too long, get ready

on addictive drugs:
where do you start. i've been slowly accumulating addictions since high school, and even if i'm not selling myself on the street for heroin, i'm acutely aware of the gravitational, inescapable pull of addictive substances. the nonsensical insensitivity with which you need something you know isn't helping you. alcoholics anonymous is a creepass cult as far as i'm concerned, but one thing they like to say hits home pretty hard, and that's that alcoholism, or rather the craving for booze itself, is a kind of insanity. maybe they mean it as an excuse, as a shelter under which they can hide their willpower, but i think of einstein's great definition of insanity--doing the same thing again and again, expecting different results. i'm not just talking about trying to quit (which this definitely applies to), but the whole ritual, the whole psychological paradigm an addict adopts. the same goes for cigarrettes, whatever, anything you want to break free of but feel utterly unable to, like it's become such a part of your deepseated psychological makeup that you're not even sure if you want to give it up, if you'll still be your little individual self if you 86 it.
now, three cities in canada are getting ready to prescribe heroin to junkies. if this sounds like a bad idea to ya, get the fuck off of my blog right now; you're not gonna get any of this because you haven't experienced any of what i'm talking about. the damage inflicted on drug addicts, while yeah, largely is their own fault (fault's such a messy term, though. is it a schizophrenic's fault she's crazy? the interaction between conscious and unconscious is where fault seems to manifest in most people's minds, but what about those whose prefrontal development's been stunted from an early age? those who haven't had the chance to develop the fine-tuned 'self-control' we put so much stock in? but i digress and this is too philosophical for anyone to really agree on or probably even listen to anyway), is propogated by and large, in americaland, usa, by governmental controls. if you're at the point where quitting pushing off (or insufflating, or drinking [fun fact: alcohol is the only drug from which the withdrawal can actually kill you], or whatthefuckever) is going to cause you more pain, suffering, and possibly long-term damage, than continuing, you tell me what you're gonna do. so these people, who need a slow, gentle release from this shit, become major criminals, and cost us zillions (do not actually know the number) of dollars rotting in jail, instead of getting treated for however much (even if it cost the same as jailing them [it wouldn't] the humanitarian aspect would be worth it) and becoming a productive member of society who can actually give back.
i'm not saying drugs never hurt anyone. i'm not saying that the mindblowing drug cartel violence our southern brothers are bearing and inflicting can be swept under the metaphysical rug. but think more of hunter s. thompson, who while running for sherriff of wherever in colorado he ran for sherriff (under the 'freak power' party, the logo of which by the way is a six-fingered hand clutching a peyote button) advocated simultaneous legalization of all drugs and punishment by indefinite lockup in the stocks for drug traffickers and profiteers. if these drugs were not illegal (and thus have an artificially repressed supply [and arguably increased demand--everyone knows we want what we can't have even more {microeconomics, bitch}]), dealers would be hard-pressed to make money and have little incentive to gun down 17 teenagers at a rehabilitation center in mexico (god..). i feel like you all already knows this. of course you do. but fuck, why is it taking so long to do something about it.
back to canada. in one of these experimental rehab clinics for heroin addicts, they had groups of people who were treated with methadone (a pharmacological cousin of heroin, often used to wean junkies off their habit) and people who were just given a fix of heroin. two a day i think. in the methadone groups, 1 in 5 patients improved in some way (they had a few categories: physical and mental health, association with non-drug users, and criminal acts). BUT GET THIS: 55% of the heroin-administered heroin-addicts improved. and of the patients who improved the most, pretty much all were from the heroin-administered group.
we're inching toward a reasonable attitude toward 'drugs' (i'm talking about the currently illegal ones), finally, after a long and insane moratorium on even scientific research on them (here i'm talking mostly about psychedelics. and weed) stemming from racism and xenophobia, and hippies, a little bit. me, i'm guardedly hopeful.
i've saved my favorite bit for last, though. all this talk about gently helping, with compassion and tolerance, etc. etc., drug addicts, ignores one critical, wonderful, explosive discovery: iboga. iboga, or rather the active component, ibogaine, is a rare west african psychedelic derived from the root bark of a certain plant. it produces about 4 hours of dream-like, often repressed childhood-related, memories and visions. this is followed by a period of intense introspection that can last from 2 hours to 2 days (!!). this is more than the intense, self-awakening vision quest we've all wanted since we saw that one simpsons episode feat. johnny cash (rip), though. post-ibogaine trip, one (read: many/most) no longer craves whatever they have been addicted to! it's lost its glamour, its all-consuming magnetism. sounds too good to be true, but there's some good (read: foreign/illicit) research that's been done on this. all kinds of compulsive behavior can be cured by this too, including ocd. it seems so insane and specific for all your addictions to be miraculously purged, but this is what the reports say. granted, doesn't work for everyone, but the fact that it does reliably work blows my mind and gives me some real creepy hope, for myself and everyone. a little research hints that this whole effect is due (or somehow related) to an amplification of glial cell-derived neurotrophic factor, which is a brain protein that protects all kinds of neuron (yeah right, as if you gave a shit). this article says it better than i could though (written, as it was, by an ex-junkie who was cured by an ibogaine trip): http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2004/jun/20/features.magazine67. the poor fuck knows what he's saying, or rather what i want to say. listen to this shit: "The irony of the drug experience is that it comes from an outgrowth of genuine longing, a reaching out for meaning, a yearning for transcendence and salvation, and it ends with sitting in a darkened room staring miserably at the wall."
i don't know just where this is going, but i'm gonna try for the kingdom.. if i can.

-rgr

ps why'd i write this? if anyone has any idea, please let me know.