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Birds of a Feather -- Without a Quill

This post is for informational purposes only.

[Updated 2-28-08]

A Brief History & Introduction

No, the "Green Fairy" is not an Irish androphile, it's the nickname of the liquor Absinthe, made of potent herbs, wormwood, and sixty-percent alcohol, popular in bohemian Paris and Amsterdam, used by Vincent van Gogh, Oscar Wilde, Charles Baudelaire, Stephane Melmarme, Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud, and even Ernest Hemingway. It was banned in 1915 because it was pleasurable to drink, and by 1920, all alcohol was prohibited in the U.S. Prohibition brought about the mafia, bootleggers, and still makers to circumvent the ban. America's puritanical distaste for all things pleasurable could not stop the speakeasies, the demand, nor the crimes, so thirteen years later the first and only "morality" code to the U.S. Constitution was repealed (1933).

The War against Pleasure (and Everything Else)

But Americans have never learned. Today, 80% of U.S. prisons are occupied by individuals convicted of selling, buying, or using "contraband." Of that 80%, another 80% are either African-American or Latino, who, not so coincidentally, have the highest high-school drop-out rates, the least fluency with English, and the highest rates of poverty and illiteracy. The U.S. has the highest ratio of inmates-to-non-inmates in the world, spends by far the largest on prison construction and prison staff, than any other nation in the world -- far ahead of Russia, China, Cuba, Columbia, or anywhere. All in its "War on Drugs" that has repeatedly lost its battles.

The Irrational Response to Difference

Like the War in Iraq, the War on Drugs for over thirty-five years has been a complete and total failure, even though the U.S. spends as much on the War on Drugs as it does in the War in Iraq. Even though the U.S. has deforested large swaths in Columbia, Peru, and Bolivia, even though Afghanistan poppy cultivation has never been higher (as a U.S. client state), and despite dubious border patrols. In 2005, former U.S. Border Patrol agent Christopher E. Bemis, 24, was indicted for importing drugs "south of the border." Despite 1,189,067 arrests in 2005, Alberto Gonzales prosecuting U.S. border guards while immunizing the drug trafficker, the American public cannot get enough of the stuff these "mules" bring across the Rio Grande. As far as Bush is concerned, numb and dumb Americans to his scandals.

Playing to the Puritanical

Perhaps the most inane political theater comes from Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her "girlfriend" Senator Dianne Feinstein, who together in 2007, introduced legislation to stiffen the penalties for use of crystal methamphetamine. While already illegal, the Twisted Sisters would like to put most of America behind prison bars, to show themselves "opposed" to the already illegal drug. With over 50,000 of their constituents using it, perhaps the gesture was pure histrionics to placate Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter, and the porn-star Matt Sanchez, USMC (himself apparently a user, as is many in the military). But why should histrionics from Congress be any different from the White House?

Facts versus Fiction

Okay. Enough of the bullshit. Let's get to the facts. Simply, Americans hate anyone having pleasure. They always have, they always will, even if they are hypocritical about it (e.g., David Vitters, James Swaggert, Ted Haggard, Gavin Newsom, Jim Bakker, ad infinitum). While not encouraging any illicit drug use, many illicit drugs are safer, saner, and more responsible than some of the insane opposition. In my considered option, three drugs should never be used, for any reason: Tobacco, heroin, and crystal meth. It's not their pleasures that I find disagreeable, it's their addiction, tolerance, and dependence that makes all three undesirable in all cases. In that "spirit," let's examine some of the others agents of pleasure:

DRUGS

Ethyl Alcohol

An ubiquitous drug in all, but Isalmic, cultures. Beer, wine, and spirits can create a "buzz," reduce over-wrought inhibitions, and taste extremely pleasant -- depending on the liquor of your choice. Some individuals delight in the "micro-brews" of different beers, some sniff the bouquet and relish the robust flavors of vintage wines, others enjoy a the tantilizing aperitifs like Campari or Dubonnet, others enjoy Manhattan (bourbon) or Martini (vodka, gin, rum), and after a meal, sip the digestif pleasures of a cordial, such as Benedictine, Cognac, Grand Marnier, brandy, Kaluha, or Drambuie. Whatever tickles your fancy. Personally, I prefer a Manhattan cocktail before dinner, a nice vintage wine during dinner, a Riesling during desert, french-roasted coffee, and then Benedictine (without the brandy) to finish in fine evening of conviviality and dining.

Cannabis

Not my favorite herb, although I've discovered different types in different situations have different effects. While ubiquitous in high school and college, its use extends into adulthood to "enlighten" individuals into profound thought, while the non-420 look-on in bewilderment. Cannabis can be highly erotic, highly sedating, highly disorienting, and if it is grown in the right locale, enables one to overcome all inhibitions. It's also the best agent to relax tired or tense muscles, including torticollis. No addiction. No "slippery slope" to stronger stuff. But some may possible "nod-off," when you least want them to. Both medicinally useful and hedonistically enjoyable.

Sedatives

Besides alcohol (which most people can moderate to their "mean"), this class of drugs includes barbituates (e.g., seconal), Quaaludes and Halcion (knock-out hypnotic), GHB (date-rape pass-out), and minor tranquilizers of the benzodiazapine class, such as Valium, Xanax, and Ativan. Valium also has useful muscle-relaxant properties, including use during seizures.

The short-acting benzodiazapines (e.g., Ativan) tend to develop less tolerance and less addiction than the longer-acting ones (e.g., Valium, Klonopin), are useful for occasional duress, stress, anxiety, and panic. Some are occasionally used for agoraphobia (fear of large public encounters), while some are used for their hypnotic properties (e.g., Temazepam). For occasional use, these minor tranquilizers of benzodiazapines are generally safe, non-addicting, and useful aids to emotional disturbances, seizures, and insomnia.

The Deadly Sins: of Pleasure

Opiates

Rush Limbaugh's favorites, because it gets a blubbery ass screwed when he's too cold to know different. Opiates for pain, real, serious pain, are without parallel. Morphine and mepridine (Demerol) and hydromorphine (Dilaudid) are all potent central nervous system depressants, and effectively diminish severe pain. Weaker opiates like Codeine and Vicodin (a synthetic codeine) are less potent and prone to adverse side effects. Vicodin is known to cause agitation in many users, but causes less stomach distress. Codeine is among the most useful all-purpose agents, especially for travel. It's analgesic, antipuretic, constipating, anti-inflammatory, and fever-reducing properties make it a suitable emergency "pill," especially in travels abroad. However, it is known to aggrevate stomach discomfort.

I Can, You Cannot: I'm God of Right

Stimulants

Cocaine is the fashionable "in-crowd" stimulant, because it is expensive, and only the "elite" are drawn to use it for its expense factor. When cooked into a rock formation and then smoked through a bong, it becomes "crack," that delivers an euphoria unlike all others. Cocaine once appeared in America's favorite beverage, Coca-Cola, and in snake-oil salesmen's tonics for all that ails one. Before prohibition, African-American laborers who toiled hard could endure heavier loads, longer work hours, and make American business highly efficient with freely dispense cocaine. Dr. Freud and the mystery detective Sherlock Holmes were addicted users, both by injection.

The Pill to Solve All Problems

Methamphetamine, or Desoxyn, is not generally prescribed and its street variant, crystal meth, is illegal. In addition to increasing the need for sex and enabling the user to engage in prolonged sexual activity, methamphetamine lowers inhibitions and may cause users to behave recklessly or to become forgetful, making it one of the most common factors in the spread of HIV and other STDs. Users may even report negative experiences after prolonged use, engaging in excessive, compulsive, and obsessive masturbation, yet ironically leads to erectile dysfunction and methamphetamine-induced hyperstimulation leads to anhedonia (inability to experience pleasure). Many androphile bottoms find its use opens their sphincter muscle to anything and everything and everyone. 13% of androphiles used methamphetamine in the previous 6 months, according to recent epidemiological studies. Recovery from addiction is as tormenting as heroin. Along with psycho-sexual stimulation initially, euphoria, increased energy and attentiveness, diarrhea, nausea, excessive sweating, loss of appetite, insomnia, tremor, jaw-clenching, mental and physical agitation, obsessive-compulsive repetitive tasks, talkativeness, irritability, and panic attacks are commonly experienced. Death from overdose is usually due to stroke, heart failure, but can also be caused by cardiac arrest (sudden death) or hyperthermia.

My Crack for Your Crack?

Other stimulants, like benzedrine, Ritalin, Adderall, are all amphetamines or similar in nature, which, if used only occasionally to keep awake, to dance the night away, may serve a limited purpose. A new class of stimulant that operates on the histamine, rather than dopamine, system like Provigil and Modafinil function as a stimulant, without the "high" or toxic effects associated with stimulants.

I AM

Some men resort to cocaine and amphetamine use to delay ejaculation during eroticism. In some men, it also retards or impedes an erection. The most common effect is a semi-turgid penis unable to reach orgasm and a bored partner becoming impatient.

Finally, let's not forget caffeine, the substance found in beverages like coffee and colas and now even in beer, or even in pills -- to "jolt" one awake in the morning, to keep one going throughout the day, to help the mind focus, and provide a mild-to-moderate "buzz." This stimulant remains legal and available without a prescription, but excessive amounts may lead to profound dysphoria.

Many decongestants, especially pseudoephedrine, can be stimulating, and if combined with other stimulants can be life-threatening.

The 12% Solution: Freud's Answer to Life

Hallucinogens

Other than phencyclidine ("PCP"), this class of illicit drugs is among the safest biologically, and obtained naturally from mescaline and peyote, or artificially from lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD or "acid"). This class of drug alters one's sense of time and space, often producing visual and auditory distortions or exaggerations of ordinary reality. They often contributed to the perception of separation of mind from body, feelings of spiritual, intellectual, or intimate insights, and a sense of complete freedom.

Bad Trip or Cutting Edge?

PCP was discovered in 1953, it remains a Schedule II drug, but is rarely used by physicians and only occasionally by veterinarians. Its potent effects on the nervous system, altering perceptual functions (hallucinations, delusional ideas, delirium or confused thinking), motor functions (unsteady gait, loss of coordination, and disrupted eye movement or nystagmus), and autonomic nervous system regulation (rapid heart rate, altered temperature regulation). Intoxicated individuals often act in an uncharacteristic, unpredictable fashion, driven by their delusions or hallucinations, driven to acts of self-injury including suicide, and attacks on others or destruction of property. The analgesic properties of the drug can cause users to feel less pain, and persist in violent or injurious acts as a result. Recreational doses of the drug can also induce a psychotic state that resembles schizophrenic episodes.

As with all hallucinogens, the common "downside" is the proverbial "bad trip," causing the user to experience extreme anxiety, paranoia, and self-injury -- and making oneself vulnerable to hazardous situations while under its influence.

Whatever Sells: Just Say "Yes"

Inhalants

These agents are "solvents" such as vapors from glue, paint, nitrous oxide, and "poppers." Among androphiles, only poppers are commonly used. Originally amyl nitrate and a prescription drug to stimulate the circulatory system during a cardiac incident, the inhalant became useful under similar composition for the momentary delerium, the intense warm feelings, and the reduction of inhibitions -- all of which were thought useful during anal penetration. But like all pleasurable drugs, one found these poppers in dance clubs, in local bars and back rooms, and pervasively "perfuming" bath houses. Besides the terrible scent, excessive use tends to cause nasty headaches and a room repugnant in fumes. Rarely lethal, because amyl and its butyl cousin are both vasodialators, as are drugs to treat erectile dysfunction (e.g., cheap cialis, Levitra, Viagra), their conjoint use can cause the heart to slow to dangerous levels or stop altogether.

Steroids

Corticosteriods are a "miracle" drug when inhaled for asthma, applied topically for skin inflammations, or rarely ingested for serious inflammation that is unresponsive to other treatment. Testosterone (like estrogen and androgen) are also steroids, but a naturally-occurring one, and its use in replacement therapy for insufficient amounts will have dramatically ameloriative effects. Likewise, the use of medicines to affect neurotransmitters, like serotonin, dopamine, and epinephrine, are often hormonal intervention useful in some psychiatric conditions.

But anabolic steroids and human growth steroids for no other reason than pumping-up human bulk, improving athletic performance, or to improve your self-image by bodybuilding, as rather inane athletes espouse (e.g., Barry, Castendada, etc.), is never appropriate, as harmful changes in cholesterol levels, virulent acne, unstable blood pressure, serious liver and heart damage, and psychiatric deterioration and personality changes often occur. If you are currently using anabolic and human-growth steroids illegally, please consult a physician to titrate yourself off these nasty drugs, rather than stopping "cold-turkey."

The "Perfect" Illicit Drug?

Methylenedioxy-methamphetamine (MDMA or Ecstasy) is sometimes described as a cross between a psychostimulant and a mild hallucinogen. On pure MDMA, subjects feel at peace with themselves and the world. They discover an enhanced sense of self-worth, self-forgiveness and complete self-acceptance. Cynical thoughts and negative feelings disappear. Aspects of life normally too sensitive to talk about can be explored freely. Heightened feeling allows long-forgotten and repressed emotional memories from childhood can be retrieved with unusual ease. In some settings, painful, highly-charged and even hitherto unmentionable problems may be discussed with (rose-tinted) candour.

MDMA is sensuous and sensual in its effects without being distinctively pro-sexual. On MDMA, a lifetime of accumulated psychological barriers and defence-mechanisms go down, somehow magicked out of existence with a pill. Anger, irritability and ingrained fear dissolve; the hostile amygdala is subdued, if only for a few hours. Ecstasy users tell each other affectionately what beautiful people they are; and they do so from the depths of their hearts. In many cases, 3,4-methylenedioxyethylamphetamine (MDA) is substituted for MDMA, which is chemically and experientially similar. For further details, consult MDMA/Ecstacy: Utopia.

If this Be Ecstasy, Why Deny It?

Editorial Observations

Many in the world, especially in pleasure-denying, god-loving countries, like Saudi Arabia and the United States, not only depreciate pleasure of most kinds, they criminalize it. The U.S., or parts thereof, have criminalized the use of birth control, lest people fuck for the pleasure of it, and not as god demands, for procreation. Ditto, homophilia, the prototypical sin of all sin, indulging in the pleasures of the flesh, which makes one hostile to a wrathful, vindictive, and demanding god. The use of cocaine, ethyl alcohol, opiates, and now tobacco, are all subject to criminal penalties. Anything that could be remotely enjoyed in itself, for its own sake, is objectively sinful, and therefore, to be criminalized by the State, as god's moral agent and authority.

That's not how a modern, liberal, free, and democratic society is supposed to function. In the that kind of state, the individual is free to make his informed choices, provided he does not harm others in his own "pursuit of freedom." But, as we all know, the U.S. is a "Christian" nation, just like Israel is a "Jewish" nation, and Saudi Arabia a "Muslim" nation -- none are truly modern, liberal, free, and democratic societies. For that kind of society, one finds isolations in the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, and Finland. In the U.S., we spend a fortune in taxes every year to prevent people from experiencing pleasure. We have the highest prison population in the world, spend the largest amount of money in fighting pleasure, than the rest of the world put together.

The Dead User by Injection

Never Never Drugs

Simply: Never use crystal methamphetamine and heroin or its opium derivatives. Anabolic steroids are just plain stupid.

That said, some "illicit drugs" are banned irrationally. Cannabis and MDMA are relatively benign drugs, non-injurious to ourselves and third parties, and certainly less toxic physiologically than alcohol or tobacco. They and LSD have demonstrated useful therapeutic effects. Thomas Jefferson advocated Virginians to plant cannabis rather than tobacco; tobacco won, and was "subsidized" by the U.S. taxpayer. The FACT that a significant number of our population indulges in the use of "illicit drugs" should speak to a core reality, not a mythological utopia of god's city on earth. Calvin's Geneve failed just as Prohibition failed, and all these other draconian efforts to impose Calvinism throughout the U.S. only fills prisons and veins by even more irrational means.

Maybe Nancy Asked the Wrong Question

If government serves a purpose to "prevent harm," then it must abolish roadways and the vehicle, which kills far more people than illicit drug use. In fact, more people die in the "War on Drugs" than from illicit drugs. Yet, we are all rational people with access to factual information to help inform us in making the virtuous choices in life. Certain substances are so inherently dangerous and destructive, they should be banned.

Napalm, DDT, for example. Certain "recreational drugs" are neither recreational nor simply drugs; heroin and GHB are examples of dangerous, addictive, and destructive drugs. So is crystal methamphetamine. Criminalizing these types of drugs is sensible. But any drug, including aspirin, if used to excess, or inappropriately, is dangerous and destructive. So individuals, by biological or mental constitution, are "addictive personalities." They become addicted to whatever they enjoy, whether drugs, sex, work, or prohibiting others from drugs, sex, work, or whatever alters their perceived drudgery.

Just "Say NO?" No Way!

Government Protects Us, Right?

The government can inform us to the harms that imported goods from China, the use of heroin, or running up massive deficits to finance an unjust and immoral war -- but we, the people, are the government, and we are not the slaves to our representatives, we are not docilely obedient to mental messiahs, nor should we live in a police state that criminalizes pleasure, because it is hostile to the gods. Get rid of the gods, or obey the gods for yourselves, not demand we all live by some politicians' gods' silly-ass rules. With the existence of HIV and Hepatitis C, the use of syringes to administer drugs should only occur with licit drugs and medical supervision. Never share a needle! Never!

Nancy Will Protect Us, Won't You, Nancy?

Autonomy Requires Responsibility

Similarly, if we expect to be treated with respect, autonomy, civilly, and as free-agents, we have the responsibility to make informed choices. Informing the public, not policing it, is the government's best function. Like my parents, the parental duties of the state are to inform, not to tell us what we can and cannot enjoy, who we can and cannot love, or how we can or cannot act, if our choices do not harm others deliberately. Police belong to the narrow function of harm avoidance and injury protection, not to violating our privacy to see who we are fucking, how we are fucking, what we are eating, and when and where it comes. If anything, our government should function to insure the purity and safety of our purchases, not ban their existence or consumption. The current Administration cannot even do that adequately, much less stop the use of illicit drugs. It's farm policies and subsidies are more detrimental to our health and environment than the drug addict.

Personal & Social Responsibility

We have a personal and social responsibility to make informed decisions. The majority of the drugs identified in this post are not malicious or detrimental, if used with discretion, with knowledge of effects and consequence, and used occasionally in moderation. Immoderate individuals should refrain from all choices which might lead to immoderate consumption. Otherwise, some of the illicit drugs identified to serve several licit functions, including the function of pleasure for its own sake, or facilitating other pleasures, might be enjoyable.

Dying Ain't Much to Life

That responsibility belongs to the user, the consumer, the purchaser -- you and I. It requires the responsibility of not driving while intoxicated, not raping an intoxicated individual, or using a drug as an excuse for immoral behavior. No drug will ever inhibit good, sound moral choices; it may allow us to think about it longer, but not actually act on it.

But whether one ingests useless and sugary "corn and corn by-products," "transfatty acids," or indulges in an occasional ice cream is largely due to our own governments' misinformation, to its scare tactics that exaggerate risks to the point of incredulity, that makes lawful obedience (or unlawful disobedience) as senseless as docility to their fabricated gods' absurd laws as irrational.

Products that pose undue or disproportionate risks should be labeled as such, like the majority of products sold in the snack aisle of grocery stores, or toys and products imported from China for children to finance the War in Iraq, or in use of pharmaceuticals approved by the F.D.A. that cause suicide in many of its users (e.g., Accutane, SSRIs). Knowledge is our responsibility, enabled by our government, not government being our "nanny."

The Accomplice is "Clean"

Yet government believes in "sin taxes," but the real "sin" is government's abuse of its citizens, in the hidden pleasures it seeks for itself, which government conceals to the public at large, while hiding the larger sins in its promotion sugar, corn syrup, and all the other corn by-products and animal feed, approved by our governments' irrational claims to basic food supply. Ideally, the U.S.D.A. and F.D.A. should regulate the purity of cocaine, not ban its use, expose the excess of corn sugars, not bury or subsidize them.

But Democrats and Republicans both believe that their puritanical standards against all pleasure is the only answer to their failed Wars in Vietnam, in Iraq, against Columbia's cocoa plantations, Peruvian cocoa growers, against those with darker-complexions, against Arabs who grow opium and poppies, against those who enjoy a Martini or Manhattan cocktail, while their Evangelical leaders, like Ted Haggard enjoys fucking male hustlers on meth, their mayors, like Gavin Newsom, fuck other men's wives on alcoholic binges, promote gay porn, while their wives and children are sent to Jesus Camps, and rock stars spill their guts (literally) on Hollywood's fake rehab, while blacks and Latinos languish decades behind prison bars, fucking each other, spreading HIV and knife attacks, and the Supreme Court is convinced that righteous pot users for intractable pain, glaucoma, and AIDS are growing, selling, or using weed to violate the commerce clause of the Constitution, but corporations are not.

Grimm Fairy Tales = Grim Prison Sentences

The "Green Fairy" represents all the illusions and delusions in which the god-fearing, pleasure-denying forces put anyone who thinks, acts, or looks different from the righteous, pleasure-abnegating forces behind prison bars, where they're getting fucked with thirty year prison sentences and spreading the lethal virus AIDS as their "just desert" for providing their droves of lily-white clients, from adolescents, housewives, philandering husbands, and tricks in the sticks, with the "stuff," while naively viewing Murdoch's MySpace blog for right-wing ideas. For every drug bought on the streets that is "illegal," dozens of their suppliers lose their lives in the high-risk effort to supply them for a "living," and those that survive do so in prison -- upwards of thirty years, while the main users and lawmakers who etch these draconian laws, these anti-pleasure ordinances, run Congress, the Executive, and the Courts, the churches, the synagogues, and mosques, all to rid society of the scourge of drugs. Oddly, those who grow, cultivate, and package the products never seem to be "wasted" by them, never "spent" in prison, just the target of righteous indignation. But then, they're all "white" boys, who fell into the throes of dark forces, eh?

Maybe Their Ecstasy is "Under" Rated

UPDATE (2/28): The Washington Post heralds the headline that more Americans are in jail today than ever before: one out of each hundred, a ratio that far exceeds any other country -- including China. 80% of all inmates are convicted of possession, selling, or buying "illicit" drugs. For a "war" such as the War on Drugs, in which $300 billion is spent each year, the American approach to "recreational drugs" is now obscene, immoral, and grotesquely unjust.

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