Lewis Lapham on Substance Abuse

During the first half of the Broncos-Ravens game I read Lewis Lapham's piece on drugs and the national security state that appeared last Sunday on www.TomDispatch.com.  He makes the argument that the war on drugs is a war against human nature; that the quest for intoxication has been with us from the beginning.

If what was at issue was a concern for people trapped in the jail cells of addiction, the keepers of the nation’s conscience would be better advised to address the conditions -- poverty, lack of opportunity and education, racial discrimination -- from which drugs provide an illusory means of escape. That they are not so advised stands as proven by their fond endorsement of the more expensive ventures into the realms of virtual reality. Our pharmaceutical industries produce a cornucopia of prescription drugs -- eye-opening, stupefying, mood-swinging, game-changing, anxiety-alleviating, performance-enhancing -- currently at a global market-value of more than $300 billion.

Add the time-honored demand for alcohol, the modernist taste for cocaine, and the uses, as both stimulant and narcotic, of tobacco, coffee, sugar, and pornography, and the annual mustering of consummations devoutly to be wished comes to the cost of more than $1.5 trillion. The taking arms against a sea of troubles is an expenditure that dwarfs the appropriation for the military budget.

Given the American antecedents both metaphysical and commercial -- Thomas Paine drank, “and right freely”; in 1910, the federal government received 71% of its internal revenue from taxes paid on the sale and manufacture of alcohol -- it is little wonder that the sons of liberty now lead the world in the consumption of better living through chemistry. The new and improved forms of self-invention fit the question -- to be, or not to be -- to any and all occasions.

For the aging Wall Street speculator stepping out for an evening to squander his investment in Viagra. For the damsel in distress shopping around for a nose like the one seen advertised in a painting by Botticelli. For the distracted child depending on a therapeutic jolt of Adderall to learn to read the Constitution. For the stationary herds of industrial-strength cows so heavily doped with bovine growth hormone that they require massive infusions of antibiotic to survive the otherwise lethal atmospheres of their breeding pens. Visionary risk-takers, one and all, willing to chance what dreams may come on the way West to an all-night pharmacy.

The war against human nature strengthens the fear of one’s fellow man. The red, white, and blue pills sell the hope of heaven made with artificial sweeteners. 

My twenties were devoted to heavy drinking, a habit developed at the university (see the poetry of William Cartwright).  I stopped when I hit thirty.  Then I started again in my late thirties due to the shock of returning to office work after being away from it for the better part of 1990s.  I stopped again and rode the water wagon for several years before toppling off because of the stress brought on by a new girlfriend.  I quit for the final time after seeing that alcohol actually made everything worse.  Exercise is a far superior way to handle stress whether it's from a job and/or interpersonal relationships.  Exercise is the true intoxicant.