Call it blasphemy in these days of a shrieking national debate over drug policy, drug use, and the growing drug economy. Call it irresponsible at a time when community leaders publicly compare the effects of crack to the effects of slavery. Call it juvenile now that the Summer of Love, which wasn’t so love-filled, is the stuff of history books, and now that many of its graying veterans specify “no drugs” when advertising for housemates. But, says somber scientist Ronald Siegel, we’ll never understand human culture unless we understand this: getting high is fun.
Because, says Dr. Siegel in his controversial new book, Intoxication: Life in Pursuit of Artificial Paradise, the biological impulse to get high rivals the biological impulse for food, water, and sex. It is, in Siegel’s words, “the fourth drive.”
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So, the argument goes, the birds do it, the bees do it, why don’t you and me do it? To paraphrase Siegel, the birds do it, the bees do it, so you and I can’t help but do it–because “drug seeking and drug taking are biologically normal behaviors.” By itself this animal analogy is not convincing. Most animals shit in public view and fuck only during well-defined reproductive periods. And it’s hard to imagine a reasonable scientist arguing in 1990 that we should embrace our animal instincts, our biologically normal behaviors, by defecating in the street and eschewing recreational sex. Civilization has its advantages.
Science won’t of course, and thank goodness for small favors. For if drugs were perfectly safe, what would keep users from becoming abusers? The danger of drugs works as a check for recreational users; as delightful as altering the consciousness can be sometimes, most of us can count on the postdrunk hangover or the posttrip exhaustion to remind our bodies of the virtues of moderation. And who wants perfectly safe drugs, anyway? Isn’t danger part of their warped charm?
Intoxication: Life in Pursuit of Artificial Paradise by Ronald K. Siegel, E.P. Dutton, $19.95.
