The Curious World of Drugs and Their Friends Reloaded by Adriano Sack:

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Thoughts for a toxicological manifesto:

1. Drugs are normal. Read the statistics or just open a newspaper, go to the movies or to a club on Saturday night: the use of drugs, even illicit drugs, has become a social norm. Taking them is no longer associated with avant-garde thought and rebellion. In the 70s drugs, along with terrorism, were still regarded as a last resort in social protest. Today the willingness to sacrifice one's life for drugs seems passé. The last major pop star in a long line of age 27 drug deaths was Kurt Cobain in 1994, effectively marking the end of romantic drug addict era. Today's drug abuse does nothing but add some spice to a celebritiy's CV (as long as they show up at the set in time) and the marijuana industry in California is flourishing.

2. Drugs are fast. Be it Novalis, Lord Byron or Thomas De Quincey - it wasn't redemption in the hereafter they wanted, they wanted it now in the form of a high. Baudelaire spoke of it in terms of the "artificial paradises," for which opium and hashish were particularly well-suited - mood-elevating drugs that soothe at the same time. The discovery of the stimulant cocaine was the beginning of a high for the here and now. One forerunner for this new drug practice was Sigmund Freud. Taking cocaine spurred the Viennese doctor's exceptional sexual and intellectual performance, culminating in his theory of psychoanalysis. And even this is related to the cocaine high: the need to dig around in your own past, the belief that the solution is talking things over, the indefatigability. A three-hour conversation in a nightclub bathroom stall, pausing only to "blow" again and again in shorter and shorter intervals feels like a quickie analysis.

3. Drugs are a ticket to the real hereafter. In the 1950s and 60s, hallucinogens such as LSD and mescaline were discovered as instruments of a spiritual awakening and the right to religious freedom was evoked. People have always eaten mind-altering plants; it's just that this was always done in a ritual, shamanistic context. All that would need to be done is to re-instate it. Respective differences were drawn between consciousness-expanding good drugs and strung-out bad drugs. Good meant taking your time with the high and using it to find enlightenment; bad meant horking them down like fast food. But why is it that of all drugs, the ones that distort perception are deemed the best tools for spiritual awakening. What they misjudged back then: the high does not accompany or inspire religious release; it's the other way around. First, people came to know the instant bliss of drugs, then heaven was created in its image. It's the "artificial" paradises that are the real ones.

4. Drugs are natural. Cats crave catnip, pigs root for truffles. The American psychopharmacologist Ronald K. Siegel speaks of our need for intoxication as the "fourth drive" along with the need for food, sleep and sex. Intoxicated people do funny, weird and sometimes horrible things. They either re-invent the world or babble nonsense. They forget themselves - or their best friend. They have fantastic sex - or fall asleep. When people take drugs, they aren't necessarily doing it to be happier. They're following a natural drive to be different for a little while.

5. Drugs are like vacation. The majority of people who take drugs are not addicts. It's just that they occasionally like to twist off and get away from it all, for once just let it all hang out. The money used to buy drugs on a Friday night is hard earned from the week before. Even more so than paradise, drugs have more than a little in common with yet another, younger triumph of civilization: vacation. Be it an extreme sports adventure, an expedition, or simply killing time - drugs promise a few hours of detour into a strange, varied, dangerous world. The designation "recreational drugs" perfectly captures what it all amounts to in the end: time off. Not necessarily physically, but mentally. He who comes to work with a heavy hangover is, thanks to a guilty conscious, all the more eager to tackle whatever routine tasks lie before him.

6. Drugs can not be defeated. There is no stopping the flow of goods in a globalized world. The fact that the drug war cannot be won has long been obvious; even the global drug-battling United States has shifted its strategy, showing with nicotine how a state can best keep intoxicants under control: through regulation and high taxation. Since then the number of smokers has sharply declined and public life is by and large a nicotine-free one. As long as drugs remain illegal, the state is powerless to tax them and they remain relatively cheap. A decent shot of heroin will cost you 10 dollars, a gram of weed even less - anyone can afford them.

7. Drugs might be the future. Like all other animals, people live their lives poised between pleasure and pain, euphoria and depression. The one unthinkable without the other, suffered pain makes it possible to recognize happiness. But also: without the hangover, no buzz. And yet it doesn't have to be that way. In his manifesto "The Hedonistic Imperative", British philosopher David Pearce proclaims the end of what he calls the "Darwinist Age": the dualism of positive and negative perspectives were necessary to evolution, can however be overruled and all of mankind effectively drugged into a state of permanent happiness. Pearce is convinced that neither the countless illegal, not to mention readily available drugs have the necessary precision - the empathogen effect of ecstasy is paid for with nerve damage, for example. But one thing he is sure about: if happymakers could be researched as freely as pharmaceuticals are, mankind would be raised to a whole new level of contentment.

8. Drugs are not for everyone. Despite the fact that most people who take drugs do not become addicted and many more deaths in the United States are caused by traffic accidents than by all illegal drugs combined - drugs are still dangerous. In high doses or to a weak physical and mental constitution, they can cause permanent damage and death. In the 60s, the then Harvard lecturer Timothy Leary recommended administering LSD to toddlers, claiming that there would soon be no more homosexuals. Today, this is one point on which practically all drug advocates and opponents agree: no one should be forced to take drugs against their will, be it from the state, doctor or best friend.

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Adriano Sack, Ingo Niermann, The Curious World of Drugs and Their Friends, reference, drugs, books, Penguin Books