Guest speakers: Richard Glen Boire, Erik Davis, and John Gilmore
PROGRAM NOTES:
(Minutes : Seconds into program)
05:08 Richard Glen Boire: “What if the government could inoculate you so you couldn’t get high, so if you took a drug it didn’t work in you?”
07:53 Richard begins a discussion about the U.S. Government’s research into anti-drug drugs, which he calls “Neurocops”. “So the question is, is it actually possible to treat illegal drug use with other drugs?”
08:25 Richard Glen Boire: “What I think the drug war is about to become is like truly a “drug” war. The war of your favorite drug against the government’s anti-drugs.”
09:09 Richard Glen Boire: “One of those [“anti-high”] vaccines that is now under production (they have these for all the major classes of illegal drugs right now, including marijuana), and this is the one that’s been tested now in humans, is only known as SR141716.”
10:10 Richard Glen Boire: “The most recent Drug Control Strategy Report, this year’s, has this term, ‘compassionate coercion’. This is a real government publication. [quoting] ‘Compassionate coercion requires the use of innovative techniques for fighting addiction, such as specialized pharmeceuticals.”
15:40 Richard Glen Boire: “What makes this kind of thinking by the government possible: That we’re going to create a vaccine, and you druggies are going to get it so you don’t continue to transmit your disease, is what’s made the drug war itself possible, which is the government’s total disrespect for what we call Cognitive Liberty. And that is the right to control your own neurochemistry, to think the thoughts you want to think triggered by whatever inputs those may be as long as you’re not causing harm to others.”
16:43 Richard Glen Boire: “I think we need in this country a Roe v. Wade of the mind.”
17:11 Introduction of Erik Davis who talks about “Waking Up In The Matrix”
20:16 Erik Davis: “What I talk about in Techgnosis is the way this sort of Gnostic hunch, this sense that there is some kind of false construct that I’m in is really part and parcel of technological society.”
21:02 Erik Davis: “By ’spirituality’ I really mean something very simple, which is the process of inquiry. And I mean inquiry on multiple levels. . . . Constant inquiry, such as ‘what is going on here?’ “
30:14 Erik Davis: “As Dale Pendell said in a line that has just stuck with me, ‘When one learns to face the gods directly one no longer fears facing a king.”
30:37 Introduction of John Gilmore who talks about our Constitutional rights of anonymous travel and speech.
32:48 John Gilmore: “When the government says, ‘Terror . . . danger . . . evil . . . trouble,’ people sort of zoom in and look at that stuff. Instead, I kind of back away and say, ‘What are they doing around the edges while they’re trying to get your attention over here?’ “
34:10 John Gilmore: “If you focus on the ability of individuals to do evil you forget about the ability of individuals to do good.”
36:40 John Gilmore: “The Bill of Rights, the Constitution, these are memes. They’re not alive. They’re not self-executing. They require human hosts to carry them and spread them around, and I’ve been infected by that meme, and I’m carrying it around.”
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I can’t believe I missed this episode. Great information and well-explained. There may be some paranoia, but it has only served to make me want to be more open about my support of these psychedelic substances.
And though paranoia might not be appropriate anytime, I think that fact that people are EVEN TRYING to do things like create cannabis “vaccines” or other similar pharmalogical methods of blocking certain states of consciousness is wrong on so many theoretical levels that the first talk still had merit.
No one likes doom and gloom, but usually in every speech there are a few pearls of wisdom and a few bits of truth, maybe more than a few. I’m not ready to right off the Richard’s concerns, even here in a slightly more liberal 2011.
Comment from original blog page: http://www.matrixmasters.net/blogs/?p=197
jabuhrer
I hate to say it, but this podcast was kind of a downer. Some of the ideas just seemed a little too paranoid. I think Paranoia is one of the worst aspects of our community, and it sometimes has as much of a negative impact as the cops themselves.
It really reminds me of Terence McKenna’s great comments about how this community often seems overly interested in the legalization of its practices and yet not interested enough in the legitimation of its ideas.
I’ve always felt that responsible drug users and responsible gun owners are sort of faced with the same hard fact: it is never in your best interest to pretend that problems don’t exist, because they do. It is much better to carify that responsible and sensible activities aren’t part of the problem. I certainly don’t want to end up like the gun nuts with a sticker on my car that says “They can have my stash when they pry it out of my cold, dead hand.” A typical psychedelic explorer and a violent meth head with 2 or 3 burglary convictions don’t have anything in common, and unforunately the non-using public doesn’t have much of a grasp on this. If we focus on issues like this rather than knee-jerk reactions to law enforcement’s most psychotic fringe fantasies (like dope vaccines developed by mad scientist bogey men) then we might be able to make some headway. Think about it. Being paranoid about a drug vaccine isn’t going to do anything to stop it from happening. The only thing that would really help is if public opinion about certain drugs and drug users undergoes a shift towards the sympathetic. This will only happen if more people come out of the psychedelic closet and enter an intelligent and respectful dialog with other real people.
What if a private pharmeceutical company announced that they have developed a sodomy vaccine which will help law enforcement agencies enforce the sodomy laws? There would be public outrage and no law enforcement agency would bother to introduce it’s general use. Why? Because a lot of Gay Rights groups as well as regular people have fought long and hard to help the public realize the fact that homosexuality is neither a sickness nor a crime. Homosexuals couldn’t “un-invent” the plethysmograph the same way we can’t “un-invent” drug vaccines, but we can borrow a page from them by trying to introduce reason into the public discourse, which can (with time) make the laws and the methods of enforcement irrelevant.
So, while I agree that we very much need a “Roe v. Wade of the Mind,” I think it wouldn’t hurt to have a “Stonewall of the Mind” as well. Come out of the psychedelic closet, take your place among society, and by doing so make that society better. Do it on the social level, with real people, rather than waiting for some lawmaker to do it for you. The only other option is to further isolate ourselves with NRA-style paranoia.
garion333
I agree with what jabuhrer is saying, except those comments only really apply to the first talk. John and Erik both spoke on topics that have a bit more grounding, so don’t run away from this podcast if you are expecting pure paranoia.
Only a different note, Richard mentioned antabuse, which is the drug that makes people sick when they consume alcohol. Well, while antabuse has been on the “market” for quite a while, it’s never been a very good substance. It is nearly impossible to control someone’s consumption of antabuse. (Keep in mind that antabuse doesn’t stop alcohol from getting into your system, it just makes you sick by converting some of the alcohol. Meaning, you can drink) While that doesn’t speak exactly to what Richard’s talk was about, the idea of drugs blocking other drugs is not new to society. And the results have been modest, at best.
That being said, obviously a vaccine would be a different scenario, but how often would you have to get his vaccine? Is our body going to create antibodies that block THC from interacting with the brain? I doubt it. Especially since almost all drugs don’t have a specific receptor in the brain . . . it’s a shared receptor. If you block the synaptic uptake of one thing, it’ll block it for another.
Anyway, interesting talks nonetheless. Thanks for putting them out there!
garion333
Oh, and in reference to the medical model of addiction . . . that’s just one of the model’s. Unfortunately, the government has adopted it, but it is just one of the model’s out there.
terranhealer
Garion333 makes a valid point by stating the multi-synaptic pathways of many neurotransmitters, like dopamine. IF you blocked this with a vaccine (not sure how they would get a permanent block anyway) you would cause vaccine induced Parkinson’s disease. The other obstacle, besides vaccine induced biochemical meltdown, is licensure. Currently the FDA is responsible for licensure of all vaccines. This is a process that requires hundreds of millions of dollars. First proof of concept is accomplished in animal models. However the animal models have to very closely match humans. Second, phase 1 trials test safety and dose in small numbers of humans. Phase 2 trials tests the same parameters as phase 1 but in a statistically larger sample population. Phase 3 trials test if he drug is efficacious. And phase 4 trials are post licensure. All along the way safety is the biggest concern. Vaccines are pulled from the market very quickly if they are determined to be unsafe. SO whomever is funding the vaccine production takes a huge financial risk. Then there is the issue of acceptance. It was mentioned that drugs are written in the same laws as infectious disease. However, I see no politician that would mandate the whole population to be vaccinated with one of these. It would be suicide for their career. In Texas there was a big controversy over mandating the Human Papilloma Virus vaccine to school ages children. IT received a huge backlash from the people mostly because of its $340 price tag. But, this is a vaccine meant to protect people from disease and reduce health care costs whereas an antidrug vaccine would not. However, I am stepping over my bounds because the speaker did imply only a small fraction of people might receive such a vaccine, such as prison inmates and persons on probation.
Tim
SR141716 is NOT a cannabis vaccine . . . such things don’t exist. Cannot exist. sure some drugs can actively stop the effects of other drugs, temporarily, but a vaccine for psychedelics is tantamount to altering the very physical make-up of our cells genetically.
http://www.3dchem.com/moremolecules.asp?ID=348&am…