I try to avoid pharmaceutical sorcery or even mild drugs like caffeine. Six years ago I got a job where commuting took ages so I had to rely on coffee to ‘get me going’ in the early start mornings. So then the constant coffee and crunched up train journeys, usually sat in the corridor of a packed train, got me some kind of nasty stomach problem after years of it. Plus being overweight. So I went to a doctor. Of course doctors do nothing without including a medicine prescription. So I get the only way out medicine can provide. I turned it down and binned the prescription when I read the side effect warning. If I hadn’t then side effects have to be treated with yet more drugs. I took doctor advice by trying to quit caffeine. I tried. I failed. The stomach problems got worse. Lung trouble too. Apparently they go together. Lucky for me the pandemic came along. But that comes with pressure for taking pharmaceuticals right, left and centre. If you rely on them you can still get ill. But now you risk getting vaccinated, lowering your guard and getting others ill. It goes on. One thing leads to another. All pharmaceutical. Now here I am in an innocuous position of having to do honest enough work. If dishonesty or immorality were involved there might be a need to persuade girls to have abortions or morning-after pills, take hard drugs to suppress guilty fears, go into hospital with injuries requiring strong pain-killers and anaesthetics when victims retaliate or things turn nasty, tattoos, maybe even plastic surgery and more hard drugs. Crime tends to involve harder medicine. Things have to be covered up. Bad things happen to those who do bad things and pharmaceuticals offer well-tried mitigation. If instead of modern medicine you try shamanistic alternatives you get sacrifices and chanting and mind-altering drug-induced trances all thrown in. Even the modern approach throws animals and even humans under the bus with animal and clinical trials. Sacrifices to unknown gods.
