GETTING HIGH WITH THE BARDS

Scholars and drugs go way back. The nonconformist, academic-genius
lifestyle not only allows drug usage but encourages it.

Live a Life on the Edge.

I go to the ATM alone, and sometimes at night. I take both of my
antacids in the morning instead of one with breakfast and one with
dinner. I return library books the exact day they are due. This
constant flirtation with potential disaster keeps life exciting for me.

So naturally I've been thinking a lot about psychedelic drugs. Not in
the irresponsible, thrill-seeking, destructive sense (I have enough
of that on a daily basis from the activities listed above), but from
a scholar's perspective.

As an American studies major with a concentration in '60s culture, I
have the opportunity to justify this kind of thinking as academic,
because I practically immerse myself in the lifestyle due solely to
my course schedule.

Last semester, in Main Currents of American Culture Since 1865, weeks
were spent discussing Timothy Leary and Ken Kesey, whose lives seemed
much improved from their curricular predecessors of the New York
sweatshop revolt era (could acid be the reason why?).

This semester in The Beats and American Culture, the romantic,
benzadrine-driven notions of Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs
percolate through my brain and urge me to try to see for myself.

This is way beyond peer pressure. This is dead-people-I-admire
pressure - pressure from the grave.

Scholars and drugs go way back. The nonconformist, academic-genius
lifestyle not only allows drug usage but encourages it. Reputable
brainiacs have been arguing for the legalization of drugs since the
18th century and doing drugs long before that.

Philosophers such as Immanuel Kant used potent elixirs to release
their brilliance. Kant, in order to desert the German army, hid in a
wheat barrel and tripped for days, subsequently unlocking his mind
and releasing a cloudburst of transcendental idealist thought that
influenced the direction of the Enlightenment.

According to a recent article in The Independent, the poet Samuel
Taylor Coleridge often vanished for days on opium benders. Granted,
Coleridge was a depressed hypochondriac, but the article argues that
his seminal works were written because of his opium-induced delusion.

For many philosophers of times past, morphine was the drug of choice
- - it allowed for focus and lucidity along with the standard euphoria.
Modern bards such as Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg are lightweight,
hacky-sack-tossing potheads in comparison with the astute men who
shaped modern thought and their drug habits.

When considered within a scholastic framework, drugs are not
masochistic tools of escape but mental catalysts toward understanding
larger, indefinable gray ideas - things like the proverbial if, God
and campaign finance reform.

Really, drugs seem to be more a rite of passage into the world of
intellect than anything else. Those whose nimble minds can withstand
the effects of or flower from drug usage are truly the strongest and
the smartest. And then there are the romantics - the scuffed-up,
beat-down, drugged-over artists and writers whose lives are delicious
and beautiful tragedies because of their chemical experimentation.

Can I ever be the tortured artist I desperately want to be without
the influence of mescalin, benzadrine, LSD, peyote? Perhaps
rationally considering drugs is enough to satiate the voices of my
influences. Perhaps having the voices of my influences clouding my
head is already some kind of warning sign against drugs.

And, of course, there are always dreaded side effects to consider -
the thought of Coleridge throwing up last night's shepherd's pie, a
gaunt Kant shaking in an alley, dressed in rags, missing teeth - the
price of mind expansion.

Also, you never know when drugs will yield brilliance. For every
Warhol silkscreen, there is a guy in Brooklyn collecting hairballs in
a jar and some dude in L.A. casting kitty litter in plaster of Paris,
waiting for their moments in the sun.

St. Augustine said that complete abstinence is easier than perfect
moderation. It's also cleaner, cheaper and safer. Not that safety and
security are huge concerns of mine, but I have gone over the edge a
few times. I've seen the dark side. I've had overdue library books.
The rush is fun at first, but once you have to pay the late fee, any
extractable beauty from the situation is effectively tarnished.