Yes, i've heard of all the good reasons to make guns, marijuana, weapons of mass destruction, eight feet fences in the suburbs illegal, but can we really illegalize a plant? Well, they have with poppies, though you can sell the seed. Cannibis is illegal, except in some counties in this great country. Some guns are illegal. Things they supposed would kill us, or inhibit overal sociall growth are banned for general use. But growth into what, must be asked.
A society that illegalizes those things that are good for us, are they really looking out for our best interests? Absinthe (the powerful drink that can cause severe hallucinations) is outlawed in the US. The plant wormwood is not illegal, but i suppose making absinthe could be. A native american woman i know makes a solution out of wormwood that when drunk can subdue any spider or insect bite. I'm not saying anything new, any thinking, common sense individual can make out we live in a society that is derailing the human race into extinction.
We must discuss then the specifics of why salvia and plants like it are so feared by the institutions that govern our daily lives. Recently, a boy committed suicide after he had induced a Salvia d hallucination and wrote a note that "Salvia had shown him the way." The mother, obviously distraught, has taken things into her own hands going so far to the high courts to save other mother's and children from the same occurence. Now although i pity the mother and could not imagine my own son dying from a seemingly innocous substance as a plant, i don't think any other person's ability to explore and test his own consciousness should be inhibited. This is the first account of anyone dying from Salvia d.
If one person doesn't like cannibis, it doesn't mean i shouldn't be able to try it myself. But this is the most mundane issue though it is an important one. The fact is the boy died. Facts also didnt' come out that the boy was on a lot more than a quick Salvia d hallucination. And i agree that anything that could harm my child should be challenged- candy from China? killed two children in Australia. No, thank you. But i know about their candy. Lead paint in the colors, on trains, on my computer probably. Do i know all there is to know about everything my child will do?
Rollercoasters can cause death, and for damned sake that car he will want when he is sixteen will probably see the curtains of death far more than any salvia d hit. But again, thats not the point. We teach our children about cars- how to drive, what the consequences are if they go too fast, drunk drive, get sleepy on the wheel. And that ladies and gentleman is the greatest point of all, if we are taught how to do something, and do it well, with common sense, safety-precautions taken, then we can do most anything, yes?
I will not suppose i know the young man that was overcome with things we will never know. I will not suppose to know how much he knew about salvia d. But how much did others around him know? If the mother had been open to her son's curiousity about drugs, natural at a young age, would he have been saved from this catastrophe? And neither am i blaming the mother. How was she to know about Salvia d? Is the plant a regular dinner conversation? Is it in the birds and the bees talk? Is it even in the drug talk- "Don't do drugs, pot, ecstacy, opium, and especially heroin. All these things can kill you- crack, cocaine, anything you have to use a needle for- oh and don't do Salvia d either." Probably not.
Salvia d like any other natural drug comes to us in our late teens along wtih mushrooms, acid, and marijuana. Is not the american youth experience loaded with images of teens drinking, stumbling in the creeks high on mushrooms? But this is the liberal experience probably. I know nothing of the suburban or city life- though my roomates in college went to to high school in Chicago on acid and one bottle of 180 proof vodka. Everymorning for home period. And she wasn't alone.
East coast college students came to school with an arsenal of over the counter pills, and not so over the counter pills too, their mother's cancer pills ranging from low opium doses to pills that felt like heroin itself. Drugs, unfortunately, come in all different shapes and sizes. And what we find is that all natural compounds and hallucinatory compounds come from nature- plants, trees, roots, seeds, and shrubs. Fungi can get you high too. Shoot, its almost like the natural environment wants you to get high, or die.
Your much loved garden plant, Foxglove, a gorgeous spike of purple flowers, if eaten is highly toxic. Not to be touched. Your Salvia d, if you were to gorge on your plant could probably send you into a cacaphone of mind disturbing or mind pleasing images. You choose. A not so common garden plant though fast becoming a staple in high end gardens, is your Brugmansia of many colors and its shrub sister plant, Datura, can take your mind completely away if digested. Completely gone. Do we not allow these plants to grow? Can something from nature be ultimately bad for us? Yes. But is it our duty to teach ourselves what roots not to eat, which to use for soap, which to smoke to relieve a stressful day.
But do we know how to make our own soap? I don't. But if we did we wouldnt' have to need a grocery store. Don't get me wrong, i'm not out there hunting with my bow and arrow. I like getting my chicken cut up, breasts and thighs seperate. My grandmother taught me how to kill, skin, and gut a chicken but you don't see me demonstrating this to my children on our dining table either. But perhaps if i were stuck on a farm, i would know how to chase a chicken and make it into soup in one hour flat. I could go out into the woods and recognize a potato leaf. I could survive and have a good time too, with a mushroom book in hand, I could continue to see Krishna himself everynight of my apocalyptic life.
But someone out there makes it so I have to FIND everything i need to know. There was a cold fusion car in the 50's. A man discovered gold molecules in Arizona in his dirt that would disappear at heightened temperatures (two dimensions?) but his land was bombed to high heaven. What do we really know about each other? And what do we really know about our plants?
Find out who is telling you what. What are they saying, and who is saying it. Because it matters. If a high school principal told me i should never try Absinthe, well i'd probably go out right then and there so i could drink a whole bottle (and wish i hadn't the next morning). For how much does that principal really care about me if my books are ten years old? If it was my parent telling me I couldn't take heroin or cocaine, I'd ask what they knew about it. They might go show you the bums and their riddled teeth and arms. But your parent might not tell you then and there that lots of people function on such drugs. Wallstreet? Actresses high on herion, high in publicity pictures.
And then you can talk about the ethical and moral issues about drugs. They might tell you there are appropriate times for everything. A wine glass at a family dinner? A must. A cigarrette during a funeral? hell yes, please. Drinking while in the car? Not the best time, young man or daughter. But that is because we care for you, we want to see you happy and loved.
Can we say the same for our government? The FDA approves drugs that are pushed by Pharmaceutical companies. They have side effects that make your butt run with diarrhea. They make your hearing go away but give you a boner. Which i will not judge, for when i am old, i will probably hail the great progress of medicine. But so far, medicine has been in the dark ages of our new century. They are archaic.
So give me new, give me learned, give me safe Salvia d.
Comments