V
After finally kicking a rather serious cocaine habit, Milhouse
came to the shocking realization that he’d been dead for
several years.
David Badders/DN
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Risks outweigh pleasure
Drug use equals mental anesthesia
I’m not a Nancy Reagan youth.
The fact that drugs are against
the law does not affect me. I don’t
believe civil law has any intrinsic
value, although it may sometimes
be practical.
Fear of the cops does affect me.
As legal penalties become stiffer for
pushers and users, and the ranks of
narcs and Nancy Reagan youth
swell, drug use has become the
crime of the '90s. Knowing this, the
risks of serious drug use outweigh
any pleasure I might experience
from using.
But that’s just the point. I don’t
enjoy the drug experience. Even if
drug use were easy and free, I
wouldn’t do it.
The drugs I’m talking about are
the illegal variety and booze. The
purpose of these substances is to
alter your perception. They may
change the way you think, feel
and perceive time. They may erode
inhibition or open the door to your
subconscious mind. •
I enjoy thinking and communi
cating. When my speech becomes
slurred and I lose my train of
thought, 1 have a hard lime being
understood. And then I babble
incoherently, like the giant bug in
Kafka’s Metamorphosis.
-44
The purpose of these
substances is to alter
your perception. They
may change the way you
think, feel and percieve
time. They may erode
inhibition, or open the
door to your subcon
scious mind.
--99 -
Now these are things that I might
do sober, but being wasted only
makes it worse.
It may be true that drug use
enhances creativity. I know many
musicians, artists and literary types
who produce fantastic work under
the influence, but it doesn’t seem to
help me. What use is an amazing
discovery if I can’t remember it in
the morning?
As for loss of inhibition, that’s
never been a problem for me. I’m
perfectly capable of being
undignified while sober. If I’m of
fensive, I want to be aware of it so
that I can fully appreciate the re
sults.
I’m a control freak — I admit it.
I have nothingagainsl dredging the
subconscious, or thinking streams
of unrelated thoughts, but I wantto
be able to shut them off. I have a
loose concept of time, but I don’t
like having no concept of time.
Everyday life seems chaotic, un
controllable and unintelligible to
me. Even on a good day it’s hard
enough to make sense of it and to
still retain any kind of sanity.
Drug use doesn’t seem to en
hance my mental stability, or to
make the world any easier to un
derstand. It only numbs that part of
me that strives for meaning and
purpose.
I don’t want mental anesthesia.
I’d rather stumble around sober.
Tht^re must be something out there
that’s worth the trouble. Odysseus
left the land of the lotus eaters for
just that reason. As pleasurable as
that place might have been, his
purpose was elsewhere.
I’m not suggesting'that this is
true for everyone. It’s a personal
choice, of course, and my choice is
to not use drugs.
— Amy Wilson is a classics major and
Diversions contributor / \
/>
writing technique creates i\ew
way to look at opposing views
By Scott Wesley
Diversions Cutup
This column is based on liter
ary experiments called “cut-up
techniques” conducted first by
Brion Gysin and William S.
Burroughs in the 1950s.
They took “found” articles,
cut them into pieces or other
wise rearranged them.
Based on these reconstruc
tions they wrote a new piece of
literature, using the changed
words and phrases as inspire
tion.
My source this time was the
FACE OFF essays of last week’s
Diversions, and the final tech
nique I used was to take alter
nate words from each essay (the
first word from one essay, the
second word from the second,
and so on).
I came up with a composite
essay about as long as either of
the originals. Then I rewrote the
composite.
This technique, or others like
it, will recur in this semester's
Diversions. Give it a try your
self.
Anyone with a pair of scis
sors and a pot of paste can play!
Even 1, with my standards, be
lieve the term will last forever. “Val
ues” will inspire songs, and poems
will be written around them, and
yet, they will probably never ac
quire a full definition.
1 often hear values cited merely
to reach past time-worn defense
safeguards in attempts to grab at
the human heart
One-thirdof“tradilional” couples
to^ay are involved with infidelities
in more than a conceptual way.
Two-liming is rife, and the family
has thus become unquanlifiable.
Most heterosexual “values" gan
be reduced tocouplespassingtheir
commitments to their children, who
then have nowhere to look for
support but their grandparents.
This in part explains why reli
gion, love of country (and free
dom), and a sense of duty are on
the rise, and that the cause of
societal distress is the hippies’ re
sponsibility in the minds of many
twentysomethings. r
Discovering what is so basically
American about this moralizing re
quires that you remember that you
are in with it, that you are involved
beyond words. Perhaps if the words
of that German philosopher had
.succeeded in pointing to the core
of the problem... “God is dead'"
said Nietzsche, but his metaphor
was inadequate to the task
For he did not kill religion along
with God, andthe waveof religious
need sweeps through the country,
business as usual.
It can be no accident that we are
the most recorded, most media-ted
generation in history, and becom
ing substantial as children is the
core of what growing up is about.
For that we m,*ed families, but
we need only point to the cities to
show the results of trying to uphold
so-called “family values" at any cost.
What have you seen happen?
Families gone dow n the rat hole,
into poverty and, despair, leading
further to the second biggest in-'"
crease in child abuse in this cen
tury.
On the flip-side, women have
found new alternatives, new
lifestyles and new means of sup
port, as necessity mothers a new
Goddess, Invention.
If Religion, more than God, has
reaped the benefits of reinforcing
monogamislic behavior tarnished
by the pill but born again in AIDS,
leaving unbelievers, that ragtag
bunch of misfits and dreamers, to
chomp at the entrails of the carcass
of society left behind, then our
generation must seek our true na
ture in higher climes than street
drugs like religion provides.
Our responsibilities must not be
let to fall, lest the wasteland of
pious emptiness destroy our ability
to write songs and poems.