Sebastian Saville reflects on drugs and happiness

The idea of happiness, what constitutes it and how it may be achieved, changes with time and place.

Human beings have, throughout history, in each time, place, and culture, used drugs of various kinds to modify, extend and intensify happiness. We humans have evolved in partnership, in symbiotic relationship, with a whole multitude of mood- and mind-altering chemicals. We are not the only animals to engage in these practices, but it seems there is something specifically human which leads us to use drugs and to develop social patterns, stories, myths and explanations of such uses: to generate drug cultures.

Good drugs

There is a range of contemporary drug taking that is socially accepted, and sometimes positively encouraged.

We regard it as a civilized thing to enjoy a convivial glass of wine at table; and indeed alcohol oils the wheels of most social gatherings. Beyond this, if we are feeling low, we visit our doctor, who is likely to prescribe an antidepressant for a while to pick us up; or, if we are too ‘up’ already, a tranquillizer to bring us down. Drug companies are labouring continually over a spectrum of new products to make us more intelligent, awake, potent, competitive and happy, and our governments and corporations approve.  Huge sums are spent on pushing these new products. These are the good drugs.

Bad drugs

The bad drugs are obvious; we hear about them often.

Addiction to heroin, dependence on cocaine; now perhaps even the return of Reefer Madness. The illegal drugs, those from which our governments must protect us, even those of us who do not wish to be protected. The lines seem clear cut, and we are told that they are. No happiness here.

Yet substances regularly cross the boundary. A hundred years ago, opium was to be found in almost every home: God’s Own Medicine. Curing everything from headache to toothache to insanity; the idea that it could be made illegal was unthinkable. Tobacco, meanwhile, appears to be making the reverse journey, from a must-have accessory for those who aspire to beauty, modernity and coolness, to a loser’s habit.

The dividing line is not a natural part of the world, but a line we ourselves draw. It changes over time and place, and can be redrawn.

Ugliness

The ugly is the outsider’s world: the world into which one is cast when one transgresses the boundaries of the good. It is largely the product of our own policy: the ‘war on drugs’.

Drugs and their use have always been, and are likely to remain, a part of the equation of human happiness. The sooner we recognize this, the less needless unhappiness we will generate.

Sebastian Saville is Executive Director of Release. The website has details of Release’s 40th anniversary conference on 18 June.