The Forbidden Game
Brian Inglis
13. The Collapse of Control
EVEN IF HEROIN AND CANNABIS COULD HAVE BEEN BANISHED, it had become
clear by the 1970s that they would immediately have been replaced
by other drugs. Some had already established themselves—occasionally
with the active help of governments, or of the medical profession,
or both.
When the amphetamines—'pep pills'—were first marketed in the
1930s, doctors had begun to prescribe them for patients who felt
tired or lethargic; and later as a slimming aid. During the war
they proved a help to men in the forces who were required to stay
alert on duty; and when it ended, vast quantities of them, surplus
to requirements, were dumped on the open market. Sometimes they
were employed as an adjunct to alcohol; when in 1947 'Chips' Channon
held the dinner party which one of his guests, Somerset Maugham,
told him was the apogee of his career (the guests included two
queens), he described in his diary how he had 'laced' the cocktails
with benzedrine, 'which I find always makes a party go'. But then
it was realised that, injected intravenously, the amphetamines
could produce an explosive bout of euphoria; and as they were
cheap and easily available, they were soon being extensively used
for that purpose, with destructive effects on the health of some
of the addicts, ranging from brittle finger-nails to ulcers, chest
infections, liver disorders, and cerebral haemorrhages. Governments
banned sales, except on prescription; but so many people had acquired
the habit of taking the drug, and so many doctors were willing
to indulge them, that the black market was rarely short of supplies.
Taking amphetamines, in Brecher's estimation, ranked 'among the
most disastrous forms of drug use yet devised'—particularly
in Sweden, where the attempt to impose total prohibition led only
to a rise in the price, encouraging illicit manufacture and smuggling,
and leading to a spectacular growth in the number of addicts.
Barbiturates took a similar course. In 1949 Colliers ran
an article under the title 'Thrill pills can ruin you', alerting
its readers to the fact that sleeping pills, if injected, were
euphoric. The health authorities added their warnings which, as
Brecher commented, ensured that 'throughout the 1950s and the
1960s, the relatively harmless sleeping tablets of the 1930s played
their new role as one of the major illicit American drugs'. As
with the amphetamines, the barbiturates were so widely prescribed
that control was impossible; the black market could be fed from
tens of thousands of family medicine cupboards. But when a committee
of enquiry set up by the British Government recommended in 1972
that the barbiturates should be re-categorised, to bring them
under the same type of control as heroin, the British Medical
Association's scientific committee successfully blocked the proposal,
ostensibly because of the 'practical difficulties in implementing
regulations', but really because it would further have eroded
the doctor's right to prescribe.
Cocaine also made a come-back 'Sniffing' had enjoyed a vogue in
the United States in the 1920s; in his Drugs and the Mind,
Robert S. de Ropp surmised that the original 'dope fiend' peddled
cocaine, rather than heroin. But it was expensive; the amphetamines,
far cheaper and more easily obtainable, for a while replaced it.
When the amphetamines proved an unsatisfactory substitute, cocaine
began to return to favour in American cities. Its high price was
less of an impediment to sales than it had been in the depressed
1930s, and provided an incentive to smugglers; Timothy Green estimated
in 1969 that a yachtsman carrying 10 lb. of cocaine to the United
States could make £10,000 on a single trip; and by 1973,
according to Thomas Plate in the New York magazine, 10
lb. was fetching anything up to $ 160,000 on the market. With
the raw materials, coca leaves, abundant and cheap, this left
an ample margin to perfect smuggling techniques, and to bribe
Customs or police. Once the cocaine had been brought in, there
was no difficulty in selling it. What Plate called the iron law
of drug marketing, 'supply determines demand', came into operation;
whenever it was available, cocaine became
... the drug of choice, not only among whites but ever increasingly
among affluent black drug users as well... Among Latin Americans
in New York, cocaine is often the preferred drug of entertainers,
expensive prostitutes, very successful businessmen, and certain
religious sects for whom cocaine use is literally an act of faith.
And among white drug users, cocaine is especially popular with
rock stars, writers, younger actors and actresses, and stockbrokers
and other Wall Street types...
And even if all these drugs could have been brought under some
control—by, say, the discovery of some instrument on the lines
of a Geiger counter, capable of infallibly detecting them—it
would not have solved the problem. Apart from synthetic variants,
there were numerous substances which though not sold as drugs,
could be used for that purpose—and frequently were. Benzine
and glue had long been sniffed 'for kicks', and with the advent
of the aerosol can, it was found that there were endless alternatives;
'literally hundreds of easily accessible sources', the Le Dain
Committee found, including paints, paint removers, lighter fuel,
and dry-cleaning fluids: 'it was recently observed that thirty-eight
different products containing such substances were available from
the shelves of a service station's highway store in Ottawa'. In
the circumstances, the Committee pointed out, effective restriction
was hardly practicable, 'except at considerable inconvenience
to a large segment of the population'; and, as the large segment
of the population was unlikely to accept that inconvenience, the
existence of these 'substances' created a problem 'which clearly
calls into question the potential of the crimino-legal system
in controlling drug use'.
The doors of perception
The crimino-legal system of control, whatever its defects, was
at least theoretically relevant so long as there was agreement
that drug-taking was a social evil, which ought to be suppressed.
But by this time a different category of drug had come into widespread
use, supported by testimonials from men whose opinions commanded
respect, who claimed that it could bring great benefit to society.
During the war a Basle chemist, Dr. Albert Hofmann, took a minute
quantity of an ergot derivative—four-millionths of a gramme—in
his laboratory, and after cycling home with some difficulty ('my
field of vision swayed before me and was distorted like the reflections
in an amusement park mirror, I had the impression of being unable
to move from the spot, although my assistants later told me that
we had cycled at a good pace') he experienced startling symptoms,
which he noted down when he recovered;
vertigo, visual disturbances—the faces of those around me appeared
as grotesque, coloured masks; marked motor unrest, alternating
with paralysis; an intermittent feeling in the head, limbs, and
the entire body, as if they were filled with lead: dry, constricted
sensation in the throat; feeling of choking; clear recognition
of my condition, in which I sometimes observed, in the manner
of an independent, neutral observer, that I shouted half insanely
or babbled incoherent words. Occasionally I felt as if I were
out of my body...
By that time—1943—there was more of a disposition to investigate
any drug capable of inducing such a reaction—not out of any
feeling that the visions might be of value to the beholder, but
because the Pentagon was looking for a drug which might be used
to facilitate brainwashing, or for disorienting enemy forces in
the field. And as the visions which Hofmann's LSD induced sometimes
bore a resemblance to those seen in psychotic states, a few psychiatrists
began experimenting with it in the hope it might help in the treatment
of schizophrenia. Although the military soon lost interest, and
the psychiatrists' hopes were not realised, LSD was remembered
when there was a sudden resurgence of interest in vision-inducing
drugs, following the publication of Aldous Huxley's The Doors
of Perception in 1954.
There was nothing strikingly new in Huxley's experience after
taking mescaline. His description of looking at his bookshelves—
Red books, like rubies; emerald books; books bound in white jade;
books of agate, or aquamarine, of yellow topaz; lapis lazuli books
whose colours were so intense, so intrinsically meaningful, that
they seemed to be on the point of leaving the shelves to thrust
themselves more insistently on my attention
—might have come from Havelock Ellis, or from the case histories
provided earlier by Louis Lewin. But the general public, disillusioned
with civilisation's materialist progress, was more willing by
the 1950s to listen to Huxley's argument that the heightened or
altered perception obtainable from mescaline was worth enjoying,
not just in its own right, but for the new insights, the new meanings,
it could provide. 'I am not so foolish', he wrote
as to equate what happens under the influence of mescaline or
of any other drug, prepared or in the future preparable, with
the realisation of the end and ultimate purpose of human life;
Enlightenment, the Beatific Vision. All I am suggesting is that
the mescaline experience is what Catholic theologians call 'a
gratuitous grace', not necessary to salvation but potentially
helpful and to be accepted thankfully, if made available. To be
shaken out of the ruts of ordinary perception, to be shown for
a few timeless hours the outer and the inner world, not as they
appear to an animal obsessed with survival or to a human being
obsessed with words and notions, but as they are apprehended,
directly and unconditionally, by Mind at Large—this is an experience
of inestimable value to everyone and especially to the intellectual.
People who wanted to shake themselves out of the ruts of ordinary
perception did not find it easy to obtain mescaline, for which
the raw material peyote was scarce; but LSD could be manufactured
in a laboratory, and it quickly became the standard drug for that
purpose. And scientific trials began to confirm—in so far as
such trials could—that it worked. In LSD—Dr. Richard Blum
and his associates at Stanford University claimed in 1964—a
means had been found 'for enhancing values or expanding the self,
a road to love and better relationships, a device for art appreciation
or a spur to creative endeavors, a means of insight, and a door
to religious experience'. For a few individuals, though, researchers
admitted, the consequence of taking LSD was a 'bad trip', involving
experiences which were disturbing and sometimes terrifying. Stories
began to circulate about the destructive effect of these bad trips
on promising youths, like those which had been heard about marihuana
(or tobacco), but with some characteristic twists—in particular,
the much-repeated tale of the girl who told her friends 'look,
I can fly!' and stepped to her death from a fourth-floor window.
Inevitably, down came the ban—even, in the United States, on
research into LSD. The outcome was the growth of a cult, catered
for through a profitable black market. The formula was generally
known; the materials available; the manufacturing process not
difficult; and distribution ridiculously simple, as LSD, in addition
to being tasteless, odourless and colourless, occupied negligible
space in relation to its potency. Prohibition was immediately
followed, Brecher wrote,
(a) by an increase in the availability of LSD, and (b) by an increase
in the demand. The increased availability can be explained in
part by the higher prices which law enforcement engendered, and
which attracted more distributors. The increased demand can similarly
be explained in part by the LSD publicity that legislative action
engendered. As in the case of the opiates, the barbiturates, the
amphetamines, glue and other drugs, the warnings functioned as
lures.
The peyote cult
It is possible from the available evidence to show how the attempt
to suppress the vision-inducing drugs has failed, and why: because
it has repeated the self-defeating pattern so often seen before.
What is not yet possible is to assess the impact of the mescaline/LSD
movement (or even, for that matter, of the influence of the cannabis
cult) on those who came to take it, let alone on society as a
whole.
Early on, the psychedelic movement split into two main groupings,
though they were never clearly differentiated. Both derived from
the views of Humphrey Osmond—who had introduced Huxley to mescaline:
that these drugs 'provide a chance, perhaps only a slender one,
for homo faber, the cunning, ruthless, foolhardy pleasure-greedy
toolmaker, to merge into that other creature whose presence we
have so rashly presumed, homo sapiens the wise, the understanding,
the compassionate'. By some of Osmond's followers, this was taken
to mean that the function of the drugs was simply to reveal, to
anybody who took them, the limitations he had been imposing on
himself; so that he would seek ways, not necessarily through drugs,
to explore the potential within himself which he had not known
existed. But there were others who, like Dr. Timothy Leary, tended
to invest the drugs themselves with almost magical powers, and
to propagandise for them on a national—and eventually, on an
international—scale. By the 1970s the Leary version was beginning
to go out of fashion; LSD was being used, if not with more discrimination—its
illegality made this difficult—at least with greater care, in
recognition of the unpredictability of its effects. But the story
of the movement which Huxley and Osmond sparked off, and which
in their different ways William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg and
Carlos Casteneda, among others, pushed along, cannot yet adequately
be told—not, at least, as history.
What can be told is the parallel story of how differently peyotl
was handled in the Indian reservations; and how different the
results. A century ago it was found that the peyotl cult had not,
as had for many years been believed, been successfully put down
by the Spaniards. After they were driven from Mexico, it began
to re-emerge. The peyotl cactus, anthropologists found, was still
worshipped, though the ceremonial had picked up Christian accretions,
originally designed to deceive the Spaniards, but eventually establishing
themselves in their own right, so that the ceremony took the general
form of the Mass, and Jesus's name was involved. Peyotl was still
taken, though, for the traditional vision-inducing purposes, as
were the morning glory, and the psilocybe mushroom; the Mazatecs
believed that Jesus had given the mushroom to them, and included
him and his saints' names in their chants.
In the 1880s the peyotl cult began to spread north into the United
States, alarming members of the Commission on Indian Affairs.
The Commission's agent in charge of the Comanche reported in 1886
that they were getting a kind of cactus from Mexico 'which they
eat, and it produces the same effect as opium, frequently putting
them to sleep for twenty-four hours at a time'; he forwarded some
specimens for analysis, adding that 'as the habit of using them
seems to be growing among them, and is evidently injurious, I
would respectfully suggest that the same be made contraband'.
The Federal Government did not take his advice; but from time
to time individual State legislatures, disturbed by reports that
Indians in their reservations were going over to peyotism, would
debate how to stop them getting supplies of the drug. The difficulty
ordinarily was that peyotism was a religion and that it had wrapped
itself up in enough Christian doctrine to be able to liken peyotl
to communion wine. How far this was originally deliberate policy
is hard to tell; but it became so with the foundation of the Native
American Church, whose expressed aims were
to foster and promote religious beliefs in Almighty God and the
customs of the several tribes of Indians throughout the united
States in the worship of a heavenly Father, and to promote morality,
sobriety, industry, charity and right living and cultivate a spirit
of self-respect, brotherly love and union among the members of
the several tribes of Indians throughout the united States and
through the sacramental use of peyote
But to many Christians, the use of peyotl was not so much sacramental
as sacrilegious; and to many respectable citizens, it was scandalous
that the American Indians should be permitted to enjoy a notorious
drug. A campaign after the Second World War to have it banned
was only warded off with difficulty, largely through the efforts
of two anthropologists who had studied the subject, Weston La
Barre and J. S. Slotkin. It was amazing, Slotkin observed, to
find that the expert evidence on which the campaigners relied—fantastic
stories about the effects of the drug, and the nature of the ritual—was
derived from white and Catholic officials in the reservations;
'none of them have had the slightest first-hand experience with
the plant or with the religion, yet some fancy themselves to be
authorities and write Official reports on the subject.' From his
own extensive experience, members of the cult were both more industrious
and more temperate in their drinking habits than other Indians
in the reservation.
With the renewal of interest in vision-inducing drugs in the 1950s,
the campaign against peyotl started up again, this time for fear
of what it might do to the white youth of America. In 1964 a California
court ruled that it was a sufficient public danger to justify
a ban on it, in violation of religious freedom, because it was
gaining adherents among the hippies; and the rumour circulated
that it was frequently the cause of insanity. Newspapers began
printing some of the same kind of stories that had circulated
about hemp drugs in India. An investigation was set up by Dr.
Robert L. Bergman, of the Public Health Services, to follow up
the fifty-odd reports of peyotl-induced psychosis. The vast majority
of the reports, it was found, were simply hearsay, and could not
be traced to any source. Only one single instance was found which
could be described as 'a relatively clear-cut case of acute psychosis',
and that was of a Navajo who, in defiance of the cult's own injunction,
had also consumed a quantity of alcohol. Although the cult did
not always 'take'—the Apaches on their Reservations adopted
it for a while, but went back to alcohol, their preferred drug—in
general its effects appeared beneficial. 'We have seen many people
come through difficult crises with the help of this religion',
Dr. Bergman commented,
and it appears to me that for many Indian people threatened with
identity-diffusion it provides real help in seeing themselves
not as people whose place and way in the world is gone but as
people whose way can be strong enough to change and meet new challenges.
The success of the cult, admittedly, does not prove that it would
have been possible to establish anything similar among the white
population of America, or of other Western countries. Nor would
the obvious alternative—making LSD a prescription drug, to be
dealt with by doctors—have worked; few doctors have the required
interest or understanding. What the peyotl experience does suggest
is that alternatives could have been found to the drug policies
of Western governments, had there been a better appreciation of
what was involved.
Mao's way
In retrospect, then, the lesson which emerges from the confused
history of drugs is that though we have been unable to learn the
right way to handle them, we have at least been shown what is
the wrong way: prohibition. But there has been one striking exception
to this rule: Communist China. It seems to be agreed, even by
observers who have little sympathy with the rule of Chairman Mao,
that opium has effectively been banished.
Three forces were at work to make this possible. Public opinion
in China remained hostile to opium, as a foreign imposition. In
so highly communalised a country, it was difficult for those who
smoked opium to do so for long without being detected, and denounced;
and even harder for farmers to cultivate poppies. Most important
of all, smuggling became unprofitable because the ordinary commercial
channels through which opium could be illicitly distributed ceased
to exist.
In Western countries, though public opinion might be hostile to
drugs, there was always sufficient privacy available to enable
those who were able to obtain them to take them with relatively
little risk; the commercial channels were geared to assist the
smuggler, as was the freedom of movement between country and country;
and there was far more purchasing power available to be spent
on drugs. China s example, consequently, was irrelevant, and would
remain so as long as the Western countries retained their traditional
economic and social fabric.