A Drug Addicted Society

Could it be difficult to determine which is the lesser evil, potentially violent drug dealers in our neighborhoods or pharmaceutical monopolies?  Startlingly in the last decade what once was a quaint American tradition has grown into Fortune 500 fiasco.  While once we used to walk or ride our bikes to the local drug store to pick up our pills, now we simply are a minute cog in the machine of mass drug production.  Does it really matter whence our drugs come?  When faced with a three thousand dollar visit to the local emergency room for kidney stones, it in retrospect seems much wiser to buy a fix of some narcotic to ease the pain, sit back, and drink water until the little demon dropped into the bowl.  I experienced both.  The first times I passed kidney stones I was showering after having skateboarded at our local indoor skate plaza.  I had no idea whence the pain came, but it was severe.  We had no choice but to frequent one of the local emergency rooms.  At the time there was a more upscale facility operating, so for the sake of timeliness and pain relief we went there.  It was a ballet.  First I was put on in IV drip.  Morphine was added and did little to ease the pain.  I suggested Dilaudid.  I was given this drug during a cornea transplant at Duke University, and I never will forget its effectiveness.  They gave it to me and finally the pain subsided.  I was instructed to go home and drink water continuously until the stone passed.  In the mean time they of course had to prove the existence of the stone.  With blood in my urine I was slated for a CT scan to see into my innards.  Sure enough there were two.  After understanding the nature of this process and because it had occurred before, I would not feel as content to spend three thousand dollars plus on this treatment.  Instead while working on a ship simply I told them of my previous episodes.  They checked my urine and gave me a shot of Demerol.   Case closed.  I went back to the cabin happy and content and drank water as usual.  The difference between the two treatments was stark.  Fully I understand a doctors need to understand your condition.  Fully also I understand that treating illness has become a staple industry of our country.  I said treating illness, not solving the enigmas of disease.  Treating illness.  Treating illness means we must be sick.  In a depraved view of the medical establishment and its cohort, pharmaceutical companies, it is not far reaching to assume treating illnesses with drugs is a profitable method.  Upon every available corner in America springs up massive drug stores often emulating castles.  They are large affairs, not quaint ones, with a drive through window and aisles and aisles of sundries.  Covertly these monstrosities have overtaken the corners in our towns' intersections  converting what once was a colloquial cultural habit into big business.  Television commercials have appeared advertising their drugs in what could be considered a satirical way.  Are they not even aware that any sane individual never would take any of these advertised drugs for fear of grievous side effects or death?  These commercials are a joke, and I am not sure why they air.  Isn't it a doctor's responsibility along with the pharmacist to understand which drug is appropriate for your treatment?  Why are drug companies evidently suggesting you self medicate?  We should ask our doctors for these drugs?  I am confused.  What I am not confused about is that our medical establishment much like our military is raging out of control.  Pharmaceutical companies along with their cohorts, insurance companies, now control our medical care.  The once intimate relationship we had with our family doctor now has been usurped by a greedy machine that has infiltrated our lives.  Now we are mere minute cogs in this out-of-control monster.  It is no wonder Americans have taken matters into their own hands.  Which is the lesser evil, becoming addicted to prescription narcotics or buying heroin on the street?  Really it all is about feeling good.  If we felt good as human beings, if we were not ill, and if we had some semblance of control over our meager existences then possibly we would not need these drugs.  We don't. Evidently we all are miserable.  Why is this?  In my opinion it is easy to surmise.  Once human beings were sensory beings.  Our existence largely was connected with our human senses.  Sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste were an integral part of our humanity.    These senses while appropriately capable of providing bad experiences also are capable of providing ecstatic experiences.  Ecstasy.  Isn't it ironic the the current connotation of this word would not be a human response it all.  It is a drug.  There was a time that human experiences derived from our senses provided the much needed shielding we need from the brutality of life.  America's first settlers found this out in a hurry.  Life in America could be brutal.  We lost a complete colony.  I am not sure today that Americans are in touch with our history.  It is being disguised.  Once the loving intimacy of a spouse provided this much needed shelter.  It is very well characterized in several pioneer-type films.  Early Americans as they struggled to maintain an existence as they traveled west across the great plains, sought comfort with the sexual intimacy of their spouses.  It was not erotic.  It was not depraved.  It was necessary.  It was given to us by God for exactly this reason.  Those of us that understand this can make full use of it.  Possibly our modern environment does not promote this practice.  Further our modern socioeconomic system does not promote this practice.  Why?  It is because America is capitalist.  We buy and sell as a means of sustenance.  Because we only know how to buy and sell why should we not buy and sell the human condition?  Why should we not sell love and intimacy?  It is disgusting.  I live in a city host to 50,000 soldiers.  Anywhere else in the world prostitution would be thriving in such a situation.  Having traveled to many places on ships, it is ironic to me that prostitution is legal in almost every place I visit.  It is legal, it is clean, and it is respected as a vital product of the human condition. Thus in America where we attempt to sell both love and sex underhandedly, the one entity which is capable of providing at least a temporary antidote for loneliness is absent.  Like many grassroots professions, the powers at be adamantly do not want to place money in the hands of common people.  They want to keep it for themselves.  This contingency somehow decided that money no longer would be in the hands of musicians and their industry.  Similarly they have decided to strangle the life out of humanity by implementing a far right wing philosophy so absurd it defies comprehension.  Is it possible a sect with psychotic dogma has infiltrated America thus infecting American traditions with irrational notions?  In certain ways that is the only way to understand the change that has occurred in America.  My whimsical antidote to Jihad merely has been the suggestion that instead of raping and killing women and then waiting for seventy-two virgins in heaven, why not traverse the same path each and every heterosexual man traverses?  Get in the trenches with a real woman here on earth and make that tackle.  It is a formidable opponent, one of which men must be tiring.  It seems to me that once known about ray of light in the world, the realm of physical intimacy and love, has lost relevance.  It's a shame, because it still is just as potent as ever.  With its revival most probably the need for both illicit and legal drugs would pale.  Wouldn't that be a shame?  Dare I suggest, "Free love?"  Nikola Tesla suggested "Free electricity" and we all know how that went.  America it seems would rather buy and sell the inappropriate products, products that make you fat, products that make you sick, and products eventually that will kill you after you have spent your hard-earned dollar.  Needless to say I always have been a Socialist.  At least I can get laid.