Journal of Psychoactive Drugs
ISSN: 0279-1072 (Print) 2159-9777 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ujpd20
Letter to the Editor Ronald K. Siegel To cite this article: Ronald K. Siegel (1990) Letter to the Editor, Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, 22:2, 259-260, DOI: 10.1080/02791072.1990.10472548 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02791072.1990.10472548
Published online: 20 Jan 2012.
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Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=ujpd20 Download by: [Monash University Library]
Date: 15 November 2015, At: 03:02
Letter to the Editor imals. Part 2 is subtitled "The Drive," and here the motivation is discussed along with the war on drugs and my pr0posed solution. Among the minor themes incorrectly outlined by Leverant is that " drug users, whether animal, bird, insect or human, cannot self-regulate their use of intoxicants." I make the point again and again that most animals do regulate their use of plant intoxicants in the wild, and that even laboratory monkeys regulate their use (smoking) of cocaine free base, which is something many humans have trouble doing. Failures at regulation are not due to the drug per se, but the preparation, dosage, and pattern of use. Perhaps most unfair of all is Leverant's statement that I maintain that intoxication is dangerous because it releases some underlying Freudian impulses. The only mention of Freud in the book is his infamous line that he liked the taste of American cocaine better than German cocaine. I clearly state (p, 209) that intoxication provides "pleasure, relief from pain, mystical revelations, stimulation, relaxation,joy, ecstacy, self-understanding, escape, altered states of consciousness, or just a different feeling . ... Plant drugs and other psychoactive substances have been employed as natural tools for satisfying such motives." Later in the book I explicitly state (p . 313) that intoxication fulfills health needs and helps organisms adapt to their internal and external environments. Another major point I make is that while some forms of these drugs have proved to be abusable and problematic, intoxicants can be made safe, risk free, and yes, even healthy. Leverant clearly missed this point, a point easily grasped by reviewers in TIme, Newsweek, and other major publications. Interestingly, these reviewers saw Intoxication as being a pro-drug, antiwar (on drugs) argument The Los Angeles Times book review section said that they had not seen anything this sympathetic to drug users in general and psychedelic drug users in particular since the heyday of the 1960s and Timothy Leary. All this makes one wonder why Leverant sees the book so differently. Leverant's references to MDMA and the DEA suggest a reason. He places me in with the antidrug forces, such as the DEA, and claims that I am a leading contractor for the multibillion dollar drug abuse industrial complex. Is it possible Leverant remembered that I was called by the DEA as a witness in the MDMA hearings? Is it possible that he is unaware that the "other side" also asked me to testify? Did Leverant know that I testified that none of the Schedule I hallucinogens, including MDMA, were addicting or caused public health problems? Did Leverant know that my only contract was with NIDA to prepare a monograph on
Downloaded by [Monash University Library] at 03:02 15 November 2015
To the Editor: I wish to correct several errors in Robert Leverant's review of my book Intoxication: Life in Pursuit of Artificial Paradise, which appeared in the January-March 1990 issue of theJournal ofPsychoactive Drugs (Volume 22, Number 1). Since I regularly review books for the Journal, I recognize a reviewer's right to opine about the book's content as well as the author; however, I also rec ognize the obligation of a reviewer to present a book's content accurately. Leverant has indulged in the former while ignoring the latter. In addition, I recognize the im portance of selecting reviewers who are equipped to read and write accurately. Here the editors of the Journal have fallen short. First, Leverant wonders where the description of the author as the "Leif Eriksson of psychopharmacology" originated. The phrase came from Hooper and Teresi's The 3-Pound Universe and was used in reference to my exploration of the hallucinatory world using trained "psychonauts." Second, Leverant characterizes Intoxication as an elaboration of a brief essay that I authored in 1983. That essay only covered a few of my experiments related to psychedelics. The book is a description of the larger class of psychoactive drugs and is based on a synthesis of the literature. There are 49 pages in the bibliography containing hundreds of references to the work of Schultes, Hofmann, and all the other luminaries Leverant wonders about. Indeed, contrary to Leverant's statements that the book is centered on my research, more of the text is devoted to the field and laboratory research of other investigators than to my own work. In his own review of the book, Hofmann wrote: "Reading this book one becomes conscious of the many different aspects of the drug problem, of the usefulness and dangers of psychoactive substances, and of their role and importance in medicine, in religious rituals, and in daily life.... Siegel's impressive work is based on personal experiences and research and on comprehensive knowledge of the large, old, and new scientific literature on the subject." Next, Leverant says the book is not formally divided into two parts and then proceeds to divide it into his own two parts: the politics and history of drug use , and the nation of the fourth drive as the motivation for drug use. Strangely, my copy of Intoxication, as well as other copies that I have seen, is divided into two parts that are clearly marked Part 1 and Part 2. Part 1 is subtitled "The Drugs" and devotes separate chapters to each drug, with emphasis on the use of plant drugs and their chemical allies by an -
Journal ofPsycnoactive Drugs
259
\bl. 22(2), Apr-Iun 1990
Downloaded by [Monash University Library] at 03:02 15 November 2015
Siegel
Letter to the Editor
As stated in the beginning of this letter, book reviewers have the right to color their impressions and Leverant does not hesitate to tell the reader that there is a "witchhunt tone and message to this book." That sounds like my expression when I compared the c urrent hy steria over drugs to "the cri es against witches in the Dark Ages" (p . 290). Apparently Leverant was swept away by the imagery of my historical account of America's war on drugs from colonial days to the Reagan administration, a war I clearly characterize as a futile, misguided witch-hunt. Leverant either did not or could not see my thoughts on the matter. Instead, Leverant sees a conspiracy wh ereby "this book has been written and published as part of this country's .. . war on illicit drugs." Leverant claims that the written words in books like this one are fo rays into" the minds of the White middle class," just as drug tests are forays into the bodies. His paranoid vision is all the more incredible in light of this country's response to the book. In every national forum in which I have appeared to di scuss the book and my solution to the drug problem - from "Larry King Live" to the editorial pages of the Washington Post - the administration has dispatched a spokesperson from the White House or the Office of National Drug Control Policy to debate me . Leverant sounds more like an angry victim of the war than a fair reviewer of a book that agrees with him on most issues but whose author once appeared to oppose him on the MDMA issue. In this sense, we are all victims of the war on drugs . I wrote that the fanaticism of the war on drugs hascreated this atmosphere, and I argued again st the growing epidemic of "test abuse" via urine screening as well as against the law enforcement approach of supply-and-demand reduction and the use of scare tactics. Instead, I proposed a solution, which is ignored by Leverant, of developing perfectly safe intoxicants. Let the reader be the judge of the tone and message of my book (p . 316): "Winning the war on drugs by eradicating nonmedical drug use is neither possible nor desirable. We need intoxicants - not in the sense that an addict needs a fix, but because the need is as much a part of the human condition as sex, hunger, and thirst. . . . Our use of intoxicating drugs is just as natural and can be, if we apply our ingenuity, just as healthy as the medicating drugs that we use should be. This is not moral surrender to the war on drugs. The development of safe, man-made intoxicants is an affirmation of one of our most human drives and a challenge for our finest talents."
cocaine free base, which some NIDA officials said was too honest and not antidrug enough to be published. The unrevised monograph was eventually published by the Journal ofPsychoactive Drugs (Volume 14, Number 4, October-December 1982). In discussing my proposed solution to the drug problem, Leverant continues to make misrepresentations of the material he is reviewing. Surprisingly, Leverant does not discuss my solution, only the alternate solutions suggested by others and rejected by me. Leverant incorrectly states that I have two solutions: to legalize weaker drugs and to allow stronger ones to be dispensed by physicians. Either Leverant's copy of the book is different than all the others or something else is obscuring his perception. I explicitly reject the notion of legalization (p. 299) - "We can't. Legalization isn't the answer." - as well as what Leverant calls weaker drugs (p. 303) - "Substituting the more controllable plant intoxicants for risky chemicals is not the answer." Leverant implies that I endorse the notion that the use of soft or weak drugs leads to the use of hard or strong drugs. More correctly known as the stepping-stone theory, I called this an incorrect assumption underlying government legislation (p. 274). I also stated that physicians dis pensing drugs is not without problems, inasmuch as 125,000 Americans die every year from prescription drug use. Here as elsewhere, Leverant criticizes me for not defining terms, such as "addict." Yet, my copy of the book has 44 entries under "addiction" in the index. Leverant would only have to flip through the book to find it. Furthermore, Leverant cites the omission of positive cultural uses of intoxicants from my book. Here again, he missed them . There are, for example, discussions of such benign cultural uses as coca chewing in the Andes, ritual Datura use throughout history, and peyote use among the HuichoIs. Leverant also claims that I have cultural biases and maintain that all intoxicant use is by low-functioning persons and destructive to self, society, and environment. This statement is an insult to any intelligent reader. Nowhere does anything remotely resembling this appear in my book. Indeed, I argued that intoxicant use is necessary to the survival of self, society, and species; and that is why it must be made as safe as possible. Then, Leverant claims that I say that users cannot selfregulate their use of intoxicants. On the contrary, self-regulation is the major behavior that divides users from abusers, and I stated that (p. 22lff.). I even stated that some PCP users have angelic, positive experiences, A major section of the last chapter is devoted to promising new research in the area of controlled intoxicant use.
Journal ofPsychoactive Drugs
Ronald K . Siegel, Ph.D. Los Angeles, California
260
Vol. 22(2). Apr-Jun 1990
ISSN: 0279-1072 (Print) 2159-9777 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ujpd20
Letter to the Editor Ronald K. Siegel To cite this article: Ronald K. Siegel (1990) Letter to the Editor, Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, 22:2, 259-260, DOI: 10.1080/02791072.1990.10472548 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02791072.1990.10472548
Published online: 20 Jan 2012.
Submit your article to this journal
Article views: 6
View related articles
Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=ujpd20 Download by: [Monash University Library]
Date: 15 November 2015, At: 03:02
Letter to the Editor imals. Part 2 is subtitled "The Drive," and here the motivation is discussed along with the war on drugs and my pr0posed solution. Among the minor themes incorrectly outlined by Leverant is that " drug users, whether animal, bird, insect or human, cannot self-regulate their use of intoxicants." I make the point again and again that most animals do regulate their use of plant intoxicants in the wild, and that even laboratory monkeys regulate their use (smoking) of cocaine free base, which is something many humans have trouble doing. Failures at regulation are not due to the drug per se, but the preparation, dosage, and pattern of use. Perhaps most unfair of all is Leverant's statement that I maintain that intoxication is dangerous because it releases some underlying Freudian impulses. The only mention of Freud in the book is his infamous line that he liked the taste of American cocaine better than German cocaine. I clearly state (p, 209) that intoxication provides "pleasure, relief from pain, mystical revelations, stimulation, relaxation,joy, ecstacy, self-understanding, escape, altered states of consciousness, or just a different feeling . ... Plant drugs and other psychoactive substances have been employed as natural tools for satisfying such motives." Later in the book I explicitly state (p . 313) that intoxication fulfills health needs and helps organisms adapt to their internal and external environments. Another major point I make is that while some forms of these drugs have proved to be abusable and problematic, intoxicants can be made safe, risk free, and yes, even healthy. Leverant clearly missed this point, a point easily grasped by reviewers in TIme, Newsweek, and other major publications. Interestingly, these reviewers saw Intoxication as being a pro-drug, antiwar (on drugs) argument The Los Angeles Times book review section said that they had not seen anything this sympathetic to drug users in general and psychedelic drug users in particular since the heyday of the 1960s and Timothy Leary. All this makes one wonder why Leverant sees the book so differently. Leverant's references to MDMA and the DEA suggest a reason. He places me in with the antidrug forces, such as the DEA, and claims that I am a leading contractor for the multibillion dollar drug abuse industrial complex. Is it possible Leverant remembered that I was called by the DEA as a witness in the MDMA hearings? Is it possible that he is unaware that the "other side" also asked me to testify? Did Leverant know that I testified that none of the Schedule I hallucinogens, including MDMA, were addicting or caused public health problems? Did Leverant know that my only contract was with NIDA to prepare a monograph on
Downloaded by [Monash University Library] at 03:02 15 November 2015
To the Editor: I wish to correct several errors in Robert Leverant's review of my book Intoxication: Life in Pursuit of Artificial Paradise, which appeared in the January-March 1990 issue of theJournal ofPsychoactive Drugs (Volume 22, Number 1). Since I regularly review books for the Journal, I recognize a reviewer's right to opine about the book's content as well as the author; however, I also rec ognize the obligation of a reviewer to present a book's content accurately. Leverant has indulged in the former while ignoring the latter. In addition, I recognize the im portance of selecting reviewers who are equipped to read and write accurately. Here the editors of the Journal have fallen short. First, Leverant wonders where the description of the author as the "Leif Eriksson of psychopharmacology" originated. The phrase came from Hooper and Teresi's The 3-Pound Universe and was used in reference to my exploration of the hallucinatory world using trained "psychonauts." Second, Leverant characterizes Intoxication as an elaboration of a brief essay that I authored in 1983. That essay only covered a few of my experiments related to psychedelics. The book is a description of the larger class of psychoactive drugs and is based on a synthesis of the literature. There are 49 pages in the bibliography containing hundreds of references to the work of Schultes, Hofmann, and all the other luminaries Leverant wonders about. Indeed, contrary to Leverant's statements that the book is centered on my research, more of the text is devoted to the field and laboratory research of other investigators than to my own work. In his own review of the book, Hofmann wrote: "Reading this book one becomes conscious of the many different aspects of the drug problem, of the usefulness and dangers of psychoactive substances, and of their role and importance in medicine, in religious rituals, and in daily life.... Siegel's impressive work is based on personal experiences and research and on comprehensive knowledge of the large, old, and new scientific literature on the subject." Next, Leverant says the book is not formally divided into two parts and then proceeds to divide it into his own two parts: the politics and history of drug use , and the nation of the fourth drive as the motivation for drug use. Strangely, my copy of Intoxication, as well as other copies that I have seen, is divided into two parts that are clearly marked Part 1 and Part 2. Part 1 is subtitled "The Drugs" and devotes separate chapters to each drug, with emphasis on the use of plant drugs and their chemical allies by an -
Journal ofPsycnoactive Drugs
259
\bl. 22(2), Apr-Iun 1990
Downloaded by [Monash University Library] at 03:02 15 November 2015
Siegel
Letter to the Editor
As stated in the beginning of this letter, book reviewers have the right to color their impressions and Leverant does not hesitate to tell the reader that there is a "witchhunt tone and message to this book." That sounds like my expression when I compared the c urrent hy steria over drugs to "the cri es against witches in the Dark Ages" (p . 290). Apparently Leverant was swept away by the imagery of my historical account of America's war on drugs from colonial days to the Reagan administration, a war I clearly characterize as a futile, misguided witch-hunt. Leverant either did not or could not see my thoughts on the matter. Instead, Leverant sees a conspiracy wh ereby "this book has been written and published as part of this country's .. . war on illicit drugs." Leverant claims that the written words in books like this one are fo rays into" the minds of the White middle class," just as drug tests are forays into the bodies. His paranoid vision is all the more incredible in light of this country's response to the book. In every national forum in which I have appeared to di scuss the book and my solution to the drug problem - from "Larry King Live" to the editorial pages of the Washington Post - the administration has dispatched a spokesperson from the White House or the Office of National Drug Control Policy to debate me . Leverant sounds more like an angry victim of the war than a fair reviewer of a book that agrees with him on most issues but whose author once appeared to oppose him on the MDMA issue. In this sense, we are all victims of the war on drugs . I wrote that the fanaticism of the war on drugs hascreated this atmosphere, and I argued again st the growing epidemic of "test abuse" via urine screening as well as against the law enforcement approach of supply-and-demand reduction and the use of scare tactics. Instead, I proposed a solution, which is ignored by Leverant, of developing perfectly safe intoxicants. Let the reader be the judge of the tone and message of my book (p . 316): "Winning the war on drugs by eradicating nonmedical drug use is neither possible nor desirable. We need intoxicants - not in the sense that an addict needs a fix, but because the need is as much a part of the human condition as sex, hunger, and thirst. . . . Our use of intoxicating drugs is just as natural and can be, if we apply our ingenuity, just as healthy as the medicating drugs that we use should be. This is not moral surrender to the war on drugs. The development of safe, man-made intoxicants is an affirmation of one of our most human drives and a challenge for our finest talents."
cocaine free base, which some NIDA officials said was too honest and not antidrug enough to be published. The unrevised monograph was eventually published by the Journal ofPsychoactive Drugs (Volume 14, Number 4, October-December 1982). In discussing my proposed solution to the drug problem, Leverant continues to make misrepresentations of the material he is reviewing. Surprisingly, Leverant does not discuss my solution, only the alternate solutions suggested by others and rejected by me. Leverant incorrectly states that I have two solutions: to legalize weaker drugs and to allow stronger ones to be dispensed by physicians. Either Leverant's copy of the book is different than all the others or something else is obscuring his perception. I explicitly reject the notion of legalization (p. 299) - "We can't. Legalization isn't the answer." - as well as what Leverant calls weaker drugs (p. 303) - "Substituting the more controllable plant intoxicants for risky chemicals is not the answer." Leverant implies that I endorse the notion that the use of soft or weak drugs leads to the use of hard or strong drugs. More correctly known as the stepping-stone theory, I called this an incorrect assumption underlying government legislation (p. 274). I also stated that physicians dis pensing drugs is not without problems, inasmuch as 125,000 Americans die every year from prescription drug use. Here as elsewhere, Leverant criticizes me for not defining terms, such as "addict." Yet, my copy of the book has 44 entries under "addiction" in the index. Leverant would only have to flip through the book to find it. Furthermore, Leverant cites the omission of positive cultural uses of intoxicants from my book. Here again, he missed them . There are, for example, discussions of such benign cultural uses as coca chewing in the Andes, ritual Datura use throughout history, and peyote use among the HuichoIs. Leverant also claims that I have cultural biases and maintain that all intoxicant use is by low-functioning persons and destructive to self, society, and environment. This statement is an insult to any intelligent reader. Nowhere does anything remotely resembling this appear in my book. Indeed, I argued that intoxicant use is necessary to the survival of self, society, and species; and that is why it must be made as safe as possible. Then, Leverant claims that I say that users cannot selfregulate their use of intoxicants. On the contrary, self-regulation is the major behavior that divides users from abusers, and I stated that (p. 22lff.). I even stated that some PCP users have angelic, positive experiences, A major section of the last chapter is devoted to promising new research in the area of controlled intoxicant use.
Journal ofPsychoactive Drugs
Ronald K . Siegel, Ph.D. Los Angeles, California
260
Vol. 22(2). Apr-Jun 1990
