Divine Goddess......... Ooops, sorry, no......
On January 7th of this year, the United Kingdom became a better and safer place to live. Under the umbrella of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, a number of previously legal substances were declared Class A drugs, the most serious classification available. Among them were AL-LAD and LSZ, two LSD-type substances that had become available in recent times through a number of (completely legal and above-board) internet sites.
A browse through some of the websites that specialise in such matters will reveal no incidences of harm caused by the consumption of AL-LAD or LSZ. Nevertheless, they are deemed worthy of serious criminalisation, as recommended by the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (once a body that could claim a degree of independence; nowadays unashamedly a government policy mouthpiece). Following the logic of the situation, I shall be writing to the Home Secretary in due course, urging her to criminalise carrots and electric toasters. No harm appears to have been caused by them as yet, but you never know......
Over the past few years, a game of cat-and-mouse has developed between ever-expanding drugs laws and the appearance of 'novel substances' to replace those that have just been criminalised. The United Nations 'World Drug Report' for 2013 reported as follows: 'The international drug control system is floundering, for the first time, under the speed and creativity of the phenomenon known as new psychoactive substances....... No sooner is one substance scheduled than another one replaces it, thus making it difficult to study the long-term impact of a substance on usage and its health effects.' To my knowledge, the report does not point out that the novel substitutes are sometimes far more dangerous than the original criminalised substance. LSD, a fairly harmless substance physically, is a classic case, with NBOMes, LSD-type substances that came onto the scene a few years ago, having been responsible for quite a number of deaths.
Theresa May is the latest in a line of British Home Secretaries that I have come to despise. Their small-minded interference in other people's business knows no bounds, demonstrates deep personal ignorance, and is worthy of nothing but disdain. I have little wish personally to check out novel psychedelics, but I have some respect for those who choose to do so. They have generally done their homework, and their motives are healthy enough. Purchasing such substances, even when legal, involved quite a palaver, so the buyer needs to be serious before entering into such a course of action. For such folk, ingesting a blotter of AL-LAD is probably safer than driving on the motorway on a Friday evening.
Drug laws, with regard to psychedelic-like substances at least, are so irrational that it begs the question (dodged by even plenty of members of the so-called psychedelic community): Why? It's not, as some apologists would have us believe, about appearing 'tough on drugs' so as to garner votes in the next election. There are nowadays huge numbers of ordinary folk who see that current drug legislation is hopelessly out of touch with reality, and the 'war on drugs' has failed miserably. No, it is something else, more existential, more esoteric, more troubling......
My mind goes back to two seminal psychedelic-assisted realisations I had in the 1970s, the consequences of which I am still in the process of absorbing fully.
In the first, I was immersed in the most harmonious and beautiful experience of my life to date, a state of being facilitated by my recent consumption of LSD. It suddenly occurred to me that the means to this blessed state was highly illegal; indeed, it had been thoroughly demonised by politicians and the media over recent years. How could this be? It just didn't make sense. What, then, were the real purposes of politicians and the mainstream media? At that moment, it clicked that they weren't my friends, they were not interested in true human betterment, and my life would henceforth be lived as far as possible from their slimy grasp.
The second realisation took place in the aftermath of my first fleeting experience - again with the help of our chemical friend - of non-duality. Of a unitary mode of consciousness, where the habitual subject - object distinction dissolved, revealing in its stead a completely different (and, it seemed, more real) mode of perception. This experience, brief though it was, turned me inside out. Life could never be the same again. But what struck me was that nobody had told me about this before. I had successfully negotiated the entire British education system, culminating in a good-grade degree at the cream of British universities, and no-one had uttered a word. Once more, what was this all about? How could this be? This was not a rational state of affairs at all.
I had stumbled upon what I nowadays refer to as the Secret. The Secret is that we are not what we have been told we are at all; or what, indeed, most of us experience ourselves as being. We are not - or are not purely - separate beings dwelling in a universe of separate things, living strictly dualistic (subject - object) lives. We are, if you like, multidimensional beings, with the capacity to experience things in very different ways, which can appear to be more 'wholly real' than the habitual dualistic mode of experiencing.
Closely allied to the Secret is the Lie. The Lie goes something like this. We live in a random, meaningless universe. It is our lot to live our lives as follows. We are born, we get an education of sorts; we find a sexual partner with whom we can give birth to a younger generation who can undergo the same treadmill; we get a job and, if it's a good job, a mortgage; we eventually finish all this stuff and, with a bit of luck, our poor worn-out bodies can do a bit of gardening for a few years before it becomes too painfully old or simply expires.
The everyday world that most of us live in - of politics, economics, finance, social organisation, media, entertainment and leisure activities - depends entirely on the successful functioning of these two, the Secret and the Lie, for its survival and further propagation. Neil Kramer describes this very clearly: how the Control System, as he calls it, 'Empire', is specifically designed to keep the mass of humanity's consciousness at a low level, that of the Lie. The very fabric of most people's existence depends on the continued maintenance of the Lie, and the hiding, the suppression, of the Secret. And here, looking more deeply, lies the Achilles Heel of the whole rotten charade.
The Control System, the Construct, call it what you will, is built on shaky foundations indeed. It must do anything within its power to keep the Secret a secret. Anything that threatens to let the cat out of the bag on anything than the smallest scale must be dealt with decisively. Hence the hysteria surrounding LSD consumption in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It was OK when it was the domain of a few psychotherapists and artists. But when Timothy Leary and his buddies came along encouraging Joe Public to go psychedelic, something had to be done. 'The most dangerous man in America', President Nixon said of Leary in 1974, and he wasn't kidding. Even if the majority of LSD users continued with life 'as normal', there remained a substantial minority who had effectively been let into the Secret, and had seen at least something of the Lie. They were ready to consider what Neil Kramer terms 'withdrawing consent'. Enough withdrawing consent and the Control System crumbles. Job done.
Of course, effectively withdrawing consent is easier said than done. The means need far more serious discussion. It is partly physical withdrawal, partly psychological/spiritual - a matter of consciousness. But it's the only way. Complain, protest, demonstrate against politicians, capitalists, banksters, as much as you want. It may be OK and in certain circumstances may have its place. But don't expect much real change. You are still playing by the rules laid down by the propagators of the Lie. It is familiar territory to them, the world they know and understand, and they can be relied on to play it skilfully to their own advantage.
So we come back to AL-LAD and LSZ. We can see why they must be criminalised, taken out of the equation. They must. They must.
