Teetotalitarianism

A number of cranky-pants folks got rather wound up when I pointed out that alcohol is safer than psychotropic drugs, specifically because we have solid believable objective public knowledge about alcohol. Everyone knows that alcohol is a dangerous, mood altering and physically impairing drug which can destroy your life and the lives of your victims, and that it can be horrifically addictive. Nobody is going to believably pressure you to keep drinking alcohol if the benefits of drinking are outweighed by its detriments. We’ve got thousands of years of experience with the stuff. No industry or corporation or marketing campaign or question-begging monomanical theory backed by billions of pharma dollars can make us forget what we already know about alcohol.

That is what makes responsible drinking possible.

It is also what makes prescription drugs so much more lucrative.

Prescription drugs are much more dangerous than alcohol, perhaps innately but without question because of social context. You have to count on your dealer and his supplier to watch out for your best interests, as you doff your cap to the medical aristocracy.

That doesn’t always work out so well.