America What Drugs are You On Today?

America what drugs are you on today?

This a.m. I hear on the radio that the North and East is wracked with opioid addiction, and in the West it's all about methamphetamine (and guns, a deadly combo). Plus of course, everywhere, alcohol flows like water through every little burg and town in the land. And don't forget pot. Medicinal, and recreational.

And then there are the countless pharmaceuticals that doctors prescribe for every malady, real and imagined. Drugs. They are legion. We are all hopped up on something for sure.

There's also chocolate (sugar), fast food (fat & salt & sugar), and my favorite poison, coffee (caffeine is both my religion & savior).

One thing America can agree on, we love our drugs. The drug war is a scourge, a plague that pushes the whole thing in a deadly, punishing, and counter-productive direction. The narcos just love that we've made a class of drugs illegal. Good for a thriving black market. Empowers the narcos and gangs. Good for prices. The money flows, the drugs flow. And everything is copacetic.

Should we all blame Timothy Leary & Allen Ginsberg and those other Drug Utopians? Or was it all inevitable, with no one to blame, except maybe just the human condition? People just don't want to confront too much cold reality.

America what drugs are you on today?

What is the a.m. soundtrack? The Incredible String Band's "The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter" (1968). Take one listen to the these original British Freak-Folk and the first question that comes to mind: "What drugs are these people on?" Trippy. Acoustic. To my ears a bit of Monty Python mixed with a dash of Syd Barrett &  a drop of Robin Hitchcock. Were they all on psychedelics, living in mud huts in the forest? A utopian, Manson family? Weird shit.