Black Swan, which rightly handed an Academy Award to Natalie Portman, boasted some stunning cinematography, epic displays of athleticism, a memorable lesbian scene, and in a related montage, the titular character's use of MDMA, or ecstasy in a dance club. My mother, after having seen the movie, was curious about what 'rolling' meant, so a week following abortive attempts at discussing testicle-cuffs, I found myself explaining, in one-hundred words or less, the uses and culture surrounding the drug.
MDMA has been around a long time, but it wasn't until it merged perfectly with rave culture in late 80s Britain, that its use became more recreational. Within the club environment, DJs spin records that ebb and flow, controlling the crowd's energies and working their bodies into states of hot, sweaty abandon. Just as pot enhances, well, most other things, rave culture is ideal for the pill, and makes dancers feel in love with everything, and everyone. A person who rolls loves to touch and be touched, since it opens them up to others, allowing them to become less inhibited. More intriguingly, psychologists have begun studying its therapeutic effects on soldiers with PTSD, depression, and other maladies, often finding it a useful alternative to SSRIs, and with fewer negative side-effects.
I had to stress to my mother that I've never done it. I don't like being around most people anyway, much less take something that makes me want to participate in a mass-grope session. I've never even seen it, but I've known a few people who've tried it, and overwhelmingly enjoyed it. Rolling is produced by the wave-like feelings of positivity that come from the intermittent serotonin releases in the brain, the chemical that enhances well-being. The euphoria washes over the user, like waves rolling onto a shoreline. Used occasionally, like anything else, the drug's lasting consequences are minimal, and even wonderful.
When Natalie Portman goes bonkers and attacks herself in the mirror in a later scene, my mother asked me in all seriousness if it have anything to do with her serotonin levels being low? Was she depressed from rolling? Would she have been spared her psychological trauma if she would have only abstained? Yup. She was perfectly rational until that point, with a healthy home-life, then it all started to go amiss. If she hadn't messed with drugs, she could probably have quit that ballet nonsense and made something of herself, gotten her MBA, and become an accountant. What a waste.
Here's what I don't get. I've made this point repeatedly, and nobody seems to hear it: Drugs are neither good nor bad. For argument's sake, let's exclude clearly degenerative things like huffing paint, and booting up meth, since it's universally agreed upon that those fall beyond the realm of what most would consider safe, normative substance use. As a child in the early 80s, who spent a fair amount of time watching Saturday morning cartoons, I was bombarded with those utterly inane PSAs, or public service announcements; the 'This is your brain on drugs,' and the comical 'I learned it from watching you!' nonsense, created by, you guessed it, my parent's demographic, the same people who probably spent their college years in a narcotic fog, listening to Pink Floyd under black-light. I was later convinced so thoroughly about the evils of drug use in high school by the wrestling coach/shop teacher, that by the time I smoked marijuana in college, I was a nervous wreck, convinced that I would go permanently insane, and spend my remaining years thinking Will and Grace was funny.
It's like the lamest people got together and said, 'I've done some drugs, tripped acid a few times, and it fucked me up so badly I decided to become an advertising executive.' It's debatable that anybody who did drugs wouldn't make such shitty commercials. At the very least, the music would be better, and they wouldn't use actors that looked like extras from West Side Story, saying things like 'what are you chicken?' Nobody in the history of recorded time has ever been asked this when refusing drugs. Everybody would just think 'good, more for us,' check to make sure the pizza isn't burning, and get back to watching Dave Matthews concert footage.
So why did so many people fall victim to this crap? The same people who laughed at Reefer Madness showed us that a plant, once smoked, will cause you to waste perfectly good eggs by having a psychotic meltdown in your kitchen, go on murderous rampages through nursing homes, and rape innocent kittens. Under Clinton, who smoked his fair share, and George W. Bush, who is lucky to have his nasal septum intact, the imprisonment of those caught with such piffling offenses like having small amounts of narcotics soared, and these hypocrites, with their drug czar (what kind of messed up title is that?) stood idly by and let it happen on their watch. We did it, they seem to be saying, had some great times, but you better never touch the stuff. It'll ruin your lives. At least Obama, when asked if he had ever inhaled, said 'isn't that the point?' Here's a gem from my youth. The real crime here is this guy's mustache. Gabe Kaplan must have needed cash, badly.
Drugs are not bad by themselves, just as anything by itself isn't bad. I'm neither for or against drugs, but I do support unequivocally a person's right to make decisions regarding what enters their bodies, provided their decision doesn't impinge upon my life. The solution is not to ban them, or get hysterical about them, it's to understand and research them. The people that get their hands on them make the decisions, pure and simple. That rock outside my window is totally inert unless I decide to either ignore it, or throw it at somebody. My car is just a hunk of welded metal until I decide to drive it to the grocery store, or into a throng of people. It has nothing to do with the car, rock, gun, or drug. If that logic doesn't work, there's nothing more to say.
The point I'm returning to is that Portman's problems weren't caused by drug-use, or depleted serotonin, but when people start fixating on one thing, it becomes pronounced and exaggerated in everything, and it gets blamed for everything, because it's an easy, lazy target. Here's an example of how deranged this addled obsession can become. Once, I returned home from high school, to find my parents sitting in the living room with stern looks on their faces. I had weeks earlier purchased the Trainspotting soundtrack, perhaps the greatest movie soundtrack ever compiled. The liner notes contain a quote about heroin, as was the movie's drug de jour, and, lucky me, that week's Newsweek featured a cover-story about the evils of heroin. Like junk in a spoon, I was cooked. They had put two and two together, and figured out that their class president son, who wore button-down shirts and leather oxfords to school, was on a perilous path towards the needle and the damage done. I hadn't so much as tried a beer, much less procured smack, needles, nor any desire to inject opiates, and Trainspotting made me want to become a junkie about as much as the song 'Climb Every Mountain' made me want to go rock climbing. If they had bothered to watch it, rather than take some quote out of context, they would have noticed that Trainspotting is probably the most anti-drug movie ever made. Still, Newsweek, who might have some half-cocked strategy to maximize magazine sales, pounded home the hysteria: 'Models, rockers...are your teens at risk?' I was neither a model nor a rocker, although I could shred the air guitar in my heyday, before Colonel Tom Parker convinced me to get fat, wear sequins and die on the toilet.
Any questions? Yes, can I get that with a side of bacon? Actually I'll just have a salad: 25% of all deaths in the US last year were from heart disease, combined with creepy 80s synthesizer music. I've seen a lot of people on drugs, and not one of them thought their brain was an egg.
Last year, around 30 people died of a heroin overdose in the United States. Nearly 2,000 people lost their lives to medical mistakes. The solution is clear: we must all stop going to hospitals. The fact is that every drug, save for marijuana, has its casualties, and in the mid-nineties, some unfortunate girl overheated and died at a rave, after having taken ecstasy. She didn't hydrate herself, and her body's temperature soared to lethality. The media immediately went ape-shit over it, with cover stories featuring pictures of burned-out, sick youth being poisoned by this new social scourge, thrilled to have a new target for their endless manipulation. It's as if those in power think that drugs they've used are excusable, but those they don't understand are hideous destroyers of all that's good and decent. Check out the cheap Photoshop job on the related Time magazine picture that leads this posting, and tell me what kind of a spin it puts on the drug? Cool, you mean if I take ecstasy, half my face will change color? Note that after 1. The science, 2. The rave scene, comes 3. The CRIME RING! Well, I'm convinced, the shit's evil, no need to read the article any further.
Here's another curio: People die from recreational drugs, but aspirin kills too(see table below). Suicides and car accidents far, far more. Plus, I can buy a case of beer and a carton of cigarettes from the gas station, except on Sundays. Gotta keep that day holy. Watch any televised Sunday church sermon, and see those same anti-drug idiots speaking in tongues, arms outstretched, lost in their own, much more ruinous form of ecstasy. Religion fucks up more minds than drugs.
A lack of understanding doesn't permit anybody from jumping to unfair conclusions, but everybody looks to target their blame, especially after tragedies. For instance, Marilyn Manson had nothing to do with Columbine, just like the Beatles had nothing to do with Sharon Tate's murder. If some freak manages to twist a song like 'Blackbird,' into a call for racial warfare, that's not Paul McCartney's problem, just as ecstasy wasn't the culprit in the British girl's demise. A lack of water, fresh air, and a genetic heart-defect combined with a club's warm temperatures played just as big a part. Heavy metal, mental illness, your opposing political party, youth culture, Facebook, rap music, baggy pants, blah blah blah. No shortage of wagging fingers and no shortage of undeserved blame.
This is the worst possible result of drug abuse. Polyester: Are your teens at risk?
I get tired of talking about, and defending this to people who should know better, especially people who've used drugs and gone on to live full, satisfying lives. We all know people who have been hurt by substance abuse (not use, mind you), but nearly all of them were messed-up before substances. Blaming your problems on drug use is delusional, and unfair. A person chooses to take something, they must accept the consequences. Rest assured that, in another year or so, a new, demonized drug will dominate the headlines, giving rise to more misguided panic and immature conclusions. In the meantime, we all keep working hard to pay for the endless drug-war, bullshit propaganda, and scare tactics that have so badly distorted our foundations of common sense. Here are the facts, plus some levity, courtesy of the dearly-departed Bill Hicks, RIP. Check out the last entry, for marijuana. Zero deaths. Ever.
From http://drugwarfacts.org/cms/?q=node/30
Annual causes of death by cause in the United States:
Tobacco-435,0001
Poor Diet and Physical Inactivity-365,0001
Alcohol-85,000
Microbial Agents-75,0001
Toxic Agents-55,0001
Motor Vehicle Crashes-26,3471
Adverse Reactions to Prescription Drugs-32,0002
Suicide-30,6223
Incidents Involving Firearms-29,0001
Homicide-20,3084
Sexual Behaviors-20,0001
All Illicit Drug Use, Direct and Indirect-17,0001
Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs Such As Aspirin-6006
Marijuana-0
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