The Real Drug War

Now that the marijuana dispensaries in Los Angeles are threatened with complete closure, it is a good time to ask how much of adult drug use is truly medicinal and how much is recreational. But why stop at marijuana? How much of what is being prescribed legally is truly necessary? How much is ending up in the mouths and veins of others? How many kids are self-medicating with their parents’ Oxycontin, or selling it to others, or claiming ADHD to receive preferential treatment? We now have a drug dependency culture. The medical language refers now to “lifelong disorders”! How convenient.

A recent analytical study of federal health data suggested that American teens aged 12 to 17 are at risk of cardiovascular disease, because of poor diet, lack of exercise and high cholesterol levels. In the second study, pharmacy data show a big rise in the use of antipsychotic and adult ADHD treatments over the past decade. One in five adults is now taking at least one psychiatric drug such as antidepressants, antipsychotics and anti-anxiety medications. The use of ADHD drugs like Adderall, Concerta and Vyvanse among adults is way up, particularly among women.

Are these two studies related? Do those teens evolve into those adults?

America was built on a belief in freedom, even if that freedom permits us to kill ourselves slowly with junk food and no exercise, and then to self-medicate. In other words, if we eat poorly and we don’t exercise, then this leads to real physical and mental anxiety and that leads to the desire to take drugs - sorry “medications” - to blot and blur out the anxiety. This is aggravated by the culture of distraction – which is self-induced stress after all - and the reluctance to simplify life. Freedom is a paradox; it is limits that set us free.

Conservatives are right when they talk about this as a spiritual crisis. They know it’s not just a legal/medical one. The spiritual crisis is about the freedom to THINK and the freedom to BELIEVE, not just the freedom to ACT. If we do not feed and exercise our imagination in the same way we feed and exercise our body, we will feel frustrated and blocked. If we feed and exercise neither our imagination nor our body, why would we expect a positive result?

Photo: Mcginnly/Wikipedia – it shows Tulip Stair, Queens House, Greenwich