Chasing The High

    America's inner cities are dying from a drug overdose. City centres that were once the backbone of commerce were abandoned as the suburbs expanded and industry moved away.  These urban wastelands have become home to legions of modern-day zombies.  Some of these neglected downtown areas were already known as hangouts for the drunk, addicted, and homeless, but since fentanyl hit the streets in 2005, the population of vacant humans has spread like an uncontrolled infection.  This is the American dream come home to roost.  
    Unique in the world, America's Declaration of Independence in 1776, included not only the right to life and liberty, but the right to the pursuit of happiness.  It also stated that all men are created equal, but this was in an age when "all men" didn't include women, blacks, or men without property.  The phrase about the pursuit of happiness was meant as a right that certain men should have to enjoy their property in safety, security, and happiness.  It was never intended as a guarantee of happiness for the entire population, which is how many in the last century have rigidly interpreted it. When people believe their government owes them happiness, they are disappointed when this doesn't turn out to be true, and believe that their government has betrayed them. How often have we heard Americans protesting that something is their right as citizens, as if the accident of their birthplace has given them special status among humans?  The Bill of Rights says in so many words that Americans have been endowed with these rights by the Creator.  Dragging the name of God into the rights of man obscures the fact that man is only allowed rights that are assigned to him by his master, whether that be his government, his employer, or his peers.   It is apparently not a human right to kill his fellow man unless his government declares the opposite and sends him to war.
    The expectation of certain things by a population inevitably leads to disappointment.  To lessen the disillusionment when things don't go as planned, Americans have come to expect that there will be immediate easy remedies, and if there are not, it must be someone's fault.  In the early rampantly capitalism of infant America, snake oil salesmen promised a cure for every ailment and so the pharmaceutical industry was born.  Feeling unhappy?  Drink this.   Feeling depressed? Take a pill.  Feeling hopeless?  We will show you God.  America has never stopped chasing the high of a promised land that never was. When politicians shout about Making America Great Again, they are selling a dream that was never a reality.   There have always been holes in the dream.  The dream is only conceded to those with money, property, and the willingness to exploit others.
Schizophrenic America can have a presidential campaign that thunders on about Saying No To Drugs, while the main street of every small town has a neon arrow pointing to glossy storefront pharmacy and that spells out in huge letters,the word Drugs.  Schizophrenia is the policy.  Take drugs, don't take drugs.  Maybe just take the ones that are socially acceptable like alcohol or others that the doctor prescribes but don't take the ones that mother says are bad.  
    Those who are disappointed with their lives are encouraged to seek remedies outside themselves because they can't find answers elsewhere.  Some turn to religion, some to all-consuming phobias, from obsessive cleaning to hoarding, hoping to block the emptiness of their existence. Many of these lost souls have reason to be untethered.  Their religion and state have let them down, and the drugs aren't a permanent fix.  Unfortunately, many are not brave or intelligent enough to understand the origins and objectives of their governments or religions, and mistakenly believe that these institutions should be responsible for their well-being.  
    There is another problem with the slide into drug consumption to keep the disappointment and unhappiness at bay.  Once a person is prescribed certain medicines, there is a fear on the part of the drug taker, that if they give them up they will relapse and might be unhappy, something that is unacceptable in Thomas Jefferson's Bill of Rights.  If a doctor prescribes medicine for high blood pressure it is understood that this medication needs to be taken for life.  There is not a doctor alive who will advise a patient to stop their hypertension medication.   Patients are led to assume that if they stop their meds they will die, and doctors don't contradict this notion.  "Of course you can stop," they say, "but it's your funeral."  Antidepressant medications are much the same.  A doctor might go so far as to suggest that a patient could taper off antidepressants, but the reluctance this time lies with the patient.  Will I go crazy again if I stop?  Many are unwilling to take that chance.  Drug companies would prefer that once we are on medication, we are on it for life.  That way their profits are certain.
    America is chasing its own tail.  Drugs are needed to survive the emptiness of existence, but the drugs, and the attempt to use them to find nirvana is an empty solution.  Not all turn to drugs, as some go overboard with fitness, religion, games, and a thousand other distractions, rarely getting at the root of the problem. A man can be a shining example of health and fitness and have a spiritual and emotional life that is as desolate as a burned-out inner city.  Adrenaline can temporarily satisfy us, but like many drugs it requires more to get the same effect.  
    It has been said that the constant search for a high is a hedge against boredom, or maybe proof that we are alive in a restricted society.   The only solution, the way off of this treadmill of chasing a high that never was, is to take aim at the pillars of society that keep every citizen in a mortal struggle for survival.  There are enough resources in America to pay everyone a generous living wage, but that does not suit the higher powers as they are afraid it will rob them of their control over the desperate masses who will kill each other to get the best place in the machinery. Churches are not as focused on a man's spiritual health as they are in swelling the numbers in their congregation.  More members bring more money.   With so much emptiness in their lives and with no vision of how to make things better, the perpetual search for a quick fix to make things better is as American as apple pie and just as unhealthy.  It will not be a surprise when future nations without the same poisonous baggage come along to supersede mythical but flawed America.