HOW PSYCHOLOGICAL VAMPIRISM CAN TOTALLY HARSH YOUR MELLOW

Every person has a drug of choice. Someone yesterday argued to me the
point that "being drug-free is free," which is good advice to heed if
one's demand for pleasure chemicals exceeds his supply of cash.
Otherwise, the risk involved with consuming a drug is only a matter of balance.

When addiction is understood as a pattern of behavior, and the risks
inherent in acquiring pleasure-molecules are placed on a spectrum of
relativity, no man or woman is pure or guiltless. If many other
people are negatively influenced by my pattern of behavior, then I am
abusing my free will as a conscious human being. If my pattern of
behavior tends to positively influence other people, then my action
is just and needs no correction or remediation. That a drug is legal
is no seal of safety.

I've already mentioned how a study on rat brains showed that
unrestricted junk food can produce chemical dependence similar to a
heroin addict. Eating fast food every day will destroy your health
incomparably faster than consuming cannabis every day. In his book
Food of the Gods, renowned drug scholar Terence McKenna compares the
habit of watching television to the characteristic dependence of
opiate users: "The nearest analogy to the addictive power of
television and the transformation of values that is wrought in the
life of the heavy user is probably heroin."

Television is a source of pleasure-chemicals that is widely accepted
as safe. The hypnotic moving lights on screen induce the human brain
to favor the right hemisphere, which causes a release of the body's
natural opiates, called endorphins. Endorphins are structurally
identical to opium molecules, and can be acquired in many ways.
Watching television, biting one's fingernails, strenuous exercise,
smoking cannabis and achieving sexual release are all ways that
people use to get free opium from their brain, and these activities
are often habit-forming. That people seek to re-achieve pleasure does
not make pleasure evil. The only thing that defines an evil pleasure
is the effect it has on the pleasure of others.

Even casual watchers of television have demonstrated withdrawal
symptoms similar to those of a heroin addict: increased anxiety,
frustration and depression. The average American watches over four
hours of television per day; the average stoner does not commit that
much time to smoking weed every day.

Speaking of these industrial products that have come to define
acceptable addiction, author and activist Jerry Mander has
characterized them as chemical replacements: "These technologies do
act as drugs. They are what society offers to make up for what has
been lost. In return for family, community, a relationship to a
larger, deeper vision, society offers television, drugs, food, noise,
high speed and unconsciousness. Each one offers some element of
satisfaction. Watching television, for instance, keeps you from
thinking about other things, it passes the time, it provides
'entertainment,' it can make you laugh sometimes. It tells you a
little bit about what seems to be happening in the world, although it
discourages any relationship you might have to it."

There are definitely funny shows on television, but the pattern of
behavior and the financial sums involved with keeping a subscription
to a television provider resembles the pattern of drug addiction more
than any kind of conscious or logical choice of behavior.

As I stated above, the only determinant when analyzing the morality
of a pattern of behavior is the effect that the behavior has on the
happiness of others. There are many people in our society who clothe
themselves in righteousness as they condemn the smoking of marijuana
as immoral behavior. Yet by relentlessly abstaining from such mild
psychological relaxants, these people often unconsciously become
addicted to the favorable actions of other people. They refuse to
make themselves happy, so in turn they must draw all good-feeling
from others around them. This is psychological vampirism: When you
cannot be happy unless others fulfill your expectations of them.
Introducing the medical herb cannabis to a psychological vampire is
often something like poison garlic laced with kryptonite.

A man who commits to seek the maximum amount of pleasure in the
course of his lifetime, yet who still maintains that he should not
harm the happiness of others, is a man who probably smokes marijuana.
This man probably sees his own herbal habit as destructive to no one,
least of all himself. He probably sees the way television, poor
nutrition and dogmatic thinking all result in a sort of human
blindness that rapes the happiness of millions every day throughout
the world. Most of all, he probably wishes all psychological vampires
would drop the fake-ass front of righteousness projecting from a deep
sense of emotional insecurity and smoke up already. For him, the
grass is always green.