They say, "it's always safer not to take drugs".
What of medicine, what of utility?
There's certainly need for antidotes,
and pain relief and even wakefulness.

They'd amend, "It's safer not to take drugs recreationally",
What of therapy and wholesomeness,
The spiritual aspect or communal element
of mind-expanding or pair- and group-bonding.

I ask, is there a healthy amount of recreational drug use?
Can we perform a hedonic calculus to determine
this amount, per person, per substance?
How do we treat with the ethics
of recreational drug use?
What do we owe
the virtues we have inherited,
How do we reckon with the vices identified?

Is substance exceptionalism ever warranted?
Do we deserve cognitive liberty?
Is such a thing coherent
given I may have become biased

in partaking or abstaining
from those drugs
I endeavor to study.
How do we determine what is pleasurable and right?

Let us focus on what matters,
Let other things fall to the side,

Let there be a wholesome truth
and an honest reconciliation,

Let our best selves manifest,
And let us encourage the best

in each other. I write this
'cause I reckon we're in it

for the long haul
surely as I know

I have value.
    I am courageous.
    I am worthy of love.​
    I give myself permission to be myself.
    ​I am enough.​​

I care for myself.
    I am mindful.
    I am strong-willed
    I have clear intention.
    I share in the good life with others.

Hone in on those genuine desires.
    Health.
    Prosperity.
    Passion.
    Trust.

Trust in the world.

Why was I so enamored as a young person
by the world I had found in addiction
and everything it encompassed;

The search, the climb
and the view from up high.
It was as a balm to my longing,
A salve to that infinite homesickness.

Why was I so enchanted as a young adult
by the moments we experienced
as companions of substance;

A breeze caught my sails
and I escaped the doldrums
of mundane existence, I knew
"Today is Yesterday's Tomorrow"

When things become difficult
I am not afraid to turn towards the source of pain.
Thus I asked: what is your greatest fear?

Failure is a path to learning.
To err is human.

You can never be abandoned.
Solitude is a blessing.

Damage is the chance we take.
It is the most genuine fear

known to all wounded healers.

I've been feeling that division
between the world of techne (these abstractions
of data) and the world of virtue (those intuitions
and stories). Those more meaningful, self-fashioned
but unscripted, a-textual. These to quantify
what is authentic, original, genuine.

It strikes me as near sacrilegious,
Intention mining,
Sentiment analysis,
Would it disenchant us, and profane
our living narratives. They would strip us of those
vestiges, and even belief: cognitive liberty
is the freedom to believe
in your story,

Some better habits
are written upon
our conscience,

And ketamine;
But you know what they say,
Irony is golden.

The warm, entactogenic transience
of 5-MAPB carried us into 2δ24, thus
we found ourselves in January uttering:

Tempus edax rerum (time devours things).