Dealing With the 'Legal Highs'

I found this article about the British struggling with their enormous addictions problem, particularly now with the addition of synthetic drugs:

Amy Winehouse Foundation launches drug programme

It is funny how they are not quite clear on the whole matter.  The UK can't let go of the 'harm-reduction model' that assumes drug usage cannot be eliminate, so you instead try to make it 'safe.'  This ignores the underlying question of why people 'need' to get high to begin with.  It also assumes that you can use mind-altering substances in a controlled and harmless fashion.

Drug usage by its very nature is an escape from inhibition.   That means it is means to leave the boundaries of control.  What 'harm-reduction model' people are trying to do is tame a monster.  It won't work, because nobody wants to use a drug with a 'domesticated' effect.  People use drugs because they are 'wild' and 'untamed.'

So, they roll out a 'harm-reduction' program at an addiction conference... pretty funny, eh?  They want to  'educate' people about the dangers of the new drugs.  We all know that education does not stop an addict who wants to use.  

The problem of the demi-legal new synthetic drugs is far more disturbing.  After all, there are plenty of cheap and legal highs out there, especially alcohol.  But, young people are chasing down more intense experiences.  Why?

This is the question we are not asking, because we don't like the answer we know by intuition: our society has created a false condition called adolescence that is failing our humanity.  Rather than maturing in a rather brief period after the full onset of puberty, we are holding people in an ambiguous state from just before puberty all the way up until their 30s.

In the full onset of sexual fertility, we force young people not to marry and have children through our social expectations.  At the time when their minds are the most open to learning trades and skills, we keep them boxed up in repetitive schooling where their natural skills are repressed in favor of sitting.  

So, these 'kids' are left frustrated and bored, and they seek so way of handling the 'foot-binding' of modern education.  The answer: drugs.

Addicts are often not stupid.  They are underutilized.  They sense the world, and their own absence from it.  They are sensitive and acutely aware, which is why they so often need to deal with the pain of existence with some kind of substance that numbs the heart.

Society would rather deal with the natural consequences of repressed humanity than the fear of change.  So, the battle will continue until the modern world awakens to its real problem.