Pyotr Patrushev and Dr. Andrew Weil   DRUGS, MEDICINES AND POWER From Dependence and Control to Intelligent Use The Story So Far For as long as humanity existed, it used substances obtained from nature, which altered consciousness of individuals who took them. Such substances range from Amazonian coca leaves to Siberian mushrooms, to North American thorn apple, to fermented and therefore alcoholic berries. We did it initially as a matter of exploration, as do virtually all known animal species. Although some individuals got poisoned or disorientated as a result of such exploratory activities and may have perished, the drive persisted. In a sense, every one of us is a descendant of a successful natural junkie.   Such exploratory activities were not just a part of search for food. Certain plants seemed to have had a particular fascination for both humans and animals and once eaten were eagerly sought. The chemicals in these plants readily interacted with internal chemistry of our brains in certain very powerful ways. These plants were the relatives we have left behind in our race for survival. Meeting them again was a matter of both joy sometimes pain. We found that plant-based drugs were not only about forgetting, also about remembering.   Thus, throughout human evolution, plants and plant  extracts were used as a part of ritual of power and knowledge transfer between generations and as a communal vision quest for novel solutions. It was also a part of our perennial search for the ultimate answer, in other words, for God. Every known religion sprung from natural cults, which had a history of occasionally sophisticated use of plants for ritualistic purposes. Modern researchers are still arguing, for example, whether the proverbial Soma so eloquently described in perhaps the most ancient religious text known to man--the Vedas--is a species of a Siberian mushroom or a particular Eurasian plant. Such plant use was strictly regulated by tradition and was also relatively safe due to checks and balances built into the plants' chemical structure.   As we grew older as a species, our search for “Paradise” that we felt we have left behind grew more and more desperate. Science and technology became enlisted in this self-fuelling process. Novel and powerful drugs, both legal and illegal, were developed and manufactured. Now we have finally reached a point when, for many societies, disruption associated with the so-called drug problem and our attempts to deal with it make it a question of prime importance. Drugs and Medicines   If we accept that traditional use of drugs by human beings stems from the desire to recapture the grandeur and the mystery which lies at the beginning of creation, to mood-alter, and to find dramatically new hopes and visions for the future, than we may stop talking of drugs pejoratively, as a menace to be always avoided or controlled though the use of force, and call all drugs, prescription or otherwise, medicines.   We can then talk of medicines which may be more or less beneficial, or more or less dangerous. What we have to recognize then is that most of old medicines mankind has been taking no longer seem to appeal to us, except in small and relatively isolated tribal areas and among fringe groups. The novel medicines, from mind-expanding LSD, to mind stupefying Valium and alcohol, to mind-destroying crack and heroin, are extremely potent and dangerous. Medicines and Power   Older and powerful individuals, mostly males, as well as those with access to specialist knowledge (scientists and doctors who are our contemporary shamans and healers), have always attempted to regulate and control use of potent medicines by the rest of society. At different times, and in different societies, varying medicines were judged to be safe or at least not worth controlling.   During the last century and early in this century opiates and even cocaine were widely available in some Western societies, including the US. They were used and abused by prominent personalities (including some Presidents) and ordinary people. However, availability of pure substances and immunity from persecution, as well as lack of corruption associated with illegal trade in medicines minimized negative social and health effects of such use.   Altered states of consciousness associated with use of medicines have led not only to psychological and spiritual, but also material breakthroughs for humanity. Gutenberg was mildly inebriated when he saw that wine press he was observing could be the precursor of a printing press, thus initiating one of the most fundamental revolutions in history.   The current state of medicine war has three main ingredients: 1) the insecurity of the older male generation about their own knowledge and power and the ability to design and implement meaningful initiation rituals for the young; 2) disruption of human and family environments (animals isolated and stressed in a zoo will also abuse medicines); and 3) polarization of forces between medicine pushers and medicine controllers.   The powerful cartels and organizations which provide wrong and even deadly medicines for the young to design their own initiation rituals with are the shadow expression of spiritually blind men and women who now lead and govern many societies. Medicines, as if obeying some as yet undiscovered natural law, are acting as powerful catalysts in exposing the hidden gulf between the rich and the poor, young and old, black and white. Chemicals locked in a coca leaf, when suitably modified, unlock destructive and atavistic behaviour patterns in the brains of humans, transforming our cities and villages into a lawless jungle. In some societies our unconscious past has turned into a very dangerous present. On the legal side of things the pharmaceutical companies design ever-changing array of costly drugs with dangerous side-effects to placate the pill-popping urges of the general population. For many of these modern drugs (such as Prozac) the main beneficial effects appear placebo-related and diminish dramatically as the novelty of the drug wear off.   The souls of the young who are the future of our race are at stake in the war between the medicine pushers and medicine controllers who vie for power in the contemporary world. The power and the greed of these counterpoising elites may lead our species not to a new tree of knowledge, but to the tree of collective amnesia. The stoned monkey may become a zonked out ape. The fact that the “War on drugs” is not only ineffective but totally misplaced can be seen from the fact that in the US twice as many people die from adverse reactions to prescription drugs as they do from the use of all illegal substances combined. Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs such as aspirin kill about half the number of people that die from illegal drug use. One of the major “scourges” – marihuana – has not directly killed anyone yet. Tobacco, poor diet, physical inactivity and alcohol are the major causes of deaths in most modern societies. If the medicines’ problem was approached on purely epidemiological grounds, one could simply ignore the illegal drug use and concentrate fully on the abovementioned four major killers. Can Humans Become Intelligent Medicine Users?   If this were a question purely of science rather than of power politics, the answer would have been relatively easy. There are a number of experts who are very knowledgeable on this subject, both among the native informants and the scientists who are working in the area of psychopharmacology and medicine use. There are some promising new techniques and developments (see Recommended Reading and Appendix at the end of the article).   A dangerous substance such as crack can become a healing medicine when administered via a different route (sniffing rather than smoking) to a particular group of people (elderly with arthritic problems). In this case, there is no danger of addiction or abuse. Such common medicines as marihuana can be of benefit for pain relief.   If we start approaching the medicine problem scientifically, a number of directions for research and experimentation emerge. 1. Using recombinant DNA and other novel techniques, we can custom-tailor medicines to reduce their toxicity and addictiveness; 2. Medicines can be tailored to suit different genetic types. Active, cortically dominant types may require very different medicines and doses than, for example, less physically active, emotional types; 3. New initiation rituals for the young can evolve once the older generation will itself transcend its spiritual blindness, possibly with the help of some new medicines; 4. Even in the current medicine control climate, legitimate experimentation can be carried out with minute doses of some powerful natural and modified plant medicines. Such experiments can be monitored using sophisticated equipment and techniques to determine the efficacy of particular medicines for particular types of people at particular times, settings and doses. 5. Psychoactive plants from around the world can be made available for experimentation by packaging them in micro dose or homeopathic strengths and selling them through health food stores and practitioners. They could be also made available as experimental kits for botany and biology classes in senior schools. Taken in such doses, the plants could provoke subtle shifts in consciousness noticeable through dreams, meditation, vision quests, etc. The experimenter would therefore be able to find his or her "companion plant" which would set the strongest resonance in the psyche. The individual may then wish to pursue further acquaintance with such plant and the store of knowledge associated with it by "conscious trekking" to the part of the world where it grows. Experience acquired through the encounter with shamanistic and medicinal knowledge could then be processed and modified and integrated using modern psychological approaches. As bizarre and radical as this suggestion may appear to some, it is certainly less bizarre and radical than the current indiscriminate ingestion of random substances of unknown strength and purity in a psychological climate of subterfuge or open defiance, which not only leaves an unprocessed and toxic residue in the consciousness but makes an individual a criminal and an outcast. 6. Non-medicinal techniques such as meditation may complement and finally replace medicines after paleobotanic catalysts have "kick-started" endogenous production of biogenic amines linking our consciousness with certain plants.   If our society is serious about medicine abuse problem, an international interdisciplinary effort aimed at replacing illegal and harmful medicines with legal and beneficial ones can be a step in the right direction. The most conscious among the power elites may choose to find new ways of re-legitimating the irrepressible human drive to stake a claim in the domain of tribal knowledge and power through communication with suitable paleobotanic consciousness catalysts (plants with powerful messages for human brains).   While such an approach will not directly address the problems of drug-infested urban slums and their poverty-ridden, angry and disillusioned dwellers, or the problems of recreational use of drugs by the hedonistic rich, it may help to shift the long-term perspective from violent repression and control to intelligent use.   The search for ‘Paradise’ does not have to be an exact reliving of how we were thrown out of it. Conscious refashioning of some old evolutionary tools may hold at least a partial answer to the problem of drugs, medicines and power.

(See my article "Are Drugs Experimenting with Humans?" for a more popular expose on the subject), as well as my book “Project Nirvana”.

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BACKGROUND LITERATURE AND FURTHER READING

Selected Books on evolution, religion, psychology and the nature of progress:

“A Short History of Progress” by Ronald Wright, Text Publishing, Melbourne, Australia, 2004

“Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed” by Jared Diamond, Viking, 2005

“Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies” by Jared Diamond, W W Norton & Co Inc, 1997

“The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee” by Jared Diamond, Vintage, 1991

“The Broken Bow: The Solution to the Riddle of Man” by Edward M. Keating, Atheneum, 1975

“The ‘God’ Part of the Brain” by Matthew Alper, Rogue Press, 2001

“Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought” by Pascal Boyer, Basic Books, 2002

“NeuroTheology: Brain, Science, Spirituality, Religious Experience” by Rhawn Joseph

“Why God Won't Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief” by Andrew Newberg, Ballantine Books, 2002

“The Biology of Belief: How Our Biology Biases Our Beliefs and Perceptions” by Joseph Giovannoli, Rosetta Press, 2001

“The Mystical Mind: Probing the Biology of Religious Experience” by Eugene G. D'Aquili, Augsburg Fortress Pub, 1999

“In Gods We Trust. The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion” by Scott Atran, Oxford
University Press-USA, 2002

“The Next Enlightenment: Integrating East and West in a New Vision of Human Evolution” by Walter Truett Anderson, St. Martin's Press, 2003

A comprehensive collection of books and other resources on psychedelics and culture can be found at Flashback Books site: http://www.flashbackbooks.com/fbb1.html, including seminal works by authors such as Andrew Weil, Ralph Metzner, Terence McKenna, Stanislav Grof, and Alexander and Ann Shulgin.

Many online books are available through: http://www.psychedelic-library.org/bookmenu.htm

See also Thanatos To Eros, 35 Years of Psychedelic Exploration by Myron J. Stolaroff, a free e-book to be found at: http://www.maps.org/t2e/

Pyotr’ Patrushev’s “The Transcendent Ape” (in print)

There is a plethora of sites on the Internet devoted to the continually updated catalogue of books, articles and other information on psychotropic plants, meditation, and their social and psychological effects. Some of the informative web sites and portals are: www.maps.org; www.erowid.org; www.leda.lycaeum.org; www.entheogen.com; www.imprint.co.uk/jcs; www.theantidrug.org/index.html; http://www.drugsense.org/html/; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucinogenic_drug

A most comprehensive list of links on Drugs and Society is: www.umsl.edu/~rkeel/180/drglink1.html

The most complete Russian site on the subject is: www.behigh.org/library/press/other/cc-revolution.html

For an Indian spiritual perspective see a thoughtful article by Saurabh Bhattacharya “In Search of the Ultimate High”: www.lifepositive.com/Mind/evolution/drugs.asp

An article in the New Scientist summarizes latest medical research with psychedelics: “Psychedelic medicine: Mind bending, health giving” (26 February 2005): www.newscientist.com/channel/health/mg18524881.400

Federal Drugs Administration also published an article about “Medical Possibilities for Psychedelic Drugs”: www.fda.gov/fdac/features/795_psyche.html

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APPENDIX

Illegal drugs use 'rose in 2004'

Source: BBC News 6/30/2005

The number of people taking illegal drugs worldwide rose last year by about 15 million to 200 million, the UN annual drugs report says.

The value of the global drugs trade, which the report says is about $320bn, is higher than the gross domestic product of 90% of the world's nations.

It also says Afghanistan produced 87% of the world's illegal supplies of opium last year.

Cocaine production fell in Colombia, but rose in Peru and Bolivia.

"This is a worrying loss of momentum for both countries, which had already made significant progress to curb coca production," the report said.

The report said there was a long-term trend towards rising opium production in Afghanistan - although this had been offset by strong declines in Burma and Laos.

It added that there were positive signs for Afghanistan, where in 2005 the area under poppy cultivation had fallen from record levels last year.

The report said the Afghan government was strengthening its control over the economy, following elections in 2004.

 User breakdown:

Cannabis is the most widely used drug, and is taken by 160 million people, the report said.

Cocaine abuse, it said, was declining in North America, but rising in Europe.

The report said there were an estimated 14 million cocaine users worldwide, two-thirds of them in the Americas.

Around 16 million people use opiates - including 10.5 million taking heroin.

 Drug Users Around The World:

• 160m use cannabis

• 14m use cocaine

• 16m use opiates

• Of those, more than 10.5m use heroin

 Annual Causes of Death in the United States (2000):

Source: http://www.drugwarfacts.org/causes.htm

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