Eight years ago I discussed why I don't drink. Part of that story dealt with a high school friend, Avery, who died between our junior and senior years when he was hit by a drunk driver. A few weeks ago, this past May, another high school friend's death made international headlines when he died in a car crash a few hours after his wedding. They are still, as of posting, awaiting toxicology reports.
So I'm not really going to get into all that.
Now, unlike alcohol, where I've tried sips and tastes of pretty much everything over the years, I have never bothered trying drugs in any quantity. The risks are too high, the rewards too few. As I always tell people - no one tries something for the first time with the intention of becoming an addict.
Instead what prompted this renewal of reflection was reading yet another article about how Michael Pollan took acid and enjoyed it. The timing of Mr. Pollan's praise, and renewed academic discussion, just seems so... off.
Pollan, as every piece mentions, is Mr. Natural (in the Whole Foods sense, as opposed to the 60s and 70s counter-culture usage). Why would the guy who likes plants and grains, who has been exhorting us to live healthier lifestyles, go in for what is usually targeted as the most synthetic and unnatural drug?
The different articles make different claims attempting to answer those and other questions. I don't really care. The bothersome aspect for me remains the timing and context. Our country is in the middle of a deadly epidemic of opioid use. Quick terminology: Opioids are distinct from opiates - the plant-based precursors which had to be derived from Opium poppies (morphine, for example). Oxycodone, a common opioid, is synthetic - it doesn't come from plants any more than the lab-created Fentanyl which is dominating headlines as the new front on the war against opioid addiction. Fentanyl, perhaps not coincidentally, was synthesized in the 1960s, right when LSD was becoming popular (having been synthesized decades earlier).
According to the most recent data, from late 2017, about 64,000 Americans died from overdoses in 2016. One third of those were from Fentanyl and other opioids. (For context, around 88,000 people die annually from alcohol. But we're not talking about that.) 64,000 may not seem like much - it is literally .0001% of the population. It's only 1/5 the number of Americans who contacted HIV/AIDS at the height of that epidemic crisis in 1993. It's less than 3% of Brooklyn.
Is all of this hand-wringing, then, and talk of a national crisis, just getting the spotlight because it effects the Trumpian base? I doubt that's the only reason. The issue is vulnerability - rural vs. urban communities, the elderly, the poor - the usual victims of social ailments. This in turn raises the antennae of the liberals, who see the spread of opioids as harming our most vulnerable. That way it's not just the communities which overwhelmingly voted for Donald Trump that care about the issue close to their hearts, but seemingly the nation as a whole.
Meanwhile, predominately liberal states like California and Colorado are going toe-to-toe with Jeff Sessions regarding marijuana legalization, and New York is set to soon follow. Of the states with legalization (California, Colorado, Oregon, Maine, Massachusetts, Nevada, Washington, Vermont) only one - Alaska - is identified as conservative, and tellingly Alaska's 'leave-me-alone' libertarian-extreme definition of conservative has long been regarded as unique in the national makeup.
So while rural and lower working-class communities from West Virginia to California's farming communities in the north, are dealing with addiction and fatality, the urbane centers are getting back into pot and acid.
If this all sounds familiar, like the 60s is back, I would recommend instead a comparison to the 1980s. The now infamous lies told during the decade regarding the discrepancies between cocaine and crack reflected socio-economic prejudices more than narcotic realities. Wealthy elites, liberals and conservatives, did coke, while poor communities, especially POC, in America's cities were arrested for crack. To be fair, the criminalization of marijuana was due to similar attempts of targeted social engineering, as of course, was LSD.
But the history goes deeper. The same decade that saw the synthesizing of Oxycodone and LSD was ironically the start of America's obsession with body image and health. The pendulum since the 1930s has repeatedly swung back and forth between 'body as temple' and 'body as receptacle' - Eat oranges from sunny Florida / put bacon on everything, achieve a glowing tan or gleaming smile / beautiful at any shape or size, exercise and aerobics trends from jogging to jazzercise / the late 90s/00s obesity epidemic. For around a century, since it first became possible to carefully control our bodies' looks and contents, we have as a nation had both our fad diets and our cheat days.
Drugs have traditionally straddled both sides of this debate: whether they are treats we know are bad for us, or part of our general well-being and health. Neurochemically we know that salt and sugar are addictive like drugs, not as much as, say, tobacco, but still. And sugar probably does more harm to us in the quantities we consume it than the toll marijuana may take on your lungs. But saying that is a guess.
Why Pollan, railer against the evils of high fructose corn syrup, is groovy with micro-hits of acid is beyond me. Oxy and LSD are about the same street price (or so the internet tells me). Is it due to availability? Oswald Stanley got to spend two years in prison for LSD, but he was a grimy hippie who toured with the Dead - Michael Pollan? Heaven forbid. He's allowed to write up a book about how it helped expand his horizons. I wonder if the Feds will come knocking on his door.
Our relationship to drugs as a nation is complex, ever-evolving, and reflective of wide disparities in socioeconomic status and cultural and ideological biases. The timing of Pollan's embrace of synthetic drugs comes right when vulnerable Americans are dying at the hands of synthetic drugs. It is not a new story - but it is a new, and dangerous narrative that the non-addictive drugs (pot, LSD) are for the liberals and elites, and the addictive drugs (opioids) are for the plebes. Liberals should take note that we have long-championed the counter-narrative, that addiction is not a personal failing, but instead a social issue that needs our compassion. With nearly 80,000 Americans living in the hell of the Federal Penitentiary System for drug violations, Mr. Natural's making money off of his story advocating tripping can't help but be seen as arrogant bragging that he is above the law. I wonder how his defense of drug use will go over in a place like Fayette county, West Virginia - or even Humboldt county, California - where opioids have claimed the highest toll. We have enough big issues and culture wars to deal with in 2018 before we bring legalizing LSD back into the mix.
So I'm not really going to get into all that.
Now, unlike alcohol, where I've tried sips and tastes of pretty much everything over the years, I have never bothered trying drugs in any quantity. The risks are too high, the rewards too few. As I always tell people - no one tries something for the first time with the intention of becoming an addict.
Instead what prompted this renewal of reflection was reading yet another article about how Michael Pollan took acid and enjoyed it. The timing of Mr. Pollan's praise, and renewed academic discussion, just seems so... off.
Pollan, as every piece mentions, is Mr. Natural (in the Whole Foods sense, as opposed to the 60s and 70s counter-culture usage). Why would the guy who likes plants and grains, who has been exhorting us to live healthier lifestyles, go in for what is usually targeted as the most synthetic and unnatural drug?
The different articles make different claims attempting to answer those and other questions. I don't really care. The bothersome aspect for me remains the timing and context. Our country is in the middle of a deadly epidemic of opioid use. Quick terminology: Opioids are distinct from opiates - the plant-based precursors which had to be derived from Opium poppies (morphine, for example). Oxycodone, a common opioid, is synthetic - it doesn't come from plants any more than the lab-created Fentanyl which is dominating headlines as the new front on the war against opioid addiction. Fentanyl, perhaps not coincidentally, was synthesized in the 1960s, right when LSD was becoming popular (having been synthesized decades earlier).
According to the most recent data, from late 2017, about 64,000 Americans died from overdoses in 2016. One third of those were from Fentanyl and other opioids. (For context, around 88,000 people die annually from alcohol. But we're not talking about that.) 64,000 may not seem like much - it is literally .0001% of the population. It's only 1/5 the number of Americans who contacted HIV/AIDS at the height of that epidemic crisis in 1993. It's less than 3% of Brooklyn.
Is all of this hand-wringing, then, and talk of a national crisis, just getting the spotlight because it effects the Trumpian base? I doubt that's the only reason. The issue is vulnerability - rural vs. urban communities, the elderly, the poor - the usual victims of social ailments. This in turn raises the antennae of the liberals, who see the spread of opioids as harming our most vulnerable. That way it's not just the communities which overwhelmingly voted for Donald Trump that care about the issue close to their hearts, but seemingly the nation as a whole.
Meanwhile, predominately liberal states like California and Colorado are going toe-to-toe with Jeff Sessions regarding marijuana legalization, and New York is set to soon follow. Of the states with legalization (California, Colorado, Oregon, Maine, Massachusetts, Nevada, Washington, Vermont) only one - Alaska - is identified as conservative, and tellingly Alaska's 'leave-me-alone' libertarian-extreme definition of conservative has long been regarded as unique in the national makeup.
So while rural and lower working-class communities from West Virginia to California's farming communities in the north, are dealing with addiction and fatality, the urbane centers are getting back into pot and acid.
If this all sounds familiar, like the 60s is back, I would recommend instead a comparison to the 1980s. The now infamous lies told during the decade regarding the discrepancies between cocaine and crack reflected socio-economic prejudices more than narcotic realities. Wealthy elites, liberals and conservatives, did coke, while poor communities, especially POC, in America's cities were arrested for crack. To be fair, the criminalization of marijuana was due to similar attempts of targeted social engineering, as of course, was LSD.
But the history goes deeper. The same decade that saw the synthesizing of Oxycodone and LSD was ironically the start of America's obsession with body image and health. The pendulum since the 1930s has repeatedly swung back and forth between 'body as temple' and 'body as receptacle' - Eat oranges from sunny Florida / put bacon on everything, achieve a glowing tan or gleaming smile / beautiful at any shape or size, exercise and aerobics trends from jogging to jazzercise / the late 90s/00s obesity epidemic. For around a century, since it first became possible to carefully control our bodies' looks and contents, we have as a nation had both our fad diets and our cheat days.
Drugs have traditionally straddled both sides of this debate: whether they are treats we know are bad for us, or part of our general well-being and health. Neurochemically we know that salt and sugar are addictive like drugs, not as much as, say, tobacco, but still. And sugar probably does more harm to us in the quantities we consume it than the toll marijuana may take on your lungs. But saying that is a guess.
Why Pollan, railer against the evils of high fructose corn syrup, is groovy with micro-hits of acid is beyond me. Oxy and LSD are about the same street price (or so the internet tells me). Is it due to availability? Oswald Stanley got to spend two years in prison for LSD, but he was a grimy hippie who toured with the Dead - Michael Pollan? Heaven forbid. He's allowed to write up a book about how it helped expand his horizons. I wonder if the Feds will come knocking on his door.
Our relationship to drugs as a nation is complex, ever-evolving, and reflective of wide disparities in socioeconomic status and cultural and ideological biases. The timing of Pollan's embrace of synthetic drugs comes right when vulnerable Americans are dying at the hands of synthetic drugs. It is not a new story - but it is a new, and dangerous narrative that the non-addictive drugs (pot, LSD) are for the liberals and elites, and the addictive drugs (opioids) are for the plebes. Liberals should take note that we have long-championed the counter-narrative, that addiction is not a personal failing, but instead a social issue that needs our compassion. With nearly 80,000 Americans living in the hell of the Federal Penitentiary System for drug violations, Mr. Natural's making money off of his story advocating tripping can't help but be seen as arrogant bragging that he is above the law. I wonder how his defense of drug use will go over in a place like Fayette county, West Virginia - or even Humboldt county, California - where opioids have claimed the highest toll. We have enough big issues and culture wars to deal with in 2018 before we bring legalizing LSD back into the mix.
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