Mimetics Hostilis: An Assemblage of Law, Psychiatry, and Chemical Artifice Richard Glen Boire Configuratio ns, Volume 16, Number 2, Spring 2008, pp. 145-165 (Article) Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press For additional information about this article Access Provided by Universiteit van Amsterdam at 02/07/11 11:21AM GMT http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/con/summary/v016/16.2.boire.html
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Mimetics Hostilis: An Assemblage of Law, Psychiatry, and Chemical Artifice
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8/7/2019 Mimetics Hostilis: An Assemblage of Law, Psychiatry, and Chemical Artifice
So-called psychotomimetic6 drugs (drugs that mimic psychosis)
were, o course nothing new, even during the 1940s. Only seven years
ater the publication o Jean Etienne Esquirol’s Des maladies mentales
(1838),7
widely considered the rst scientic study o psychosis,Esquirol’s associate Jean-Jacques Moreau de Tours was eating hash-
ish (and giving it to his medical students) in an eort to better un-
derstand the resultant “happy madness.”8 A hundred years o such
hashish and marijuana studies had accumulated by the time Delysid
was released in 1947. Researchers had also amassed nearly ty years
o psychotomimetic studies using mescaline, a psychotropic com-
pound isolated rom the peyote cactus ( Lophophora williamsii) by
Arthur Heter in 1897 and rst synthesized in 1919 by Ernst Spath.
Kurt Beringer, a colleague o Herman Hesse and Carl Jung, gave mes-caline to over ty doctors and medical students and published their
psychonautical reports in his 1927 book, Der Meskalinrausch.9
But Delysid was dierent: it was artifcial.10 Yes, it was derived rom
ergot—a ungus common to rye and wheat—but unlike marijuana
and mescaline, Delysid was nowhere to be ound in the natural11
world. Its articial character permitted both quantitative and qualita-
tive assurances that were impossible with the pre-existing psychoto-
mimetics. It was psychoactive in astonishingly small amounts. Dos-
ages were measured in micrograms (millions o a gram), whereasmarijuana and mescaline were measured in grams and milligrams.
But most importantly, unlike all the preexisting psychotomimetic
agents, Delysid was what might be called a “pure product,” not only
Boire / An Assemblage o Law, Psychiatry, and Chemical Artifce 147
6. This term was evidently coined by Ralph Gerard; see Gerard, Neuropharmacology:
Transactions o the Second Conerence (New York: Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation, 1956).
7. Jean Etienne Esquirol’s, Des maladies mentales (On mental illness) (Paris: J. B. Baillière,
1838). Esquirol is also credited with introducing the term hallucination; see RolandFisher, “The Perception-Hallucination Continuum (A Re-examination),” Diseases o the
Nervous System 30:3 (1969): 161–171.
8. Jean-Jacques Moreau de Tours, Du Hachisch et de l’aliénation mentale (On hashish and
mental alienation) (1845), in John Miller and Randall Koral, White Rabbit: A Psychedelic
Reader (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1995), p. 209.
9. Kurt Beringer, Der Meskalinrausch (The mescaline intoxication) (Berlin: Julius
Springer, 1927).
10. The Compact Edition o the Oxord English Dictionary (1971), s. v. “articial”: “Op-
posed to natural. Made by or resulting rom art or artice; contrived, compassed or
brought about by constructive skill, and not spontaneously; not natural.”
11. Ibid., s. v. “natural”: “Constituted by nature; having a basis in the normal constitu-
tion o things. Existing in, or ormed by, nature; consisting o objects o this kind; not
articially made, ormed, or constructed.”
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The term psychedelic caught on22 and Delysid, better known to-
day as LSD (D-lysergic acid diethylamide tartrate), became its quint-
essential exemplar.
* * *Re-branded to allow or more positive interpretations o the experi-
ence, some o which were nothing less than rapturous, word o LSD
began spreading. Especially among artists, philosophers, and mys-
tics, ew wanted to be let behind. But just as researchers were begin-
ning to reexamine LSD outside o the psychotomimetic interpretive
straightjacket, a rash o women in Europe gave birth to babies with
serious birth deects. The problem was traced not to LSD, but to an-
other experimental drug, a sleeping pill named Thalidomide.
In response to public concerns that loose regulations in theUnited States could lead to a similar asco, the U.S. Congress passed
new regulations that tightly limited research with experimental new
drugs.23 Prior to 1963, human experiments with newly created drugs
were largely unregulated; the 1963 regulations radically expanded
the powers o the FDA, requiring companies to prove that a new
drug was reasonably sae and eective in nonhuman animals beore
commencing human testing. I animal testing was successul, hu-
man testing could begin, but only in stages, with each new stage
requiring both pre-approval and post-evaluation by the FDA. Whilesaeguarding against a U.S. tragedy like the European Thalidomide
crisis, the new regulations added substantial costs and delays to the
process o developing potentially saer and more eective new
drugs.24
In 1963, the same year that these new regulations came into eect,
Sandoz’s patent on LSD expired. Without any way o generating a
protected prot rom its investment, Sandoz concluded that it could
Boire / An Assemblage o Law, Psychiatry, and Chemical Artifce 151
22. Just a year ater Osmond suggested abandoning the label “psychotomimetic,” the
World Health Organization published a report that encouraged ongoing scientic
research with psychedelics and expressed dissatisaction with the moniker “psychosomi-
metic,” remarking: “The relationship between a model and a real psychosis . . . is ar rom
clear. The term, thereore, can only be accepted with the greatest reservation, and it is
suggested that, until superseded by a happier one, it should not be used”; see “Ataractic
and Hallucinogenic Drugs in Psychiatry: Report o a Study Group,” WHO Technical
Report Series no. 152 (Geneva: World Health Organization, 1958), pp. 34–35.
23. Pub. L. No. 87-781, 76 Stat. 780 (1962), codied in various sections o 21 U.S.C.
24. Lehman Brothers Healthcare Group has estimated that the costs o bringing a newdrug to market under current FDA regulations can reach as high as $675 million; see
Lehman Brothers, “Drug R&D Costs, Success Rates, and Emerging Technologies: A Look
at Three Future Scenarios” (1997), in Pharmaceutical R&D Statistical Sourcebook (Dublin:
Parexal International, 2000).
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diethylamide (LSD), mescaline, peyote, psilocybin, and psilocin.27
Sandoz responded by ending all urther production and distribution
o LSD, psilocybin, and psilocin.28
Congress ollowed up on the law in 1970, passing a massive ederal
criminal law29 (tenuously based on its power to regulate interstate
commerce), which, among other things, created a category o con-trolled substances denoted “hallucinogens.” The six compounds al-
ready labeled hallucinogenic by the earlier law were joined by eleven
152 Confgurations
25. On March 25, 1966, Lie magazine published a cover story titled “The Exploding
Threat o the Mind Drug That Got Out o Control,” reporting that “[a]t least one mil-
lion doses o LSD” would be taken in 1966, and concluding that “the genie o LSD,
with all its tantalizing possibilities or good and evil, is out in the open”; see http://
www.psychedelic-library.org/magazines/lielsd.htm. See also Edward M. Brecher and
the editors o Consumer Reports, “Chapter 50: How LSD was Popularized, 1962–1969,”in The Consumers Union Report on Licit and Illicit Drugs (Boston: Little, Brown, 1972), pp.
366–374.
26. Drug Abuse Control Amendments o 1965, Pub. L. No. 89-74, 79 Stat. 226 (1965).
While the new law outlawed possession o hallucinogenic substances, not all posses-
sion was outlawed. An accompanying provision carved out a large exception, permit-
ting any person to possess hallucinogenic drugs so long as they were or his or her own
personal use or the use o a member o his or her household (sec. 511 [c]). In the all o
1968, the exception or personal use was eliminated (Pub. L. No. 90-639, 82 Stat. 1361
[1968]).
27. 31 Federal Register 4679 (March 19, 1966).
28. See letter o A. Cerletti, then-director o the pharmaceutical department o Sandoz,
dated August 23, 1965; reprinted in Homann, LSD (above, n. 3), pp. 62–64.
29. 21 U.S.C. sec. 801 et seq.
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drocannabinols (21 U.S.C. sec. 812, subd. [b] [1970]). As o January 2004, the number
o ederally prohibited hallucinogens had risen rom the initial six to a total o thirty-
two (21 C.F.R. 1308.11). But the reaches o the ederal law extend even urther. Any
“material, compound, mixture, or preparation, which contains any quantity” o a
scheduled hallucinogenic substance is likewise considered a controlled substance
(ibid.). Although this phrase was intended to reach street dealers who sell diluted or
“cut” drugs that contain more o the cutting agent (e.g., cornstarch) than the illegal
drug, ederal and state prosecutors have twisted its interpretation to include plants that
naturally produce controlled substances. Additionally, under a ederal law passed in1986, the denition o “controlled substance” was radically expanded to include “con-
trolled substance analogues,” designated in an Alice-in-Wonderland way as all new
substances that are “substantially similar” to those explicitly controlled (“Controlled
entheogen. Our word sits easily on the tongue and seems quite natural in English.
We could speak o entheogens or, in an adjectival orm, o entheogenic plants or
substances. In a strict sense, only those vision-producing drugs that can be
shown to have gured in shamanic or religious rites would be designated en-theogens, but in a looser sense, the term could also be applied to other drugs,
both natural and articial, that induce alterations o consciousness similar to
those documented or ritual ingestion o traditional entheogens.32
Conclusion33
fade in
a close-up, low-angle shot of a sterile marble floor. the narrow depth
of field reveals what appears to be a long hallway, interrupted by out-of-
focus black movements that resolve into the shoes and slacks and deter-mined strides of professionals.
It could be the inside o a madhouse, or a courthouse.
Men34 are talking about simulations, about delusions, about various
orms o guilt. Their voices rebound and mix, an auditory montage
supplemented with discontinuous announcements over an intercom
system and overlaid with other sounds and noises o bureaucratic o-
ciousness. On a table rests an open manila older, a page reads:
synopsis: a forty year old man35
discovered in a private cabin under the influence of illegal hallucinogenic drugs. unrepentant. refuses to acknowledge guilt. claims that
these drugs are “entheogenic” sacraments essential for his religious practices.
154 Confgurations
32. Carl A. Ruck, Jeremy Bigwood, Danny Staples, Jonathan Ott, and R. Gordon Was-
son, “Entheogens,” Journal o Psychoactive Drugs 11:1/2 (1979): 145–146.
33. “The notion that sequences o real events possess the ormal attributes o the stories
we tell about imaginary events could only have its origin in wishes, daydreams, and
reveries. Does the world really present itsel to perception in the orm o well-made
stories, with central subjects, proper beginnings, middles, and ends, and a coherence
that permits us to see ‘the end’ in every beginning?”; see White, Content o the Form (above, n. 2), p. 24.
34. “You are undoubtedly aware that thanks to zooormalin one can temporarily be-
come—or rather, eel onesel to be—a turtle, ant, ladybug, or even a jasmine blossom,
with the help o a little botanil inforescine—subjectively o course, it is also possible
to undergo dissociation into two, three, our parts. When the number o personality
splits reaches a two-place gure, you obtain a thronging eect. At which point we are
no longer dealing with an ego, but a wego. A plurality o minds in a single body” (Stan-
islaw Lem, The Futurological Congress (rom the Memoirs o Ijon Tichy), trans. Michael
Kandel [New York: Seabury Press, 1974], p. 124). “I shall . . . imagine that I have an
opponent who ollows my arguments with mistrust, and here and there shall allowhim to interject some remarks” (Sigmund Freud, The Future o an Illusion, trans. James
Strachey [New York: Norton, 1961], p. 21).
35. “[M]an had been a gure occurring between two modes o language; or, rather, he
was constituted only when language, having been situated within representation and,
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The deendant may believe what he will as to peyote and marijuana and he may
conceive that one is necessary and the other is advisable in connection with his reli-
gion. But it is not a violation o his constitutional rights to orbid him, in the guise
o his religion, to possess a drug which will produce hallucinatory symptoms similar to those produced in cases o schizophrenia, dementia praecox, or paranoia, and his
position cannot be sustained here—in law nor in morals.36
By using an illegal hallucinogenic drug under the guise o reli-
gion, this man has breached the social contract on just about every
level imaginable. The major active ingredient in peyote is mescaline.
Mescaline is a hallucinogen whose eects are similar to those o lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD). It may produce alteration o consciousness, evi-
denced by conused mental states and dreamlike revivals o past traumatic
events, alteration o sensory perception, evidenced by visual illusions and distortion o space and perspective, alteration o mood, evidenced by anxi-ety, euphoria, or ecstasy, alteration o ideation, evidenced by impairment
o concentration and intelligence, and alteration o personality, evidenced by impairment o conscious and the breakdown o cultural and social in-
hibitions . . .37
But gentlemen, let’s not orget that unlike an actual madman
who’s hopelessly lost inside his mind, this man is able to control his
hallucinations. He’s operationally sane in all but one domain: hisproclivity or chemically inducing hallucinations, which he believes
have some religious import. But, as we know, these hallucinogenic
drugs merely simulate. To characterize their eects as “psychosis” or
as some sort o “religious” beatic vision, is in both cases to mistake
an articial model or the real. I, on the one hand, religion brings with
it obsessional restrictions, exactly as an individual obsessional neurosisdoes, on the other hand it comprises a system o wishul illusions together
with a disavowal o reality, such as we fnd in an isolated orm nowhere
else but in amentia, in a state o blissul hallucinatory conusion.38
I you mean to excuse his behavior, I disagree. Even under the
most generous interpretation, I see no reason to distinguish this
man’s actions rom those o a malingerer. Remember that character
in M*A*S*H? Colonel Klink? No, Corporal Klinger.
Boire / An Assemblage o Law, Psychiatry, and Chemical Artifce 155
as it were, dissolved in it, reed itsel rom that situation only at the cost o its own
ragmentation: man composed his own gure in the interstices o that ragmented
language” (Michel Foucault, The Order o Things: An Archaeology o the Human Sciences,
trans. Alan Sheridan [New York: Vintage, 1970], p. 386).
36. State v. Bullard (1966), 148 S.E.2d 565, 569.
37. Peyote Way Church o God, Inc. v. Smith (1984), 742 F.2d. 193, 197.
38. Freud, Future o an Illusion (above, n. 34), p. 43.
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Marijuana . . . appears merely to have served as the means by which
appellant ascertained particular states o mind characterized by him asreligious. Such conduct, even i perormed to attain what is considered a
sincere religious experience, is not protected by the First Amendment.45
There is no constitutional protection or theorizing. You can’t just
label your pet theories a “religion” and think that you’re thereby
entitled to use illegal drugs. For God’s sake we can’t permit this
man’s drug-induced fights o ancy to rewrite something as unda-
mental as the First Amendment.
There is no evidence that deendant’s belie was espoused by any orga-nization or was a principle, tenet, or dogma o any organization o which
he was a member. There is no evidence that deendant’s belie encom-
passes marijuana as an object o worship or that the use and distributiono marijuana except in limited ways would be sacrilegious. There is noevidence that deendant uses marijuana to communicate with any Su-
preme Being; no evidence that deendant’s use or distribution in any way involves any religious ceremony; no evidence that the use or distribution
involves any principle, tenet or dogma pertaining to the spiritual or eternaland, thus, nonsecular.46
The act that the use o drugs is ound in some ancient and some modern
recognized religions is an obvious point that misses the mark.47 Moreover,
the act that he’s not alone in his belies about hallucinogens, andthat he gathers together with others to take them, does not make
them a “church.” It is the opinion o the Hearing Ofcer ater review and
study o the record that the Church o the Awakening is not a religion in thetrue sense o the word, but a loose conederation o kindred souls whose
purpose is to explore the mystical boundaries o humanity through the useo hallucinogenic drugs and other means.48 The Free Exercise Clause is
not a get-out-o-jail-ree card or drug-using philosophers. . . . deen-dant has oered no evidence that his use o marijuana is a religious practice
in any sense o that term. In deendant’s discourse to the jury he did reer tothe Bible and to the practices o some Hindus, but in essence he was express-
ing only his own personal philosophy and way o lie.49
I might add, just or the purposes o argument, that even i we
were to grant that his drug use is producing an authentic religious expe-
rience, the law does not provide any protection or such articial
158 Confgurations
45. People v. Werber (1971), 19 Cal. App. 3d, 598, 608.
46. State v. Brashear (Ct. App. NM 1979), 593 P.2d, 63, 68.
47. Ibid., p. 68.
48. 35 Federal Register 2874 (February 12, 1970).
49. People v. Mitchell (1966), 244 Cal. App. 2d, 176, 182.
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aids. The point is that the law does not bar the deendant rom practices
indispensable to the pursuit o his aith. Rather, it compels him to aban-don reliance upon an artifcial aid and to utilize other, perhaps sel-in-
duced means to attain the desired intensifcation o apperception.50
It’squite clear that the Free Exercise Clause o the First Amendment
doesn’t guarantee a person the right to use the most eective reli-
gious practices. Exercise entails natural eort, it cannot be reduced
to eciency or eectiveness, or to the ease o popping a pill. Granted,arguendo, that drugs can acilitate or precipitate a religious or mystical
experience, the record shows that the experience can be reached throughless convenient means such as asting, prayer, meditation, hypnosis, etc.
Thereore, denial o the exemption would not inringe on the rights o the
petitioners to exercise their religion.51
So ar, we’ve been assuming that he is operating in good aith;
that he sincerely, but mistakenly, believes that his drug-induced hal-
lucinations are o a religious nature. But, there is another possibility
that we must consider. It is possible that all this talk about religion is
a ruse. Ater all is not simulation inherently misleading, raudulent,
and deceptive? I do not want to impute dishonesty, but I think it is
our duty to consider that this man may be misrepresenting his hal-
lucinogen use as “religious” in a desperate eort to nd a legal sae
harbor or what is, in actuality, pure and simple illegal drug use. Thelaw [may] exert its orce in situations where, under guise o religion, indul-
gence is sought in acts oensive to law and morality alike, in the disin- genuous belie that they are constitutionally protected. There is no immu-
nity, o course, to devotees o such ancient observances as a dionysiansymposium or a bacchanalian orgy, even though conducted under a pro-
ane pretext o divine worship.52
There is a decided acility or drug abusers to enter into the membership
o the Church o the Awakening. This would provide a ready means to
acquire immunity rom the law i the petition were granted. “Bad aith” o uture members and monitors is a real problem under the proposed re-quirements enumerated by the Church. Granting o the exemption would
create serious breaches in drug abuse legislation and open the door to pseudoreligions conceived or the purpose o circumventing drug laws in-
tended to control the misuse o drugs.53
I am tempted to suggest that there may be multiple layers o deceit
here. Simulation upon simulation. Addiction upon addiction. We
Boire / An Assemblage o Law, Psychiatry, and Chemical Artifce 159
50. People v. Collins (1969), 273 Cal. App. 2d, 486, 488.
51. Federal Register (above, n. 48).
52. State v. Hughes (1965), 209 App. 2d, 872, 881.
53. Federal Register (above, n. 48).
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may be venturing along the edge o a catalytic collective addiction o
sorts, a reality-obliterating contagion, i you will. Indeed, I believe
this is o the utmost concern, and the reason why we simply cannot
compromise, even an inch, on this question o confating hallucino-genic drug experiences with religious experiences.
Let me try and explain.
The evidence suggests that hallucinogenic drugs have relatively
little physical addiction potential. We can’t equate them to drugs
like alcohol, nicotine, or crack cocaine. In a sense, however, they
pose an enantiomorphic danger. One might say that a person who is
addicted to a classically addicting drug such as crack cocaine or her-
oin lives in an amplied super-reality. Everything becomes more real,
not less.To be a confrmed drug addict is to be one o the walking dead. . . . The
teeth have rotted out, the appetite is lost, and the stomach and intestinesdon’t unction properly. The gall bladder becomes inamed; eyes and skin
turn a bilious yellow; in some cases membranes o the nose turn a aming red; the partition separating the nostrils is eaten away—breathing is di-
fcult. Oxygen in the blood decreases; bronchitis and tuberculosis develop.Good traits o character disappear and bad ones emerge. Sex organs be-
come aected. Veins collapse and livid purplish scars remain. Boils and
abscesses plague the skin; gnawing pain racks the body. Nerves snap; vi-cious twitching develops. Imaginary and antastic ears blight the mind and sometimes complete insanity results. Oten times, too, death comes—
much too early in lie. . . . Such is the torment o being a drug addict; suchis the plague o being one o the walking dead . . .54
To be sure, such a drug addiction makes the objective physicality
o every moment excruciatingly intense. Hunger, money, desire, de-
spair, the moments leading up to the x and the period during
which the drug’s eects are waning, all are experienced with height-
ened intensity. The realness o the world is amplied. The organismsquirms and screams or attention. Embodiment is inescapable. Even
during his high, the drug addict does not seek to escape his or her
body, but rather seeks to become immersed in it, to melt into the
warmth o his organs.
In short, the ratio o the unreal to the real is, in the case o a clas-
sic drug addiction, tipped decidedly in avor o the real. But, pre-
cisely the opposite occurs in the case o hallucinogen use. The hal-
lucinogen user alters the ratio between the unreal and the real, but
in the direction o the unreal. Dr. Fisher in his studies noted that the“most important characteristics o the drug-induced waking-dream
160 Confgurations
54. Robinson v. Caliornia, 370 U.S., 660, 672 (1962), J. Douglas, concurring.
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state is its high sensory to motor ratio.”55 The hallucinogen taker is
inactive physically, lost in his mind.
In the midst o his hallucinogenic experience he escapes his or-
gans, losing himsel in articial dreams. He invests his hallucinationwith an ontological status that is supreme. Spirit alone is Reality. It is
the inner being o the world, that which essentially is, and is per se; it as-sumes objective, determinate orm, and enters into relations with itsel—it
is externality (otherness), and exists or itsel; yet, in this determination,and in its otherness, it is still one with itsel—it is sel-contained and sel-
complete, in itsel and or itsel at once.56 The religious hallucinogen
user believes he has cut directly to the ground o objective reality—
to God Himsel—which he substitutes or a gment o his chemi-
cally contorted imagination.[I] God himsel can be simulated . . . then the whole system becomes
weightless, it is no longer anything but a gigantic simulacrum—not un-
real, but a simulacrum, never again exchanging or what is real, but ex-changing in itsel, in an uninterrupted circuit without reerence or circum-
erence.57
This is precisely why hallucinogenic drugs are so damnably dan-
gerous. They encourage subjectivity to such a degree that they make
it impossible to distinguish religion rom madness, God rom hallu-
cination.In the end, it is always, I think, under this charge that the prohibition
is declared. We do not object to the drug users pleasure per se, but we can-not abide the act that his or hers is a pleasure taken in an experience
without truth. Pleasure and pain (now still as with Plato) are not in them-selves condemned unless they are inauthentic and void o truth.58
Because God is the touchstone or an ultimate objective reality,
widespread use o hallucinogenic drugs—which threaten to render
God indistinguishable rom a simulation—poses the ultimate threat:
that o annihilating reality itsel. You have to deend the religious illu-sion with all your might. I it becomes discredited—and indeed the threat to it is great enough—then your world collapses.59
There is . . . among some in the land today a view that the individual isree to do anything he wishes. A nihilistic, agnostic and anti-establishment
Boire / An Assemblage o Law, Psychiatry, and Chemical Artifce 161
55. Fisher, “Perception-Hallucination Continuum” (above, n. 7), p. 164.
56. Georg Hegel, The Phenomenology o Spirit/Mind (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), p. 86.
57. Jean Baudrillard, “Simulacra and Simulations,” in Jean Baudrillard: Selected Writings,
ed. Mark Poster (Stanord, CA: Stanord University Press, 1988), p. 170.
58. Jacque Derrida, “The Rhetoric o Drugs,” in High Culture: Reections on Addiction and
Modernity (Albany: State University o New York Press, 2003), pp. 25–26.
59. Freud, Future o an Illusion (above, n. 34), p. 54.
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attitude exists. These belies may be held. They may be expressed but
where they are antithetical to the interests o others who are not o thesame persuasion and contravene criminal statutes legitimately designed to
protect society as a whole, such conduct should not fnd any constitutionalsanctuary in the name o religion or otherwise.60 The hallucinogens
threaten to dissolve the very possibility o community, by turning
people inside and away rom rationally shared perceptions. In a
seeming paradox, however, they have a lure that draws others into
this interior nowhere. Were this potential contagion—the desire to
use hallucinogens—to reproduce itsel and spread, the inevitable re-
sult in the aggregate would be an externalized social obsession with
interiority. Society would racture and ssure as large segments o
the population “desocialize”61
or “drop out.”62
It would be difcult toimagine the harm which would result i the criminal statutes against
marihuana were nullifed as to those who claim the right to possess and trafc in this drug or religious purposes. For all practical purposes the
anti-marihuana laws would be meaningless, and enorcement impossible.The danger is too great, especially to the youth o the nation, at a time
when psychedelic experience, “turn on,” is the “in” thing to so many, or this court to yield to the argument that the use o marihuana or so-called
religious purposes should be permitted under the Free Exercise Clause. We
will not, thereore, subscribe to the dangerous doctrine that the ree exer-cise o religion accords an unlimited reedom to violate the laws o the
land relative to marihuana.63
We have seen something which in a way is most alarming, more alarm-ing than death in a way. And that is the loss o all cultural values . . .
these people . . . are deculturated, lost to society, lost to themselves.64
This is why, even today, we can permit Indians to ingest peyote in
their primitive ceremonies. Indians who practice the “old ways” are
inconsequential; they have chosen not to participate in our society
to any substantial degree. In eect they are lost in their mythicalworld, their radical subjectivity tolerated because they are o zero
import to organizing our wider society.65 They are separate and apart
162 Confgurations
60. United States v. Kuch (1968), 288 F. Supp., 439, 445–446.
61. Derrida, “Rhetoric o Drugs” (above, n. 58), p. 37.
62. Timothy Leary, The Politics o Ecstasy (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1968), p.
223.
63. Leary v. United States (1967), 383 F. 2d, 851, 860.
64. Sidney Cohen in testimony beore the U.S. Congress, as quoted in Jay Stevens,Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream (New York: Grove Press, 1987), p. 279.
65. It bears noting that even this marginalized subpopulation’s use o peyote is only
grudgingly permitted pursuant to a ew ederal laws and regulations; see “American
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rom us; eectively quarantined. Hell, the Amish too could use a
hallucinogen i they wanted.
But this man is one o us. Give him smallpox in a blanket and we
will perish.66
. . . and so it was that the lotus eaters devised not death or our ellows,
but gave them o the lotus to taste. Now whosoever o them did eat thehoney-sweet ruit o the lotus, had no more wish to bring tidings nor to
come back, but there he chose to abide with the lotus-eating men, ever eeding on the lotus and orgetul o his homeward way.67
Revelations aside, we have entered the historical period o God in
the Age o Chemical Reproduction. As Kempis stressed,68 the imita-
tion o Christ is to be applauded; but God’s simulation must be
strictly prohibited.And so it was.
Case closed.
fade out
Editor’s Note to Author:
Indians who practice the old ways are inconsequential; they have chosen
not to participate in our society to any substantial degree. In eect they arelost in their mythical world, their radical subjectivity tolerated because
they are o zero import to organizing our wider society. They are separateand apart rom us; eectively quarantined. Hell, the Amish too could use
a hallucinogen i they wanted
Item 23. Please consider modiying the above sentences o your
article to include along with “Indians” and the “Amish,” the 130
members o the O Centro Espirita Benecente Uniao do Vegetal, in
Boire / An Assemblage o Law, Psychiatry, and Chemical Artifce 163
Indian Religious Freedom Act,” 42 USC 1996; 21 CFR 1307.31. In 1990, the U.S. Su-
preme Court ruled that while statutes may protect religious use o peyote by Native
Americans, the Constitution’s Free Exercise Clause does not; see Employment Div., Ore.
Dept. o Human Res. v. Smith (1990), 494 U.S. 872. Three years later, Congress passed the
Religious Freedom Restoration Act o 1993, which prohibits the ederal government
rom substantially burdening a person’s exercise o religion, unless the government
“demonstrates that application o the burden to the person” represents the least restric-
tive means o advancing a compelling interest (41 USC 2000bb-1[b]).
66. Many Native American’s believe that their ancestors were given smallpox-inected
blankets by representatives o the U.S. government, and there is evidence that this may
have occurred; see E. Wagner Stearn and Allen E. Stearn, The Eect o Smallpox on the
Destiny o the Amerindian (Boston: B. Humphries, 1945), pp. 73–74.
67. Homer, The Iliad and the Odyssey , rendered into English prose by Samuel Butler
(Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1952), bk. 9.
68. Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation o Christ (1425; reprint, Middlesex, UK: Penguin,
1975).
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