Urine Trouble

[Lightning Rod]

"I ain’t gonna pee-pee in no cup, unless Nancy Reagan’s gonna drink it up."

-- from the 1987 song "I Ain’t Gonna Piss in No Jar," by Mojo Nixon

Religion forever masquerades as science. This is the result of the circular mental construct of the faithful who think that believing something makes it true. Lie detectors and urine tests are prominent examples of this prejudicial way of thinking.

Urine sane if you believe either lie detectors or piss tests are useful science. Both 'sciences' are about as reliable as ducking. In the 1600's it was thought that the foolproof, scientific method of determining if a person was a witch was ducking. This was a process of submerging the victim in the local pond or river and if he or she bobbed to the top it was proof of an association with the black arts because the body was rejecting the baptismal water. If the victim drowned, he was innocent. I guess that was considered good science in the 1600's.

Pee tests and lie detectors are about as scientific as ducking. They both purport to measure something, and that sounds scientific. But in both cases what is being measured has nothing to do with what you want to know. After all the measurements, urine the dark. No lie.

I'm sure urine sisting that our transportation systems and workplaces are somehow protected by having workers piss in a cup but urine correct. What a pee test tells an employer is not whether or not a worker is immediately competent to do his job but whether or not he has smoked a joint in, say, the past thirty days. Which gets us back to the ducking stool. Urine vestigating something entirely different with a piss test than competency; what urine vestigating is witchcraft. Heresy.

What urine deavoring to discern is not job competency, but moral rectitude. Urine sinuating that the person with proven illegal substances in his body is more likely to steal, cheat, neglect duties, lie on his income tax and fuck white women.

If urine terested in whether an employee is competent to do his job, you give him a dexterity test when he punches in on the time clock. It takes thirty seconds. it's cheaper than chemistry and it tells you what urine terested in. But urine shurance company gives you a clause, a way out of urine debtedness in case of an accident. If an employee has an accident on the job and urine volved in a compensation lawsuit, urine titled to make the employee take a piss test. The results of this test can relieve you of urine demnity. If the serf fails the test, urine the clear. He is obviously a witch.

All these methods of ceremonial science are really for the same purpose. They are tools of intimidation. When urine timidated, you are more compiant. If, when urine tering the employment office, they hand you a cup and wire you up to a polygraph, urine clined to feel like you have been rendered naked and that urine terior life, your most secret and solitary thoughts, will become known. The illusion of omniscience is powerful. If you can make someone believe you know their every thought and action, urine control.

The Poet's Eye sees that the ducking stool is better science than piss tests and that urine danger of losing urine dependence if you surrender your bodily fluids. Reject the baptismal water. Prove urine league with the devil.

[abcrystcats]

This is very funny, L-Rod, and too true. Why not give a simple dexterity test? But it's not dexterity they are testing for, but moral rectitude ... hmmm .... The witch hunts did not end in the 16th century, they are beginning again now. And I doubt that they will stop with mere drug tests.

I believe that in the future they will include other special things, such as one's financial solubility, personal life (including, but not limited to, family connections), and political affiliations. You do know that large corporations now favor potential employees with "balanced" personal lives? A single person might find it difficult to locate a job, living up to such standards. An indebted person might never get out of debt if they could never find a job to work down previously incurred financial complications. And I suppose we all ought to vote Prez Bush in for a third term if such a thing is made possible.

Love this wonderful world we're living in, where our most deep dark secrets are exposed for public scrutiny, whether or not they interfere with our public functions.

For the record, I could have been high as a kite most days on my previous job, and being high would have made me a far better employee to them, not a worse one. Being sober on that job speeded its termination. Reality in some places is almost incomprehensible to any sane and intelligent human being ...

[Lightning Rod]

thank you, cat

It's always the purpose of The Poet's Eye to entertain rather than to convince.

there is a speech in the pookah papers where billyB postulates that soon there will be detectors on everybody's sewer lines that can digitally record what you had for dinner last night and what drugs you took.

they'll have us all lined up for DNA smears someday, claiming it is for our own good health.

hide and watch.

[Doreen Peri]

Urine credible, Lightning Rod!

And just when you think urine visible, urine tuitive as hell!

Not only that urine alysis was quite provocative!

But that's because urine dignant oftentimes and who could blame you because urine strumental in viewing things in a way which some may find pee-nalizing but that's a good thing.

Urine dicative of what every columnist wants to be!

It occurs to me that this piece may piss some people off but that's ok, because urine doctrinating them to see things how you do, which is a good thing!

I'm telling you, babe, urine sights are fabulous!

That's all I've got to say!

[abcrystcats]

sorry if anything I said seemed facetious! It wasn't. I am convinced, and drug testing is the tip of the iceberg -- or witch hunt.

[perezoso]

Effectively written and I tend mostly to agree with you, El Rot. The potential for cops and "crimefighters' to manipulate or lie about a urine sample is surely there. In LA County it's common knowledge that cops and probation officers tamper with the piss test samples--for drugs or alcohol-- of "perps" they don't care for. Certainly for pot or alcohol it's a joke and injust, though drunk drivers are scary and very dangerous; thus piss testing suspected drunk drivers is not a bad idea.

As far as as other drugs I am not so willing to buy into the traditional libertarian arguments as I once did. We might not care if co-workers at the software company or news desk are stoned , as long as it doesn't affect our dept.s' performance. I DO worry about speed-tweeking big rig drivers or pilots, engineers, or even teachers. In the central valley--say Fresno or Kern--some teachers are known to tweek . If your child was in class with a tweeker bitch or coach you might not dig it. So I hate to say it I am in favor of piss tests--at least for speed or crack or heroin-- for teachers and other professionals such as doctors and lawyers. The cops should also be tested. ( LA cops are known to use drugs and even sell the shit they confiscate). Trusting the cops is not so great, but if psychologists and med. people are involved it might not be so bad. I am in support of decrim. really, but meth is a real problem in Cali. Having known a few tweekers I must say they are usually nut cases if not nazis and a real danger. Nothin' worse than some hick (or ho) who has been bingin' for two weeks in his trailer park and is hallucinating and out to break into houses or mug or kill people .

[Dave The Dov]

Here's what Old Uncle Bill had to say about it!!!!



Just Say No to Drug Hysteria!


by William S. Burroughs


(a foreward from THE DRUG USER DOCUMENTS: 1840-1960, which originally appeared in a slightly different version in HIGH RISK: An Anthology of Forbidden Writings.)


An interesting case of mass hysteria is described in a book called The Medical Detectives, by Berton Roueche. The outbreak occurred at the Bay Harbor Elementary School in Dade County, Florida. A girl named Sandy, who was slightly ill with the flu, collapsed in the school cafeteria and was carried out on a stretcher as the next shift of students was coming in.


Sandy, it seems, was a sort of leader. In any case, the students started keeling over in droves. An officer from the Department of Public Health was dispatched to the scene. Fortunately, he recalled a similar case some years back from another high school, and quickly made a diagnosis of mass hysteria.


The remedy is very simple -- get back to a calm, normal routine as expeditiously as possible. Get the children back to their classes. And that was the end of the outbreak. However, if the hysteria is not recognized and acted upon, it will go on and get worse and worse, as happened in the previous outbreak.


When hysteria is deliberately and systematically cultivated and fomented by a governing party, it can be relied upon to get worse and worse, to spread and deepen. Recent examples are Hitler's anti-semitic hysteria and present-day drug hysteria. The remedy is simple -- a calm, objective, commonsense approach.


* * * * *


Remember that during the 19th and early 20th centuries -- the "good old days," which conservatives so fondly evoke -- opiates, cannabis tinctures and cocaine were sold across the counter from sea to shining sea, and the United States did not founder as a result. There's no way to know exactly how many addicts there were, but my guess would be -- surprisingly few. Many people simply don't like these drugs.


In England, before America persuaded the English government to adopt our own tried-and-failed, police-and-sanction approach, any addict could get heroin on prescription and fill his script on the National Health. As a result there was no black market, since there was no profit involved. In 1957 there were about 500 addicts in the UK, and two narcotics officers for metropolitan London. Now England presents the same dreary spectrum as the USA -- thousands of addicts, hundreds of drug agents, some of them on the take, a flourishing black market, addicts dying from OD's and contaminated heroin.


Obviously the sane, commonsense solution is maintenance for those who cannot or will not quit, and effective treatment for those who want to quit. The only treatment currently available is abrupt withdrawal, or withdrawal with substitute drugs. Withdrawal treatment dates back to early 19th century British drug essayist Thomas De Quincey. Surely they could do better than that. Indeed, they could, but they show no signs of doing so.


* * * * *


Consider alternative therapy that is available: acupuncture, apomorphine. Both therapies work because they stimulate the production of endorphins, the body's natural regulators and pain killers. The discovery and isolation of endorphins has been called the most crucial breakthrough towards understanding and treatment of addiction since addiction was first recognized as a syndrome.


If you don't use it, you lose it. The addict is ingesting an artificial painkiller, so his body ceases to produce endorphins. If opiates are then withdrawn, he is left without the body's natural painkiller, and what would be normally minor discomfort becomes excruciatingly painful, until the body readjusts and produces endorphins. This is the basic mechanism of addiction, and explains why any agent that stimulates the production of endorphins will afford some relief from withdrawal symptoms.


De Quincey suggested that there may be a constitutional predisposition to the use of opium, and modern researchers speculate that addicts may be genetically deficient in insulin. I have heard from one addict who received an experimental injection of endorphins during heroin withdrawal. He reported that there was none of the usual euphoria experienced from an opiate injection, but rather "a shift of gears," and he was suddenly free from withdrawal symptoms. Researchers believe that endorphins, since it is a natural body substance, may not be addictive. Only widespread testing can answer this question.


Since endorphins were first extracted from animal brains, it is at present prohibitively expensive: $2000 a treatment, just as cortisone was very expensive when it was first extracted. Synthesis has brought the price of cortisone within reach of any patient who needs it. Is any of the $7.9 billion in Bush's latest War on Drugs plan marked for the synthesis and widespread testing of endorphins? I doubt if many of the congressmen who draft "tough drug bills" even know what endorphins are. And the same goes for the so-called drug experts who advise President Bush.


Billions for ineffectual enforcement.


Nothing for effective treatment.


* * * * *


I quote from a reading I have delivered to many receptive university audiences. This is an old number that is once again current and timely. It is called "MOB," for "My Own Business," drawing a line between the Johnsons and the shits:


This planet could be a reasonably pleasant place to live, if everybody could just mind his own business and let others do the same. But a wise old black faggot said to me years ago: "Some people are shits, darling."


I was never able to forget it.


The mark of a hard-core shit is that he has to be RIGHT. He is incapable of minding his own business, because he has no business of his own to mind. He is a professional minder of other people's business.


An example of the genre is the late Henry J. Anslinger, former Commissioner of Narcotics. "The laws must reflect society's disapproval of the addict," he said -- a disapproval which he took every opportunity to foment. Such people poison the air we breathe with the blight of their disapproval -- southern lawmen feeling their nigger notches, decent church-going women with pinched, mean, evil faces.


"Any form of maintenance is immoral," said Harry, thus rejecting the obvious solution to the so-called drug problem. On the other hand a Johnson minds his own business. He doesn't rush to the law if he smells pot or opium in the hall. Doesn't care about the call-girl on the second floor, or the fags in the back room. But he will give help when help is needed. He won't stand by when someone is drowning or under physical attack, nor when animals are being abused. He figures things like that are everybody's business.


Then along came Ronnie and Nancy, hand in hand, to tell us nobody has the right to mind his own business:


"Indifference is not an option. Only outspoken insistence that drug use will not be tolerated."


Everyone is obliged to become hysterical at the mere thoughts of drug use, just as office workers in Orwell's 1984 were obliged to scream curses, like Pavlov's frothing dogs, when the enemy leader appeared on screen. And they'd better scream loud and ugly.


William von Raab, former head of US Customs, went even further: "This is a war, and anyone who even suggests a tolerant attitude towards drug use should be considered a traitor."


Recollect during the Dexter Manley famous-athlete-cocaine-dealer flap, Eyewitness News was prowling the streets, sticking its mike in people's faces. One horrible biddy stated:


"Well, I think making the money they do, they should serve as an example."


She gets plenty of mike time.


And here a black cat working on some underground cables, straightens up and says, "I think if someone uses drugs, it's his own bus---"


He didn't even get the word out before they jerked the mike away. Freedom of the press to select what they want to hear, and call it the voice of the people.


* * * * *


Urine tests! Our pioneer ancestors would piss in their graves at the thought of urine tests to decide whether a man is competent to do his job. The measure of competence is performance. When told that General Grant was a heavy drinker, Lincoln said: "Find out what brand of whiskey he drinks, and distribute it to my other generals."


Doctor William Halsted has been called the "Father of American surgery." A brilliant and innovative practitioner, he introduced antiseptic procedures at a time when, far from donning rubber gloves, surgeons did not even wash their hands, and the death rate from post-operative infection ran as high as 80 percent. Doctor Halsted was a life-long morphine addict. But he could still hack it and hack it good, and he lost no patients because of his personal habit. In those "good old days," a manÂ’s personal habits were personal and private. Now even a citizenÂ’s blood and urine are subject to arbitrary seizure and search.


The world's greatest detective could not have survived a urine test. "Which is it this time, Holmes, cocaine or morphine?"


"Both, Watson -- a speed ball."


* * * * *


It is disquieting to speculate what may lurk behind this colossal red herring of the War Against Drugs -- a war neither likely to, nor designed to, succeed. One thing is obvious: old, clean money and new, dirty money are shaking hands under the table. And the old tried-and-failed police approach will continue to escalate at the expense of any allocations for treatment and research. In politics, if something doesnÂ’t work, that is the best reason to go on doing it. If something looks like it might work, stay well away. Things like that could make waves, and the boys at the top, they donÂ’t like waves.


Anslinger's "missionary work," as he called it, has found fertile ground in Malaysia, where there is a mandatory death penalty for possession of a half-ounce or more of heroin or morphine or seven or more ounces of cannabis. (No distinction between hard and soft drugs in Malaysia, it's all "Dadah.") Anyone suspected of trafficking can be held two years without trial. Urine tests are a prerequisite for entry to high schools and universities.


Mahathir Mohamed, the Prime Minister of Malaysia, has launched an all-out radio and TV campaign to create a "drug-hating personality." He is said to command widespread support for his drug policies. So did Hitler command support for his anti-semitic program. Just substitute the word "addict" for "Jew," and Der Stürmer storms again. Der Stürmer was Julius Streicher's anti-Semitic rag, designed to create a Jew-hating personality.


In order to get to the bottom line of any issue, ask yourself: "Cui bono? -- Who profits?" According to Michele Sindona's account in Nick Tosches' book Power on Earth, the bulk of the world's dirty money is processed in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, and the sums involved are trillions of dollars. Any liberalization of drug laws could precipitate a catastrophic collapse of the black drug market and cut off this salubrious flow of dirty money to the laundries of Malaysia. (Hanging small time pushers-addicts to protect huge Syndicate profits ... does money come any dirtier?)


And I would be interested to examine the offshore bank accounts of Malaysian officials involved in the fabulously profitable war against drug menace. But that is a job for an investigative reporter like Jack Anderson, a job he is not likely to undertake, since he seems to be in basic sympathy with Malays Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamed.


Interviewing Mohamed on the subject of drugs, Jack Anderson reports that he "spoke with real passion." (And so did Hitler speak with real passion.) In a column entitled, "We Are Losing the War Against Drugs," Anderson speaks of thousands of "stupid and criminal Americans" who persist in using drugs ... yes, criminal, by act of Congress. With the passage of the Harrison Narcotics Act in 1919, thousands of US citizens -- from frugal, hard-working, honest Chinese to old ladies with arthritis and old gentlemen with gout -- were suddenly "criminals."


George Will relates the story of a Colombian woman who was detained at Customs until she shit out some cocaine in condoms. He goes on to say: "We should attack demand as well as supply. Life should be made as difficult for users as it was for that woman."


So thousands of suspected users are rounded up and forced to swallow Castor oil in the hope of bringing illegal drugs to light ....


"Got one!"


"False alarm ... just a tapeworm."


* * * * *


Fifty years ago, deep in the Ural mountains of Lower Slobbovia, a 13-year old prick named Pavlik Morozov denounce his father to the local authorities as a counter-revolutionary Kulak -- had a pig hid in his basement. (A Kulak is a subsistence farmer.) That was when Stalin was starving out the Kulaks to make way for collective farms, which didn't work. Stalin levied an outrageous produce tax, knowing that the farmers would hide their crops, then sent out patrols to search and seize concealed produce and farm animals. At least three million people starved to death in the winters of 1932 and 1933, and that's a conservative estimate.


Little Pavliki was hacked to stroganoff by the outraged neighbors -- good job and all. Thus perish all talking assholes.


"His name must not die!" sobbed Maxim Gorky, his hearty voice contracted by painful emotion. So Pavliki became a folk hero. Got a street in Moscow named after him, and a statue to commemorate his heroic act. He should have been sculpted with the head of a rat. And the viilage of Gerasimovka is a fucking shrine, drawing legions of youthful pilgrims to the home of Pavlik Morozov.


"Dirty little Stukach."


That's Ruski for "rat" -- a word designed to spit out.


* * * * *


It is happening here. Lawrence Journal-World, October 29, 1986: "Girl, 10, Reports Mother's Drug Use." It was the fourth time that a California girl had turned in her parents for alleged drug abuse since August 13th. And Reagan's Attorney General Ed Meese said that management has the obligation and responsibility for surveillance of problem areas in the workplace, such as locker rooms and above all, toilets, and the toilets in the nearby taverns, to prevent drug abuse.


I am an old-fashioned man: I don't like informers. It looks like Meese and Reagan, and now Bush, intend to turn the United States into a nation of mainstream rats.


Well, as Mohamed says, one has to give up a measure of freedom to achieve a blessed drug-free state, at which point the narcs will wither away. Sure, like the KGB withered away in Russia.


* * * * *


Unfortunately, my own most "paranoid" fantasies in recent years have not even come close to the actual menace now posed by anti-drug hysteria, if current polls are even approximately accurate. According to a survey conducted recently by the Washington Post and ABC News, 62 percent of Americans would be willing to give up "a few freedoms we have in this country" to significantly reduce illegal drug use; 55 percent said they favored mandatory drug tests for all Americans; 67 percent said all high school students should be regularly tested for drugs; 52 percent said they would agree to let police search homes of suspected drug dealers without a court order, even if houses "of people like you were sometimes searched by mistake"; 67 percent favored allowing police to stop cars at random and search for drugs, "even if it means that the cars of people like you are sometimes stopped and searched"; and fully 83 percent favored encouraging people to report drug users to police, "even if it means telling police about a family member who uses drugs."


President Bush said in his television address not long ago: "Our outrage against drugs unites us as a nation!"


A nation of what? Snoops and informers?


Take a look at the knee-jerk, hard-core shits who react so predictably to the mere mention of drugs with fear, hate and loathing. Haven't we seen these same people before in various contexts? Storm troopers, lynch mobs, queer-bashers, Paki-bashers, racists -- are these the people who are going to revitalize a "drug-free America"?


The emphasis on police action rather than treatment has persisted and accelerated. The addict seeking treatment today will find long waiting lists and often prohibitive costs. And the treatment is old-fashioned withdrawal, with a very high incidence of relapse. In all the television and newspaper talk about drugs, I have yet to hear a mention of the possible role of endorphins in such therapy, or any other innovative medical approach.


The dominant policy of police enforcement has nothing but escalating addiction rates (and ballooning appropriations) to recommend it. Americans used to pride themselves on doing a good job, and doing it right. Hysteria never solved any problem. If something clearly and demonstrably does not work, why go on doing it? It's downright un-American.


* * * * *


Now this: an excellent, level-headed anthology, covering the spectrum of drugs in common use. Artaud, Cocteau, Baudelaire and Huxley are included, of course; and here you have James Lee's Underworld of the East, a refreshing departure from the repentant whine of cured addicts. "The life of a drug addict can be one of unsurpassed happiness," Lee asserts, "if the user has knowledge and self-control ..." "A Hashish House in New York" is a tour-de-force of 19th century purple prose, admonishing the reader of the terrible fate that may await those who die addicted to drugs, condemned to hover over living users in the vain hope of relieving incarnate withdrawal. And there's more. This is good material to re-read in the 90s, an antidote to knee-jerk hysteria. This book belongs on the shelf of every Johnson in America.


* * * * *


My advice to the young is: Just Say No To Drug Hysteria!


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CSI: Miami Forum

[Lightning Rod]

the next chapter:

http://www.local6.com/entertainment/3972353/detail.html

[perezoso]

.

The world's greatest detective could not have survived a urine test. "Which is it this time, Holmes, cocaine or morphine?"

"Both, Watson -- a speed ball."

INteresting that Uncle Bill admired the writings of Conan Doyle. Holmes, a fictional character, was brilliant and enjoyed his cocaine; Coleridge was a junkie and a great writer. But Billy Bob O'Tweek of say Fontana or Spokane is not. Burroughs' stuff about the "shits" and the "Johnsons" is amusing if naive; yes Nancy Reagan's approach is a hideous joke, but I don't think the libertarian creed of assuming everyone will mind their own business always works. Johnsons are cool, but we know the underworld doesn't work as well as Uncle Bill dreamt. I m not worried about pot smokers or 'heads, but we might be worried about speed tweeking rednecks in their big rigs or on harleys. And that IS a problem--crazed meth bingin' hicks and alcoholics-- not the cliche of old hippy pot heads. Legalizing drugs and providing treatment is the right course, though I don't think I would vote to legalize meth or crack.

[Lightning Rod]

zoso

I spent several years earning my living as a speed cook. It was never my drug of choice but it was very lucrative. I made about a quarter million a year doing it. There is no shortage of tweekers out there. But I must say it was the most violent and unscrupulous world that I have ever experienced.

[perezoso]

Yeah, saying the meth biz is violent is a bit of an understatement. I guess ones got to do what ones gotta do, and Im not a snitch.
'Skins or "peckerwoods", after a few days of bingin', will have knife fights for kicks. If you have ever had to disarm and beat the shit out of some knife-wielding ghoul on meth you might understand . We might remember Hitler used amphetamine to keep his soldiers ready to kill.

[Doreen Peri]

Hey, LR!

Urine sinuating that urine clined to only address those posts which urine spired to comment on. Well, that's ok. Urine titled to do that.

I was just hopin' to pun with ya!

*sigh*

Don't worry. Urine the clear.

But about your chemistry set. I'm glad you gave up that career because you know what happens when you mess with that stuff? Urine carcerated. Yep. LOL!

Hey, btw, urine surmountable work is going to be published today along with 20 other writers, right here on the internet superhighway! That's right! Stay tuned! I can't say that urine da money, but hell, it's somethin' anyway.

[Lightning Rod]

Urine credible, doreen
and more than that, urine despensible

Urine love
and so am I

[perezoso]

Urine the money fer sure with some top notch Studio 8 writers.....

[Doreen Peri]

Urine couragable, Lightning Rod! *wink*

And not only that, it's possible that urine toxicated but I know urine tentional flattery is just fine with me. Urine strumental to my achievements, no matter how minor. Why? Because urine sperable with me. I wouldn't think for a moment that urine sincere.