns SSRIs into whole milk. And as with whole milk, all reported downsides are blamed on the user, not on the substance. Can't handle milk? Why, you freak! You must be lactose-intolerant! Can't handle a given SSRI? No problem, we just have to keep weaning you off and on different KINDS of SSRIs until we find the one that's "right" for you.
Speaking of which, it's the new feminine small talk: what meds are you on? How many? How long have you been taking it? Do you think you'll switch to another SSRI any time soon?
And this in a country that is trying desperately to get Americans to say no to drugs? 1 in 4 American women are on multiple drugs every day of their life and the Drug Warrior pretends to not notice as they advocate 20-year jail terms for folks who reach down and use the plants and fungi that grow at their very feet.
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.
The book "Plants of the Gods" is full of plants and fungi that could help addicts and alcoholics, sometimes in the plant's existing form, sometimes in combinations, sometimes via extracting alkaloids, etc. But drug warriors need addiction to sell their prohibition ideology.
The December Scientific American features a story called "The New Nuclear Age," about a trillion-dollar plan to add 100s of ICBM's to 5 states, which an SA editorial calls "kick me" signs. This Neanderthal plan comes from pols who think that compassion-boosting drugs are evil!
Clearly a millennia's worth of positive use of coca by the Peruvian Indians means nothing to the FDA. Proof must show up under a microscope.
"There has been so much delirious nonsense written about drugs that sane men may well despair of seeing the light." -- Aleister Crowley, from "Essays on Intoxication"
The Drug War is based on two HUGE lies: 1) that prohibition has no downsides, & 2) that drug use has no upsides.
We would never have even heard of Freud except for cocaine. How many geniuses is America stifling even as we speak thanks to the war on mind improving medicines?
The Drug War is the most important evil to protest, precisely because almost everybody is afraid to do so. That's a clear sign that it is a cancer on the body politic.
The Drug War shows us that American democracy is fundamentally flawed. Propaganda and fearmongering has persuaded Americans to give up freedoms that are clearly enunciated in the U.S. Constitution. We need a new democracy in which a Constitution actually matters.
Outlawing substances like laughing gas and MDMA makes no more sense than outlawing fire.
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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