Life, as we find it, is too hard for us; it brings us too many pains, disappointments and impossible tasks. In order to bear it we cannot dispense with palliative measures. . . There are perhaps three such measures: powerful deflections, which cause us to make light of our misery; substitutive satisfactions, which diminish it; and intoxicating substances, which make us insensible to it.
Perhaps the simplest example is a synthetic plastic, which unlike natural materials, is not degraded by biological decay. It therefore persists as rubbish or is burned-in both cases causing pollution. In the same way, a substance such as DDT or lead, which plays no role in the chemistry of life and interferes with the actions of substances that do, is bound to cause ecological damage if sufficiently concentrated.
So much for the crusade against drugs. . . all America is actually doing is consolidating its position as the biggest dealer in addictive and lethal substances on the planet, waging war on all rivals, whether they take the form of the Thai domestic tobacco industry or the Colombian cocaine cartels.
In general, any productive activity which introduces substances foreign to the natural environment runs a considerable risk of polluting it.
What action could bodies and substances have if they were not named in a further increase of dignity where common nouns become proper nouns?
But injustice breeds injustice; the fighting with shadows and being defeated by them necessitates the setting up of substances to combat.
Through all of history mankind has ingested psychedelic substances. Those substances exist to put you in touch with spirits beyond yourself, with the creator, with the creative impulse of the planet.
Life, on this Earth may be likened to a great Kaleidoscope before which the scenes and facts and material substances are ever shifting and changing and all any man can do is to take these facts and substances and re-arrange them in new combinations.
I know of no culture in the world at present or any time in the past that has not been heavily involved with one or more psychoactive substances.
The compelling thing about making art - or making anything, I suppose - is the moment when the vaporous, insubstantial idea becomes a solid there, a thing, a substance in a world of substances.
war with poison and chemicals was not so rare in the ancient world. . . An astounding panoply of toxic substances, venomous creatures, poison plants, animals and insects, deleterious environments, virulent pathogens, infectious agents, noxious gases, and combustible chemicals were marshalled to defeat foes - and panoply is an apt term here, because it is the ancient Greek word for 'all weapons.
As soon as chemists have a definite conception of the internal structure of the molecule of an organic compound, they are able to tackle the task of producing these substances by artificial methods, i. e. by synthesis, as we call it.
Substances like LSD, which give away a secret about the nature of the social game - the human game and what underlies it - are potentially dangerous, of course, like any good thing is. Electricity is dangerous, fire is dangerous, cars are dangerous, planes are dangerous, but not so dangerous as driving on the freeway. The only way to handle danger is to face it. If you start getting frightened of it, then you make it worse. Because you project onto it all kinds of bogeys and threats which don't exist in it at all.
Synthetic or inorganic substances do not contain any 'life force'; they are not dynamic. Everything is made of chemicals, but organic substances like essential oils have a structure which only mother nature can put together. They have a life force, an additional impulse which can only be found in living things.
There is a fundamental similarity between the persecution of individuals who engage in consenting homosexual activity in private, or who ingest, inject, or smoke various substances that alter their feelings and thoughts and the traditional persecution of men for their religion. . . . What all of these persecutions have in common is that the victims are harassed by the majority not because they engage in overtly aggressive or destructive acts,. . . but because their conduct or appearance offends a group intolerant to and threatened by human differences.
But in simple substances the influence of one monad over another is ideal only.
As I live and am a man, this is an unexaggerated tale - my dreams become the substances of my life.
I never took banned substances, but I have been courted by doctors who wanted to improve my blood in the laboratory. My mother always put them on a flight.
Owing to the difficulty of dealing with substances of high molecular weight we are still a long way from having determined the chemical characteristics and the constitution of proteins, which are regarded as the principal con-stituents of living organisms.
A schism has taken place among the chemists. A particular set of them in France have undertaken to remodel all the terms of the science, and to give every substance a new name, the composition, and especially the termination of which, shall define the relation in which it stands to other substances of the same family.
