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March 08, 2005
On Why Do You Think They Call Them Dopes?
There’s a natural tendency for people to think the world was created the day they were born, but most folks seem to grow out of it. Evidently, the rest go to journalism school.
There’s a huge story all over the teevee news right now about how officials have discovered some people are using horticultural products to get high. As usual, the media are right on top of this one. Kids and adults alike have been using stuff like morning glory seeds for several decades. Whenever some numbskull in the newsroom shouts “hold the presses” over a drug story, I’m sure a half dozen aging baby boomers start snickering.
Then again, we’re always snickering. And there’s no truth to the rumor that Burpee has trademarked the phrase “the seeds of destruction.”
Just wait until the news stooges get hold of the Jimson weed. People have been using that stuff to get high longer than they’ve been using, oh, say, heroin. In the movies it’s better known as “loco weed,” and it was aptly named. Why do you think Gabby Hayes looked that way?
I started wandering dazed and amused by the media’s near-complete ignorance of drug history back when the “news” about ecstasy broke about a decade or so ago. It was the newest thing around and, of course, it had been around since the 1960s. It was originally sold under its clinical name of MDMA, but when we started appreciating the role of marketing in our daily lives it was renamed “ecstasy.” Perhaps somebody was a fan of the rock group XTC.
But our reportorial geniuses missed the real story.
Last month the US Food and Drug Administration gave the go-ahead for soldiers who had been fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan to be included in an experiment to see if MDMA (remember, ecstasy) can treat post-traumatic stress disorder in order to help free them of flashbacks and recurring nightmares.
Hey, don’t get me wrong. I hope it works. But given the 67-year history of lysergic acid diethylamide (a.k.a. orange sunshine, acid, and LSD) – it was invented the year after marijuana was made illegal – you’d think this sort of thing would seem like a bad flashback.
Posted by Mike Gold at March 8, 2005 10:33 PM
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Last month the US Food and Drug Administration gave the go-ahead for soldiers who had been fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan to be included in an experiment to see if MDMA (remember, ecstasy) can treat post-traumatic stress disorder in order to help free them of flashbacks and recurring nightmares.
Hasn't our govenment been harrassing and arresting scientists who were trying to research psychedelics in therapy for almost forty years? What will they do for clinical proceedures and controls now?
God help our soldiers.
Posted by: Michael Evans at March 9, 2005 03:35 PM
Have you seen this before? It's a number guessing game: http://www.amblesideprimary.com/ambleweb/mentalmaths/guessthenumber.html. I guessed 25267, and it got it right! Pretty neat.
Posted by: Merideth Carleton at June 6, 2006 09:50 PM