The past few weeks, while all of us were sleeping, eating, working, Pfizer quietly released a very dangerous pharmaceutical into the market. Without fanfare, they've silently begun the re-engineering of the human world as we know it, a re-engineering direly predicted by authors for centuries, yet the story has barely been covered by newspapers, news shows, or magazines. As a writer once predicted, when the end came, we'd be too busy reading about Julia Robert's twins to even notice.
The drug, called varenicline, was originally developed to help smokers lose their desire for cigarettes. Subsequent research has shown the drug can also help drinkers lose their desire for drinking, gamblers lose their desire for gambling, and on and on down the list of human distractions. Essentially, the drug has the ability to destroy any desire for vice that a human being might have. And before you write this blog off as the desperate fears of a "problem drinker" (that is my title according to a recent Time magazine article, as I depend upon alcohol as a "supporting" element of my social life), keep in mind that this drug is also referenced in use to treat "excessive" fascination with food, shopping, internet, and coffee, all of which can lead to unrealistic detachment from a healthy lifestyle. So if you do any of these things as often as I have a beer (which you all do), then pay attention.
This the quiet first step in society's attempt to modify humanity. In his book, Brave New World, Aldus Huxley warns about the dangers of engineering society into a place of permanent happiness, without vice. He warned that in such a world, humans would be reduced to passive egoists, disinterested in anything but pleasure. There would be no truth, because nobody would care for it. A world without vice isn't human. It's false. And that's where we're headed.
Let's take a day at work to examine the vices under consideration. You start the day with a cup of coffee, which contains caffeine, which is a drug. You take a break from work to take a drag from a cigarette, which has nicotine, which is a drug. After work, you go grab a beer with co-workers. Beer has alcohol, which is a drug. So instead of a beer, you go shopping for new shoes, which excites the same part of the brain as cocaine, which can lead to addiction. You can't eat a bacon cheeseburger (food addiction). Or masturbate (pleasure addiction). The good news is, you can do needlepoint! They haven't found problems with that, yet.
The essential problem is all of these things are part of what make us human. Life, in essence, is often a struggle, and since the beginning, humans have engaged in vices to relieve the stresses of their hard life. Men are defined by their vices, and struggles to overcome them. What if Hemingway hadn't been a drunk? What if Van Gogh wasn't part crazy? Their experiences resulted in the dramatic art they, and others, produced. There is a certain beauty in the impure side of humanity. It is humanity reacting against the plainess of doing the smart, healthy, responsible thing. It is humanity recognizing life isn't always a happy day in the sunshine, and sometimes you need a little relief. If we can all take a pill that eliminates are desire to do these things, what will we all become? A hideous version of Pleasantville citizens, constant, steady, pure, and, resultingly, inhuman.
Although Pfizer is listed on the patent, though it sure sounds like something made directly by a Christian Scientist tucked away in a secret lab underneath a church somewhere in Hollywood.
The most frustrating issue is the medical communities constant insistence that the best way to cure one problem is with another. Take our drug instead of someone else's. And who does that benefit? Me or them? If I buy a drug that makes me stop drinking, but have to take that drug everyday, where exactly have I gotten? I'm still spending money, I'm still putting a foreign substance into my body, only now I am paying Pfizer for that instead of Budweiser. And isn't the end result the same? Pfizer is just pissed that more people spend money on weed and booze than their own supposedly "helpful" drugs. Trade one addiction for another.
And anyways, aren't they taking a vice at wholesale value? It's easy to target the craving of alcohol as a vice, but is it really a chemical dependency? I'll be the first to say that most of what I crave when drinking is the social aspect of it. The relaxed conversation, the comfort, the enjoyment of friendships, the feeling of a cold beer in my hand on a hot day. People don't take shots because they enjoy the taste of Jim Beam tumbling down their throat. They enjoy being with the people that do it, sharing a common experience. Unfortunately, I haven't found that same sense of comradery built by eating shrimp poppers with someone, or getting together in groups of five to read a newspaper.
You can attribute it to any number of factors, the way I was raised, my beliefs on the human condition, my fear of control, but the point is I simply cannot accept that a world without drugs, alcohol, gambling, or any other common vice, would make for a better world. Sure, less of it would be better. And people not being addicted to it would be better. But giving us all pills that makes us never, ever want to do any of it? Never want enjoy a glass of wine with dinner? Never want to buy a new pair of jeans? Never want to play poker when in Vegas?
Tell you what - everyone who wants to take this pill can move to Singapore (which is already mostly like this). There, they can take daily walks in the park, eat salads for each meal, watch Oprah, write bad poetry, and vacuum their rugs. I'll be over here, with the other deviants, recognizing life for what it is, enjoying my time in reality.