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stargazer Registered: 03/21/10 Posts: 615 Last seen: 3 years, 4 months |
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For a while I've been puzzling over the simple fact that drugs are not a social problem in the Amazonian tribes that use ayahuasca. That's what got me thinking about this little essay/article I just finished writing:
=============== 8 ways our society could approach psychedelics Psychedelics are powerful substances capable of both great distress and great benefit, depending on the setting and the intentions of the user. Psychedelics are both dangerous and beautiful. They are risks worth taking, but we cannot afford to delude ourselves with the idea that we can allow anyone, from 4-year-old kids to serial killers, to take psychedelics in uncontrolled and unsupervised environments. Of course I want to end the War on Drugs, but the only alternative right now in our public discourse, it seems, is either decriminalization or complete legalization. These are negative programs with no positive suggestions for how we, as a society, are to address the inevitable challenges and occasional harms that the psychedelic experience will present to us. We must, at least minimally, regulate our society's use of psychedelics in some way. The question is, how? The various Amazonian tribes that use ayahuasca are obviously taking a very different approach towards psychedelics from what our Western society is doing, and they are achieving very different results—namely, psychedelics are not a significant social problem in their society (in fact, they are tightly integrated into their society). These Amazonian tribes are not just letting their members use psychedelics willy-nilly; rather, they regulate their consumption of psychedelics with elaborate, yet gentle communal mechanisms of social control. In any case, the simple fact that there are and have been societies in the world with positive relationships with psychedelics demonstrates that it is not the drugs themselves, but their method of social regulation, that largely accounts for whether the drugs become a social problem. Our society's natural impulse towards any social problem nowadays is to pass it off to some field of professionals: sociologists, economists, policy analysts, scientists, etc. It is an open question whether this is a good response in any case, but it becomes apparent that, in the case of psychedelics, it is impossible. As it so happens, we cannot simply hand authority for using psychedelics over to the medical community, or over to some religious institution, because psychedelics have this messy habit of having both scientific as well as religious implications. They can teach us about 5-HT(2a) receptors as much as they can about God. Therefore, it cannot be so simple, as our culture might naturally prefer, to come down with a final verdict on where psychedelics belong—in the labs as chemicals, or in the churches as holy sacraments. Our culture's natural presupposition is, of course, that it has to be one or the other, and that if we can demonstrate that it is just one (that they are just chemicals affecting the brain, for example), then it cannot be the other as well (that they cannot be magical, holy sacraments). To a sober Western mind, this might seem like the only logical conclusion, but this notion of mutual exclusivity of the scientific and religious implications of psychedelics is a naive presupposition that the psychedelic experience inevitably shatters, according to my and many others' experiences. Since no single institution is equipped with the necessary tools to address all aspects of the psychedelic experience and its challenges, we must broadly engage with psychedelics on societal level. There are 8 approaches that our society could take towards psychedelics. They stem from 3 variables, each giving two options (hence, 2^3 combinations). The first variable is whether we allow or disallow their use. The other two variables have to do with the methods we use to facilitate or prohibit their use. Together, they give four methodological combinations, which I will list out here before explaining each of them in turn: *Communal (emotional / external) *Internalized (emotional / internal) *Legalistic (rational / external) *Libertarian (rational / internal) Communal (emotional / external): This is the mechanism of social regulation of psychedelics that Amazonian tribes predominantly rely upon. This is also the primary mechanism of social control for a Puritan village (perhaps drawing a connection with our own cultural background will make the image a bit clearer). So imagine yourself in a Puritan village. Assuming that your Puritan village accepts the use of psychedelics, that use of psychedelics will come with a very tightly socially-prescribed manner for taking them. There will be careful rituals and whatnot. There will be no taking psychedelics with friends and running around the village performing dangerous antics for amusement. In such a case, the village would come down hard on you with social disapproval and give you many emotional incentives to stay within the communally-regulated methods of using the psychedelics. Assuming that your Puritan village prohibits the use of psychedelics, you won't be doing any psychedelics because the eyes of the whole village are constantly hovering over you. You will surely be caught, and even if your fellow villagers don't resort to any legalistic means of punishment, they will scold you, ostracize you, harm your reputation, and generally give you many emotional incentives for not doing psychedelics in the future. Most times, though, it would never come to this. You'd restrain yourself. And lest this sound harsh, let's remind ourselves that the communal method also allows for many second chances and much intimate understanding and help in reversing your socially-disapproved ways. A legalistic mechanism would convict you, lock you up, and throw away the keys, regardless of any personal particularities, but a communal mechanism has the level of intimate detail, such that it can say, “Oh, that Johnny is really a good boy at heart, but he just made a stupid decision. We're going to give him a second chance.” And you might receive emotional encouragement to right your ways. In this way, the communal mechanism has a softer touch than the legalistic mechanism, and in general we will tolerate a degree of objective social control via a communal mechanism, whereas we would perceive that same level of social control via a legalistic method as “totalitarian” or “Orwellian.” In modern Western society today, we have largely abandoned the communal mechanism because it takes a lot of work and intimate involvement with each other. It cannot really work in a nuclear family in which one or both parents have jobs outside the home; it really requires an extended family or communal village. One of my main contentions in this essay is that we will have to revive the communal mechanism of regulating psychedelics in our society to a certain extent if we are ever going to get psychedelics to cease being a social problem. Internalized (emotional / internal) Internalization is that guilt that makes you feel bad for not doing your homework on time. Sure, you're grade won't suffer much, so rationally there's not much reason to feel as bad as you do about it, but you can't shake the feeling of being down on yourself for not doing what you feel you were supposed to be doing. (As you can tell, I have much intimate experience with the internalization mechanism). Internalization is, in many ways, a substitute for the communal mechanism. I find it particularly suggestive that the rise of the internalized Protestant work-ethic occurred in Europe at the same time that more and more people were moving out of village environments with tight communal social controls and into more anonymous urban environments. In a city, you can commit socially-disapproved acts and get away with them (and you can avoid fulfilling social obligations), whereas you can't in a communal village. So there has to be some proxy mechanism for making sure you don't do “bad” (socially-disapproved) things even when nobody is looking. That's where internalization comes in. Internalization is emotional because you can rationally know that you can get away with it and there will be no negative material consequences for doing something, while still being restraint by the guilt of internalization. Some have called internalization the “police inside our heads.” I don't think that's quite accurate. The police enforce laws with material consequences. They are, in that sense, mechanical and non-emotional. So I would say that internalization is more like the “mother (or father) inside our heads.” Internalized guilt and self-judgment currently operate in our society to dissuade us from psychedelic drugs only somewhat. I think there are obvious limits to how much of an effect this mechanism can have on this issue. In any case, I think this would be a bad mechanism to rely on if our society accepted psychedelic drugs and simply wanted to regulate their use, considering that emotional internalization is the sort of stuff that gets fucked with during a trip in the first place. Legalistic (rational / external) This is the mechanism of social control that our country today predominantly uses to enforce its position on psychedelic drugs. It is “external” because there are external agents deploying the negative consequences against you if you transgress the approved boundaries of social control, and it is “rational” because it doesn't care how feel. It's not concerned with making you feel bad, like village disapproval or an internalized mother is; it simply says, “If you do X, some material consequence Y will happen to you.” This social control mechanism is currently failing to prohibit our society's use of drugs because it isn't being wielded aggressively enough. If we could create a totalitarian police-state that intervened in our personal lives as much as the members of an Amazonian tribe intervened (in softer, more human, communal ways), in each others' lives, then we could successfully prohibit drugs if we wanted to. However, the cost of having to live in a harsh, unsympathizing totalitarian police-state would obviously outweigh the benefits. This is why our current predominantly-legalistic approach to prohibiting drugs will never work. What if our society accepted the use of psychedelic drugs, what would the legalistic mechanism look like then? I suppose it might look something like the Federal Aviation Administration. In order to become a pilot (an “aeronaut,” let's say), you have to have many hours of training under an approved flight instructor, utilizing various types of aircraft with various types of instrumentation, etc. Similarly, even after you get your solo license for flying turbo-prop planes (as my brother has), you still have to file flight plans with the FAA any time you want to fly. Similarly, in order to become a “psychonaut,” you'd have to have many hours of training under an approved psychonautical instructor. (One obvious question is, what government agency would license people to be trip-sitters? And what professional field would they come from? Psychology? No consensus on how to deal with psychedelics yet there. Religion? Ditto.) After utilizing various psychedelic substances in various situations under supervision, and after showing that you won't flip your lid and go insane from them, then you'd be licensed to trip solo with various substances at various dosages (small at first, then incrementally larger, just as one goes from being licensed to fly turbo-props to commercial aircraft). I'm not sure if there'd be an equivalent of having to file a “trip-plan” with the Federal Psychonautical Administration any time you wanted to trip, but I'm sure there'd be all sorts of onerous bureaucratic safety regulations that you'd have to abide by in any case when tripping, under penalty of fine or revoking of your license—safety regulations totally ignorant of the specifics of your personal character or situation—which the communal mechanism, by contrast, could take into account. As you can probably tell, I am skeptical of this approach. It just seems to me that any impersonal legalistic mechanism, however benignly-intentioned, will have a hard time dealing with the subtle nuances of a person's psychedelic experience. That's why I still think the communal mechanism has more merit, if we can find a way to revive it in our society. Libertarian (rational / internal) What I am calling the “libertarian” mechanism is basically when we are left up to our own rational judgment to minimize harm for our own good. “Harm reduction” information is given out under the assumption that this “libertarian” mechanism works—that people can rationally look ahead and see, “If I do X, Y will happen.” It's the principle under which our current prohibitionist drug education works too, except for the fact that the actual information used is mostly misleading. (No, LSD does not damage your chromosomes!) It is a rational mechanism because, unlike internalization's feelings of guilt, the libertarian mechanism's judgments have to do with rational consequences. And it is “internal” because, unlike with the legalistic method of social control where some external force is presenting us with additional consequences to rationally consider, with the libertarian mechanism we are only dealing with the consequences inherent to the activity itself. Conclusion Here, then, are the 8 ways in which our society could approach psychedelic drugs, along with real or hypothetical examples of each: 1. Accepting / Communal (accepting / emotional / external) – Amazonian tribe using ayahuasca 2. Prohibitive / Communal (prohibitive / emotional / external) – An anti-drug Puritanical village* 3. Accepting / Internalized (accepting / emotional / internal) – Some weird hypothetical pro-psychedelic brainwashing cult 4. Prohibitive / Internalized (accepting / emotional / internal) – The War on Drugs – When we internalize an emotional revulsion towards drugs as something scary or nasty. 5. Accepting / Legalistic (accepting / rational / external) – Prop 19 for marijuana legalization in California, or the hypothetical Federal Psychonautical Administration I described earlier 6. Prohibitive / Legalistic (prohibitive / rational / external) – The War on Drugs – Police-state aspect 7. Accepting / Libertarian (accepting / rational / internal) – Erowid.org 8. Prohibitive / Libertarian (prohibitive / rational / internal) – The War on Drugs propaganda – nida.nih.gov *Note: In reality, the Puritans drank copious amounts of alcohol, but that's beside the point. I think a combination of #1 and #7 would be an ideal future for our society's approach to psychedelic drugs. We'd have accurate, Erowid-like drug education in our schools, and we'd trust people to pay attention to the information and mostly look out for their own good. However, I don't think this libertarian approach can stand on its own because inevitably some people are dumbasses and will do dangerous things with psychedelics, which is why I think we also need a little bit of communal regulation as well, so that people who have an impulse to act like dumbasses on psychedelics have a subtle social/emotional incentive to not do so. Insofar as there is a psychedelic “subculture” or “movement,” I think this combination is what it should strive to cultivate within itself and, ultimately persuade the rest of society of. In order for this combination to work, however, we'd need a dramatic revival of communal structures such as extended families, churches (psychedelic churches?), etc. In the case that our society finds it impossible to revive/build these communal structures, then I'd also accept a combination of #5 and #7—that is, drug education + a Federal Psychonautical Administration. I think this sort of structure of social regulation of psychedelics would work less well than the communal method, but I think it would still be workable, and compared to the current War on Drugs, it would still count as a glorious liberation for us persecuted drug users. The thing I want to reiterate is the same thing I said at the beginning: we cannot afford to continue hoping for a simple legalization solution to the War on Drugs without also coming forward with our own alternative methods of social control of psychedelics. No matter how reasonable anti-prohibitionist arguments might sound, if you convey these arguments to an open-minded non-user of psychedelic drugs, that person will still not be able to shake the image of people running willy-nilly through the streets tripping on acid (granted, that doesn't sound like such a bad thing, but c'mon, society can't really function if this is going on on a regular basis). We need plausible concrete plans for making sure this won't happen. Trusting in people's good sense (the libertarian approach) is good in most cases, but it is not sufficient; people rightly sense that there will be some reckless dumbasses who will put themselves, and most importantly, others in danger, and we need to have plausible recommendations for how we will disincentivize and prevent most of such behavior, either through communal disapproval or legal regulation.
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grammer natze Registered: 08/05/10 Posts: 4,171 Last seen: 1 year, 5 months |
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Post deleted by Remix
Reason for deletion: never finished reading --------------------
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Mr Mushroom Registered: 09/25/05 Posts: 1,751 Loc: Europe |
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mmm i read you're essay in flight but i think social control does not work since drug use is already frowned upon in most cultures. Most other options demand like you said a drastic change in society which simply won't happen anytime soon.
Quote: Basic human behaviour. people learn by making dumb mistakes. Lower educated citizens will have a higher chance of abusing substances because there lives are generally allot less enjoyable. Or because the government wants to keep the black population in check by spreading crack cocaine. -------------------- A weekend wasted is never a wasted weekend
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stargazer Registered: 03/21/10 Posts: 615 Last seen: 3 years, 4 months |
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Re: virus1824:
I would argue that social control currently works in moderating the usage of alcohol, more so in continental Europe, where getting too drunk and making an ass of oneself is seen as highly boorish and dishonorable, and less so in the anglo countries, where drinking to excess and bringing upon the harms of acute alcohol overdose seem to constitute a badge of honor for many. One thing that, I think, fuels this attitude in the anglo countries (at least in America, with which I am more familiar), is the fact that the drinking age is so high and the restrictions so onerous, such that it becomes a mark of rebelliousness to demonstrate how extremely one can disregard society's bullshit laws. Thus, you have college freshmen getting wasted and ending up with acute alcohol poisoning. If we had a culture like France where alcohol is easily obtainable and not made to be such a big deal, I guarantee you we'd see less of this. (One might argue that the association between alcohol and the Catholic Church in France--a moderating institution of social control that gives alcohol a certain ritualistic significance--is a factor behind the more moderate attitude towards alcohol in France). Unfortunately, as long as most recreational drugs remain illegal, the brash attitude towards them will only continue to be reinforced, and it will be difficult to cultivate attitudes and institutions of moderation towards them. But nevertheless, I would argue that we must try. The only way that people in the mainstream will tolerate legalized drugs is if they don't have to fear quite as much that their 16-year-old kids will do something cavalier, stupid, and dangerous with them. I might sound like some old-fogey debbie downer in saying this, but I think I'm just being realistic.
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student Registered: 07/03/08 Posts: 686 Loc: The 28th Dimensi Last seen: 10 years, 4 months |
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nice one, comrade
It's so frustrating that this isn't interpreted by the masses with the same clarity as such that you've just shown - well written!
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Mr. Registered: 05/23/10 Posts: 64 Loc: Victoria, Austra |
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The libertarian means of approaching drugs, I think, has much to recommend it in light of the long-term failures of the “War on Drugs” to deal with even obviously addictive hard drugs like cocaine and heroin - and multiply so for other drugs like marijuana, LSD, magic mushrooms, and other psychedelics.
I in fact agree that there is a need for a communal regulation of drugs to avoid them being a major social problem. In modern-day Continental Europe where the working masses vehemently rejected traditional Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, there have often been huge alcohol problems, particularly in the run-down regions of European Russia where the collapse of Stalinism has destroyed already-poor infrastructure. On the other hand, I can be a little optimistic that we do not need the radical changes you advocate to achieve communal regulation of drug use.
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It's so frustrating that this isn't interpreted by the masses with the same clarity as such that you've just shown - well written! 
