This article is adapted from Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs by Johann Hari
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Fifteen years ago, the Portuguese had one of the worst drug problems in Europe. So they decriminalized drugs, took money out of prisons, put it into holistic rehabilitation, and found that human connection is the antidote to addiction.
It is now one hundred years since drugs were first banned—and all through this long century of waging war on drugs, we have been told a story about addiction by our teachers and by our governments. This story is so deeply ingrained in our minds that we take it for granted: There are strong chemical hooks in these drugs, so if we stopped on day twenty-one, our bodies would need the chemical. We would have a ferocious craving. We would be addicted. That’s what addiction means.
This theory was first established, in part, through rat experiments—ones that were injected into the American psyche in the 1980s, in a famous advertisement by […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
Accurate point of view, in my opinion. It is the quality of the cage, that not only drives drug addiction, but mental ill-health rates as well. The current ‘cage’ for the young of any race is crazymaking, instilling some desire for medication or release.
As we dance toward the Great War Redux, with baboons at the head of the parade, and focus group ‘social psychologists’ testing our galvanic skin response every other millisecond ………… it is only fitting, is it not, that we legalize drugs.
I say this seriously, realizing that more people have been killed in our border country to the south on behalf of drugs than the US lost soldiers in Viet Nam. It is time to admit it. Opium is the opiate of the people.
And until we free ourselves from the cycle of greed and subjugation and lying to ourselves we will certainly need Something to avert our awareness of where we are headed. (If you read this on a computer, you have already lied to yourself by ‘clicking through’ your EULA, your user agreement to all kinds of stipulations to which you do not agree….. but want to use your #@&#! program. 😉 Once you begin lying to yourself, the next steps are easy.