Erminia, I've taken dexedrine (i.e., amphetamines) since adolescence for
narcolepsy and couldn't have become a functioning, reasonably productive
adult without it. It's not the same drug as Ecstasy, is it? And how is it
possible for heroin addiction to lead to cancer of the eye? There's such a
mixture of literary, anecdotal, and pharmaceutical material in this post
that it's hard to know what to make of it, to tell you the truth. (I'd be
interested in hearing more about the connection between drugs and _Wuthering
Heights_, though--perhaps the most baffling of your allusions here.)

In any case, I can assure you that people who take addictive drugs
(including pain killers) for medical conditions don't ordinarily even get
high on them, much less addicted to them. Me, I get off on such delightful
brews as David Birc's "Question of Origins"!

Candice




on 1/3/02 3:24 PM, Sonia Lipenolch at [log in to unmask] wrote:
> ------------------
> Thank you Chris,
>
> ...I find amazing how a substance such as the
> methylenedioxymethamphetamine, designed to have the effects of
> amphetamines (meaning soliciting in a chemical way a state of supposedly
> efficiency and alertness ) can end by being defined as "ecstasy", which
> is infact a state of emotional rapture, an extraordinary elevation of the
> spirit, as when the soul and the body are stimulated by love (He on the
> tender grass would sit, and hearken even to ecstasy. --Milton. ), art,
> religiosity (Like a mad prophet in an ecstasy. --Dryden.), poetry (Our
> words will but increase his ecstasy. --Marlowe. ), music and/or sex, which
> are all substances other than chemical.
>
>
> As a matter of fact, in medical terms, a state of “ecstasy” (like that
> of "stupor”)describes a condition of complete suspension of sensibility,
> of voluntary motion, and mostly of mental power.
>
> As for the “drugs”, well, this is a term which has replaced “ pharmacon”
> (see pharmacology, the study of the effects of poisons over some state of
> illness) , (in Greek, meaning a “poison” being found as having
> therapeutical effects, but still noxious at various degrees of intake and
> abuse). So, away from the real meaning of drugs, as medical herbs, they
> designate something that cannot be trusted and that while healing one
> part, cause damage to another (the secondary effects or counter-effects
> of pharmacos/medicines).
>
> We all have agreed that we are not at all converned with “drugs” as
> illegal substances, but merely with drugs as artificially made chemicals
> (presumably intially taken for medical reasons, or entertainment, or with
> the intent of improving one’s performance in a given activity.)
>
>
> We are dealing (as in the case of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights) with
> histories of physical and mental illnesses caused by serious drug and
> alcohol dependency, which one should help those who are addicted to learn
> how to escape from to come back to normal life (although, I can see that
> the majority of those who abuse drugs, in fact wish to escape from the
> horrors of what we call a “ normal life”).
>
>
> Although I am sure that all of us do not wish but to speak about these
> issues concerning health, I thinki that nobody can sustain a sympathy for
> drug dealers, who are still the only way to get to have access to drugs
> (with the due exceptions of the civilized countries where drugs have been
> legalized).
>
> When I was at high school, one of my class mates died of an heroine
> overdose all alone on a bench, in 1978, at the age of sixteen. At leat
> five people I knew from the same period have died of AIDS, other two
> recently died of heart attacks caused by cocaine addiction (one was 35,
> the other 41). In my town, we all saw them slowly killing themselves and
> could do nothing.
>
> In my circle of acquientances, some kids of rich families who had become
> heroin addicted went to communities to rescue themselves, buhaving in many
> cases more than one relapse and more than one permanent damage.
>
> One of my school peer friend, Y , (he was a baron who lived in a
> beautiful ancient villa), who, together with his sister J, had been
> heroin addicted, died years later for a cancer of the eye caused by heroin
> abuse.
>
> But the most terrible story is that of X (J's husband and brother in low
> of Y who, as a youn man, had been a serious case of heroin addiction and
> had finally rescued himself in India, becoming a Buddist: his 17th years
> old son died suicidal at the age of 17, because he had not passed the O
> Level exams (sadly, the child had been conceived while the two parents
> were still drug aburers. He was therefore always put under an incredible
> pressure to be "proper", and when he failed his parents expectations,
> failing the exams, he could not cope with the fear of being rebuked. Of
> course, the disproportion of the child's reaction to failure is indicative
> of a family problem, probably caused by their heavy past history of
> addiction. Their story is very sad and everybody feels sorry for this
> tragedy in my town.)
>
>
> If we mind of the physical harm caused by drugs, then we are deling with
> pharmacological issues, say with the part of medical sciences responsible
> for the study of the action, use and effects on those poisons (also
> medicines and drugs) on our body and brains.
>
> Sorry, but after having said what I said about the people I knew – which
> just account for my transversal experience – you will be no longer
> surprised if I am reluctant to define MDMA “ecstasy” in the modern slang
> implying "delight".
>
> I would rather go back to the ancient roots of the term "ecstasy" , from
> the Greek ekstasis, astonishment, distraction, ( from existanai, to
> displace, derange ) to the Latin extasis (out-of-place), terror,: ek-,
> out of; see ecto- + histanai, to place;
>
>
> Erminia