Drugs

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We are not drug addicts. We are not criminals. We are free men, and we will react to persecution the way free men have always reacted. ~ Arthur Kleps
The Nazis spoke of having a Jewish problem. We now speak of having a drug-abuse problem. Actually, “Jewish problem” was the name the Germans gave to their persecution of the Jews; “drug-abuse problem” is the name we give to the persecution of people who use certain drugs. ~ Thomas Szasz
  • Drugs are tearing apart our societies, spawning crime, spreading diseases such as AIDS, and killing our youth and our future.
    • Kofi Annan, quoted in Young People and Drugs (April 8, 2003), Awake! magazine, published by Jehovah's Witnesses.
  • People with mood disorders, including those who are unresponsive to conventional therapies, might be able to ditch their antidepressants and antianxiety medications. Those with terminal illness could enjoy their remaining days without the fear of death looming over them, while people with PTSD could return to a normal life unobstructed by paralyzing flashbacks. And rehab centers for substance use and eating disorders could empty out as more people turn to psychedelics.
  • Philosophically, I think that if somebody wants to sit around and get stoned that's up to him or her. And if that ruins your life, so be it.... So I am for drug legalization.
  • In a paper published this summer, Dr. Rafael dos Santos from the University of São Paulo in Brazil, along with his colleagues, sought to analyze and compile the research done on these drugs. Given the legal restrictions still placed on them, one difficulty in this area of research is identifying clinical trials conducted with the proper experimental methods and controls. Thus, of the 144 studies that the researcher found, only 6 made the cut for their analyses. Despite their small number, these studies reported consistent positive effects among their participants. For instance, psilocybin was found to improve symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression among terminally ill cancer patients, and decrease both alcohol and tobacco dependence among addicts. Likewise, LSD was reported to decrease anxiety symptoms associated with life-threatening diseases as well as help in the treatment of alcoholism. Crucially, the reported improvements lasted over the course of several days and, in some cases, months.
  • Addictions come from shortages in infancy. People try to compensate this way. Alcoholism is generally produced from a shortage in mother's milk. And heroin addiction is usually due to a lack of being, the absence of recognition; the drug fills the emptiness of not being loved.
  • I've had a lot of fun on drugs ... I've had a lot of marvellous experiences. I've danced a lot. I've had a great time. I'm not ashamed of it. And I don't see what's wrong with it.
    • David Marr (3 December 2011). "The great debate that no one's talking about". Sydney Morning Herald. Farifax. Retrieved 28 November 2006.
  • Three reports have surfaced in the literature of individuals with long-standing OCD who experienced significant alleviation of their disorder after what was initially a “recreational” use of LSD, peyote, or Psilocybe mushrooms. The most recent of these relates that a 34-year-old man who had suffered from OCD since the age of 6 found that both peyote and Psilocybe mushrooms moderated his symptoms (which included incapacitating and compulsive counting, showering, and ritualistic washing of his clothes, hands, and body). He began a 4-year course of daily Psilocybemushroom ingestion, which resulted in improvement of his OCD symptoms, unaccompanied by any hallucinogenic effects because of his acquired tolerance. During a subsequent 2-year period, his OCD remained in control without the need for him to ingest Psilocybe, but then the symptoms gradually returned to their initial levels.
    Some beginnings have been made in studying the effects of psychedelic drugs for alleviating OCD. The potential benefits of these drugs in anorexia nervosa, a devastating and not infrequently life-threatening disorder with few or no fully successful treatment options, should likewise be studied.
  • To date, pharmacological treatments for mood and anxiety disorders and for drug dependence show limited efficacy, leaving a large number of patients suffering severe and persistent symptoms. Preliminary studies in animals and humans suggest that ayahuasca, psilocybin and lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) may have antidepressive, anxiolytic, and antiaddictive properties. Thus, we conducted a systematic review of clinical trials published from 1990 until 2015, assessing these therapeutic properties. Electronic searches were performed using the PubMed, LILACS, and SciELO databases. Only clinical trials published in peer-reviewed journals were included. Of these, 151 studies were identified, of which six met the established criteria. Reviewed studies suggest beneficial effects for treatment-resistant depression, anxiety and depression associated with life-threatening diseases, and tobacco and alcohol dependence. All drugs were well tolerated. In conclusion, ayahuasca, psilocybin and LSD may be useful pharmacological tools for the treatment of drug dependence, and anxiety and mood disorders, especially in treatment-resistant patients. These drugs may also be useful pharmacological tools to understand psychiatric disorders and to develop new therapeutic agents.
  • Professionals and experts seem to prefer the tragic explanation of why some choose drugs to get by more effortlessly in life. Tragic upbringing and sexual abuse, spiced with an alcoholized home, are "popular" explanations. (. . .) What I miss are all those who have in fact used and are using drugs because it feels good – so good that you do not want to stop even though you can see with open eyes that you are playing Russian roulette with everything and everybody that are close. Family, sweetheart, children. Yes, even life. (. . .) The reasons why people start to use drugs are plentifold. You encounter drug users in all social classes and segments of the population. But if there exists a common denominator, that would have to be the desire for a "recess". Recess from what? Well, that varies from one individual to the next. It is really a matter of drug users being as diverse as the rest of the population.

Prescription drugs[edit]

There were fewer than 3,000 overdose deaths in 1979, when a heroin epidemic was raging in U.S. cities. There were fewer than 5,000 recorded in 1988, around the height of the crack epidemic. More than 64,000 Americans died from drug overdoses last year [2016], according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. ~ Mike Strobe
Main article: Medicine
  • Worldwide, pharmaceutical use has been on the increase for the past century and will continue to increase into the future with the development of new medicines to cure recently discovered diseases as well as previously untreatable conditions. Following use by the patient, active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) and their metabolites are excreted to the sewerage system. They are then typically transported to a wastewater treatment works, where, depending on their molecular structure and physicochemical properties, they can be either degraded by biological treatment processes or released to the environment in effluents or sorb to sludge. The soil environment will therefore be exposed to APIs and their metabolites when sludge from treatment processes is applied to land as an agricultural fertilizer or when soil is irrigated with reclaimed wastewater effluent. While only a few studies have explored the occurrence of APIs in the soil environment, available data indicate that a range of API classes, including nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, antidepressants, anticonvulsants, and antibacterial agents do occur in soils in concentrations up to the low mg/kg level.
    Because of detection of pharmaceuticals in soils, concerns have been raised over the potential for these substances to be taken up into human food items and to pose a risk to human health. A number of studies have demonstrated the uptake of pharmaceuticals used in human and veterinary medicine into plants. Studies have explored the uptake and translocation of a variety of APIs with a particular focus on the antidepressant drug fluoxetine and antibacterial chemicals including sulfamethazine, sulfamethoxazole, and trimethoprim into numerous plant species including root and shoot crops such as soybean, lettuce, and carrot.
  • "When a drug is ingested, it’s metabolized and what eventually is excreted is the portion of the original parent drug that doesn’t get metabolized, along with metabolites, which may have biological activity of their own,” says Christian Daughton, an environmental chemist from the Environmental Protection Agency.
    The amount that our bodies break down drugs varies widely, from drug to drug and even from person to person. For many drugs, Daughton says, about 90% of the drug is metabolized. Others aren't metabolized as much, and a lot of the parent compound is excreted. The undigested drugs and metabolites, the digested drugs, are either removed from the body as waste or sweat. These are either flushed down toilets are go down the drain in our showers.
  • Although previously the monoamine systems were considered to be responsible for the development of major depressive disorder (MDD), the available evidence to date does not support a direct causal relationship with MDD. There is no simple direct correlation of serotonin or norepinephrine levels in the brain and mood. In other words, after a half-century of research, the chemical-imbalance hypothesis as promulgated by the drug companies that manufacture SSRIs and other antidepressants is not only without clear and consistent support, but has been disproved by experimental evidence.
    • Irving Kirsch (2010). The Emperor's New Drugs: Exploding the Antidepressant Myth. p. 92.
  • Did you know that of the 14 states with the highest number of painkiller prescriptions per person, they all went for Trump?
    • Bill Maher Real Time with Bill Maher, January 20th 2017
  • For decades, scientists have embarked on the long journey toward a medical breakthrough by first experimenting on laboratory animals. Mice or rats, pigs or dogs, they were usually male: Researchers avoided using female animals for fear that their reproductive cycles and hormone fluctuations would confound the results of delicately calibrated experiments.
    That laboratory tradition has had enormous consequences for women. Name a new drug or treatment, and odds are researchers know far more about its effect on men than on women. From sleeping pills to statins, women have been blindsided by side effects and dosage miscalculations that were not discovered until after the product hit the market.
  • “We have an aging demographic, and we have an increased reliance, in North America and Europe in particular, with the treatment of health concerns with pharmaceuticals.” This translates to more medicines making their way into the water system, and we need to determine how to deal with it, she says. “Long-term exposures [to pharmaceuticals] are quite a bit different than short term exposures, and we need to really start testing and figuring out if chronic exposures of low doses are relevant for the health of an individual or population of animals.”

Alcohol[edit]

Who has woe? Who has uneasiness? Who has quarrels? Who has complaints? Who has wounds for no reason? Who has bleary eyes? Those lingering long over wine; those searching out mixed wine. Do not look at the wine’s red color as it sparkles in the cup and goes down smoothly, for in the end it bites like a serpent, and it secretes poison like a viper. Your eyes will see strange things, and your heart will speak perverse things. And you will be like one lying down in the middle of the sea, like one lying at the top of a ship’s mast. You will say: “They have struck me, but I did not feel it. They beat me, but I did not know it. When will I wake up? I need another drink.” ~ Solomon
Main article: Alcoholic beverages
Main article: Alcoholism
Main article: Beer
Main article: Wine
Main article: Rum
  • Alcohol abuse and alcoholism have a different physiologic effect on women than on men. Societal attitudes about women and alcohol and internal (self-perception) and external (environmental) factors can create barriers to the detection and treatment of female alcohol abusers.
  • Who has woe? Who has uneasiness? Who has quarrels? Who has complaints? Who has wounds for no reason? Who has bleary eyes? Those lingering long over wine; those searching out mixed wine. Do not look at the wine's red color as it sparkles in the cup and goes down smoothly, for in the end it bites like a serpent, and it secretes poison like a viper. Your eyes will see strange things, and your heart will speak perverse things. And you will be like one lying down in the middle of the sea, like one lying at the top of a ship's mast. You will say: “They have struck me, but I did not feel it. They beat me, but I did not know it. When will I wake up? I need another drink.”
  • Perhaps the single greatest influence on the scope and direction of alcohol research has been the finding that a portion of the vulnerability to alcoholism is genetic. This finding, more than any other, helped to establish the biological basis of alcoholism. It also provided the basis—and justification—for much of the progress in genetics, neuroscience, and neurobehavior described in the Tenth Special Report. Today we know that approximately 50 to 60 percent of the risk for developing alcoholism is genetic. Genes direct the synthesis of proteins, and it is the proteins that drive and regulate critical chemical reactions throughout the human body. Genetics, therefore, affects virtually every facet of alcohol research, from neuroscience to Fetal Alcohol Syndrome.

Tobacco[edit]

I am of course notoriously hooked on cigarettes. I keep hoping the things will kill me. A fire at one end and a fool at the other. ~ Kurt Vonnegut
Main article: Tobacco
  • A custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black, stinking fume thereof nearest resembling the horrible Stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless.
  • I am of course notoriously hooked on cigarettes. I keep hoping the things will kill me. A fire at one end and a fool at the other.

Cannabis[edit]

When you smoke herb, herb reveal yourself to you. All the wickedness you do, the herb reveal itself to yourself, your conscience, show up yourself clear, because herb make you meditate. Is only a natural t'ing and it grow like a tree. ~ Bob Marley
Main article: Cannabis
  • The Rastas, more than any other group, have elevated ganja to a central place in their religious practice and have developed a well-articulated ideology justifying its use and explaining its significance. ... Rastas regard the proscription of ganja use by Babylon's government as part of its strategy of social control.
  • Please help me squash this deceptive and dangerous misrepresentation of my true feeling on this matter by the ONDCP. It just shows how desperate they are that they must mislead people in this way. And just so there is no question about this, let me be clear: Whole cannabis is not only the best medicine for me, it is the only medicine that has kept me alive during the 32 years that I have continued to live, in relatively good heath, despite a terminal diagnosis of malignant pheochromocytoma.
  • When you smoke herb, herb reveal yourself to you. All the wickedness you do, the herb reveal itself to yourself, your conscience, show up yourself clear, because herb make you meditate. Is only a natural t'ing and it grow like a tree.
    • Bob Marley, as reported in Martin Booth, Cannabis: A History (2005), p. 366
  • I have repeatedly stated [cannabis] is not safe, but that the idea that you can reduce use through raising the classification in the Misuse of Drugs Act from class C to class B—where it had previously been placed, but thus now increasing the maximum penalty for possession for personal use to 5 years in prison—is implausible.
    • David Nutt, (2009). "Government vs science over drug and alcohol policy". The Lancet. 374 (9703): 1731–1733. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(09)61956-5. PMID 19910043.

Cocaine[edit]

A kilo of cocaine costs $50 in the trafficking countries and is sold in the consuming countries for $5,000 to $10,000, and so there always will be someone ready to run the risk of the illegitimate business. ~ Gustavo de Greiff
Main article: Cocaine
  • A kilo of cocaine costs $50 in the trafficking countries and is sold in the consuming countries for $5,000 to $10,000, and so there always will be someone ready to run the risk of the illegitimate business.
  • I shared a room with a female crack addict who also worked the streets. This was a completely alien thing to me and, at first, I was horrified but soon realised she was not so different to me.

Heroin[edit]

By 2007, the UN’s Afghanistan Opium Survey found that the country’s then-record opium harvest of approximately 8,200 tonnes provided 93% of the world’s illicit heroin supply. ~ Alfred W McCoy
Main article: Heroin
  • Ros was dead. He had loved heroin more than it loved him.
    • Craig Ferguson, American on Purpose: The Improbable Adventures of an Unlikely Patriot
  • The CIA looked the other way while Afghanistan’s opium production grew from about 100 tonnes annually in the 1970s to 2,000 tonnes by 1991. In 1979 and 1980, just as the CIA effort was beginning to ramp up, a network of heroin laboratories opened along the Afghan-Pakistan frontier. That region soon became the world’s largest heroin producer. By 1984, it supplied a staggering 60% of the US market and 80% of the European. Inside Pakistan, the number of heroin addicts surged from near zero (yes, zero) in 1979 to 5,000 in 1980, and 1.3 million by 1985 – a rate of addiction so high the UN termed it “particularly shocking”.
  • By 2007, the UN's Afghanistan Opium Survey found that the country's then-record opium harvest of approximately 8,200 tonnes provided 93% of the world's illicit heroin supply.
  • ... The cultivation of opium [in Afghanistan] reached its peak in 1999, when 350 square miles (910 km2) of poppies were sown ... The following year the Taliban banned poppy cultivation, ... a move which cut production by 94 percent ... By 2001 only 30 square miles (78 km2) of land were in use for growing opium poppies. A year later, after American and British troops had removed the Taliban and installed the interim government, the land under cultivation leapt back to 285 square miles (740 km2), with Afghanistan supplanting Burma to become the world's largest opium producer once more.
  • Kingdoms fall, empires crumble, powerful nations come and go .... But the opium Market remains as stable as rice or gold. Nobody questions it; nobody asks why. It is a crop that grows every year in half of the known world and a lot of people want it. They like opium. They enjoy smoking it and floating happily into a dream world, and that is a hard habit to argue with.
    It is an acquired taste, they say, and I have never had much luck with it. there is a lot of ritual involved, and you are always dealing with foreigners who may or may not take care of you, once the dragon begins to sing. Young want to have a lot of disposable income and plenty of free time on your hands before embracing a serious opium habit. It is not a productive drug, as a rule.

LSD[edit]

Main article: LSD
  • "Schizophrenic children receiving d-lysergic acid or a derivative in daily adequate doses are without toxicity, side effects or gross emotional reactions. They show alterations in mood, appearance of physical well being, responsiveness, habit patterning, soft neurological signs, sympathetic nervous system stability, integrated perception, reality testing, thought processes, fantasy content and intellectual and personality maturity.
    "There are concurrent biochemical changes in the binding of serotonin and freeing of epinephrine. Some of these alterations occur in the first few days, others in the first few weeks and tend to level off, others continue for many months and are integrated into a more healthy and mature level in the development of the child."
  • Comparatively large doses of LSD-25 and Sansert may be safely administered to autistic schizophrenic children for extended periods of time. Brain damage was not observed. Rather, improvement is reported.
  • This group of boys showed considerable: and consistent effects from medication with UML or LSD daily for two to eleven months. Their behavior, ward management, school-room adjustment and progress at home changed favorably with less acting out and less disturbed behavior. They not only needed no other tranquilizing, sedative, or antidepressant medication, but furthermore, unlike the tranquilizers which made them sleepy and groggy, they were generally cheerful and alert. Personnel and families noted the difference. Repeated psychiatric inter-views revealed a change in fantasy material which was loss bizarre, personalized or disturbing. Depressive, anxious and paranoid attitudes were focused on real objective problems. Insight was impressive. Intellectual changes, as seen in psychometric tests, indicated improved maturity, better organization and motivation with a rise in IQ which was reflected in improved school work. The Rorschach and drawing tests also showed increased maturity and control with clearer thinking. Studies of the autonomic functions were not made.
  • It was hoped that these drugs might prove effective in breaking through autistic defenses, improving autonomic nervous system functioning, and modifying distorted perceptual experiences.
    There were some differences in results in the various groups. In general, the younger autistic children became less anxious, less autistic and plastic, more aware and responsive, with some changes in verbalization and qualitative improvement, on the Vineland Social Maturity Scale. The girls and older autistic boys showed similar results, but much less marked and persistent. Verbal children showed improvement in general behavior, with marked changes in fantasy and bizarre ideation to more insightful, reality-oriented, though often anxious and depressive attitudes, and improved maturity and organization.
    There were no major side effects, though a few patients on UML had muscular spasms and vasomotor changes in the legs, generally of a temporary nature. It is significant to note that while most of these patients had required tranquilizing or, other medications, they could all now be maintained only on the LSD or UML. A few patients received reserpine to control excessive activity, aggression, or biting.
  • We do not use it as a psychoanalytic tool. Our idea was to give it as a daily drug. It is our general experience that frequently the children respond to many drugs that affect the central nervous system differently than adults. This is common knowledge; at least, to those of us using drugs with children. So we were not surprised to find, in our early initial studies, that if the children were near puberty or in puberty they responded to the first dose with anxiety and disturbance, just as the adolescent boys did. But even these children could be maintained on high doses of the drug, just as the adolescent boys were, so that the drugs can be given to these children in continuing doses. What tolerance means, I don't know. Tolerance may be established in our patients. The chemical studies suggest this, and even our psychological studies indicate a slight change later on, a leveling off of response as compared to initial reaction, but the long-term reaction is still the most valuable reaction to the drug.
  • At home I lay down and sank into a not unpleasant intoxicated[-]like condition, characterized by an extremely stimulated imagination. In a dreamlike state, with eyes closed (I found the daylight to be unpleasantly glaring), I perceived an uninterrupted stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes with intense, kaleidoscopic play of colors. After some two hours this condition faded away.
  • The evolution of LSD from remedy to inebriating drug was, however, primarily promoted by the activities of Dr. Timothy Leary and Dr. Richard Alpert of Harvard University
    • Ibid, p.29
  • It gave me an inner joy, an open mindedness, a gratefulness, open eyes and an internal sensitivity for the miracles of creation.... I think that in human evolution it has never been as necessary to have this substance LSD. It is just a tool to turn us into what we are supposed to be.
    • Albert Hofmann, Speech on 100th birthday; as quoted in "LSD: The Geek's Wonder Drug?". Wired.com. 16 January 2006. Retrieved 29 April 2008.
  • With regard to the purpose of these studies, all were to some extent exploring the therapeutic potential of psychedelic drugs rather than their psychotomimetic properties. This was least true of Freedman and his coworkers (1962) who viewed LSD primarily as a means of studying the schizophrenic process by "intensifying pre-existing symptomology." This orientation contrasted sharply with Bender's view. Noting that withdrawn children became more emotionally responsive while aggressive children became less so, she hypothesized that psychedelic drugs "tend to 'normalize' behavior rather than subdue or stimulate it." This basic difference in expectations seems at least partially responsible for Bender's extremely favorable outcomes and Freedman's rather poor results. Regarding all forms of psychotherapy, it has become a truism that " where there is no therapeutic intent, there is no therapeutic result" (Charles Savage in Abramson, 1960, p. 193).
  • Consistent with their explicit therapeutic intent, Bender, Fisher, and Simmons each offer essentially the same hypothesis based on a psychological interpretation of childhood schizophrenia: " The working hypothesis of this study is that the psychosis is a massive defensive structure in the service of protecting and defending the patient against his feelings and affectual states" (Fisher & Castile, 1963). Psychedelic drugs were viewed as a powerful means of undermining an intractable defense system and thereby making the patient more receptive to contact and communication with others.
  • Although Freedman was prompted to use LSD primarily as an experimental device to study psychosis, he did mention that he was influenced to some extent by the dramatic improvement in autistic children reported by Peck and Murphy (in Abramson, 1960) and by the apparent success of Cholden, Kurland, and Savage (1955) in their work with adult mute catatonic patients. As will become apparent in the discussion of results, a partial and often transient alleviation of mutism by LSD treatment has been one of the most consistent effects reported in the children studies.
  • "...the vocabularies of several of the children increased after LSD or UML; several seemed to be attempting to form words or watched adults carefully as they spoke; many seemed to comprehend speech for the first time or were able to communicate their needs... Very few of these changes in communication had been noted previously in such a large number of children, and at such a relatively rapid rate" (1963, p. 91).
  • "They appeared flushed, bright eyed, and unusually interested in the environment... They participated with increasing eagerness in motility play with adults and other children. . . They seek positive contacts with adults, approaching them with face uplifted and bright eyes, and responding to fondling, affection, etc." (1962, pp. 172- 3). "There is less stereotyped whirling and rhythmic behavior. . . They became gay, happy, laughing frequently... Some showed changes in facial expression in appropriate reactions to situations for the first time" (1963, pp. 90-91).
  • The effects of mescalin or LSD can be, in some respects, far more satisfying than those of alcohol. To begin with, they last longer; they also leave behind no hangover, and leave the mental faculties clear and unimpaired. They stimulate the faculties and produce the ideal ground for a peak experience.
    • Colin Wilson in Introduction to the New Existentialism. p. 88 (1966)

Methamphetamine[edit]

Meth, until recently, has been largely seen inside North Korea as a kind of very powerful energy drug — something like Red Bull, amplified. ~ Andrei Lankov
  • After a few months in my parents' basement, I took an apartment near the state university, where I discovered both crystal methamphetamine and conceptual art. Either one of the these things are dangerous, but in combination they have the potential to destroy entire civilizations.
  • “Meth, until recently, has been largely seen inside North Korea as a kind of very powerful energy drug — something like Red Bull, amplified,” said Andrei Lankov, an expert on the North at Kookmin University in Seoul, South Korea, who directs the news site NK News. That misconception, he said, highlighted a “significant underestimation” within the country of the general risks of drug abuse.
    Methamphetamine was introduced to the Korean Peninsula during the Japanese colonial period, in the early 20th century, and defectors have reported that the North Korean military provided methamphetamine to its soldiers in the years after World War II. Since the 1970s, many North Korean diplomats have been arrested abroad for drug smuggling.
  • The Radio Free Asia report could not be independently verified, and the North Korean government has long denied that its citizens use or produce methamphetamine. “The illegal use, trafficking and production of drugs which reduce human being into mental cripples do not exist in the D.P.R.K.,” the North's state-run news agency said in 2013, referring to the initials of the country's formal name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

MDMA[edit]

  • "Normally, when someone [with PTSD] would be instructed to relive the traumatic experience, they would be overwhelmed with fear, anxiety, and despair," Grob says. "But while under the influence of the MDMA, it's as if they can navigate the experience more safely."
    In recent clinical trials, 61 percent of 107 participants no longer had PTSD symptoms two months after MDMA-assisted psychotherapy. Sixty-eight percent were still PTSD-free a year later. In light of findings like these, the FDA recently deemed MDMA a "breakthrough therapy," putting it on the fast track for approval.

Psilopsybin[edit]

  • In 2016, for instance, a Johns Hopkins study and a concurrent New York University study found that about 80 percent of cancer patients showed clinically significant decreases in depressed mood and anxiety even six months after receiving one to two psilocybin treatments.
    Psilocybin also appears to be an effective treatment for addiction. Echoing past research with LSD, scientists recently showed decreased cravings for and increased abstinence from alcohol after psilocybin treatment in a proof-of-concept study — and the benefits were still in evidence nine months later.
    Psilocybin seems especially promising as a tool for smoking cessation.
    In a preliminary study of smokers conducted in 2014, 80 percent of participants remained nicotine-free six months after receiving three psilocybin sessions. And 60 percent of the participants remained nicotine-free an average of 30 months after treatment.
  • As might be expected, tripping on ‘shrooms’ isn't a recent phenomenon. For thousands of years they have been widely used in Central America for religious ceremonies. The Aztecs called them teonanacatl, or “flesh of the gods”. There is a theory that several Mesolithic rock paintings at Tassili n'Ajjer in Algeria depict the ritual use of mushrooms. Some of these pictures reportedly show mushrooms actually growing out of people, so presumably the painter had been vigorously engaging with the proceedings.
    Anthropologist John Rush thinks magic mushrooms gave us Father Christmas. Apparently, Siberian shamans would hand out the hallucinogenic mushroom Amanita muscaria to the region's tribesmen every December. Often the snow was so heavy they couldn't use the door, so would climb down the chimney. Where does that particular type of mushroom grow? In coniferous woodland (i.e. pines, firs etc...). It's red with white spots. Father Christmas wears red and white. The spirit animal of these shamans? Reindeer... it all makes sense now.
  • Three-phase drug studies with FDA approval will also have to be completed before these types of drugs can be removed from the list of substances with no medical purpose. Safety and quality control are always important and will also need much more research.
    The problem is that pharmaceutical companies are not interested in researching an inexpensive substance that has been around for a long time. There is no money to be made with a non-patentable drug that is given only once or twice in a lifetime.

Mescaline[edit]

  • I first explored mescaline in the late '50s.... Three-hundred-fifty to 400 milligrams. I learned there was a great deal inside me.

Ayahuasca[edit]

  • Renowned addiction expert Gabor Mate believes that addiction is a direct result of the coping mechanisms developed in early childhood to deal with stress, abuse, or trauma (Mate is a member of the Psychotherapist/Trauma camp defined in my book, The Abstinence Myth). He believes in the power of Ayahuasca as a treatment to the underlying psychological distress experienced by people facing addiction.
    "No matter what a person is addicted to—whether it’s eating, shopping, sex, drugs—each addicted person harbors a deep pain, which they may or may not be in touch with. The plant removes the self-created barriers to get in touch with the source of that pain, so you realize what you’ve been running from all of your life.”

Ibogaine[edit]

  • The Tabernanthe iboga plant grows in the rainforests of Gabon. It's a leafy green shrub with fruits that look not unlike fat, orange jalapeño peppers, but it's the bark of the root from which you extract ibogaine. For centuries it has been used to induce visions in participants in the bwiti ceremony, a traditional, days-long tribal coming-of-age ritual where hallucinogenic visions are understood as a death and rebirth. They believe that iboga enables them to commune with their ancestors (bwiti is roughly translated as ancestor).
    According to the Global Ibogaine Therapy Alliance, which publishes research and information on ibogaine, this ancestor worship by Gabonese tribes holds that by learning the language of the spirits of things it is possible to communicate with God.
    In the mid-1800s researchers brought a specimen back to France and, 60 years on, ibogaine was being marketed there under the name Lambarène for use as a stimulant. In 1985 a man called Howard Lotsof was awarded the first US patent for its use in treating opioid addiction – two decades earlier Lotsof had himself been an addict when he'd first tried ibogaine. “The next thing I knew,” he told the New York Times in 1994, “I was straight.” But it remained banned in the US even as, by the late 1990s, it was being touted on the nascent internet as a miracle drug for opioid addicts.

Altered state of consciousness[edit]

  • Fly Chick
    Light It
    Going pay all day
    But won't ever get away
    From skinny white pimp
  • Atmosphere, in "The Skinny".
  • Ashes to ashes, funk to funky
    We know Major Tom's a junkie
    Strung out in heaven's high
    Hitting an all-time low
  • Life is a waste of time,
    and some say time is a waste of life,
    but if you get wasted all the time,
    then you might just have the time of your life
    • Drapht, "Boom Boom Boom", 'Brothers Grimm' (2008).
  • Well, they'll stone ya when you're trying to be so good,
    They'll stone ya just a-like they said they would.
    They'll stone ya when you're tryin' to go home.
    Then they'll stone ya when you're there all alone.
    But I would not feel so all alone,
    Everybody must get stoned.
  • Lets go home and get stoned
    We could end up makin love instead of misery
    Go home and get stoned
    Cause the sex is so much better when you're mad at me
    • Hinder, "Get Stoned", 'Extreme Behavior' (2005).
  • I've come to decide, that the things that I tried, were in my life just to get high on.
  • It's such a waste to be wasted in the first place
  • Ride, ride my see-saw.
    Take my place
    On this trip
    Just for me
    Ride, take a free ride
    Take my place
    Have my seat
    It's for free
  • And you can fly
    High as a kite if you want to
    Faster than light if you want to
    Speeding through the universe
    Thinking is the best way to travel

Drugs and the law[edit]

Called "Rauschgiftbekaempfung," The Combatting of Drugs, the term also acquired a more popular meaning closer to 'War on Dope.' This extremely cruel and often arbitrary prohibitionist campaign of National Socialist racial hygiene can be viewed as a precursor to the U.S. War on Drugs, which is itself busily mobilizing the entire police state to root out the demonized forces of foreign 'narco-terrorism' threatening the performance principle of Late Capital's global sweat shop. ~ Scott J. Thompson
The drug war has nothing to do with making communities livable or creating a decent future for black kids. On the contrary, prohibition is directly responsible for the power of crack dealers to terrorize whole neighborhoods. And every cent spent on the cops, investigators, bureaucrats, courts, jails, weapons, and tests required to feed the drug-war machine is a cent not spent on reversing the social policies that have destroyed the cities, nourished racism, and laid the groundwork for crack culture. ~ Ellen Willis
  • We need to take effective measures to rob the dealers of their markets and the only way that we can do that is by supplying addicts through the medical profession, through prescription. We cannot afford to be shy about being prepared to do that.
  • Prohibition has failed to protect us. Leaving the drugs market in the hands of criminals causes huge and unnecessary harm to individuals, communities and entire countries, with the poor the hardest hit.
  • Now it's one thing to say (I say it) that people shouldn't consume psychoactive drugs. It is entirely something else to condone marijuana laws the application of which resulted, in 1995, in the arrest of 588,963 Americans. Why are we so afraid to inform ourselves on the question?
  • We're sending the kids to the department of human services, we're sending the parents to jail over marijuana. Well, I knew some of these people and I knew they weren't gangsters. I knew they were nonviolent people.
  • Today, our nation is fighting two wars: one abroad and one at home. While the war in Iraq is in the headlines, the other war is still being fought on our own streets. Its casualties are the wasted lives of our own citizens. I am speaking of the war on drugs. And I cannot help but wonder how many more lives, and how much more money, will be wasted before another Robert McNamara admits what is plain for all to see: the war on drugs is a failure.
    • Walter Cronkite, "Why I Support DPA, and So Should You". Drug Policy Alliance. Archived from the original on March 4, 2006. Retrieved July 17,2009.
  • Since you [US "drug czar" McCaffrey] control a federal budget that has just been increased from $17.8 billion last year to $19.2 billion this year, is asking people like you if we should continue with our nation's current drug policy like a person asking a barber if one needs a haircut?
    • Judge James P. Gray, Orange County California, LA Times, March 29, 2000.
  • Half of what government spends on police, courts and prisons is to deal with drug offenders.
    • Gary Johnson, Jones, Steve (February 1, 2011). "Myrtle Beach Tea Party hears from presidential hopeful". Myrtle Beach Sun. Archived from the original on August 13, 2012.
  • We are not drug addicts. We are not criminals. We are free men, and we will react to persecution the way free men have always reacted.
    • Arthur Kleps, testifying before the Special Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Narcotics, May 25, 1966, as cited in Walter Houston Clark, Chemical Ecstasy (1969), p. 140.
  • Congress should definitely consider decriminalizing possession of marijuana... We should concentrate on prosecuting the rapists and burglars who are a menace to society.
    • Dan Quayle, U.S. Representative and Vice President under President Bush, 1977
    • Source: Dan Baum, Smoke and Mirrors: The War on Drugs and the Politics of Failure (1996).
  • I remember when the U.S. had a drug problem and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore.
  • Even if drugs are fully as destructive as they are usually claimed to be, it is morally wrong — and demonstrably more destructive — for government to deprive people of their unalienable, individual, civil, Constitutional, and human right to make an utter mess of their own lives. Since human beings are inclined to learn more from the mistakes they make, rather than from their triumphs, the right to fail, for individuals and groups alike, may be even more important than the right to succeed, and it must be fiercely protected at almost any cost.
  • Importantly, there is nothing in the Constitution — by which, under Article 6, Section 2, officials at every level of government are obligated to abide — that authorizes the banning of any substance or enforcing that ban with the threat of injury, incarceration, or death. The lawful powers of the federal government are enumerated in Article 1, Section 8, and they do not include forbidding drugs or any other substance. Politicians early in the 20th century understood this, and passed a Constitutional amendment allowing them to outlaw alcohol. No such amendment has ever been passed, or even proposed, with regard to drugs.
  • The Nazis spoke of having a Jewish problem. We now speak of having a drug-abuse problem. Actually, “Jewish problem” was the name the Germans gave to their persecution of the Jews; “drug-abuse problem” is the name we give to the persecution of people who use certain drugs.
  • Since this is the age of science, not religion, psychiatrists are our rabbis, heroin is our pork, and the addict is the unclean person.
  • Called "Rauschgiftbekaempfung," The Combatting of Drugs, the term also acquired a more popular meaning closer to 'War on Dope.' This extremely cruel and often arbitrary prohibitionist campaign of National Socialist racial hygiene can be viewed as a precursor to the U.S. War on Drugs, which is itself busily mobilizing the entire police state to root out the demonized forces of foreign 'narco-terrorism' threatening the performance principle of Late Capital's global sweat shop.
    • Scott J. Thompson, "From 'Rausch' to Rebellion: Walter Benjamin's On Hashish and the Aesthetic Dimensions of Prohibitionist Realism"
  • The drug war has nothing to do with making communities livable or creating a decent future for black kids. On the contrary, prohibition is directly responsible for the power of crack dealers to terrorize whole neighborhoods. And every cent spent on the cops, investigators, bureaucrats, courts, jails, weapons, and tests required to feed the drug-war machine is a cent not spent on reversing the social policies that have destroyed the cities, nourished racism, and laid the groundwork for crack culture.
  • The centerpiece of the cultural counterrevolution is the snowballing campaign for a "drug-free workplace" — a euphemism for "drug-free workforce," since urine testing also picks up for off-duty indulgence. The purpose of this '80s version of the loyalty oath is less to deter drug use than to make people undergo a humiliating ritual of subordination: "When I say pee, you pee." The idea is to reinforce the principle that one must forfeit one's dignity and privacy to earn a living, and bring back the good old days when employers had the unquestioned right to demand that their workers' appearance and behavior, on or off the job, meet management's standards.
    • Ellen Willis, "Hell No, I Won't Go: End the War on Drugs," The Village Voice (September 19, 1989).

Philosophical views of drug use[edit]

  • These debates gave rise to the notion of pharmacological Calvinism. As framed by Gerald Klerman, this notion referred to the fact that treatments which made the taker feel good, without hard work being required, are commonly perceived to be morally bad and are likely to be accompanied by some form of secular retribution.
    • David Healy, The Creation of Psychopharmacology (2002), p. 354
  • La Mettrie anticipated the outlines of the world into which we are now moving. In particular, he envisioned philosophical speculation withering once it became possible to intervene effectively at the biological level to change human behavior. At this point, physicians would replace philosophers as the arbiters of human ethics.
    • David Healy, The Creation of Psychopharmacology (2002), p. 358
  • Is there any doubt that drug addiction is an escape from an unbearable inner state - from a reality that one cannot deal with - from an atrophying mind one can never fully destroy? If Apollonian reason were unnatural to man, and Dionysian intuition brought him closer to nature and truth, the apostles of irrationality would not have to resort to drugs. Happy, self-confident men do not seek to get stoned. Drug addiction is the attempt to obliterate one's consciousness, the quest for a deliberately-induced insanity. As such, it is so obscene and evil that any doubt about the moral character of its practitioners is itself an obscenity.
    • Ayn Rand, Apollo and Dionysus (1969): as qtd in Burns, Jennifer (2009). Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-532487-7. OCLC 313665028. p. 85
  • There are those who are so tightly meshed within physical reality that the soul is squeezed dry. They are tight, sore, and chafing beneath too-severe habits and ideas. For them momentary release, such as the drugs can give is highly beneficial.
    • Jane Roberts in The Early Sessions: Book 8, Session 362, Page 116.

The disease model for drug use[edit]

There is no health as such, and all attempts to define a thing that way have been wretched failures. Even the determination of what is healthy for your body depends on your goal, your horizon, your energies, your impulses, your errors, and above all on the ideals and phantasms of your soul. … Finally, the great question would still remain whether we can really dispense with illness—even for the sake of our virtue—and whether our thirst for knowledge and self-knowledge in particular does not require the sick soul as much as the healthy, and whether, in brief, the will to health alone, is not a prejudice, cowardice, and perhaps a bit of very subtle barbarism and backwardness. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
  • If, nevertheless, textbooks of pharmacology legitimately contain a chapter on drug abuse and drug addiction, then, by the same token, textbooks of gynecology and urology should contain a chapter on prostitution; textbooks of physiology, a chapter on perversion; textbooks of genetics, a chapter on the racial inferiority of Jews and Negroes.
  • The popular medical formulation of morality that goes back to Ariston of Chios, "virtue is the health of the soul," would have to be changed to become useful, at least to read: "your virtue is the health of your soul." For there is no health as such, and all attempts to define a thing that way have been wretched failures. Even the determination of what is healthy for your body depends on your goal, your horizon, your energies, your impulses, your errors, and above all on the ideals and phantasms of your soul. Thus there are innumerable healths of the body; and the more we allow the unique and incomparable to raise its head again, and the more we abjure the dogma of the "equality of men," the more must the concept of a normal health, along with a normal diet and the normal course of an illness, be abandoned by medical men. Only then would the time have come to reflect on the health and illness of the soul, and to find the peculiar virtue of each man in the health of his soul.
  • Finally, the great question would still remain whether we can really dispense with illness—even for the sake of our virtue—and whether our thirst for knowledge and self-knowledge in particular does not require the sick soul as much as the healthy, and whether, in brief, the will to health alone, is not a prejudice, cowardice, and perhaps a bit of very subtle barbarism and backwardness.

Drug education[edit]

  • As our experience with drug education has developed and been charted, it has become apparent that effective efforts need to be comprehensive. A classroom teacher's efforts must be reinforced by school wide drug abuse prevention activities, and these must in turn be supported by interventions in all aspects of community life. Furthermore, it is not enough merely to address the surface issue of drug use behavior; we must also address the environmental circumstances that contribute to such problems. This complex issue presents a great challenge to drug educators, but it also calls for a restructuring, sometimes called a paradigm shift, of many of our social institutions and the way they interact.
    For example, faith-based organizations are generally uninvolved in drug abuse prevention, except to condemn drug abuse. For them to have an organized and planned role in prevention will require a shift in their thinking about their goals and what type of programs they should sponsor. Establishing referral networks, service linkages, and collaborative relationships among community agencies and individuals is a difficult hurdle.
    Whether or not this is done, drug education professionals often do not know the long-term results of their work because the outcome occurs in the future, when educators no longer have contact with the objects of their efforts. Satisfaction may come from reviewing data trends as the years unfold, but this is not as gratifying as the immediate results that may come from participating in drug treatment of other kinds of human service work in which success is more immediately apparent. Of course, the flip side is that failure also is not recognized. Prevention efforts are repeated because they are well received or because of the inherent satisfaction of doing them. The fact that they have no impact may not be realized without careful evaluation.
    There has been a new push by the U.S. government to demand that state and local prevention programs, wen funded by state and federal dollars, be "science based." The expectation is that programs should show some evidence, prior to implementation, that they will actually affect youth drug use. The background to this effort is that enthusiasm and genuine concern for preventing adolescent drug abuse have often been translated into activities that are enjoyable but not carefully examined and tested. Schools have used funds to purchase t-shirts and ribbons, hire expensive motivational speakers, and to acquire videotapes and untested curriculum material without any assurance that such expenditures have led in the past, or will lead in the future, to decreases in youth drug use.

Other[edit]

  • Not only our well-being, but the well-being of our sons and grandsons depends on disseminating patterns of "sobriae ebrietas" (sober inebriation), which reconsider the use of psychedelic drugs as a moral and aesthetic challenge.
    • Antonio Escohotado, "Inebriation as Experience of the Spirit".
  • I like the FedEx driver, because he's drug dealer and he don't even know it. And he's always on time!
    • Mitch Hedberg, Track 10: "Sesame Seeds," Mitch All Together (2003).
  • All you kiddies remember to lay off the needle drugs. The only dope worth shooting is Richard Nixon.
  • MDMA got you feeling like a champion, The city never sleeps better slip you a Ambien.
    • Jay-Z, "Empire State of Mind".
  • The idea that the creative endeavor and mind-altering substances are entwined is one of the great pop-intellectual myths of our time ... Substance abusing writers are just substance abusers -- common garden variety drunks and druggies, in other words. Any claims that the drugs and alcohol are necessary to dull a finer sensibility are just the usual self-serving bullshit. I've heard alcoholic snowplow drivers make the same claim, that they drink to still the demons.
  • Hiya kids. Here's an important message from your Uncle Bill. Don't buy drugs. Become a rock star, and they give you them for free!
  • In vino veritas.
    • In wine, there is the truth.
    • Roman proverb
  • O God, that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains! that we should, with joy, pleasance, revel, and applause, transform ourselves into beasts!
  • My head hurts, this shit isn't getting me high
    My chest is so tight, am I going to die?
    My stomachs in knots, as the room starts to spin
    As I wait for this Valium to slowly kick in.
    • Staind, "Pressure", 'Break The Cycle' (2001).
  • There is nothing more helpless and irresponsible than a man in the depths of an ether binge.
  • This is the main advantage of ether: it makes you behave like the village drunkard in some early Irish novel ... total lack of all basic motor skills: blurred vision, no balance, numb tongue — severance of all connection between the body and the brain. Which is interesting because you can actually watch yourself behaving in this terrible way, but you can't control it.
  • You can turn your back on a person, but never turn your back on a drug – especially when it's waving a razor-sharp hunting knife in your eyes.
  • Ketamine was introduced by God to give dead people a means of communicating with us, the living.
  • A drug is not bad. A drug is a chemical compound. The problem comes in when people who take drugs treat them like a license to behave like an asshole.

Dialogue[edit]

Of course, you realize government regulation and distribution of narcotics would instantly destroy their monetary value. There would be no more drug kingpins. ~ Aaron McGruder
Huey: Ok, now this guy is Ralph Nader. If he wins, he’ll decriminalize drugs.
Riley: Are you serious?!!
You mean, I could be a drug kingpin like Scarface, but I won’t ever have to worry about going to jail?!! He’s the man!!
Huey: Of course, you realize government regulation and distribution of narcotics would instantly destroy their monetary value. There would be no more drug kingpins.
Riley: Aw man…he’s hatin’ on the game? Get him out of here!!

See also[edit]

External links[edit]

Wikipedia
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