Introduction
When the battle to rescue Helen, the daughter of the god Zeus, from Troy was over and the war was won, Odysseus set sail for home to rejoin his wife Penelope and his family in northwest Greece. His resourcefulness and heroism won him great acclaim but the journey home was long and arduous. Fantastic obstacles and challenges delayed him but he did not give up and continued on his way. Unfortunately for Odysseus and Penelope, the fall of Troy took place more than 3,000 years ago when communication across seas and continents was not what it is today. He could not call her by telephone to tell her where he was or that he might be delayed, nor could he send her an e-mail or report his status on Facebook or Twitter. So as the years passed Penelope was losing hope. One day during this time Telemachus, the son of Odysseus, traveled with his mother and family to celebrate the marriage of the daughter of the king and queen of Sparta, Menelaus and Helen, the woman whom Odysseus helped rescue from Troy. The king and queen recognized Telemachus as the son of Odysseus and during the celebration told him stories of the great deeds and adventures of his father at Troy. Menelaus then recounted the challenges of his own journey home and shared news he heard along the way that Odysseus was still alive but held captive on an island. Telemachus decided to set sail to find his father. Meanwhile, in attendance at the wedding celebration were many rival suitors for the hand in marriage of his mother Penelope (and of course the wealth that rightfully belonged to Odysseus). Learning that Telemachus planned to look for his father, they plotted to kill them both should they return. Naturally, when Penelope heard of this plot she became distressed, thinking that she would surely lose not only her husband but her son as well. To help her forget her sadness and find serenity Helen put a potion in the wine and gave it to Penelope. A few hundred years after the events were believed to have taken place, the ancient Greek poet Homer told the tale of Odysseus and his journey home. According to his modern translator, concerning Helenâs potion he said:
As Homer told the tale, that night in her sleep Penelope saw the goddess Athena who sent her a phantom in the form of her sister, Iphtime, to tell her not to worry.
It is possible that in Robert Fitzgeraldâs mid-twentieth-century award-winning translation of the original Homeric epic poem the word âopiateâ was used in a generic sense and not necessarily as a direct reference to opium itself. Nonetheless, by the twentieth century scientists were arguing that what Helen gave to Penelope was in fact an extract of the opium poppy (Lewin 1931). More recently and more broadly, by the later years of the century in his history of opium and opiates Michael Brownstein, a cell biologist at the National Institute of Mental Health, wrote, âDespite difficulties in interpreting ancient writings and archeological data, a picture of opium use in antiquity does emerge from themâ (Brownstein 1993:5391). The point here is that thousands of years ago, people living in society here on Earth had substances that today we would call drugs and they were using those drugs to make themselves or others around them feel better, or at least different. Clearly drugs have been part of society for a long time.
In essence those substances we call drugs include natural and manufactured chemical compounds that when ingested by individuals pass from their body to their brain, interfere with chemical signals normally transmitted by the brain, and affect their body or mind in one way or another (cf. Lewin 1931). Over the course of history, people living among other people in society have used drugs for a variety of reasons including, for example, medicinal or therapeutic purposes to heal what ails them (Chou et al. 2009; Kalso and Vainio 1990; Mather 1995; Reisman 2011; World Health Organization 2007) or egoistic purposes to find comfort, contentment, or simply pleasure in their daily lives (Goode 2012; Huxley 1954; Marlatt 1996; OâMalley and Valverde 2004; Weil 1972). Today, thanks to the wonders of modern science and the prevailing principles and practices of contemporary business, we have lots more drugs to choose from and those drugs can do lots more things for us and the people around us.
Some of the drugs available to people in society today are accessible under the law and some are only accessible and able to be used outside of legal authority. Considering just the drugs that are sanctioned by the laws of various societies around the world, Thomson Reuters in their annual pharmaceutical industry Factbook for 2014 reported, âGlobal pharmaceutical sales reached an all-time high of approximately $980 billion in 2013 and are expected to rise to $1 trillion this yearâ (http://thomsonreuters.com/press-releases/092014/pharmaceutical-factbook-2014; accessed May 25, 2015). Some of those legal drugs are available over the counter in a variety of retail establishments to almost anyone who can pay for them, and others cannot be obtained without special permission, such as a prescription from a licensed medical provider. According to the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA), an agency âresponsible for protecting the public health by assuring the safety, efficacy and security of human and veterinary drugs, biological products, medical devices, our nationâs food supply, cosmetics, and products that emit radiation,â there are more than 300,000 drug products covering 80 therapeutic classes of drugs available over the counter to anyone who asks for them at retail establishments across the country (http://www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/WhatWeDo/default.htm, accessed May 25, 2015). Clearly in contemporary society a lot of different drugs are easily available under the law to a lot of different people for a lot of different purposes.
Thanks to centuries of social and political turmoil and the values that rose to prominence as generations of people and eras of civilized societies struggled over resources, power, and control, today we have layers and layers of formal and informal social norms to guide us and, to the extent possible, to regulate our choices about everything, including what drugs we use, when we use them, how we use them, and why we use them (cf. Sumner 1907). Laws are instituted in society as formalized norms so are housed in a variety of recognized social institutions with governing authority. Through public programs and policies they present themselves to us as enforceable guidelines and standards for behavior and action. But science and history have shown us that different drugs at different times in different circumstances have different outcomes in terms of both social and personal experience. Some drugs sometimes under some circumstances do good things for people as individuals or as part of a community of people, and other drugs or even the same drugs at different times under different circumstances are harmful to the people who are involved with them or to the people around them. So making law and making policy about drugs is not so simple. There is no doubt that drugs can be a source of harm to people and those around them, but there is also no doubt that other or even the same drugs can also be a source of good. The problem in particular has been to determine which drugs at what times and under what circumstances need to be controlled or regulated to eliminate or at least minimize the negative outcomes and at the same time which drugs could or should be more openly available to maximize the positive outcomes (cf. Brownstein 2013). Considering this dilemma and focusing on the negative outcomes, Avram Goldstein wrote:
The point is that to appreciate and benefit from the good that drugs can do for society and for individuals while at the same time managing the harms that drugs can do requires a lot of knowledge about drugs and then careful thought, analysis, and planning about how to appropriately allow and limit access to which drugs, when, by whom, and for what.
Complicating the problem of determining how best to deal with the mixed blessings and dangers of living with drugs in society is the fact that drugs have always been and always will continue to be part of our social experience. Across time and space drugs have been omnipresent in all societies. Late in the nineteenth century, while writing the rules for sociological method, Emile Durkheim argued that as a social phenomenon crime is normal in the sense that it âis present not only in the majority of societies of one particular species but in all societies of all typesâ (Durkheim 1938:65). That is not to say that the commission of a criminal act by an individual is necessarily normal behavior, but rather that the presence of crime in society is normal and to be expected and found in any and all societies. In that sense drugs are normal in society. That does not necessarily mean that personal or collective involvement with drugs or the use of any drug at any time for any purpose is normal behavior by an individual member or group of individuals in any society. But the case can be made that the pharmacological substances we call drugs in one form or another for one purpose or another are and have been found and used throughout history in all known societies. Andrew Weil has written extensively about drugs and medicine and has argued that drugs are not only normal in society but to try to discourage their use by people living in society could make things worse rather than better. He wrote, âLike the fantasy that drugs can be made to go away, the idea that people who want drugs can be discouraged from using them is an impossible dream that gets us nowhere except in worse troubleâ (1972:189).
Some drugs sometimes in some circumstances will be beneficial to individuals and their societies and some drugs sometimes in some circumstances will be harmful to individuals and their societies. But either way drugs are a normal part of society and it is inevitable that people living in any society will be involved with drugs in one way or another at one time or another in one circumstance or another. To maximize their benefit and minimize their harm to people and society the challenge will be to continue to study and learn what drugs are harmful and what drugs are beneficial to what people and their social life at what times under what circumstances in what ways. There is a lot of research that has already been done and consequently, while there is much we have yet to learn, there is much we already know about drugs and society.
