Legal drugs may harm the most
Eric Long
Fitter, Happier
Consider that the few remaining legal drugs are perhaps the most harmful drugs. This is a difficult argument to make, but I will attempt to make it with customary civility and patience — after all, when one possesses the truth, as I most assuredly do, one must be careful to refrain from bludgeoning his fellows with it.
No, the truth should hurt more like an incessant tap on the temple than a sledgehammer to the back. This said, I must admit that the legal drugs have a strange way of keeping one afloat in this often disillusioning world: The secular trinity of caffeine, alcohol and nicotine have saved many a soul from the purposeless ennui of American life.
I'm certain that many of you share my experiences with these substances. Caffeine inspires the soul or at least keeps it awake for a few extra hours. The pulse quickens, the eyes open wide and the powers of concentration spike to near divine levels.
Nothing imparts the tunnel vision mentality necessary to read 500 pages of Thomas Mann better than an espresso shot or five, or a couple well-timed Vivarin capsules. All extraneous thoughts flee from the mind; any cognition that might serve to distract is buried under the monumental imperative to dedicate energy toward one's present task.
It's easy to see that caffeine is the perfect drug for post-modern humanity, the opium of the present day, corporate America's soma. We must complete a maddening variety of tasks in a day to be considered productive. Most of the time, these tasks are mind-numbing and spirit-crushing. We would rather, rightly, be doing anything else — sitting outside, taking a walk, sleeping or watching TV — another opiate. But we have oh so much to do.
Why not ingest a drug that provides instant energy and a superhuman ability to focus on the task at hand while eliminating the pesky human tendency for independent thought? Caffeine makes us stupid, perky and obedient, and for this reason it will remain legal until the end of time — when some coffee swilling scientist accidentally breaks a test tube after being awake for 134 consecutive hours doing research at some backwoods university and looses a biochemical plague on the world.
Alcohol makes us stupid and obedient, but in a freer way than caffeine. Booze is a social lubricant, a means of breaking out into the world with a zeal that we lost somewhere between the ages of two and eight. Alcohol makes us children again. The pesky, often disheartening future disappears.
The memories of past failures and inadequacies evaporate into an awareness of the immediate present moment. To top it off, alcohol makes the present even easier to deal with by reducing the senses to their least effective level. Yet this numb descent into immediacy is sometimes the most desirable form of distraction.
As for cigarettes? Well, they don't have enough zip to alter one's mental state, but they do ruin the body on an overarching, global level. Cigarettes are bad, bad, bad. They cause cancer, they wrinkle and stain the skin, they weaken the immune system and they are actually on fire and capable of burning things, like car seats and hair.
But I keep buying them, along with millions of my fellow Americans. Cigarettes provide a one-two punch of psychological and biochemical comfort. I'm not sure what nicotine does, but I can't seem to get enough of it. We dope ourselves with caffeine in the morning, alcohol in the evening and cigarettes all day long.
These are not self-enhancing drugs, but rather self-nullifying drugs. This is my core argument: I'm not saying that crack or hallucinogens are healthy, positive drugs that should be legalized today while cigarettes and beer should be banned. I'm simply suggesting that the criteria for making some drugs legal and others illegal are largely arbitrary.
Maybe when I'm in a conspiracy theory mood I will argue that the remaining legal drugs are still around because they allow us to survive in a culture that is entirely too demanding and decidedly inhuman. Perhaps my argument can be countered with a simple, obvious revelation: Addiction to illegal drugs has destroyed many lives. I can't deny this.
Indeed, illegal drugs are extremely harmful and debilitating. But imagine the two-pack-a-day smoker who wakes up in the morning, fights off a five-minute coughing fit and promptly lights up. His or her choice? That's something a non-smoker would say. Imagine the lives lost to alcohol-related accidents and violence. Consider, if you will, the horrible tragedies associated with caffeine — skip that, please.
As I leave you, about to end a coffee and cigarette riddled 36-hour protest against sleep, keep this question in mind: Are some drugs dangerous because they are legal, or legal because they are dangerous?
Eric Long is a senior major in the Program of Liberal Studies. He can be contacted at long.31@nd.edu. His column appears every other Wednesday.
The views expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.
All Viewpoint Stories for Wednesday, January 30, 2002
