Sergio De La Pava - A Naked Singularity

“Consummately so, move on counselor.”

“Well you can see where this is going as our now-energetic protagonist is in his office waiting for the meeting that will decide his fate. Of course he’s incredibly nervous, what with the wife and all, and his anxiety, abetted by his earlier drug use, is climbing steadily. Luckily he’s the sort who’s always prepared and he has just the thing for this situation. What he whips out are these little sticks. The sticks are specially-formulated so that when sucked on in the manner of a nursing infant they deliver among other things the required drug which is nicotine. Now nicotine is just what the doctor ordered so to speak because although it is, like caffeine, a cerebral stimulant it has the useful property of being the only known drug that reduces anxiety without diminishing affect and this is good. Remember that with someone like dipshit, anxiety, whether justified or not, is a constant companion and as a result the sticks become a constant presence as well, creating both a physical and psychological need in the user that ensures their lofty status as beloved chemical appendage. The drug works, not surprising given its popularity, that is to say the user’s brain is altered in the way he wished, a way he finds pleasurable and a way that can eventually be summed up as going from needing nicotine to not needing it. This is critical. Ultimately, as is the case with all of the drugs I’ll discuss, the physiological effects of the drug become unimportant and the only relevant physical and psychological states become need and the absence of need. Moreover, the latter state will ultimately only truly be achieved when the patient has just recently ingested the drug. Thus satiated, our friend can survive his meeting and any other obstacles that may come his way. Made of stern stuff this guy no? Of course the end of the meeting requires either celebration or consolation. In this city there are over ten thousand locations where you can buy, then imbibe, a liquid form of these nouns. Now when it comes to drugs favored by the multitudes, alcohol is the unquestioned leader with all other competitors rightly genuflecting before it. On TV, white-skinned, yellow-haired females of dubious repute and their predatory admirers blissfully jump into skimpy swimwear in its presence as the stuff flows like a beechwood-aged, cold-filtered waterfall. For once Madison Avenue might not be exaggerating either because truth is they love the stuff. Here we don’t have to speculate what would happen with criminalization because we saw what happened, as people decided en masse that this was one prohibition they could skip. So our friend goes to one of the countless places dedicated to providing this drug. I’m there almost every day. People sit around and pour the stuff down their gullets as quick as old Joe can keep it coming and if it would get their bloodstreams to kick the shit to their brains faster they’d pay extra. They’d pay extra because alcohol is a depressant and they need depressing. But more than that they need to disappear. They need to disrupt, if only for a limited time, their constant, tyrannical self-surveillance. The drunk person is not happy in the classic sense. Inebriation is instead prized for its liberating qualities. What they’re liberated from is insecurity and if you don’t think that’s psychologically addictive you’re crazy. Is that what you’re saying Casi?”

“I haven’t said anything.”

“The drunk don’t have to weigh their words and calculate their effect. The drug diminishes their ability to do so and reduces them to an uncalculating will that externalizes, without censorship, its internal cravings. This freedom is the undervalued effect of intoxication and it is this effect that proves so attractive. But that’s neither here nor there since the main point is that this drug is employed in overwhelming numbers and without the slightest sense of irony by those who most recoil from our clients. And yet there’s more. Because when our drug-abusing friend gets home he’s greeted apathetically by his hypermedicated family. The crewcut boy’s on Ritalin to combat his quick-cut-advertising-induced-therefore-overdiagnosed hyperactivity and his twelve-year-old, weight conscious sister’s on Prozac to take the edge off her classmates and all this with the blessing of both our drug addict and his anxious, Xanax popping wife. And the whole thing’s just so depressing that thank God the highly recommended Dr. Upper-West-Side just prescribed him some Lithium to be taken with his nightly Bordeaux so he can better deal with the whole thing. He does this from the sofa. The aforementioned chemicals course through his veins as he watches the news and complains bitterly about the damn druggies he’s supporting with his tax dollars and how to his liking you can’t throw the keys away fast enough. Right?”

“Therefore what?”

“Therefore I say blow this sloppy hypocrite out of the water. Criminalize the chemical crutches he walks with and watch him change his tune on the chemically-dependent ; see how quick addiction becomes a disease when it’s him who’s been stripped clean. What would disappear is the distinction these people hide behind, the distinction that the substances they live by are legally permissible making their abusers of higher moral worth. Note that every drug I referred to is perfectly legal in the context described so I’m now really only speaking of the hypocrisy of people who limit their drug use to the non-criminal. I’m saying nothing for the moment about those who use illegal drugs but rationalize that the particular drug they use is harmless and really shouldn’t be illegal so in the end it’s okay because they’re not really drug users. Or others who currently limit their use to the respectable drugs but secretly couldn’t be prouder of their past real drug use, which they think makes them interesting, and which they will take any opportunity to divulge but only in hushed mock regretful tones. They’re too obvious a target. Our law-abiding user is not so obvious, however, and he profits from this distinction while being a supreme weakling. Here’s a person who can’t get through a single day without chemical assistance. This despite the fact that his day consists of wearing an Italian suit and tapping keys from an ergonomically-designed chair in an airtight, temperature-controlled office then after work stopping by Citarella to pick up some freshly baked peasant bread to complement his dinner overlooking the arboreal serenity visible from his apartment on Central Park West. That’s the life he leads yet he can’t abstain but he’s perfectly willing to judge harshly people who share their beds with rats, use their ovens to heat their apartments, and so turn to admittedly stronger chemical distractions. What do you say about people like that? What do you say about a situation where the Citarella people control the fate of the oven-heated people and use that power to cage them for behavior they themselves engage in? What do you say about these drug addicts Casi?”

“Which ones?”

“The fiscally-blessed ones who have pushers with waiting rooms and think of the PDR as The Good Book. Do you think this is a good situation where they cast their votes to send the three-eared Hurds of the world off to rot for their shared crime? Is it just ?”

“No.”

“More than that right. Someone like you should think it’s a fucking abomination.”

“Okay.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“What did you have in mind?”

“This isn’t multiple choice. What response can you generate to this? Now that I’ve pointed this societal mutation out to you, at length and in mindnumbing, intentionally yawn-inducing detail meant to replicate the utter inanity of such societal questions, what do you think you’re going to do?”