Saturday, June 4, 2011

Dispatch Number 91 - Drug Travelers

This Dispatch is a break from the Two Years summary and pauses from that series after Panama, Dispatch Number 90. It will restart shortly with Colombia. In the meantime, here are some shorter pieces.


Drug Travelers
Peru, one of the poorer countries, has some of the highest purity cocaine in the world. It is also one of the cheapest at $6-7 per gram and would rate as economical to a coke addict. In Peru, drug taking has become integrated with tourism. The North Americans who drop, come for spiritual enlightenment, dosing on natural psychotropic jungle drugs, like ayahuasca used to cope with a variety of neurosis' or the popular desire to find it again.

The Australians come for coke, typically a small group will park it in a beach town somewhere and consume industrial amounts of it, like Tony Montana in Scarface. Achieving dental-grade numbness in their nasal cavity for days on end. Once they are established the coke is delivered like pizza.



As for the Europeans, they tend to dabble in cocaine more than the psychotropics. The ayahuasca centers are filled with North Americans, who don't bat an eye at these over-priced retreats run by people masquerading as 'real' Shaman. These pretenders mix, or rather highjack 'ancient-medicine man-ways' with the latest New Age fads. These Plastic Shaman, as they are called by the real Shamans, add the necessary drama to make a person feel exotic and spiritual and is brought about by the Plastic Shaman impersonating traditions and combining them with New Age-speak, telling the seeker how beautiful and real they are, while emphasizing the importance of 'processing' the experience.


Maybe I caught too many in the 'processing' stage after leaving a retreat, when more than one told me they dosed on ayahuasca for two months straight, three to four times a week (local custom, if an individual practices, is 3-6 times a year); they seemed lost in general, telling me in some fashion or another that they weren't all there because they were in a cloud trying to understand it all. The fragmented mind was out in the open for all to see.

After seeing several in this state, one would conclude that, in all likelihood, little would change for them, even after they 'processed'. The way they use the word 'processing' comes off more as place to hide, than to sort anything out. It appeared to take them in the opposite direction than the reason they came in the first place. Lots of talk and a tendency to intellectualize the experience, rather than live it.
Like the time a European said to me, You Americans are so funny. You're always trying to improve yourselves.
She had a point. 

David
Cypress, California

 

4 comments:

Dana said...

Yes she did have a point we American's are for the most part never satisfied and longing or searching for something else. Is it because our culture seems based more on money, sex, and violence which isn't very fullfilling. Think of all the people in the US on anti anxiety, anti-depression medicine. The loneliness this culture breads. How parents are happy to say that their baby sleeps alone in his own room and they let him cry himself to sleep because he needs to be trained. Even at that age we want you to know what it is like to be on your own.

Recently my parents wanted to get rid of their Mercedes so instead of giving it to me they actually made me pay for it at a deal of course. If I was in my husbands country it would have just been given to me. But no here we have to learn to survive alone. But look at the Latin cultures, Asia, people are not alone, sure they have their shit too. But even the poorest of the poor sometimes seem happier than the richest here.

In India, I met a monk who had been to Santa Monica. He said to me ' I looked around and thought wow these people must be so happy. But after spending a week I saw how miserable they really were. Here in India most of us don't have much but we have something inside of us that makes us ok.'

So many American's run to India starving for this something inside, some will give away most of their money to find it. Do they? Most find it for a moment and then find themselves forever struggling with the Demons of the US....

Traveling Dave said...

Dana,

I can add nothing, Dana. You hit it right on the nose. And I learn from what you add to the story. Life in America and the Spiritual Tourist in Latin America, trying to find it again.
Our culture does breed solitude.
David
Cypress, California

Anonymous said...

..life is too short to wake up with regrets. love the people who treat you right & forget the ones who don't. believe that everything happens for a reason. if you get a chance - take it. if it changes your life - let it. nobody said life would be easy they just promised it would be worth it..
Vanessa
Quito Ecuador

Anonymous said...

¿Por qué se indentifica a la coca con la cocaina?.Si tan perversa es la coca, por qué se llama Coca-Cola uno de los simbolos de la civilización occidental? Si se prohibe la coca por el mal uso que se hace de ella,¿Por qué no se prohibe también eluso de la televisión?
Si se prohibe la industria de la droga, industria asesina,¿Por qué no se prohibe la industria de armamentos,que es la mas asesina de todas?
¿Con qué derecho los Estdos Unidos actúan como policias del mundo,si ese paÍs es el que compra más de la mitad de la s drogas que se producen en elmundo
¿Por qué entran y salen de los Estados Unidos las avionetas de la droga con asombrosa impunidad?
¿Por qué la tecnología modernisima, que puede fotografiar una pulgada en el horizonte, no puede detectar uan avioneta que pasa ante una ventana ¿Por qué jamás ha caido, en los Estados Unidos, ni un solo pez gordo de la red interna del tráfico aunque sea uno solito de los reyes de la nieve que operan dentro de fronteras?
¿Por qué los medios masivos de comunicación hablan tanto de la droga y tan poco de sus causas ?
¿Por qué se condena al drogadicto y no al modo de vida que multiplica la ansiedad,la angustia , la soledad y el miedo,ni a la cultura de consumo que induce al consuelo químico?
Si una enfermedad se transforma en delito, y ese delito se transforma en negoccio,¿es justo castigar al enfermo?
¿Por qué no libran los Estados Unidos una guerra contra sus propios bancos, que lavan gran parte de los dólares que las drogas generan? o contra los banqueros suizos que lavan más blanco.¿Por qué los traficantes son los maás fervorosos partidarios de la prohibición.
¿No favorece el tráfico ilegal la libre circulación de mercancias y capitales?¿No es el negocio de la droga la más perfecta puesta en practica de la doctrina neoliberal?¿Acaso no cumplen los narcotraficantes con la ley de oro del mercado,según la cual no hay demanda que no encuentre su oferta?
¿Por qué las drogas de mayor consumo son, hoy por hoy,las drogas de la productividad?
¿Será por pura casualidad que hoy parecen cosa de la prehistoria las alucinaciones improductivas del acido licergico, que fue la droga del los años 70?¿Eran otros los desesperados? ¿Eran otras las desesperaciones?
Vnessa
Quito-Ecuador