The good pastor Cotton Mather, scholar and conservative churchman, was preoccupied with a variety of demons. His writings reflected, in the austere and heedful light of gallows hill, shapes tangible and intangible which infested certain New England women. These women, who were prayed over, occasionally given a clerical massage of breast and belly, or otherwise ardently beseeched to confess and repent, were sometimes hanged. That human form possessed by incubus, familiar, succubus, or other supernatural was no safe abode, no matter who was master or tenant. Suffice it to say, that once one chose or was chosen by the devil, the judges would do their duty and the hangman would do the rest. If, at the last moment, the gallows' crowd grew anxious over the wisdom of their law, Mather was there to reassure them that even if the condemned looked like an angel and wore the dignity of the cloth, there was no harm in hanging him, for it was the devil there.

Mather's demonology embraced powers that took another form, ones early alchemists had invoked in distillation, now our "spirits" of alcohol. For Mather this supernatural was almost tangible, although, as with witches, a presence was inferred only from what people did. "Demon" rum Mather called the spirit, and not altogether figuratively by any means. This demon, too, took possession, but only by summons and without the difficult legal questions that surrounded the identification of which was witch, in the case of incubi. With those who were rum-bedeviled Mather was gentler, although many claim he was always a gentle man. No loop-noosed rope was needed when the demon was so familiar—after all, it is the stranger who is the more frightening—so the drunkard was simply taken off to jail. Lest, in spite of clemency, drunkards' ranks be increased, there were pleas for temperance, implying that one might, like kings eating arsenic, ingest demons in tolerable amounts.

Kai Erikson (1966) has written of the Puritans of Mather's time and earlier and in particular of the Quaker heretics then. He makes two observations noteworthy here. One is that from the period 1651 to 16801 there was stability in the recorded number of wrongdoers from year to year; the character of offenses brought to trial might fluctuate, the count of offenses itself might vary, the kind of punishments meted out might change, but wrongdoers stayed nearly constant in number. Thus, when the years were heavy with heresy and the gallows with martyred Quakers were hung, these added no new number to the offender count. What Erikson suggests is that the Puritans had a quota for deviants; in each period, come what may, a certain number of persons, as with the constant Athenian tribute to the Minotaur, were the objects—if not the victims—of the administration of justice. It is to be noted, as an aside, that in each period a certain number were convicted for disturbing the peace—drunkenness is assumed to be the major basis for such convictions—but this number, in Puritan times, was the smallest of the offense categories. Erik-son's other point is that once a person had been defined as deviant—that is, had been arrested and convicted—more likely than not, a total characterological diagnosis had been made. Although most folk were foreordained for heaven, a few were meant for hell. These latter, the offenders, were permanently without the grace of God. Given an offense worthy of the wrath of God and man, the particulars of the crime did not matter; the man committing it had announced himself outside the law. One need know nothing more about him; he had revealed himself and his relation to God and man. His character established—unless he were to give himself over to complete repentance, which was deemed most unlikely—all the community could do was to curb his permanent wickedness. It is Erikson's belief that our prison system—and he gives no credit to modern rehabilitation-oriented penology—seeks to do only that. He cites penology's constant failure as proof.

What of these Puritans? What do they matter to us? Even though they are genealogical forefathers to only a few Americans, their ideas may nevertheless be prototypes for much current belief and practice with respect to drugs, illicit-drug users, and the treatment accorded these persons. In the terminology of our times, there is no place for demons frankly named or for witches and Dreadfuls, but the conceptual basis exists. We have the doctrine of the choice of good and evil, free will and responsibility under the law, and the implication that by certain significant acts a man commits himself irrevocably to the "other" side. We can act as though a man, once caught bloody handed in a stigmatizing horror, has moved so far away from outer norms of inner complexity that we do no wrong in judging all of him, his total character, by his one act, call him "criminal," "traitor," "hipp- ie," "drunk," or "addict." Importantly, we conceive of power. Outside of physics or politics that is rather vaguely defined, but generally we acknowledge forces beyond our control—and also beyond our understanding—which move us mightily. Also importantly, we conceive of intent and design. These imply that accident is not enough and that mechanical determinism is insufficient; the powers and events which affect us do so because of some relationship that we have to them.

It is only a step from power and intent to magic. Magic flourishes where there are wish and fear, uncertainty and weakness, cleverness and the need to explain. It flourishes when something needs to be done. Demons are one of the magical orders—a set of powers, on the one hand, and a set of explanations, on the other, a constellation of emotions and events along with the uncertainty necessary to nourish the extraordinary. Demons are a convenience, for they can serve as excuses for otherwise unacceptable actions and states of mind, as when a person is "overcome," "beside himself," "possessed," or, in legal parlance, is "temporarily insane." Demons are convenient theater, too, not only richly dramatic but welcome relief, for were they absent, one might be forced to face, perhaps, his real troubles.

What does the above have to do with drugs? In 1967, we conducted a small-scale study which sampled citizens in a small California industrial and residential city. Aimed at finding facts and attitudes relevant for crime prevention, the study began with this initial question: "What types of crime do you think are the most serious menace to the community?" The actual crime facts in this city are that the most frequently reported major crimes are burglary, auto theft, and those against property. Among the more numerous minor crimes, traffic offenses rank first, followed by malicious mischief and petty larceny. Murder and other heinous offenses do occur, but rarely. In 1966, for example, there were ten rapes, eighteen armed robberies, thirteen aggravated assaults, but no murders.

The menacing crime most often mentioned by citizens was unrelated either to crimes against property or against person. Drug use was reported as the greatest menace.' The prominent place accorded to drugs as a crime menace to the community, when added to the finding of an earlier survey (Field Poll, 1966) showing that of all public problems crime and delinquency ranked highest (that was before Black Power, Vietnam, and student-protest demonstrations), does indicate that drug use stands out as a problem, as a threat, and as a preoccupation in the public mind. Political leaders are responsive to such concerns. When President Johnson delivered his State of the Union address ( January 1968), his greatest applause reportedly came after proposals for suppressing crime and traffic in LSD. Given the available facts about drug use (see Chapters Eight and Nine), it appears that the menace unseen is greater than the presumed menace at hand—if by "menace at hand" we mean the incidence of self-damage due to mind-altering drugs or the incidence of crimes against persons and property shown to be attributable to the influences of drugs, with the exception of alcohol.

Mind-altering drugs have been invested by the public with qualities which are not directly linked to their visible or most probable effects. They have been elevated to the status of a power deemed capable of tempting, possessing, corrupting, and destroying persons without regard to the prior conduct or condition of those persons—a power which has all-or-none effects. Gradations of results are not ordinarily considered as a function of the factors empirically shown to be responsible for them, such as dosage, purity, route of administration, frequency of use, nutritional states, the presence of biochemical antagonists or potentiators, social setting, subject's health, intentions and personality, and the like. The "power" in drugs is such that those identified as users are immediately reclassified socially—most likely as unregenerate outcasts. Such a power comes close to being demoniacal. Has Cotton Mather's demon in rum changed his residence? Have witches turned now to technology whereby they lurk in heroin, LSD, methamphetamine, and other materials?

Mather's demonology provided for exotic demons—some tawny colored, some Indian red, some black, but notably few white like a Puritan—who invested a person and turned him, or in those days more often her, into a witch. Once possessed by a devil, people themselves became devils capable of all manner of fiendish exploits. The witch embraced his possessor—that is, they incorporated one another, so that it was natural for the hangman to destroy both at once, the two being in league. There were exceptions: confession and repentance could save a person. The repentant witch was not hanged then, sincé she had presumably by that act returned to mortal ground and, in so doing, had evicted her dreadful tenant in ways not made explicit. On the other hand, the unrepentant witch, who claimed there was no demon inside her, no witchcraft abiding, or even denied the phenomenon of demons itself—that woman went a-carting to gallows hill.

Now consider the modern view. One group of Republican legislators responded negatively to the report of a Presidential Advisory Committee (Walsh, 1966) proposing hospitalization for drug offenders. They objected to what they saw as the modern principle that "the individual is not really responsible for his acts . . . as long as he has indulged himself into dependence on narcotic drugs (Walsh, p. 1726)." For these legislators, responsibility for self-indulgence in drugs must be punished. Others in and out of government, the police, and prosecuting-attorney associations sometimes speak of the abominable degradation of the addict who, paradoxically a victim of his habit, resists all efforts to correct him. These people deserve, so the lobbyists say, the harshest penalties. The drug "addict" (and it is impossible to set forth here all of the confusion surrounding this word) in their view has succumbed to temptation, has embraced the evil power in drugs, and refuses correction whether provided in hospital wards or prison cells. The only recourse is further punishment for his wickedness, his demon and himself now being one. Death itself is not ruled out as too high a price for scourging demons—and death is the penalty for drug sales under some statutes. On the other hand, the repentant junkie or acid head is the most welcome of guests. The prodigal returned to give testimony is, as are other extreme and reversible converts—for example, the girls of Salem and Andover who experienced witches—harshest on the unredeemed. Witness Synanon's corrective abuse (always with pride) or the descriptions and alarms of the professional "I was a drug addict" on the stage of the high school auditorium. This is not to argue that those who have known the plague should defend it; rather, it is to suggest that the Puritan parallrls are striking. The demon and his possessed become one to frighten and repel the onlooker.

Recall the proposal that the fallen Puritan, so judged by one significant event or salient life style, revealed a total defect of character that made him a member of a different class neither likely to change nor be redeemed. In modern terms one thinks of prejudice and stereotypes, or of dominating-role characteristics. One also thinks of how difficult it is for an "ex-con" to get a job, for a nice girl to marry a criminal, for an addict to be conceived as personable or law-abiding in other ways, or for an acid head to be anything but totally irresponsible, amoral, and possibly crazy. Indeed, how easy it is to speak of drug users and to cast thereby into the pit, verbally and conceptually, the healthy student who has had a one-time casual experiment with marijuana. No problem exists for the "user" who is never officially charged, but for those who are brought before the bar, the casual experiment can be a lifetime stigma. There is no reason to exaggerate; even trial and conviction need not stigmatize in a day and age when citizens engage in civil disobedience, hold a jail sentence in respect, and when 40 per cent of our male children may expect to be arrested for nontraffic offenses (the President's Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice, 1967). Yet to be a convicted drug user does carry social penalties which can be sevre; these can include the character diagnosis of total undesirability. ^

The person who uses drugs illicitly but escapes without being caught is not condemned by the public even though his knowing friends may disapprove, or, if he advertises himself, like the hippies, he may suffer harrassment. Most users are, in fact, safe. Let us take the pilot-study data of Chapter Eleven, which reports that 18 per cent of the adult population have had one or more illicit-exotic drug-use experiences and that, for example, 5 per cent currently use marijuana and 6 per cent amphetamines, and then consider the 1967 drug-arrest figures for California (extrapolated from the semiannual report of the Bureau of Criminal Statistics), which indicate about 40,- 000 such arrests. Is it not dramatically clear that more people use illicit-exotic drugs than are arrested for using them? Assume that metropolitan adults have an overall annual illicit-use (prevalence) rate of 6 per cent, which we believe is a conservative estimate: 40,000 arrests yield for the state as a whole (population over age eighteen = 12,000,000) a rate of arrest of about 1/300. The proportion of illicit users in the adult population in any one year is at least 1/18, whereas arrests occur at the rate of 1/300, which means that the former exceeds the latter by a factor of 18.

If it is true that many people have used drugs illicitly but only a few have been singled out for punishment, how can we account for the fact? And how do we account for the remarkable fuss over those who have been caught in contrast to the presumably rare pillorying of those who are known to use illicit drugs but have not been publicly paraded? This is not to say that no concern exists over the "dark number," the unknowns. But it is a different kind of concern; the worry, it appears, is about their potential seduction, their potential castigation, not their present drug flirtation or even commitment. The case, of course, may be too strongly put, but what appears to occur is a sympathetic anxiety for the unidentified user or a fascinated interest if he is a hippie, contrasted to a public condemnation of the person who has been identified. It may not be incongruous, for it may simply reflect the value our culture places on discretion; the public is anxious for the undetected offender to remain discrete. Or it may simply be shared anxiety; each of us presumably has our darker side, our private log of our own offenses, and each of us as a "dark number" holds the hand of another, praying that he may not, as we may not, be caught.

The mechanics of the accounting for arrests for all offenses are easy enough. Police capabilities in narcotics and dangerous-drug control are established at the working level by those administrative decisions within law-enforcement agencies which set the number of officers working that form of vice. Whom these working officers arrest is, in turn, decided by their ability to gather evidence meeting the standards for successful convictions; it is also a matter of the working officers' interest in "making" particular kinds of cases with particular kinds of groups (Skolnik, 1966). Both administrative decisions and investigational arrest practices on the street also reflect larger influences: political and mass-media pressures, discretionary and discriminatory enforcement by class and race, available funds for law enforcement and the priorities for each departmental service, officer expectations of prosecutor actions and judicial response, strategic needs to protect informant offenders, and the like. These administrative and individual factors do account for the upper limit of drug arrests possible in a city. They do not account for how it happens that an upper limit is set far below the known prevalence of illicit-drug users in a community. An explanation to the effect that the police cannot do everything—that is, cannot identify and investigate all crime—is obviously correct. The explanation remains insufficient since it is not the police but the community at large which establishes police budgets and law-enforcement policies. It is to the community we must look.

At the community level several explanations are also forthcoming. One would hold that drug "abuse" is so widespread that control is impossible. Most police would concur since, in spite of public expectations to the contrary, police prevention and control of vice is at best limited. But if control is impossible, if drug use is that widespread, how does the community account for the potential vehemence of its response (defined by narcotics laws that provide punishments of two, five, and ten years, for example, for marijuana use) to those few offenders (the "quota" in Erikson's sense) who are convicted? The facile replies of deterrence, community protection, or offender rehabilitation are also insufficient since obviously large numbers are not deterred (although many more likely are) ; any actual menace requiring incarceration for community protection is negated by widespread probation and parole, as well as by the fact of little demonstrable menace existing among most nonalcoholic drug users and by the failure, so far, of rehabilitation programs.

Roche (1958) offers an interpretation of the system of justice which may be relevant to the incongruity and to the quota itself.

Crimes involving violation of strong moral codes are dealt with by what is a religious ritual, for the trial is an edifying morality play. As a society's morals are publicly reaffirmed, the observing citizen has his own moral constraints reinforced and his criminal impulses consequently further subdued. Think of the prosecutor as super ego, the judge as ego, and the accused as id caught in the act. Just as in Greek drama, the outcome is predetermined—not that all are convicted, but the guilty must fall. Roche contends that the trial also serves as a theater for the repetition of the crime and its symbolic undoing—this within the onlooker as well as for the society. Within the onlooker there also occurs the internalized ritual of guilt fixing, condemnation, and expiation. Applying Roche's scheme, one would also anticipate that the public trial reaffirms individual confidence in the mythical omnipotence of the entire system of justice itself. In addition, it may also provide him with a vicarious enterprise, for the onlooker's own criminal saga—and it is assumed here that every onlooker has violated taboo if only in his mind—remains undetected. The onlooker, a master criminal, triumphs while watching another suffer for what he himself has done. Unlike the Christian parallel, the citizen may simply be delighted rather than provided salvation. In any event, the accused, whether the lamb or the scapegoat, relieves others of their pollution or, in modern terms, their culpability or sin.

Such dramatic interpretations obviously have little to do with the day-to-day business of administering justice, neither its origins, rationale, functions, or ordinary effects. Myriad forces influence who gets arrested and who gets convicted. One asks whether any part of the immense and rightfully inspiring structure of justice's works is built upon other than a rational appraisal of the evidence concerning the effects of drugs, the known characteristics and actions of drug users, the evidence of harm done to persons and property in consequence of such use, a clear knowledge of the consequences of intervention by the system of justice on these persons and on others, and, necessarily, a clear appraisal of our moral values so that those sanctions not of evident empirical value are strongly consonant with our ideals and ethical principles. The answer is before us. The structure is neither rational and consistent nor necessarily consonant with our moral and political ideals. This does not mean it is capricious or erroneous by design or unworthy of our greatest respect. But because it is a moral system in a complex and changing society, it represents many roots, many ends, and many compromises. It also represents in some ways a mythology about drugs.

It is discriminating demonology which posits more devil per drop in some preparations than in others. Aspirin, tobacco, barbiturates, and tranquilizers are of little concern, alcohol occupies a middle ground, the amphetamines, which once were of little importance, are now growing quite worrisome, but it is heroin, cannabis, LSD, and other hallucinogens which are deemed most devilish—that is, awesome, seductive, and menacing. Such a discrimination is a bit awkward on strictly pharmacological grounds, but if the characteristics of users and settings of use are considered, we see that the attribution of menace is linked closely to the degree to which the committed users of each drug advertise their escape from the fold. But whether they are black sheep or otherwise, the menacing drugs are those whose devotees have strayed and make a point of standing apart.

It is to their drugs—the hard narcotics (excluding, of course, all medical opiates about which there is no concern), cannabis, and LSD—that the great powers to tempt, to convert, and to destroy are attributed. This description shows us something more. It shows us that these are the treacherous drugs. It is not only that they have led their users away from ordinary social styles. They are also conceived-of as deceitful; their allure leads to disaster not pleasure. This may simply be a dramatic allegory describing the conventional man's view of the social process whereby the committed users choose to become social outcasts. The drama of treachery is enshrined in the classic myth of the assassins whereby an initial taste of idyllic and sexual joy is followed by a bloody mind-killing enslavement. On the other hand, awareness of physical addiction as such and our cultural abhorrence of dependency in general is also involved, so that the drug is seen as betraying the hopes of the user, as well as separating him from society. No wonder that upon these drugs is placed a burden of public emotion: "disgust," "fear," "revulsion," "despair," and "anger" are the words narcotics officers in our earlier study used to describe public feelings.

Yet we would add another word, and that is "desire." "Temptation" and "seduction" as used to describe drug lures imply it. The term "pleasure-giving drug" acknowledges it, as do words like "high," "kicks," "joy-popping," and the like. The siren song is heard by all, and so it is upon these drugs, treacherous as they may be, that the burden of the public's great and unfulfilled desire is placed. There is the fancy of escape from pain and tedium, of gratifications in sex and gain, of perhaps—even as with the assassins and visions of "drug-crazed killers"—the license to harm, and perhaps of fraternal closeness, and, of course, of euphoria in all its forms. To these desires self-generated from the impulses in the inner man, add the songs of the prophets of the hippie scene, sweet melodies singing of love without obligation, of the vision of God beheld by those lacking either inner virtue or outer merit, of the joy of creativity without artistic skill, of aesthetic sensibilities without a sense of taste, of freedom without responsibility or consequence, of self-knowledge without self-criticism, of self-enchantment without increased complexity, of psychotherapy without doubts or anxiety, and, finally, of life itself without struggle. These are the siren songs. As with Faust, Satan promised a great deal for a very small down payment; out of that demonology Goethe constructed literature. For those who sing paeans of praise for the magic pills of pharmacology or their natural-growing cousins, the demonology is elaborated into a myth which constitutes a style of life. Those who' embrace it call it good; those who fear its treachery call it bad. As with all supernaturals, the drug demon has a Janus head, is polarized, divisible into glory and evil. His disciplines and those potential disciples who, suspecting treachery, are his sworn antagonists will be among the battalions of extremists on drug issues.

It is not likely that such spiritual extremes account for a large portion of the beliefs of ordinary citizens in secular America. There are a number of other possible sources for errors in assessments of the drug menace. It is possible that, as we (Blum and Associates, 1964) discussed in Utopiates, the very notion of private pleasure is the kernel of the matter. To have pleasure in this once work- and discipline-oriented society—a society now moving into the automated leisure of wealth, as well as experiencing the traditional enforced leisure of poverty—remains a matter of distrust. Disapproved private enjoyments, beginning with masturbatory "self-abuse" and extending through other forms of sex and drug-induced altered states of consciousness, tempt and repel us along life's way. Satan, of course, is the pleasure prompter extraordinary in any Fundamentalist ethic; it is no surprise that his agents—rarely so delightful as Screwtape—may constitute an essence of the fantasied pleasure of pills, pot, heroin ("snow"), acid, and the rest. Not that all the users' pleasures are fantastic, although it is difficult enough to say what pleasure is in tough experimental terms. Nevertheless, the titillating anticipations of the disapproving public are likely to exceed by far the transient euphoria or chronic stupor of any heavy user.

Proposals have also been made—again in Utopiates, as well as elsewhere—that suspicion surrounds the mystic in Western culture. Strongly faithful that God is there, the church is nevertheless dubious when anyone sees Him too easily. Whether investigating miracles or one-man cosmologists, the conventional religionist, regardless of whether his God is learned through doctrine or felt sublimely, takes a dim view of visions. Yet most intoxicants can produce such states and visions if the user is in tune; witness Henry James on alcoholic joy. The visionary may sense a blessing but the skeptic wonders how often a genie-God is bidden to arise from a pill. The alternative interpretations are two: either the chemical mystic has produced his own gods—which is heresy and vanity at the least and, though not likely, madness as well—or the powers he has seen are real enough but bear the wrong credentials. Whether possessed by madness or by real devils, the drugged mystic is fair game for an explanatory demonology. Both the possessed and the possessors are demons of a sort.

A third proposal is that ecstasy and excess are what is wrong in a culture geared to moderation. The committed user is an extremist in a special way. Modlin and Montes (1964) describe physician addicts whom they have studied. "They desire euphoria . . . they . . . find this part-of-the-time feeling of complete gratification, satiation, wanting for nothing; this episodic tension-free frustration-free nirvana is worth to them whatever they have to pay (p. 360)." This is a Dionysian view, that short periods of total fulfillment or total release are far better than chronic, boring adjustment. Consider the orgiastic frenzies of some revelers, whether on pot, acid, or alcohol, and compare them with a Dionysian frenzy—the former, sexual and the latter, bloodily religious. Both are a Mardi Gras cycle of feast and fast (or, in the case of drugs, the piper is paid perhaps with psychosis, hangover, drug dependency, and physical illness), rather than the pursuit of Apollonian balance.

The Bacchantae were possessed in their time; the heavy drug users ("druggies") of our time deny a demon, but for simple observers whose psychology does not account for ecstasy and extremism, some external force is required. "People just don't act like that!" A drug as power suffices, but its essences as expressed in frenzy are maenadic enough to raise the lingering cultural ghosts. So it is that drug and magical essence of demon may blend.

At another level of frankness, even the ordinary man knows that people are like that, or could be if allowed. His example is himself—not the "real" man but the might-be man. Social life requires control; technology requires efficiency; respect and esteem require restraint and regard. It does not take a Freudian to know that these are not easily come by or ever perfectly maintained. Within ourselves disruption awaits, be it pique or passion. When disruption takes place, a normal response is to deny responsibility and to blame something or someone outside ourselves. Most cultures stock a variety of blameworthy objects and notions to account for unhappy events or the misbehavior of people. In our society these range from "bad luck" and "an act of God" through personal culpability—for example, ranging from "bad blood" or "constitutional psychopath" to unpopular groups such as Communists, the "military-industrial complex" and "those people." Drugs occupy an unusual place as one of the few material substances still animistically endowed. The anima in drugs is culpable. It lures, enslaves, and destroys. So it is that for any man aware of his own vulnerability to disruption—whether it be loss of control, giving up, or madness—the animistic principle in drugs stands as a constant threat, the menace of which the public speaks.

Pharmaceutical materials do not dispense themselves and the illicit drugs are rarely given away, let alone forced on people. Consequently, the menace lies within the person, for there would be no drug threat without a drug attraction. Psychoanalytic observations on alcoholics suggest the presence of simultaneous repulsion and attraction in compulsive ingestion. The amount of public interest in stories about druggies suggests the same drug attraction and repulsion in ordinary citizens. "Fascination" is the better term since it implies witchcraft and enchantment. People are fascinated by drugs—or rather by their own and the mass-media fantasies about drugs—because they are attracted to the states and conditions drugs are said to produce. That is another side to the fear of being disrupted; it is the desire for release, for escape, for magic, and for ecstatic joys. That is the derivation of the menace in drugs—their representation as keys to forbidden kingdoms inside ourselves. The Dreadful in the drug is the dreadful in ourselves.

There is yet another perspective. For those who are already disrupted, mentally disturbed, the anima in drugs provides an excuse, a relief, and a measure of control for, as Sylvester and Oremland (1968) observe, the person who is hallucinating and then takes hallucinogens can blame his disorder on the drugs. He can say the drug produces the voices. The pathological dissociation process is pushed one further step so that the drug becomes the doer. As long as he doesn't stop using drugs, the disturbed person can believe that he could stop hallucinating if he wanted to—that is, if only he stopped drug use. By making the drug responsible, he joins his explanation to the popular one. By adding his voice to the popular conception he also aids his social adjustment, for his accounting for himself then conforms to a "normal" explanation. This accounting also provides "evidence" in support of a popular theory of drug effects. The disturbed person becomes proof of what others believe and, much like a Salem girl confessing to what witchcraft she has done, he becomes a welcome and much-cited case.

Still another aspect may be considered. Mather's demon rum turned out to be a bore after long acquaintance. He is being defanged as polar practices of teetotaling or drunkenness are slowly bemg replaced by moderate drinking. Alcoholism is with us but, as with the cultural evolution of madness, no longer as possession but as illness or, in another set of formulations, as interpersonal behavior complexly determined. The public has not become so well acquainted with other forms of drug use that familiarity allows acceptance of medical or psychosocial theories about what is happening. The illicit-exotic drugs and their devotees are strangers to this public, and it is only in response to strangers and the strange that romance and fascination develop. How many Americans sense transport to the nether reaches of the archetypical racial unconscious when smoking a Chesterfield? How many learn to "love" when drinking a beer and watching a ball game? Do they discover inner beauty when taking an aspirin for a headache? It is no surprise that romance requires a stranger. If there is to be that fascination, there is also idealization. Ordinary romantic attraction or hatred in the service of sentiment prefers simple objects. Pure evil is a loftier enemy; Iago as interpreted at the high school level is what is needed. Against pure evil one marshals the choicest antagonist—the innocent purity of the child, just as the fairy stories have it.

For the confirmed drug user, the druggie, the same scheme applies; only he reverses the field. He is the innocent and pure-borncorrupted only insofar as he has been soiled by his parents and other worldly folk. He is the flower child, free and loving. It is the rest of the world which stinks of evil, the evil of the city, of technology, of government—the overpowering evil of human beings living ordinary lives. The way both sides characterize themselves reeks, of course, of simplicity and sentimentality.

Sentimentality is a special notion. The Russells (1961) have considered it carefully and conclude that it is an elaborate deception based upon disgust, hostility, and projected feelings. It is linked, they say, to cruelty, addiction, and phobia. Its origins lie in parental hostility to the behavior or condition of the child—hostility which is introjected by the child, so that as he grows to manhood, the man too loathes that which his parents loathed. Let us say he is disgusted by dirt. Another person who is dirty arouses his hostility which, according to the formulation, becomes hostility perceived as coming from the dirty one. That unworthy must be punished. In so doing, the avenger relieves his own discomfort over his own hidden dirtiness. The punishment is visited in the name of virtue, cleanliness, crime fighting, protecting the innocent, and other sentimental appeals. The ideal, the sentiméntally surrounded symbol, is the opposite to what one has, as a child, learned is repugnant inside himself.

In Utopiates we presented the thesis that dirtiness is associated with illicit-exotic drug use in the minds of many extremists pro and con. For hippies dirtiness is renamed and becomes spontaneity, freedom, or creativity. To link these reactions to toilet training and parent-child discipline problems requires no deep insight. Recall that "shit" is a term for marijuana and think of "pot" as something other than for cooking. More important, consider the street cant by which the heroin user is "dirty" and becomes "clean" only when off the drug. The hippie druggie has other sentimental symbols; he applauds love, flowers, beauty, peace, and goodness while ironically, as the work of Hensala, Epstein, and Blacker (1967) shows, harboring massive hostility, which he may release indirectly—not that hurting parents by running away from them is really indirect. This journey, like other "trips," is more likely away from, rather than toward, others.

Sentimentality may also surround the vision of things that druggies are thought to do or adore. Sexual orgies imputed to the drug crowd are an illustration. It is not that druggies eschew sex and do not engage in plain and fancy fornication, often polymorphous to be sure; yet, what is remarkable is the preoccupation with druggie sex life on the part of antidruggies. Even though a safe presumption is that chronic drug use in fact reduces sexual interest and potency (it may, however, also increase the duration of the male erection), the popular image of the hippie, main-lining prostitute, or other freak-out is one of frenzied copulation. In the lore that titillating notion is likely to be enhanced by racial fantasies which center on the proverbial animal Negro male violating the drugged blonde maiden while a hundred other Dreadful Marvels coil in sweaty embrace. Sentimentality converts desire to disgust, envy to hostility, and fear of retribution to flattery. What emerge are, as before, an evil other, a righteous self, and a set of simplistic mawkish symbols triggering insincere but intense reactions. The sentimentality on the druggie side shows him acting as a cultural complement, doing his/her best to live up to the advanced billing with exhibitionism, artfully erotic posters, party pads, nude dances, conspicuous interracial hand holding, and girls who wear no underwear.

The manifestations of demons? Does the false simplicity, polarity, deception, and emotionality of sentimentality convert theinselves into a demonology? Yes, if one makes demons as the ancient Greeks did (Blum and Blum, 1968) out of unacceptable internal forces or of unachievable powers feared and flatteringly idealized. After all, the Eumenides, the "gracious ones," were in fact the avenging furies, the Erinyes. Whether it is necessary or not for us to admit druggie and antidruggie into an explicit demonology or simply to observe them respond to the sentimental appeals of a concealed demonology may not matter; the behavior is understandable by either scheme.

There is another aspect of drug use which relates to implicit or explicit demonologies. Mind-altering drugs are very likely to alter interpersonal relations. As we have reported elsewhere in this book, normal use is generally associated with enhanced social intercourse, although in unusual cases—whether of persons or whole cultures—the interference in social relations can be spectacular. In our study of narcotics officers as reported in Utopiates, one of their main complaints about pot heads was that they appear normal but behave in unpredictable ways. Such is not the case among drunks or junkies, for since they do not appear normal, those nearby are at least forewarned that the unusual will occur. What is implied in the officers' complaint about pot heads is their unresponsiveness or inappropriate responsiveness to ordinary social demands. This immediately brings to mind the charge that druggies are irresponsible and the counterdemand by hippies that every man should be left free to "do his own thing" regardless of conventions. In other words, the contention carried a step further implies that the druggie, whether intoxicated or not, is beyond the usual calls, manipulations, appeals, or predictions of the ordinary man using ordinary social devices. In a world requiring predictability not only for effective action but even for consistent self-definition, the presence of a group of erratic people who are not (yet) controlled by supervisorial institutions ( jails, mental hospitals, the military) or enticed into consenting ones (families, schools, churches, jobs) is unnerving. One may focus on the junkie, LSD tripper, or alcoholic to find the same phenomena, the core of which is self-induced transport away from the world of ordinary signals and responses.

There are others in our society who are also unable to function according to ordinary expectations: madmen, the witless, or those with 'serious physical illness, or infirmity. In each case a protective explanation is available: they are victims of misfortune who would act conventionally if they could. They have not "willingly" opted out.

The acid head, pot head, meth freak, or what-have-you constitutes a different case. They are not victims of misfortune; insofar as they have enjoyed opportunities and benefits of the middle class, they cannot be excused on the popular deterministic grounds of cultural deprivation, poverty, and so forth. Junkies and many alcoholics, on the other hand, may be so excused and, because of this, one sees a kind of paternal sympathy for them. Even so, all of the druggies appear to have chosen their poison. They claim free will, a claim the public cannot dispute since our cultural ethos claims it too. So by their own free will, they are unresponsive to pleas made to them in the name of parental love, civil authority, educated argument, material reward, moral rectitude, medical wisdom, self-esteem, or public respect. Pray tell what else can a society devise to influence its youth?

By being unresponsive, by not acting normally in response to the usual interpersonal symbols, the druggies not only prevent the parent, cop, teacher, and doctor from enjoying the normal sequence of social behavior but, in a more general way, challenge the efficacy of all our devices. They do "opt out" and in such a way as to make others feel impotent about guiding interpersonal relations. They advertise that they are outsiders, as the Greeks would say. They are "exotica," supernaturals who hail from outside-of-here. Unlike the demon of rural Greece whose origins as well as actions are exotic, the druggie has once been one of us. He has been our child, our spouse, our parent, or coworker—a member of the inner circle. It is after that he leaves us of his own free will, as the doctrine of responsibility has it. It is a very special leave-taking because it is a betrayal. He has once accepted the conventional system, been sensitive to our words, enjoyed our benefits, and then has found it all wanting. That druggie challenges what most hold dear and true, renouncing the array of enticements displayed in our cultural bazaar. We ask what kind of a person would do this to us? We find it hard to say it is our own child. He is not himself, he is a changeling, he has been seduced and subverted by some evil force more powerful than his innocence or our affection. He has been enslaved and that is why he does not return. Once again, the ordinary man is thinking in terms of those possessed and how the possessed of their own free will, as the Christian dogma sets it forth, have embraced evil.

A further disconcerting feature of druggie irresponsibility is that he can evoke predictable responses in us even though it appears we cannot do so in him. He knows the system that binds us and can employ it at his pleasure. We are vulnerable to his manipulation whereas we feel we cannot, outside of coercion, manipulate him. Think of the cases where a drunken relative has captured an entire family by using his drug, himself, and the conventional signs and symbols to imprison its members. Think of the amusement of the more clever hippie child pressing the buttons marked "sore" in his parents' psyches. By remaining responsible, we can be victimized—or so it may feel—by outsiders. Again, we ask the primitive question: what manner of creature is it who is able, however disreputable he looks, to arouse our emotions and flay our sacred sentiments while we make no dents in him? Such a creature, free, powerful, and in the service of discontent, is a Miltonian Lucifer. And that Loathsome One is the stuff of demons.

If the speculations presented in this essay are pertinent to an accounting of how people think about drug use, the conclusion is warranted that a mythology pervades our approach to certain kinds of drugs and to certain groups of drug users. For the sake of classification that mythology is demoniacal. If it is a demonology, then its essence is that the fervent among druggies and antidruggies are both true believers.

1 The hangings were in 1692, but court records used by Erikson did not extend that late.

2 The statistics for 1966 showed fourteen drug arrests, none for hard narcotics. During 1967, an increase in the rate of drug arrests was occurring; by the end of the year—several months after our interviews were completed—sixty-two persons had been arrested for marijuana and dangerous-drug offenses,