Drugs, Legal or Otherwise

"The real drug takers of the 1960’s were American housewives.” Keith Richards.

“She goes running for the shelter of her mother’s little helper, To get through her busy day, to help her on her way,” (Mother’s Little Helper, Rolling Stones)

There are few words in the English language that evoke such an immediate reaction as the term ‘drugs’. Second, perhaps, only to sex’, ‘murder’ and ‘pornography’, ‘drugs’ have the same force today that a mention of ‘Satan’ from the pulpit once inspired in the faithful. Today, when we hear someone mention drugs, we instantly visualise Nancy Reagan telling us to ‘just say no’, the American War on Drugs and a thousand images of junkies dying in rat-infested slums across the world.

Of course, in a world where we rely principally upon the television for our information and emotional cues to the subjects of the day, it’s often hard to see the wood for the trees. Whilst alcohol and tobacco account for 90% of deaths from drugs each year, the media attention is all focused on the great evils of cocaine, heroin and meths – presumably because the latter drugs bring no tax revenue.

Whilst the word drug refers to any substance at all that affects the nervous system – making white sugar or cheese prime candidates – the unspoken paradigm is that drugs are something sold on street corners by men with knives in their back pockets. They’re bought by skittish, pock-marked junkies on the verge of starving to death and the whole sorry affair costs the tax payer a fortune in law enforcement and health care.

The fact is that drugs are an integral part of modern society and are one of the most profitable modern businesses going. The pharmaceutical business hires 68,000 sales reps in America alone to hassle, bribe and flatter doctors into prescribing their latest drugs to the unwitting patient. They take them to dinner, bring them presents and pay for lavish cruise vacations to win the docs over.

Hence with steady support from their suppliers, doctors - the general practitioners – are by definition the biggest drug dealers in the world today. With a diploma on the wall and an emotional debt to the drug reps, they hand out pills like candy to any patient complaining of depression, hyperactivity, anxiety, impotence, fatigue or any other number of complaints unique to modern society. Even not counting the emotional blackmail of the pharmaceutical industry’s handouts, handing out pills is often the easiest way to guarantee customer satisfaction and ensure repeat business.

For the patient, the doctor remains one of the few last trustworthy figures in society, often a figure more respected and trusted than the local priest and certainly more than the politician. Doctors are seen to be scientists with a greater knowledge of our own well-being than we could ever have. Indeed, in many ways, they’ve come to replace the clergy in caretaking not only our physical but also our psychological health.

Head to any high street in the world and you can bet that the best business in town will be the local pharmacy. Clutching their hallowed prescriptions, customers line up to buy the sacred medicine, the magic pills that will cure all their ills. Any doctor who recommends only to change your diet and exercise regime is clearly short-changing you and holding out. We want the drugs.

Pop the Pills

Here’s the deal: there’s a pill for everything. Whether your kid can’t concentrate on his homework, you can’t get out of bed in the morning or your husband can’t get it up, modern science is there to lend a helping hand and drug us to the eyeballs.

The propensity to cure all our ills with a handful of pills is perhaps a core expression of the modern culture of instant gratification. Understanding, reflection and meditation are all to be found in the self-help section of the bookstore – we want an instant fix.

With the benefit of education and a scientific outlook we can afford to laugh at the na?ve charms and amulets that witchdoctors dispense in ‘primitive’ societies but our culture of legal drugs is only one step removed. The average consumer has no idea how these pills are supposed to work but how can all those doctors and chemists in white coats be wrong?

Leaving the multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical industry aside for the moment, the key thing here is to note how readily we absolve ourselves of all responsibility and power to resolve our own problems. These aren’t issues that we can work through or heal by ourselves, they’re random ailments of a cruel, unfair world - perhaps even our genes - and which are only to be cured by the doctor and his drugs.

So the next time you hear a politician or celebrity on TV lecturing about the evil of drugs, ask them to reveal the contents of their bathroom cupboards. Ten to one the pills will come tumbling out.