by thecollective
Nov 18, 2024
Topic of the Week – This week we’re exploring the topic of drugs and the relationship to anarchy.
Define drugs. How do you think most anarchists think about the topic of drugs? What historical examples are there of anarchists addressing this topic?
As an anarchist what is your relationship to drugs? How does the topic of drugs, as you might define it, relate to your anarchist way of life, if at all?
Who in the anarchist space do you see addressing the topic of drugs? Tell us more.
What can you burn that is somehow related to what the topic is saying? What historical examples are there of anarchists addressing the topic of drugs? Tell us your favorite story of being (or not being) on drugs.
Comments
Nice try, FBI
anon (not verified) Mon, 11/18/2024 - 21:33
Nice try, FBI
*sucks on bong* Yeah maaaan,
anon (not verified) Tue, 11/19/2024 - 01:08
*sucks on bong* Yeah maaaan, abolish wage slavery work.
Drugs are substances or
Dominic Black Tue, 11/19/2024 - 03:16
Drugs are substances or agents that alter an organism's physical, mental, or biochemical states, encompassing everything from medicines and psychoactives to everyday chemicals and natural compounds.
Anarchism champions individual autonomy—the right to make choices about one’s own body and mind. This includes the decision to use drugs, but it doesn’t mean endorsing or romanticizing substances like heroin or methamphetamine. Instead, it’s about rejecting state-imposed controls that strip people of their freedom to choose, even when those choices may come with risks.
The war on drugs has proven that prohibition doesn’t eliminate drug use; it only creates more harm. By accepting the reality of drug use, society can focus on reducing the dangers associated with it—through education, harm reduction, and access to safe resources. This approach doesn’t glorify or condemn substances; it simply respects free will while addressing the consequences with honesty and care.
gimme a fat rail of pure
anon (not verified) Tue, 11/19/2024 - 09:23
gimme a fat rail of pure uncut columbian snow over predictable and hyperbolic anarchist rhetoric any day, shit, i'll take some heavily stepped on and sloppy shit over crimethinc, igd, or, to be totally honest, most of anews.
a pretty major but non
truman idler (not verified) Tue, 11/19/2024 - 09:30
a pretty major but non-glamorous project of mine over the past few years has been to stop taking prescription drugs. this started with weening myself off some psychiatric meds after ten years but evolved into replacing a low-dose blood pressure med with a hawthorn tincture and cardio (though i'm inconsistent with the cardio and miss the convenience of a pill hehe). the plan was to monitor my own blood pressure and adjust lifestyle rather than weave myself further into the medical industrial complex by accepting their cure. blah blah, basic stuff, autonomy or whatever. the aim isn't anything radical, it's still in line with conventional ideas of Health that i generally take issue with, though i suppose the means are different enough to matter to me.
as for the more...fun drugs: i've never lived somewhere pot is legal, and i've always enjoyed the minor underbelly that exists around buying or bartering drugs illegally. not that there's anything inherently anarchist about this, but I find something valuable in an arrangement where neither party wants the attention of cops, for example. weed is fun but ultimately makes me a little more paranoid and boring than i'd like to be for long stretches. shrooms have offered some life-changing perspectives and powerful emotions that can't be put into words. i'll carry those moments with me forever, i hope. and alcohol tips the scales the other way and makes me reckless lol while "not giving a fuck" can be a lot of fun it's also caught up to me through arrests, questionable lovers, and TERRIBLE hangovers.
i'm curious if meditation can scratch the same itch as drugs, in a way. not saying i approach meditation as a way to feel high but more as a practice to indulge in reality melting away, similar to how drugs might. drugs without the drugs!
i suppose all of these things are only "anarchist" to the extent that the person doing them is in perpetual tension with the context of drugs: dependency, indulgence, economy, hedonism, entertainment, death, sobriety, fear, security, identity, etc. to name a few.
and while i'd never consider myself "pro-drug," I do despise the ascetic militancy (XVX) parading around as "anarchy" among many of the younger anarchists i meet. but this might be a consequence of having seen the same exact trend come and go before and result in people emphatically attaching themselves to labels (strike one!) that signify purity (strike two!) where compliance is often reinforced through guilt of transgression (strike three, you're out!). It's as X-tian as baseball, babes.
Hey brah, medicinal CBD is a
anon (not verified) Tue, 11/19/2024 - 18:27
In reply to a pretty major but non by truman idler (not verified)
Hey brah, medicinal CBD is a universal panacea for the psychological and physiological ailments which plague the capitalist hegemony. It's natural brah, and holistically heals every little lymphatic tendril which courses through this toxic and stressful existant.
With a healthy balanced diet, you to can settle into a strong and peaceful co-existence with the organic continuum.
thanks for sharing. personal
anon (not verified) Tue, 11/19/2024 - 22:01
In reply to a pretty major but non by truman idler (not verified)
thanks for sharing. personal medical is always an interesting deal. have you been able to practice much on friends etc? i can do a good amount of first aid and wound care but no one i know who uses farma wants to stop using... nor do they want stitches by my well washed hands yet.
RAAN like a mfer
RAAN (not verified) Tue, 11/19/2024 - 16:12
Question: Who in the anarchist space is addressing this topic?
Answer: Nachie, main boss at The Anvil Review - “Perhaps I should mention that the first time I ever listened to Cloud Cult, I was balls-deep in five hits of some rather magnificent LSD.”
- https://theanvilreview.org/music/climbing_to_the_sun_on_a_cobweb_made_o…
balls deep in five hits of LSD. RAAN like a mfer!
On the acid you were JUST
anon (not verified) Wed, 11/20/2024 - 04:16
In reply to RAAN like a mfer by RAAN (not verified)
On the acid you were JUST PROJECTING YOUR perceptions onto YOUR surreal canvas. Your SPOOK filling up YOUR brain screen! You know, like you're sitting on a bench in the park and YOU THINK YOU'RE A BIG MAN, and then suddenly you project, and your legs stretch out 20 feet infront of you....YOUR SURREAL PROJECTION onto a humble piece of park. Fake giant balls deep in YOUR big man spooky fantasy.
my favorite story of being on
alex (not verified) Wed, 11/20/2024 - 00:29
my favorite story of being on drugs is when some guys decided i might be an informant due to some shitty choices made by everyone and forced me at gunpoint to take an enormous amount of coke and shots of whisky and then drive home in the aftermath of a blizzard. i could barely see as i remember it, got caught in snow drifts a few times but managed not to lose control. i made it to a bridge just as dawn really hit and i remember thinking "i'm going to die but this is fucking beautiful." all i could see was light, and i remember feeling an intense desire to get back home, which i somehow did without incident. maybe not some unique story, and maybe shows my ass at least as a young transplant moving well outside my comfort zone or whatever, but i think it has informed my life ever since, having this simultaneous sense of the immediacy of death and the absolute, irrational (presumably i couldve just pulled over) drive to see what im being given and meet force with force. i've never felt more myself in a particular way that i nevertheless do not at all feel the need to intentionally revisit.
i often think that what i really wanted was a fight, and if i had met different people in the places i went looking for them in i might have found one i preferred. but i dont really know that
i think the straight edge
a non (not verified) Wed, 11/20/2024 - 06:15
i think the straight edge critique of intoxication culture is interesting to talk about in the a-space. seems less prevalent now, but 10yrs ago a lot of my interactions with anarchist spaces were mediated in one way or another by alcohol. the common-sense-ness of this was coercive. a lot of event spaces were dominated by the kind of parties where people got tanked. not a lot of real connection was possible in that context. trying to put together non-nighttime events was often difficult because people were sleeping the previous night off.
I was a straight edge emo kid
anon (not verified) Thu, 11/21/2024 - 15:10
In reply to i think the straight edge by a non (not verified)
I was a straight edge emo kid in high school and I wish I had stayed that way. Not even to get into the politics but just the damage alcohol and drugs have done to my life and to many people I knew in anarchism (including some who are dead or disappeared), surely to the scene overall and everyone in it. The libertarian “you do you” attitude and all the other unexamined cool kid shit have real costs. It contributed a lot to my awareness of anarchism as being mainly a subdivision of cultural and activist scenes where people are mostly into showing off and partying, not into looking out for each other. A lot of talk and not a lot of community, a lot of the same shit other 20-somethings do but with spicier rhetoric.
Why are there no anarchist initiatives aimed at supporting sobriety? For a movement that’s so good at “franchise activism”…
*as far as what I pose in
anon (not verified) Thu, 11/21/2024 - 15:14
In reply to I was a straight edge emo kid by anon (not verified)
*as far as what I pose in contradiction to “you do you”… I’m not talking about enforcing something but can we talk about attitudes at least? I’m aware that many substances have legitimate medicinal/ritualistic/social uses. But I think someone who uses daily, who uses alone, etc, is missing something, and it’s usually social, or a more serious form of medicine. There ought to be some way to de-normalize that. We aren’t right wing libertarians after all who don’t believe in community at all.
this is arguably what
anon (not verified) Thu, 11/21/2024 - 15:31
In reply to *as far as what I pose in by anon (not verified)
this is arguably what experienced people can lend: stories from history of how so and so conducted themself and for what reasons and what happened. but the level of intimacy for that to happen without bias is potentially more than what humans can handle. and all sorts of history-reactionary biases can come as well. tell me why old and young ppl mostly aren't hanging out at the same venues or aren't interacting across generation when they do?
Does Ozempic count? Asking
alanon (not verified) Wed, 11/20/2024 - 08:28
Does Ozempic count? Asking for the mods
I like being buzzed and I
anon (not verified) Wed, 11/20/2024 - 17:09
I like being buzzed and I like being high. I don't like being fucked up but sometimes this world sucks just enough that I might like to go further, though no further than a 1 week bender ideally. Cheers
sometimes i like the feeling
anon (not verified) Wed, 11/20/2024 - 18:51
In reply to I like being buzzed and I by anon (not verified)
sometimes i like the feeling of wounds and bruises healing about 5-10 days after getting fucked up
It's really noticable walking
anon (not verified) Thu, 11/21/2024 - 08:49
It's really noticable walking into a bar now that I am enlightened. All the loud vocalization that alcohol brings out in Western masculine personalities is astounding and ugly, all the stresses that the testosterone/alcohol combination brings out in the subjects and they don't realize how ignorant and undisciplined their minds and desires are, hah. And of course 90% of them would be dead if it wasn't for penicillin hah.
I avoid these dens of ignorance and sit on a bench at the park, nursing my little bottle of cannabis oil, oooOooh the fUn and wIt it aWakeNs in mY hUmbLe hEarT.
moralist
anon (not verified) Thu, 11/21/2024 - 09:24
In reply to It's really noticable walking by anon (not verified)
moralist
I'm a person just like you
XVX (not verified) Thu, 11/21/2024 - 19:28
I'm a person just like you
But I've got better things to do
Than sit around and fuck my head
Hang out with the living dead
Snort white shit up my nose
Pass out at the shows
I don't even think about speed
That's something I just don't need
I've got straight edge
I'm a person just like you
But I've got better things to do
Than sit around and smoke dope
Because i know that I can cope
Laugh at the thought of eating ludes
Laugh at the thought of sniffing glue
Always gonna keep in touch
Never want to use a crutch
I've got straight edge!
I am a straight edge overlord
anon (not verified) Sat, 11/23/2024 - 05:53
In reply to I'm a person just like you by XVX (not verified)
I am a straight edge overlord seething with ressentiment towards all hedonists!
https://theanarchistlibrary
anon (not verified) Sun, 11/24/2024 - 05:11
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/boles-confronting-a-silent-assa…
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