Olm the Water King
across the universe
- Joined
- Aug 12, 2014
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- 1,455
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- INFP
- Enneagram
- 459
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- sx/so
A nearly perfect illustration of mind-numbingly absurd and infantile views that still seem to be quite popular; demons and witches still live in people's minds:
XIV On the Presence of Demons | Society and Drugs
'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.'
...Still another aspect may be considered. Mather's demon rum turned out to be a bore after long acquaintance. He is being defanged as polar practices of teetotaling or drunkenness are slowly being replaced by moderate drinking. Alcoholism is with us but, as with the cultural evolution of madness, no longer as possession but as illness or, in another set of formulations, as interpersonal behavior complexly determined. The public has not become so well acquainted with other forms of drug use that familiarity allows acceptance of medical or psychosocial theories about what is happening. The illicit-exotic drugs and their devotees are strangers to this public, and it is only in response to strangers and the strange that romance and fascination develop. How many Americans sense transport to the nether reaches of the archetypical racial unconscious when smoking a Chesterfield? How many learn to "love" when drinking a beer and watching a ball game? Do they discover inner beauty when taking an aspirin for a headache? It is no surprise that romance requires a stranger. If there is to be that fascination, there is also idealization. Ordinary romantic attraction or hatred in the service of sentiment prefers simple objects. Pure evil is a loftier enemy; Iago as interpreted at the high school level is what is needed. Against pure evil one marshals the choicest antagonist—the innocent purity of the child, just as the fairy stories have it.
For the confirmed drug user, the druggie, the same scheme applies; only he reverses the field. He is the innocent and pure-born, corrupted only insofar as he has been soiled by his parents and other worldly folk. He is the flower child, free and loving. It is the rest of the world which stinks of evil, the evil of the city, of technology, of government—the overpowering evil of human beings living ordinary lives. The way both sides characterize themselves reeks, of course, of simplicity and sentimentality.
If the speculations presented in this essay are pertinent to an accounting of how people think about drug use, the conclusion is warranted that a mythology pervades our approach to certain kinds of drugs and to certain groups of drug users. For the sake of classification that mythology is demoniacal. If it is a demonology, then its essence is that the fervent among druggies and antidruggies are both true believers.
XIV On the Presence of Demons | Society and Drugs
The Birth of Heroin and the Demonization of the Dope Fiend
by Th. Metzger
Ah, heroin! The scourge of American civilization! The enslaver and despoiler of all that is good and pure! And heroin's ambassador, the drug addict: a craven, diseased, desperate minion of Morpheus who wallows in a cesspool of decadence and habitual debasement! Yes, fearsomely addictive heroin and the deranged dope fiends who inject it have somehow been merged in the American public's mind to form a two-pronged skewer that diabolically rips away at society's most vital organs, leaving a trail of despair and death in its obscene wake.
At least, that's the way it's portrayed today. But, as author Th. Metzger posits, this wasn't always so. Like everything else, heroin has a history, and so does the societal archetype of the heroin addict. Over time, heroin has came to be associated with defilement, sin and disease and its users have become synonymous with devolution and degeneracy. How this came to be makes for a fascinating tale, and Th. Metzger tells it well in The Birth of Heroin and the Demonization of the Dope Fiend.