Sometimes you have to turn your entire mind off – like a meditative state. It’s essentially a switch you flip. I have taken to calling this particular moment I experience the “click”. My first experience with this click was while looming over an eighteen foot drop as deluge of water rolled through the concrete dam below me. Funnily enough, I had no plans on throwing myself over the railing and leaping into the river when I biked to the forest preserve an hour earlier, but sometimes that’s just the way the cards fall. 

 

Earlier that day while I neared the end of my bike ride, I was sitting down on the river side when I noticed a fisherman leave. As soon as he was gone, a few nearby kids sprang up and ran towards the dam. I watched them, and slowly my expression shifted from intrigue, concern, and finally to awe as one by one they climbed over the railing and leapt into the river. After they jumped, my first reaction was relief as they emerged from the water unscathed. I distinctly remember my second reaction being “I wish I could do that.” I made my way up to the top of the dam and walked over to one of the kids leaning up against the railing. I asked her what it was like.

 

“It’s really fun, and it’s generally safe too. The water isn’t very deep so just don’t dive and you’ll be fine,” she stated, “and you don’t have to jump if you don’t want to, of course.”

 

The thing was, I did want to jump. I was leaning against the railing looking down at the water and my mind raced with all the things that I should and should not do. How do I land safely? How far out should I jump? What if I mess up? How can these twelve year old kids do it with ease, but I freeze up? 

 

She left me to my own devices and sat on a step, observing me. I retreated back into my head and thought long and hard about the decision I was about to make. On one hand, this is the adventure I love. I know I can do it, and I know I won’t get hurt too. On the other hand… what? I know I want to jump in, but what’s stopping me? I know it is not my fear, and I know it is not my mind. I have made up my mind, right?

 

It was in that moment that I realized my roadblock: I had not relinquished control. There are times when the solution isn’t total control, but rather the solution is no control. When you give yourself up, there’s nobody to hold you back anymore. That which has no substance can enter where there is no space. I let go of the railing. I left my mind. *Click*. I jumped into the river. 

 

Since then, I have used this strategy numerous times in my life. I have gone out of my comfort zone and made the closest friends I have ever had. After previous months of anxiety and deliberation, I finally went to a support group for LGBTQ+ youth where I found comradery and connection I have never had before. I expressed myself fully despite my hesitation, and I no longer have any desire to go back. I thought you needed to have worked on self confidence and wit for years, but really all it takes is a click.

Dungeons and Dragons (or DnD for short) has transformed my life in ways I had not imagined it ever could. I didn’t even pay attention to the game until last August, where my friend James mentioned a Youtube series to me. This series is called “Critical Role”, which the Storyteller/Game Master Matthew Mercer describes as “a bunch of nerdy ass voice actors sitting around playing Dungeons and Dragons.” I decided to watch it, and by the end of the first episode I was entirely hooked.

Now, to step back a bit, what exactly is DnD? I know we have all heard of it, and I also know we all have the same stereotypical image of nerdy teenagers sitting around a table in a dimly lit basement rolling dice and playing pretend. While that image hits a little close to home, it is honestly not that far off, albeit it is lacking some depth. This is how I, personally, would describe Dungeons and Dragons: A tabletop role-playing game where a group of player created characters set off on adventures taking place in a world created by the Game Master. The Game Master (GM) tells a story, which is influenced by game mechanics such as rolling dice.

You see, DnD is really more of an engine rather than a full fledged game. It has a couple basic rule books, but other than that the creative liberty is entirely up to the GM and those who play in the GM’s campaign. It is a vehicle for storytelling above all, and that is why I love it so much. It lets you tell any story you want.

Going back to Critical Role, there are two reasons why this show has a special place in my heart. The first of which is its story. Throughout the first season (115 four hour episodes), we get to know the characters as well as their actors quite well.

There’s Vex, the Half-Elf Ranger with a bold personality, there’s twin Vax, the Half-Elf Rogue with a quiet, brooding attitude, there’s Keyleth, the happy-go-lucky Druid, there’s Percy, the witty Human Gunslinger descended from royalty, there’s Grog, the simple, unintelligent Barbarian with a heart of gold, there’s Pike, a charitable and sweet Gnome Cleric for her god Sarenrae, and last but certainly not least, there’s Scanlan, a charismatic and perpetually promiscuous Gnome Bard.

All of these characters are played expertly by their actors, and they all have an incredible amount of depth and complexity to them. I’ve laughed my ass off and bawled my eyes out to this show, and it has had such an incredible influence on me. DnD is much less about rolling dice and killing bad guys, and much more about telling a story and playing the role of a dynamic character in a challenging world.

The second reason I love Critical Role is the community. All the people who watch Critical Role (dubbed Critters) form a vastly diverse, kind, and accepting community. Occasionally, the cast of Critical Role will air an episode live, and there will be thousands of people watching it in person. When they are not live in person, they are live broadcasting on a website called Twitch, where they sometimes receive upwards of 50,000 live viewers. Almost every single one of these 50,000+ people have an unending stream of compassion for everyone around them (which I’ve personally experienced every time I’ve met another Critter in person).

I honestly do not know where I would be without this show. It’s always been a place for me to go if life gets difficult, and everyone in the community is there to support me. I’m very grateful that I stumbled into this community, and I’m going to continue being a Critter for a long, long time.

One of my best friends almost died of a drug overdose. On a car ride back from a visit to my grandparents’ house, I got a call from one of her friends that she had been admitted to EMS for taking too much Vyvanse. At the time, we weren’t sure whether or not she was going to live. She was 16 at the time, and besides her friends she had no support system and hardly anyone to reach out to who would know what to do. I was terrified that she was going to die. How could it have come to this?

In the United States, addicts and drug users are treated just like we treat murderers and rapists. This is in part because the American justice system treats drug possession and use as an issue of criminal behavior rather than a health crisis. In 2017, over 1.3 million people were arrested for drug possession (Drug Policy Alliance). These aren’t people who are slinging crack or dealing cocaine to those who are vulnerable; These are everyday individuals like you and me who happen to have used drugs and gotten caught. Ask yourself— what kind of culture has been been built where it’s acceptable for the police to arrest and kidnap you from your house or car? Why do these people have near infinite legal power over you— with the threat of violence and imprisonment— for possessing something that could not hurt anyone else? They do not exist to protect and serve citizens. They exist to protect and serve private property, the United States, and its unjust interests.

 

These unjust laws are exacerbated by the government’s ravenous pursuits for incarceration in the War on Drugs. While being interviewed on the infancy of the drug war, Nixon’s domestic policy adviser John Ehrlichman provided a damning quote on the purpose of drug criminalization. 

We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.

The United States government has known for a long time that what they are doing is wrong in innumerable ethical codes of conduct, yet they have continued to double down on drugs. They also don’t have the best reputation with anyone who isn’t a straight, white, Christian man. See: Our ongoing history of genocide, enslavement, white supremacy, colonialism, etc.  The purpose of the drug war is just like that of the United States’ other militaristic pursuits – centralization of power and the persecution of minorities. While the government is one problem, there’s another important question to examine; Why is this attitude so present in American people?

It is like this because Americans have the problem of moralizing people who use drugs. I know we have all heard “Good people don’t do drugs” at least once in our lives, and there’s been a history of programs in the United States that treat addicts as lesser human beings. People don’t use drugs because they are morally inferior. They use drugs because they either want to have fun or they want a method of escapism. As a note, these are not mutually exclusive things. When my friend started using drugs, she was only in it for the fun. As she expanded her horizons from cannabis to prescription pills, it quickly turned into an addiction she had to feed. As she started to lose her grip on her life, her drug use transformed into escapism. The vast majority of this downward spiral was fueled by the lack of support she had. She had nobody to reach out to, and this only furthered her addiction. After witnessing this, it became even more obvious to me that the solution to drug problems is not throwing addicts in prison. The solution is helping them. 

Drug addiction is not a moral crisis, but rather, it is a health issue. So what then could we gain from treating drug addiction the same way we would any other public health crisis? A shining answer lies in the country of Portugal.

After struggling to deal with the rising amounts of hard drug use in their population, they decided to decriminalize all drugs. This did not lead to a drug frenzy; it led to a notable decrease in drug usage. Coupled with public health programs like needle exchanges so that heroin users had a dramatically lower chance to contract AIDS as well as having drug users meet with a team made up of doctors, lawyers and social workers, this solution worked out fantastically. From 2001 to 2017, drug deaths decreased from 78 deaths per million to less than 10 deaths per million.

 

 

We can even see preliminary results from more progressive methods of drug policy such as drug assisted psychotherapy. The Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) is another promising program for utilizing the positive effects of some drugs. Currently, their main focus is testing the use of MDMA (ecstasy) in combination with a psychotherapist to help treat PTSD in adults. These things are groundbreaking, but not for the reason you might think. They’re not groundbreaking because of the results – anyone who knows a thing or two about drugs understands the positive effects that some of them can have as medicines. The reason that this is groundbreaking is that it shows the United States is finally starting to head in a different direction, even if it is at a snail’s pace. Slowly but surely, we are starting to treat drugs and drug users the way they deserve. 

 

 

I’d like to propose a few alternate scenarios. Alternate scenario one: Say that someone buys LSD from an online darknet vendor. While this is significantly safer than buying them in person, a lot of people run the risk of dying from unregulated drugs bought online.. This is not because drugs like psychedelics or other related substances can easily kill you. Illegally bought drugs kill people because they are frequently laced with substances that are lethal. The problem is that people don’t know to test their drugs. There are legal drug testing kits available online, and using them will save lives. 

Here is alternate scenario two: Suppose someone overdoses on opioids. Currently, most people don’t even know what an opioid overdose looks like. They’d likely have an ambulance called for them, but for some folks it could already be too late. Now, imagine that all students go through a harm reduction program that teaches them signs to look for. Imagine that schools, public facilities, and other private buildings have designated areas for Narcan, a drug used to prevent people from dying of opioid overdose in emergency situations. Some students may even carry a Narcan nasal spray on them. I know I would. All the money currently put into finding and prosecuting drug users would be directed towards programs specifically made to educate everyone about different drugs and their uses and dangers. 

The last alternate scenario: Suppose we go back in time to when my friend just started her abuse of prescription stimulants. She wanted to help herself somehow, but she had nowhere to turn to. Imagine that, instead of feeling lost, she could call a phone number to be directed to an addiction counselor. She could have the option of going somewhere that, rather than abusing addicts, treats them like human beings. She could go somewhere to get the help she needed without that being a euphemism for a cell. This is not idealism. It is what needs to happen nationally to save thousands of lives. Harm reduction is the only path forward.

Works Cited

Aleem, Zeeshan. “14 Years After Decriminalizing All Drugs, Here’s What Portugal Looks Like”. Mic, 2019, https://www.mic.com/articles/110344/14-years-after-portugal-decriminalized-all-drugs-here-s-what-s-happening. Accessed 18 Oct 2019.

Baum, Dan. “[Report]: Legalize It All, by Dan Baum.” Harper’s Magazine, 31 Mar. 2016, https://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/.

“Drug Policy As A Health Issue”. American Civil Liberties Union, 2019, https://www.aclu.org/other/drug-policy-health-issue. Accessed 17 Oct 2019.

“Drug-Induced Deaths In Portugal 2019 | Www.Emcdda.Europa.Eu”. Emcdda.Europa.Eu, 2019, http://www.emcdda.europa.eu/countries/drug-reports/2019/portugal/drug-induced-deaths_en.

“MDMA-Assisted Psychotherapy – MAPS”. MAPS, 2019, https://maps.org/research/mdma. Accessed 17 Oct 2019.

 

I would try and cite these but the school recently did a blanket ban on drug related web searches, (which is dangerous, by the way I legitimately just wrote about that) so I can’t access them and get all the information needed to properly cite them. 

http://www.drugpolicy.org/resource/drug-decriminalization-portugal-learning-health-and-human-centered-approach

http://www.drugpolicy.org/issues/harm-reduction

Sacred Things

There is an idea held at the hearts of nearly every person alive today. Every government, every culture, every scientist, every leader, sage, and savior. It may, in fact, be one of the only uniting factors (besides human emotions) between nearly all modern cultures to date. What is this binding link, one may ask? Is it love? In a sense. Is it the desire for peace? Surely not. It is the following: We can -no, we must– know what is good and evil. 

Everything that we call evil stems from this assumption. In part because the existence of good necessitates the existence of evil, and in part because we’re quite particular about what we call evil. People have taken to calling things that hurt them evil – death, war, loss, things of that nature. To an extent, this makes sense. However, I’m not here to argue about that. I’m here to talk about the more pressing matter that arises from this way of thinking (dualism between good and evil, that is). The idea that growth is good. 

People often talk of carbon emissions from the pre-industrial eras. They say “Before the industrial revolution, carbon dioxide levels were stable. Now, they’re hurting the environment!” That’s true. But what’s more fascinating is what people say right after: “Oh well, that’s what it costs, I suppose.” The cost of…? What do people mean when they say this? Advanced society? Health and safety? There are two important things to ask here. Clearly, one of them is “What are the benefits and detriments of a technologically advanced civilization?” The second is whether or not a healthy, safe, and fulfilling life can be achieved without the so called “virtues of industrial civilization.”

Firstly, what are the benefits and detriments of a technologically advanced civilization?

The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly

The most visible and tangible boon of advanced technology is the interconnection between all people. On a global scale, people are able to share information at the blink of an eye and gain valuable insights into other people and themselves that didn’t exist before the invention of the internet. The vast majority of the people on this planet have the knowledge of the entire history of the human species at their fingertips. 

Similarly, another positive gain from this level of civilization is the increase in quality of life. People with previously incurable diseases now have cures, widespread increases in production have enabled many more people to have access to goods they didn’t have previously, and scientific discoveries have been unearthed that we didn’t even know about before (Ismali). It is undeniable the growth that this type of advanced technology has brought us, so what could there be to argue against with respect to the core tenants of technological civilizations?

Quite a lot, actually. I’ll touch on my personal two biggest factors, one of which gets talked about frequently and one that gets little attention. The first is climate change. All of us practically hear about it daily, so I will only briefly touch on the same effects of climate change that get talked about non-stop.

 Deep down we all know, unfortunately, that disastrous global average temperature rises are not going to be averted. Eating less meat and taking shorter showers won’t save the world. CO2 levels are rising beyond historical levels. Expect 2°C by the mid century and at least 3-5°C by the end of the century (World Meteorological Organization). How did we get here, exactly?

 

I say that we’re at this point not because of gross misuse of our innovations and technologies. I say we’re here because at its core, industrial civilization is not sustainable. It never has been and it never will be. The core motivator of industrial society is growth, simply because it states that growth is a good thing. It is fantastical to think that advancements in technology will save us, because technology is what got us here in the first place. In the words of Audrey Lorde, “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.”

The other important idea to touch on is the idea of alienation. This takes shape in alienation from our communities, from our friends, from nature, and from ourselves. This is more of an emotional concept, and because of this I’m going to include a poetic writing of sorts that aptly conveys what I mean. This is from one of my favorite writers, known only to me as Will.

I remember watching you smile through the greenest blades of grass. We would lay in the grass where the deer slept and carve tunnels to one another and roll around in the drunken happiness of sunshine and summer time. And we exclaimed, “I wish to live like this forever!” But we were fools! Idiots! Madmen, for we still thought that life was joy and leisure and happiness. With age we have seen the truth, that life is for work and pragmaticism and that dreams are only psychedelic distractions from what we ought to be doing: working hard and long. We are men now and men work hard and long and find joy only in drinks. Then we should go home and regret those drinks and pray to God that we be forgiven for seeking pleasure. For pleasure is the ultimate displeasure and the only good is slavery. The dreaming children we once were are fools! (@wild_resistance)

I am watched by cameras every day. I am monitored by computers incessantly. No matter how hard I try and how far I go, I cannot escape the roar of cars and the droning of airplanes. I’m terrified of the ever growing possibility that there is no more peace and no more quiet. How can I be myself in this environment? I feel like a specimen – labeled, monitored, studied. I know I am not the only one who feels like this. 

Now, of course, I must address the main question I had when I first reached this conclusion: Is it worth it to get out?

Maps and Dreams

It’s important to note that I’m not advocating for some sort of return to primitive ways of living. Besides being laughably idealistic, it’s unrealistic and not desirable. I, personally, have tried digging up burdock with sticks and sleeping in lean-to shelters that I’ve built with branches and twigs. Not the nicest experience. I also know that most people don’t want to go back in time like that.  Some people need plastic straws to live, and halting the use of them would be murderous. Still, something needs to happen.

Despite our growing interconnection, we grow further apart every day. With growing advances in surveillance technology, it seems to me that we are monitored like those in maximum security prisons. With ever expanding growth, colonialism and ecocide continue to rage onwards in deluges of horrific inhumanity. With this in mind, it is obvious to me what must happen next.

What I propose is a life without the constraints technology places on us. To quote the Tao Te Ching, “The more prohibitions you make, the poorer people will be. The more weapons you possess, the greater the chaos in your country. The more knowledge that is acquired, the stranger the world will become. The more laws that you make, the greater the number of criminals (John McDonald Translation, 57).”

In lieu of this idea, I return to my previous notions of growth. Once we as a global society cast away the idea that we need to grow to save ourselves will we finally be closer to true freedom. No more prescribed dogma. Instead, horizontal organization and communal cooperation. No more environmental degradation. Instead, we take what we need and we compost the rest –  factories, coal, and all that kills us. No more alienation. Instead, we obliterate the duality between humanity and nature and cast away the desires of Manifest Destiny, Industrialism and totalitarian forms of agriculture. 

When I first confronted this idea, I told myself good luck. I called myself an idealist. However, I soon came to realize something. If this seems idealist, tell that to the !Kung and the Iroquois Confederacy. Tell that to the Zapatistas and those in Rojava. Tell that to people all around the world and all throughout history who live and have lived outside the lines in love and exuberance. They succeed in this not because they strive to live outside the boundary, but rather because they destroy the boundary and grow wildflowers in its place. For our own sake, I can only hope we do the same.

 

Sources:

https://hbr.org/2009/04/4-arguments-against-technology

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/ee82/fe6864523c98752e5d25af764db3c4eca746.pdf

https://www.information-age.com/modern-technology-advantages-disadvantages-123465637/

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climate-change-un/global-temperatures-on-track-for-3-5-degree-rise-by-2100-u-n-idUSKCN1NY186

https://www.instagram.com/wild_resistance/