"Pink Pills for Pale People": SUBOXONE

"Any opiate is absolutely contra-indicated for a creative person, because it makes you less aware of what's happening around and inside you."
-- William Burroughs, 1969

"Let us not seek our disease outside ourselves; it is in us, planted in our bowels, and the mere fact that we do not perceive ourselves to be sick makes it harder for us to be cured."
-- Seneca, "Letters to Lucilius," 1st century A. D.

In “from Dawn to Decadence”(2000) Jacques Barzun describes the state of advertising at the turn of the Twentieth century: "Its rapid development was in fact a necessity when the leviathan of the age spewed forth continually new products, many of them for the ordinary citizen and not expensive. Advertising had long existed as simple publicity—at first a few lines announcing a lost article or the opening of a shop. Then the paragraph, descriptive and boastful. The Nineties saw the rise of the craft as we know it: the arresting display in type and picture with repetitious slogans and extravagant claims: Post Toasties, the first breakfast cereal, would cure appendicitis; contraptions with wires implying electric power would relieve lumbago and housemaids knee. Bottled liquids and Pink Pills for Pale People worked miracles….The [product] was shown in association with human figures seductively posed and faces radiating happiness”(601).

Earlier in this blog I described my experience in weaning myself from Oxycodone. The stuff's highly addictive, and Xanax has an even wickeder hook. My brother, my friends, and my son’s friend (a second generation Vicodin addict) are just some of the folks in my circle of acquaintances who struggle, and have struggled, with prescription drug addiction. Many of us are one injury away from dependency. Arthroscopic surgery, Percocet, a glass of wine, that warm fuzzy feeling, disharmony disarmed, and there’s no going back. Craving sets in. But is it you who’s a criminal, or, are you simply hostage to your receptor sites? Is addiction a criminal, or medical, problem? Should this question turn on whether the addict is your daughter or son?

Regardless of blame, somebody profits from the receptor ticklers. The craving is not just a matter of wanting to get high as much as not wanting to be sick, to suffer withdrawal symptoms. So you’re better now and buying it on the streets. But that’s not the drug companies’ fault, you say. Recall Barzun’s description of the advent of mass production as the “leviathan of the age.” That leviathan is now a 10th generation face-hugger. America is a market economy, feeding the market requires money, generating profits requires consumption. It’s that simple. Drugs are big business and the more we take, the more money made, no matter the human wreckage this process leaves in its wake.

Again, from Barzun: “The melancholy individual is the plaything of opposite forces; he despises himself and then acts arrogantly; he is envious of others and knows he is undeserving; he wants friends and lovers but does not know how to make the right approach and he alienates those who begin to feel affection for him. Yet the cause of this perpetual mismatch is not entirely within him. The structure of society exacerbates the disharmony. Burton (Robert Burton, ‘Anatomy' 1632) again and again lashes out at the ways the upper ranks behave toward the lower, without conscience and without reproof”(222-23).

I suppose it’s nothing new to say Americans take more pills and medications than any other country in the world. What’s new is that the comfort with which most Americans take OTC (over the counter) medications for even the slightest discomfort has facilitated their risk for addiction. That thin moral line separating the respectable and the degenerate has become blurred and ambiguous, the term functional alcoholic has been displaced by functional substance abuser. Barzun’s reference to the “upper ranks[']” lack of conscience fits nicely with his description of advertising as a mechanism of commerce. What I take from this is that it behooves the rich, economically and politically, to provide the soma with the bread and circus, the Ambien, Ritalin, Viagra, and Xanax, peddled in the midst of “Idols” and “Survivors.” As Huxley famously put it, soma (my collective name for pharmaceuticals of every stripe) has “All the advantages of Christianity and alcohol; none of their defects." After all the idle distraction has always been key to perpetuating and preserving the status quo. For those rare few who don’t take something, there’s always the Christianity and alcohol. Stay drunk and leave the civic responsibility to God. Having us hooked on drugs makes money and keeps order. Add fear to the mix and you’re in business.

The recent “Florida Medical Examiners Commission” 2007 report offers a snapshot of what’s going on across the culture. Damien Cave’s New York Times gloss on the report notes the commission (6/14/08) “found that the rate of deaths caused by prescription drugs was three times the rate of deaths caused by all illicit drugs combined.” Lisa McElhaney, a sargeant in the pharmaceutical drug diversion unit of the Broward County Sheriff’s Office notes that prescription drug abuse has reached “epidemic” proportions,” adding, “It’s just explosive.” According to Cave, the federal Drug Enforcement Administration reports that roughly seven million Americans are abusing prescription drugs. These aren’t skid row bums, these are our friends, relatives, and coworkers.