Wed, Feb 06, 2002 10:26AM -0600

I have been reading A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick (probably most famous for Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? which was more popularly known as Bladerunner, the basis of the film with Harrison Ford in it.) As a quick synopsis, it's about this guy who doesn't know whether he is an undercover narcotics agent pretending to be a drug dealer or a drug dealer pretending to be an undercover narcotics agent. This is further complicated by the fact that the drug he's on--Substance D--basically gives you a callosectomy with repeated use, literally splitting your brain into two. (This is all on the back cover so I'm not giving anything away.) But, coupled with the things I've been learning in Pharmacology, it's sort of inspirational.

Once you've tried a decent variety of drugs, both legal and illegal, you might understand. It isn't that you realize that it's better to be on drugs, that people who do drugs are better people, or anything like that. It's that you realize that people who aren't even on drugs and would never touch the stuff are pretty much just as brain-damaged as people who are on drugs. The advantage that the user has is that at least they know they're brain-damaged.