So spirituality remains quite alive; but on the bodily level we can see that drug-induced variations are just as "natural" as feelings otherwise chemically produced.

* * * * *

Now watch and see what would happen if people started altering their awareness frequently and willfully with drugs. Let us look at dexedrine and the academic process.

Dexedrine is a form of that big category of things known as "speed," and is part of an even greater gathering of "ups." However, the term "speed" is usually applied to those very large does of amphetamines that hippies and other tramps take for kicks. Taking drugs for kicks is the kind of sensory self-indulgence that we of the protestant ethic scorn. These self same people who become "speed freaks" also take LSD, not for the clear light and revelation, but for the voltage that burns out their synapses. These people are not to be worried about, though, because most of them die.

People who take things to excess is something we see all around us, and something that we, in most cases, have accepted. Just because most of our population is obese because they are helplessly self-indulgent when given easy access to mashed potatoes, this doesn't mean mashed potatoes should be made illegal. And any heart specialist knows obesity kills.

Dexedrine can be gotten with a rescription from your neighborhood drug (sic) store. It is prescribed for people who are hopelessly lethargic. To people who don't have the will to carry their weight around the house. Also to people who have to keep awake in spite of ther tiredness. like the GI's fighting in the night trenches of South Vietnam.

The drug is largely wasted on these people. There is no activity more ap- pealing to someone who has taken dexedrine than the reading of a book. The total fibre of the dexedrine-doped person's being is riveted to the ideas flowing to him out of the book. Not to the action of looking at the printed words, but to the act of understanding the expression of the author's mind.

Because this comprehension is so deep and so undistracted, the person can read books terribly fast. He can acquire all sorts of knowledge terribly fast. In fact, as he sits at this desk surrounded by open books, notes, papers and lists, he feels the urge to bring all his understanding together into one singular comprehension of how it all works. To do this, he constantly tries to work more rapidly.

There are many aspects of this peculiar chemistry which I think are like things we've seen before. For example, every university's faculty (and ours is no exception) has its meditative old scholars who are known to sit quietly reading through even hellishly noisy events going on around them. They are probably achieving a total communication with the author. But the chemistry which got them to this state comes from their entirely book-oriented life style. Dexedrine can drop a student into a book no matter what kind of rock 'n'roll life he leads. (Remember, there is a lot that can be said for rock'n'roll, too.)

In short, the capacity for learning under dexedrine is absolutely astounding. Given the way most Hum and Soc Sci courses are set up now, the average dexedrined student should be assured of at least a B if he started from scratch the day before the test. In most of the courses that the masses take at this university, he could understand and organize in his mind the entire content of study. It's all a matter of maximizing your efforts.

And the whole experience is tremendously euphoric the entire time.

And there are all sorts of really fabuous and not so really fabulous side effects you notice while you're on this tireless study sprint. First off, you become an incredible anal compulsive. If you ever wondered what this is like, you can find out. There's nothing particularly "bad" or annoying about being an anal compulsive; you, as one, just demand tidiness. You can be typing in your room and suddenly become aware that you are tremendously irritated by something about the room. You're ill-at-ease until you spot the bedspread. After you make the bed and smooth it flat, writing is much more relaxed. You also, it seems, really like to excrete in both the two natural human ways; this, I think, is the origin of the term.

You also tend to dissociate yourself from that which isn't neat and ordered (because your mind is so incredibly ordered). If you have been chewing the top of a Bic pen in your zeal, you would probably leave it behind somewhere, not remembering you need it to cover the pen's point, because you wouldn't believe that such a crumpled thing could belong to the set of objects that had to do with you.

Another thing is that you are generally unable to feel emotion. You can't love anyone or want anything; you can only order its existence. You can't care about anything in a way that you feel; you can only be interested in it in an intellectual way. This absence of emotion can be frightening, but only so if you believe yourself to be on a a "trip." You are equally incapable of emotion while playing tennis or doing anyone of a great set of totally occupying things. Do you ever stop playing tennis for fear of departing from the "natural" human condition?

For some reason, dexedrine doesn't seem to do much good in the study of science and mathematics. It has something to do with pacing. That kind of thinking, I guess, has to trickle in at a slower speed.

But for the vast body of study here at his university, dexedrine is not only adequate, it's glorious. One imagines that he had turned on the tap and knowledge is filling up his head like a swimming pool. And, indeed, it is.

I can only take a flyer at what would happen if dexedrine ever came into much wider use than it already is now here. (For one thing there would be more illness because using it a couple of times in a row really wrecks you for days.) But there would probably be a good deal more frittering away of time. Students wouldn't "sweat" their work as they piled up real-life smelling, touching experiences in their new free time.

I'm not really sure how the professors would react to all this. Maybe they would decide there is something wrong with the content of their courses--too much learning what other people's ideas were and not enough making the students capable of dealing with the same kind of thinking these men did. But I honestly can't say that I am sure that's what the lectures should be doing.

Imagine what happens when the year comes down to one day's work for each hour test, paper, and exam. That's all that you have to do