Drugism Surrounds Us
The following is an excerpt from p. 233-234 of the Conclusion, “Undoing Drugism” from my book, Drugism (2022):
Drugism, as we learned in the introduction, refers to the vast array of judgments that people make about drugs and those who use them. A more complete definition and several examples were also provided in the introduction. One of the primary reasons I have explained the histories and present statuses of these drugs—salt, sugar, DMT, and ketamine—is to show the extent to which drugism permeates throughout.
For example, Chapter 1 examined the facts around the drug that nearly the entire global population consumes, salt, and found that its consumption is the cause of millions of deaths annually throughout the world. In the United States alone sodium overconsumption takes roughly 100,000 lives each year according to Harvard scientists. Despite this, official efforts to reduce salt and sodium intake have been minimal, and the few that have been made have faced social, political and commercial opposition so strong that it more or less nullified them.
With sugar, we find much the same. The second-most-used-drug in the world after salt, it too kills millions of people across the globe each year. And, like salt, sugar is so thoroughly engrained into our various cultures that incredibly few people even realize it is a drug to begin with. As we learned in Chapter 2, the sellers of sugar have, for generations, held office in the US and accordingly enjoyed enormous political influence.
Chapter 3 explored the numerous drugisms which have formed around DMT. We saw how ideas generated by the McKenna brothers associated DMT with mystical transcendence. We also saw how Rick Strassman’s work contributed to the popularization of “the spirit molecule” as a moniker for the drug. Many DMT enthusiasts characterize the drug as objectively superior to others and champion the fact that it is produced endogenously. And while it enjoys a reputation as a breaker-of-habits, it has become clear that DMT itself is quite able to inspire habitual, compulsive use.
Ketamine’s case is a particularly complex one, as we saw in Chapter 4. Its brief history is full of contradictions. Both a source of bliss and a lethal weapon, it has in recent years become a political hot potato juggled between the eastern and western hemispheres. Although it has been federally restricted in the US for barely more than two decades, ketamine has rapidly transformed from a déclassé taboo into a pharmaceutical darling widely endorsed by corporate media.
While each of these drugs has had ardent supporters and fierce foes, they are, in the end, simply substances. Norman Zinberg once wrote that “drug use in and of itself is not bad or evil.”[i] And, regarding the drugs themselves, “none is inherently evil,” as David Courtwright wrote some years later.[ii] Both Zinberg and Courtwright are correct on these points.
Let us also bear in mind, however, the inverse. No drug is inherently good and drug use is not itself necessarily good. This is not to say that drug use cannot be good; it most certainly can. But the effects of our drug use—good and bad—depend heavily upon the conditions in which it occurs. Any drug, and arguably all drugs, can be enormously beneficial or tragically hurtful, sometimes simultaneously. So, while drugism surrounds us, it is something that ultimately comes from our own thoughts and actions, not the drugs themselves.