Triptych on Drugs

"Inasmuch as there exists a history of art, there exists a time for art. 
Yet underneath the creative process, art also harbors a different, 
volcanic element." - Ernst Jünger

I. Drugs as Media

As soon as mushrooms begin to speak, we enter the domain of true 
knowledge: "I am old, fifty times older than thought in your species, and 
I come from the stars." When asked what brings it to earth, the mushroom 
refuses to answer: "If I showed you the flying saucer for five minutes, 
you would figure out how it works." Then why be a mushroom at all? 
"Listen, if you're a mushroom, you live cheap; besides, this was a very 
nice neighborhood until the monkeys got out of control."

Psychotropic plants are teleports to parallel worlds. Moreover, they help 
us visualize immaterial data; one can actually see the words drifting 
from mouth to ear. But are drugs clusters of information in their own 
right, or merely channels for insights that originate elsewhere? 
McLuhan's drug use is proved by his thesis that the medium is the 
message, although we know that he never used hallucinogenic plants. The 
sixties generation could only come to the conclusion that McLuhan's body 
produced its own LSD. A peculiar thing about the media guru was that he 
circulated his trips in the form of aphorisms, whereas the average user, 
unable to match the learned scholar, received nothing but images whose 
info value rose to dangerous synaptic levels. In the end, the 
democratization of total insight may have resulted in a new aesthetics of 
images, but it hardly produced the kind of world literature to pull the 
reader into the intoxicated universe.

Nowadays, knowledge about the gods, golden ages, extraterrestrials, 
little green men, the primal band and the global conspiracy is generally 
available, but turns out to be practically useless. At best, it stops us 
from acting and inspires us to stage effective power strikes. "To stand 
on the brink of unnamed regions, where no victory is to be won" (Benn). 
By definition, drug use is a form of entertainment, stuck in the stage of 
Shangri-la daytrips. Hang loose. The only scope narcotics have to offer 
is their dosage: Shall we take heroic doses or remain weekend users 
forever? Just as each medium creates its own mass, so drugs have 
conquered their own global markets. No creation without recreation. 
Provided there is enough room on your pocket calendar and bank account, 
those boring old personal surroundings can suddenly prove full of 
unsuspected suspense.

Because drugs distort and enhance local experience, they stimulate our 
acceptance of the world as it is. Everything is all right and the other 
is OK. The power of cinema and literature to give meaning and coherence 
to a series of unrelated details can also be attained through botanical 
means. Thus, a walk around town can turn into a video clip, Carnival in 
Rio, a Flemish primitive painting, a Robert Frank photo book, a Godard 
film with independent audio and video tracks, or a visual version of the 
Soft Machine, or it may end in a meeting with the zombie. Again, the 
happy end is a matter of knowing what dose to take.

II. Media as Drugs

Television boasts a strange creation myth. In the early 1950s, the CIA 
found itself faced with the question of what would become the postwar 
mass drug. It hesitated between LSD and television. The possibilities for 
control originally discovered in psychedelic drugs turned out to have 
several undesired long-term side effects. Subjects developed a cosmic 
awareness that transcended social order and professional ambition. It was 
decided instead to boost television's disappointing results in mind 
manipulation through the large-scale distribution of television sets and 
programs. The effectiveness of the new medium's stupefying power relied 
on the radical colonization of leisure. The televisual image package is 
much easier to control than the trip's sovereign phantasms. Television's 
side effects are negligible. Only a handful of civilizationists still 
warn against TV addiction. The rest of us have long since accepted the 
electronic drug's actually existing fascination and democratizing 
effects.

New media only exercise a hallucinogenic effect when they are first 
introduced; think of the first time you took your walkman for a bicycle 
ride, or your first steps in cyberspace. The mild intoxication caused by 
information-overload disappears once the user learns to divert 95 percent 
to the subliminal level. The two-minute trailer carries enough info for 
us to deduce the entire movie. Even video clips, for all their frantic 
editing, contain the 5 percent needed to give the full story. The latest 
thrill is when the obsolete 95 percent is presented as essential with 
omission of the 5 percent that really matters (as in "Twin Peaks"). 
Television's illuminating influence continues unabated: Year in, year 
out, it's always nice to bob on an ocean of information that bears no 
relation whatsoever to your own life. Television must keep up its 
touristic appeal: 95 percent bullshit and the promise of a real 5 percent 
to come. The zapping multimedia users are driven by their obsession to be 
there on time. Meanwhile, they keep on paddling and accept the general 
stupor.

III. Media and Drugs

The sober perusal of the media message soon results in isolation. In an 
effort to prevent this, coffee is now being served with the news and cans 
of lager accompany the feature movie. The ashtrays will be emptied at the 
end of the evening. Still, the recipient's dazed condition is considered 
taboo in media criticism. Movie critics get sick at the thought that the 
audience is usually stoned or drunk. Inebriated interpretation seems to 
be an insult to art. The pleasures of sex and drugs should be confined to 
the screen. Western civilization insists that the distance between work 
and appreciation be respected. It is unacceptable to hand in your social 
baggage with your ticket and watch the movie within its own context, 
rather than from some theoretical framework. The impending 
overdetermination through consumption frustrates cultural transmission. 
Feel free to give a personal twist to the plot, but do not exploit the 
images for a journey of your own. Now that we can understand the whole 
movie at once through expanded consciousness, the social ritual of 
revaluating the movie later seems ridiculous. The only entertainment left 
is to have a snort, drop or smoke pending the next kick.

Conversely, drugged data preparation has become an established practice. 
Among musicians, the interval between consumption and appearance has been 
carefully laid down, something that is gratefully used by the audience to 
adapt its own dosage to the volume. In the computer industry, the use of 
smart drinks among software writers has become an accepted fact; so have 
the trips that make the money market so profitable. American artists take 
pride in their top dealers, while newcomers have to resort to suspect 
hustlers. Experienced readers have a flawless sensitivity to their 
authors' level of intoxication. What is interesting is not writing about 
drugs or filming the act but Ronell's drugged writing, Lynch's stoned 
shoots, Benn's coffeetable oeuvre, Blavatsky's hash revelations, Turel's 
Burgundy thinking, Baudrillard's cigarette hype, Scholte's cocaine 
paintings, Perry's XTC art, Marley's ganja songs, the speed of punk rock, 
the grass dialogues of Altman, even the High Politics of a Clinton and 
Gore.

Drugs and media are equal partners. Until the computer is directly 
connected to the brain, and thus to the process of creation, accelerating 
and decelerating substances will be necessary to keep a cool head amidst 
the immense number of data interactions underlying the production of 
artificial realities. Drugs can be used as the metamedium to manipulate 
the technological media. Without them, we soon reach the limits of the 
tolerable. Drugs enable communication with (extra-)terrestrial 
intelligences. But at the same time they transform our individual nervous 
systems into technological media operating at the same speed as the 
noncorporeal equipment. Now that data generation without drugs has become 
inconceivable, it is time to let the drugs speak for themselves. Install 
Coke for Windows.
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