May 16, 2012

tegahkouita asked: What are your feelings on drugs, which do you despise, which do you prefer, and of those that you consume what undertakings do you pair them with? (answering this question has the potential to be rather revealing and no offence will be taken if you choose to pass)

I think about drugs in the same way I think about salt.

The cliché about salt is that it makes food taste more like itself. Drugs make a person feel more like him or herself. The degree to which a person feels deficient is the same deficit that drugs will be used to bridge. Not to say I have moral feelings about drugs. Just that everyone feels deficiency and would prefer not to.

I am deeply suspicious of anyone whose morality is aroused by drugs or the people who take them. Like La Rochefoucauld says, ‘We all have strength enough to endure the misfortunes of others.’ In situations where we are not immediately concerned, our morality shoots forth with shining indignation.  So I am very reticent to judge someone else for what they feel like they have to do to their sensorium. That said, I have a lot more respect for R. Crumb snorting amphetamines to finish a comic than for a suburban dad getting baked in a parking lot because he can’t face his kids. In rather the same way that salt can improve a good soup or hide the taste of sour milk in a bad one.

As with everything else, the trap that drugs present lies in making feeling more interesting than doing. Goethe said that he hated anything that merely showed him something new without also goading him into doing something about it. And (last namedrop I swear) if Schopenhauer says that to do something you must be someone, I would complete the syllogism by advising that you hold off on trying heroin until you are no longer anxious enough to need it.

11:24pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/Z3yrYyLdRj2C
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  1. lazenby posted this