First published February 23, 2005, in the Chicago Free Press.
Here's a cure for all your troubles.
Here's an end to all distress.
It's the Old Dope Peddler
With his powdered hap-pi-ness.
- Tom Lehrer, "The Old Dope Peddler"
Those of us who do not do drugs, and we are the majority, are getting pretty sick and tired of drugs - and more sick and tired of drug users. Get a life, guys - a real life, not an illusory one.
Drugs are not like food. They do not add any new nourishment or capacities to the body. They produce nothing that was not already there. Nor do they add any new or additional awareness or perceptiveness, or sensitivity, or energy, or erotic desire. What they do is generate the illusion of these things by inhibiting cognitive functions that compete with or limit or regulate these responses as they occur.
They do that by temporarily distorting body and brain chemistry, primarily by reducing or forcing an excess of chemical signals the brain and body use to monitor and maintain normal, effective functioning, different chemicals depending on the drug, which is why drugs have different effects.
Eventually the body calls a halt to the disruption, shuts down, and struggles to repair itself and return to normal operation. That is why for every high there is a crash, just as deep a down as the high was high. And trying to stave off the crash by doing more drugs makes the ultimate crash all the deeper.
Drugs do not create "addiction." That is to say, drugs cannot force people to take more drugs. People take drugs because they want to, often want to very much. Some people find the absence of a drug unpleasant, even very painful, but it is they who make the choice to take more drugs.
Similarly, drugs don't make people do stupid or dangerous things. That is another evasion. What drugs do is enable people to do stupid or dangerous or destructive or violent or even murderous things. Enable, not make. Sometimes people say, "It was drugs." No. It was the person.
To repeat: Drugs do not add anything to a person that was not already there. They do not insert some foreign personality. All they can do is take away some of what makes a person fully human by inhibiting the higher brain functions people normally rely on for self-control and good judgment.
We are evolved creatures. Our animal ancestors had simple and immediate desires and responses - hunger, fear, anger, sexual desire. Only gradually did our pre-human ancestors evolve a cerebrum with cognitive capacities for thinking, judging, self-awareness, and an ability to foresee consequences and choose prudently among alternative behaviors. But those newer capacities did not replace the earlier responses; they only limited and channeled them.
When drugs distort or eliminate some of those cognitive controls humans have developed over their immediate desires and emotional reactions, people respond more readily to those primal emotions and impulses - engaging in heedless, destructive (and self-destructive) behavior.
The evidence is all around us.
I have seen intelligent men so high on drugs that they could only grunt and point instead of talk, who could barely function while their jobs went to hell. I have known drug users who, over time, seemed to lose 30 I.Q. points and all mental acuity - permanently.
I know of men high on coke or meth who have climbed into slings at parties and let themselves be fucked by anyone who came along or who pressed their greased butts against glory holes. A New York meth user recently reported to have a fast-developing strain of HIV acknowledged having some 300 sex partners in previous weeks. Just as likely, drugs debilitated his immune response.
In Chicago, a gay man reported to have a crystal meth "problem" was in a dispute with a cab driver over a small fare, proceeded to run over the driver with his own cab, backed over him again, then drove forward over him yet again, sped off, crashed into parked cars, and jumped into another cab to escape. Some "problem"!
In short, drugs are dangerous: For many, they enable destructive behavior. For others, drugs sap time, money, energy, and a sense of purpose that could be put to productive, self-actualizing projects. And drugs weaken our efforts to build an attractive, vibrant, and responsible gay community by depriving us all of the contributions those people could make. If I were a homophobic zealot, I would be out on the streets selling drugs to gay men every night I could.
Criminalizing drugs has wrought damage to our country and legal system and has not even worked. But I have no sympathy for drug users and no sympathy when they do destructive and self-destructive things. They chose to do drugs; they chose to put themselves in that condition. Drug use should never be an excuse: It should be viewed as an aggravating circumstance and drug-enabled actions should be judged all the more severely.
Drug users need to start acting like adult human beings. They are not victims, they are perpetrators. And they are a drain on our community.