'Mind-altering drugs have been invested by the public with qualities which are not directly linked to their visible or most probable effects. They have been elevated to the status of a power deemed capable of tempting, possessing, corrupting, and destroying persons without regard to the prior conduct or condition of those persons—a power which has all-or-none effects. Gradations of results are not ordinarily considered as a function of the factors empirically shown to be responsible for them, such as dosage, purity, route of administration, frequency of use, nutritional states, the presence of biochemical antagonists or potentiators, social setting, subject's health, intentions and personality, and the like. The "power" in drugs is such that those identified as users are immediately reclassified socially—most likely as unregenerate outcasts. Such a power comes close to being demoniacal. Has Cotton Mather's demon in rum changed his residence? Have witches turned now to technology whereby they lurk in heroin, LSD, methamphetamine, and other materials?
Mather's demonology provided for exotic demons—some tawny colored, some Indian red, some black, but notably few white like a Puritan—who invested a person and turned him, or in those days more often her, into a witch. Once possessed by a devil, people themselves became devils capable of all manner of fiendish exploits. The witch embraced his possessor—that is, they incorporated one another, so that it was natural for the hangman to destroy both at once, the two being in league. There were exceptions: confession and repentance could save a person. The repentant witch was not hanged then, sincé she had presumably by that act returned to mortal ground and, in so doing, had evicted her dreadful tenant in ways not made explicit. On the other hand, the unrepentant witch, who claimed there was no demon inside her, no witchcraft abiding, or even denied the phenomenon of demons itself—that woman went a-carting to gallows hill.'
