Having spent the better part of two years in a relationship with a heroin addict and seen the level of destruction and dysfunction an intelligent and compassionate person can reach, I find myself having a visceral physical reaction whenever the drug is mentioned.  I guess prior to watching that process I had lulled myself into thinking of it as just a more intense opium high.  Now I understand what Terrence McKenna meant when he wrote in Food of the Gods that addiction creates an absolute algebra of need, in which a person's entire intention and consciousness can become focussed on a single need.  And I understand the powerful use of heroin and cocaine as population control agents.

Of course it is criminalization that makes it possible for so many of the elements of heroin and cocaine related population control to be fully implemented.

I've also found myself greatly disillusioned about the so-called treatment system in this country, which for the most part seems to me to be a system of glorified brainwashing -- isolation, reprograming, and the shifting of dependency from a chemical to the twelve step cult.  

The most fundamental failure of so-called treatment is its failure to address the root issues behind addiction.  There is a strong correllation between opiate addiction and post traumatic stress disorder (one of the reasons why soldiers in Vietnam became such reliable customers for the CIA's cartel and why they brought it back to neighborhoods where trauma brought on by the systemized violence of racism and classism (Oscar Olivera's "war of everyday life")w as pretty much a collective and universal experience.)  For many trauma survivors shutting down the pain receptors in the brain is the most effective means of preventing the resurgence of repressed trauma and the first thing they find that lets them sleep through the night.  The failure to really address trauma and its related mental health issues keeps people plugged into the treatment system for life -- whether through methadone and suboxone administration or through the twelve step system.  This of course serves the ruling class well, preventing people from addressing the political dimensions of their trauma, and keeping them relatively dependent and pliable.

Of course the mindless opposition of the substance abuse establishment to any drugs other than caffeine, sugar, and tobacco also serves to limit options.  Behind closed doors mental health professionals have admitted to me the useful role of ganja in helping recovering addicts take the edge off the anxiety and desperation of their cravings.  And I think that in theraputic and shamanic settings, psychedellics have tremendous potential as tools for trauma work.

But really  what the treatment system today amounts to is a diversionary program to keep middle and upper class drug offenders out of prison and to make the drug control regime appear more humane.  Only shifting the discourse about addiction from the realm of criminal "justice" to the realm of public health will bring about any kind of serious discussion of what works for really breaking addiction.

One more twist in my rant -- and that is that I think that we in the counterculture need to take responsibility for creating a nuanced and informed discourse around the many kinds of chemicals that we can use to change our consciousness and both the positive and negative aspects of those possibilities.  I think too often we emphasize the "counter" and forget the "culture" -- the role we have in passing on our own knowledge and experience and creating an oral tradition around experimentations in consciousness.

Just as with sexuality loving and conscious polyamory is a truer opposite to monogamy than the complete obliteration of responsibility that many define as the only alternative to monogamy, wise and informed use of plants and their chemical derivatives and synthetic analogues is a much truer alternative to mindless prohibitionism than the anything goes mentality that gets posed as the only alternative.  I am not talking about legal regulation of any drug.  As Ammon Hennacy used to say "Awww judge what good are your laws? The bad ones don't follow 'em, the good ones don
't need 'em."  What I am talking about is a culture of truth telling.  Abbie Hoffman wrote about the distinction between "mind drugs" and "body drugs."  Terrence McKenna wrote about the liberatory potential of psychedellics and the ability of heroin, cocaine, alcohohol, sugar, caffeine, and television to enslave.  I think we need to anchor ourselves firmly in that tradition. (I realize of course that by invoking Terrence and Abbie I am wading into territory where Al has the potential to rhetorically kick my ass.  But if such an ass kicking is warranted, bring it on.)