Thursday, September 29, 2016
The illicit lure of heroin
I have been listening to the Robert Anton Wilson Meets Steve Fly Agaric Pratt album (review/article coming soon), and there's a bit that made me sit up.
There's a section where Steve and RAW talk about how drug use has gone up since drugs such as marijuana and heroin were made illegal, and Wilson remarks, "It doesn't matter if it's a good drug or a bad drug. Make it illegal and people get attracted to it."
Isn't that perhaps part of the reason why heroin use is going up? Marijuana is completely legal in some states and semi-legal in others. But heroin is totally illegal everywhere. Tell people they can't have something and it's human nature to think that if the government doesn't want you to have it, it must be great.
With the heroin/fentanyl/opioid epidemic raging across the U.S. (it's certainly big in Ohio, where I live), anti-heroin songs seem topical again. I've posted one of my favorites here, "Not If You Were the Last Junkie On Earth," by the Dandy Warhols.
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2 comments:
Living once again in WV, it seems I can't go a day without hearing something about the "drug epidemic." I've always thought Wilson's argument/discussion about the possibilities behind the idea of legalizing heroin in "Sex, Drugs, and Magick" were compelling.
The problem of addiction seems (to me) to come down to offering people a better alternative than numbness which this society certainly isn't working towards.
Being from Mansfield, OH and keeping in touch with friends, family, an headlines from that area I can sadly confirm the Opioid epidemic is reeking havoc in that area of the country. During a recent visit a great friend of mine plays Curtis Mayfield' s Superfly album. It struck me how timely and relevent that album still is today.
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