Why Do We Take Drugs?
Current public concern, bordering on panic, over the drug problem has stimulated a revival of the philosophy of conjecture relative to man’s propensity for drugs. Messern recently added soma new thoughts to an old hypothesis” to explain why men (and women) take drugs. According to him, the present drug problem is a part of the “end of a myth” or the end of a cultural era. The “age of reason and enlightment” which brought capitalism, music, art, and science, especially science, has become “overripe”; the goals have been achieved. Affluence is an important part of the achievement and is also the shared historical experience of the age group who seek to “cop out.” Their subjective experience of the successful economic is that the project is completed. Pass a urine test
They are not concerned with the “struggle for existence” but seek to “pacify existence” or to “indulge in existence.” Messer concedes that members of the so-called psychedelic revolution are parasites. However, he exhorts us to accept the historical reality of our position in time; to live off machine rather than like machines. When the concept of “work” becomes culturally irrelevant, then so will the concept of parasites. Because of their historical location, a considerable portion of today’s youth can perceive that we are “running out of era,” and they are busy inventing a new myth. The taking of drugs is a part of a search for a new reality.
Clausen14 offers some timely, well-frayed thoughts. He suggests that drug dependence “is, indeed, primarily a symptom of a deeper pathology that derives from our failure to integrate into the social fabric the more deprived migrants to our metropolitan centers, especially those disadvantaged by minority-group status. Subjected to all the stimuli which beckon Americans to participate in the joy of an affluent society, yet lacking the legitimate, socially approved means to achieve the gratifications and material rewards promised by this society, some of these persons turn to deviant and illegal means.” Seevers suggests a more realistic, and surely less myopic, view when he fatuously (his own evaluation) says that the individual having had no experience with psychoactive agents will never become dependent. This, in Seever’s words, is the only means to eliminate drug dependence in the human society.
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“Having once experienced drug effects, a large majority of the world population will inevitably become drug dependent.” Some drugs are weak and little harm results, but some are extremely powerful reinforcers and could, under the right conditions, cause a social disaster. “It should be clearly understood by those who decry the depravity of the drug addict that susceptability is only relative, and if conditions are optimal, almost any individual can be made drug dependent, even against his will.” There is considerable experimental evidence to support this view. Lower animals, such as the monkey and the rat, having once experienced a drug like cocaine will, without exception, self-administer the drug until they die.” In a recent symposium, experiments utilizing this behavioral component in animals to study the psychological approaches to dependence and tolerance were described.’