Poor Dick Nixon

Avoid all needle drugs, the only dope worth shooting is Richard Nixon.

- Abbie Hoffman

Nixon: Drug Addict, Criminal or Both?

by Saul Landau

Poor Dick Nixon, my friend Sanho Tree says.  He needed Betty Ford's treatment more than Gerald Ford's pardon.  Anthony Summers new book, The Arrogance of Power: The Secret World of Richard Nixon claims that Nixon took Dilantin, a mood-altering drug.  In 1968, Jack Dreyfus, founder of the Dreyfus Fund, gave Nixon his first thousand 100-milligram capsules, "when his mood wasn't too good."  Thank God Nixon didn't get it from the drug dealers who hung out near the White House!

Dreyfus saw a man who needed the drug to combat "fear, worry, guilt, panic, anger and related emotions, irritability, rage, mood, depression, violent behavior, hyperglycemia, alcohol, anorexia, bulimia and binge eating, cardiac arrhythmia, muscular disorders."  Dilantin sounds almost as versatile as marijuana.

Dreyfus recommended, however, that Nixon find a doctor to prescribe Dilantin, but Nixon said: "To heck with the doctor."  So, Dreyfus continued to supply Nixon with the drug that Dr Richard A Friedman, director psychopharmacology at Cornell medical school, said has "potentially very serious side effect risks, like change of mental status, "confusion, memory loss, irritability and altering cognitive function."

Was Tricky Dick bombed when he ordered the bombing of Cambodia?  Did his drug habit cause him to make weird faces and stiff gestures on TV?  Did Dilantin induce Nixon to use the dirty words that appeared on the secretly recorded Nixon tapes?

Summers also claims that Dick beat up his wife Pat in 1962 after he lost the gubernatorial race in California and that she threatened to leave him if he didn't stop.

Look, no one's perfect.  Nixon, like tens of millions of Americans, felt depressed after losing the 1962 race.  In 1960, you recall, he lost the presidential election to John Kennedy, whose father and the Mafia cooked the ballot boxes in Illinois.  Nixon, upset, may have blackened Pat's eyes.

But Summers has no evidence that Nixon ever fooled around with an intern.  In 1970, Nixon was depressed over the unfriendly public reaction to his bombing of Cambodia.  Nixon went to a shrink, who diagnosed him as neurotic, suffering from anxiety and sleeplessness.  Why shouldn't an anxious insomniac take drugs?

But Defense Secretary, James R Schlesinger thought Nixon was nuts and in 1974 ordered military units not to react to orders from "the White House" unless they were cleared with him or Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

So, did drugs cause Nixon to bomb Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos?  Did Dilantin lead him to conduct the cover up of the Watergate burglary that led to scandal and Nixon's downfall?

Dick Nixon needed a rehab plan, but instead he advocated an early version of the drug war.  Imagine, a drug addict advocating a war against drug users!  But Richard Milhous Nixon was more than a neurotic drug addict.  He was also a criminal.

Source: Anderson Valley Advertiser 30 August 2000

I have sacrificed everything in my life that I consider precious in order to advance the political career of my husband.

- Pat Nixon

The Frivolity of Evil

by Theodore Dalrymple

[Excerpt]

There is something to be said here about the word "depression," which has almost entirely eliminated the word and even the concept of unhappiness from modern life.  Of the thousands of patients I have seen, only two or three have ever claimed to be unhappy: all the rest have said that they were depressed.  This semantic shift is deeply significant, for it implies that dissatisfaction with life is itself pathological, a medical condition, which it is the responsibility of the doctor to alleviate by medical means.  Everyone has a right to health; depression is unhealthy; therefore everyone has a right to be happy (the opposite of being depressed).  This idea in turn implies that one's state of mind, or one's mood, is or should be independent of the way that one lives one's life, a belief that must deprive human existence of all meaning, radically disconnecting reward from conduct.

A ridiculous pas de deux between doctor and patient ensues: the patient pretends to be ill, and the doctor pretends to cure him.  In the process, the patient is willfully blinded to the conduct that inevitably causes his misery in the first place.  I have therefore come to see that one of the most important tasks of the doctor today is the disavowal of his own power and responsibility.  The patient's notion that he is ill stands in the way of his understanding of the situation, without which moral change cannot take place.  The doctor who pretends to treat is an obstacle to this change, blinding rather than enlightening.

Source: www.city-journal.org

The Perfect Aphrodisiac

PT-141 (see article in New York Magazine for more about this drug) is a nasal spray that is apparently an incredible aphrodisiac.  Use it, and you are ready to shuck your clothes and get down to business in 15 minutes.

Is this cause for rejoicing?  Apparently yes to those people - 50% of men and most women - for whom Viagra didn't work.

I confess this puzzles me.  I feel sex is a connection between two people.  It can be based on mutual attraction, or (and this applies even between marrieds) it can be a transaction.  For example, the man wants sex because it relaxes him and he wants to get to sleep quickly.  The woman is exhausted and will have no trouble falling asleep within minutes.  Sex could not be further from her mind.  However, she knows if she complies, her husband is far more likely to attend the Snows' dinner party with her on the upcoming Saturday night.  So they have sex.  This is sex-as-transaction and is valid as long as both parties are willing participants.  Or maybe it's the wife who feels ageing, fat, unloved and wants to be cuddled and caressed.  Perhaps it is her husband who is totally whipped.  But he knows he will get the silent treatment for days if he shows his disinterest.  He hides it well and is soon caught up in their mutually pleasurable activities.

Now, enter PT-141.  Autonomy is reduced.  Who needs to develop a deep relationship?  Skip the work of sorting out what we like and don't like in a relationship.  Would marriages subsequently be saved?  Perhaps the marriages that were based solely on technique + ready availability.  It doesn't seem much different than taking Prozac so you can docilely accept a boring job, annoying kids and whining spouse.  Prozac + PT-141 = Perfect Marriage!  Busy people can have sex in 5 minutes or less!

Then why is a partner even required?  Or must the partner be human?  Why not just get an inflatable doll - the Japanese have perfected their design and manufacture - or a dildo.

Or a pig.

More than 40% of Americans Use Prescription Drugs

Source: www.ncsl.org

by Randolph E Schmid

Washington - More than 40% percent of Americans take at least one prescription drug and 1 in 6 takes at least three, the government reported Thursday.  "Americans are taking medicines that lower cholesterol and reduce the threat of heart disease, that help lift people out of debilitating depressions, and that keep diabetes in check," Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G Thompson said in a statement.  The annual report on Americans' health found that just over 44% of all Americans take at least one prescription drug, and 16.5% take at least three.  Those rates were up from 39% and 12% between 1988 and 1994, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.

The report, "Health, United States 2004," presents the latest data collected by CBC, the National Center for Health Statistics and dozens of other Federal health agencies, academic and professional health associations, and international health organisations. Americans' life expectancy increased to 77.3 years in 2002, a record.  And deaths from heart disease, cancer and stroke - the nation's three leading killers - are all down 1 - 3%, the analysis said.

The study also found that spending on health climbed 9.3% in 2002 to $1.6 trillion. Prescription drugs, which make up about 1/10 of the total medical bill, were the fastest growing expenditure.  The price of drugs rose 5%, but wider use of medicines pushed total expenditures up 15.3% in 2002.  Drug expenditures have risen at least 15% every year since 1998.  The report said prescription drug use was increasing among people of all ages, and use increases with age.

Nearly half of all women were taking prescription drugs - 49% - compared to 39% of men.  Usage peaked at 84% for people aged 65 and over, with the top rate at 89% for black women over 65.  Even for people under age 18, however, nearly 1/4 - 24.1% - were taking at least one prescription medication.  The rate rose to 34.7% between age 18 and 44; for those ages 45 to 64, it was 62.1%.

Source: apnews.myway.comAssociated Press 2 December 2004

The Drugs Song

Source: www.union.ic.ac.uk

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