DRUG CULTURE IS A SYMPTOM OF OUR NARCISSISTIC AGE

The subject of marijuana and its use appears almost daily in the
news, including, recently, three busloads of teens on a ski trip to
Nevada caught with two large kitchen size trash bags of marijuana,
plus alcohol and drug paraphernalia. And a commentary in this paper
last month ("Anti-marijuana hysteria never made sense," Dec. 11)
advocated the unrestricted use of marijuana "because there is no
scientific evidence that it presents any hazard."

But it may be worth noting that Colorado legalized "medicinal"
marijuana in 2009, when about 5,000 became registered to purchase it.
By 2011 that number jumped to nearly 130,000, and the state has seen
a significant increase in the number who have entered drug-addiction
programs. Why this craving for marijuana? And how does this relate to
our culture, as developed over the past 50 years?

Perhaps the most enlightening and in-depth discussion of this subject
can be found Christopher Lasch's book "The Culture of Narcissism:
American Life In An Age of Diminishing Expectations," published in
the late 1970s. How more relevant could this topic be today when we
are immediately caught by the last few words: An Age of Diminishing
Expectations! His study focuses heavily on the relationship between
the individual and the culture he lives in: "Every society reproduces
its culture, its norms, its underlying assumptions, its modes of
organizing experiences in the individual, in the form of
personality." And what he discovers to be the prevailing type of
personality in our culture is the narcissist, a pathological
condition suffered in both young and old. The following is a list of
only a few of the many characteristics of this personality type:

1. Complains of "vague, diffuse dissatisfactions with life" and feels
an amorphous existence to be futile and purposeless, with subtle but
pervasive feelings of emptiness and depression.

3. Often suffers from hypochondria and complains of a sense of inner emptiness.

4. Unappeasably hungry for emotional experiences (highs) with which
to fill an inner void.

5. Attempts to compensate his hopelessness or depressive feelings
with fantasies of wealth, beauty, omnipotence, and ephemeral
transcendence in the foggy mist of drugs and intoxicants.

6. Chronically bored, restlessly in search of subliminal experiences
(pot, cocaine, meth, etc., etc.).

7. Lives for the moment, the prevailing passion, the ultimate high;
to live for yourself, not for your predecessors or posterity.

8. Lives in an atmosphere of danger - drugs, sexual promiscuity,
moral and psychic chaos - derived from the turmoil and narcissistic
anguish of contemporary America.

No one who reflects on the above can avoid noting some or most of
these characteristics revealed in those who belong to the drug
culture, but also in politicians, corporate execs, political
activists, and those from many other walks of life.

It is thus worth noting a recent news item concerning our military
academies, where sexual assaults have increased significantly (Record
Searchlight, Dec. 28). In response to this problem Defense Secretary
Leon Panetta is quoted: "I expect us to lead with integrity and with
energy to eliminate sexual assault and harassment from our culture."
But which culture, the academy or the culture in which the cadet has
been bred and raised? The individual is caught in the web of this
contagion, no longer stands to be free to become the unique
individual he was meant to be, but only as the product of the culture
he lives in. He lives within, not outside, his culture. And those who
escape this trap tend to be labeled "nonconformists," or "reactionaries."

It appears that the narcissist personality in our time is a necessary
symptom of the culture we have created. You cannot eliminate or
diminish a certain kind of personality that has been molded by a
culture, without a significant change in that culture. The presence
of the narcissist personality does not arise as some kind of
phenomenon, but by the way people believe, think, and act in their
daily lives. Unfortunately, when the social order begins to
deteriorate, history has declared that the most likely remedy usually
comes in the form of some great catastrophe - economic, political, or
social - and not the least, revolution.