The Aristocratic Influence of Stimulants
Nobody cares where their acetaminophen comes from, or the form it takes. An eight dollar bubble pack of Tylenol, a four buck bottle of store brand syrup. It’s acetaminophen. It relieves pain.
Nicotine, Caffeine, Cocaine, Methamphetamine,
a rapid successive structure of unrelenting advancement of stimulation in each passing age.
An exponential graph of improvement of narcotics and their use.
The initial synthesis of methamphetamine late at night interrupted only by the occasional cigarette.
Many different forms serving one function.
An Italian fighter pilot of antiquity looks down at his bottle of meth, the modern UPS pilot at his bottle of caffeine. Both read the label simultaneously.
“Stay Awakes, use with caution”
The only drug category that requires the user to mind both form and function, lest he slip from aristocratic position. No C-Suite would chew tobacco. No street-crawler would utilize caffeine as his stimulant of choice.
If a servant was called for an espresso, and he came back with a cup of gas station black. Why would he be chastised?
The corporate raider turns his nose up at rock, he’s a gentleman. Addict? It’s a few lines in service of a goal. The fact that his blood would test the same is completely irrelevant.
The raider is burning wood, he simply wishes to hasten the pace. He has infinite wood to burn and only so much gasoline, burning as much as he can reasonably sustain.
The man on the street’s marvelous rubbish bonfire simmers down to embers. He barters and begs for just a minuscule amount of lighter fluid. Something, anything flammable. He’s afraid of the cold.
Victorian England, the Roaring 20s, the madness of Wall Street in the 80s — punctured and laced by stimulants in their various forms. The aristocratic is based on access to convenient abundance. Stimulants accelerating growth until the surplus becomes fat worth trimming. A life of scientific discovery laced with cigarettes led to a reward of a retirement laced with cigars.
The microcosm of stimulants visible in their most prescribed form today.
People who, in the past, would be labeled naturally slow, slovenly, inattentive, fixed in an instant via a micro-dose of meth. Not only are stimulants utilized to push past natural capabilities, now they’ve been assigned the additional role of patching the holes of flaws that have plagued humanity since the beginning.