Richard Koenigsberg wrote:
> There has to be a "war against drugs" because drugs are pleasurable. They
> feel good because they release the individual from the burden of society. To
> be a "head" is to try to move into one's own head--to get to a place where
> culture cannot enter. This is the old story of "civilization and its
> discontents." Participation in society means removal from the dream of
> paradise. We all have a desire to remain in paradise. In order to affirm the
> social order, it is necessary to wage war against this impulse. The war
> against drugs is war against the wish not to partake of society.
>
> Society can't say that certain kinds of drugs feel good. It is the job
> of culture to sequester the energy of individuals so that this energy can be
> used to fulfill the "requirements" society. This is what Freud meant by
> sublimation.
>
> Indeed, we NEED (the mental representation of) society in order to
> defend ourselves against our own wish for regressive withdrawal, the desire
> to abandon the entire "spear chuckin' scene" in order to return to
> "paradise."
>
> One conceptualization of culture is any idea or institution-the
> attachment to which--helps the individual move away from regressive,
> narcissistic fantasies. Culture provides and performs a developmental
> function. The fantasy of paradise is projected into the future. We work hard
> (abandon infantile gratification) in the hope that someday we might be
> ushered into the "hall of fame"--become one of the immortals.
>
> In the good old days, there was a thing called repression. This
> mechanism worked to ban from consciousness potentially pleasurable impulses
> that threatened the coherence of the self in its relationship to the demands
> of society.
>
> Now, we're aware of many impulses that once were repressed. The war
> against drugs is war against the internal desire to use drugs. We attempt to
> conquer an impulse by waging war against it.
>
> War in general may be understood as the externalization of repression, a
> way of conquering or defeating an impulse by attempting to destroy an object
> in reality that symbolizes that impulse. War (an activity presumably
> directed toward the "external world") functions in the name of denying an
> inner thought or desire. One attempts to kill off in the world a symbol of a
> forbidden wish within oneself.
>
> Richard Koenigsberg