English Version | What keeps us going

20 Jul 2022
By Nuno Miguel Dias

This title is not innocent. It's from the song What Keeps Us Going. And the answer is "drugs." Yes, legal or not, prescribed or from the “black market," there is a considerable percentage of the population that is dependent on one or more drugs. Shocking?

This title is not innocent. It's from the song What Keeps Us Going. And the answer is "drugs." Yes, legal or not, prescribed or from the “black market," there is a considerable percentage of the population that is dependent on one or more drugs. Shocking? Not at all. Drugs are what keep us going. And since there is a lot of libertinism, generalized depravity, and total perversion going on around here, the most impudent are already thinking that we are going to talk about Viagra or Cialis or Levitra. I just wanted to call your attention. Which I have done successfully. 

Hello, my name is Nuno Miguel Dias, I am 47 years old and, despite countless abuses continued over the years, which have caused my state of health (and appearance) to degenerate to levels that are neither the most ideal nor the most desirable (at least for me), but everything still works perfectly. More so in the morning, but it works. Or so I thought. Because, one day, the post-pubescent kids here in the neighborhood were carrying out their usual "drinking night" (a phenomenon I truly don’t understand as a 90's teenager who couldn't live without the memorable - and unrepeatable - Lisbon nights) around the car with the trunk open propagating the sound of Goa trance. Lacking the usual slick-cut cocaine scratches, made with the Minipreço [a Portuguese supermarket] discount card on Ivete Sangalo CDs and snorted with €5 bills, one of them had stolen Viagra from his father: "That's what there is, that's what goes," he said. They offered me a copy taken from the slide and, for some strange reason, I decided not to swallow the magic pill right away, preferring to save it for an eventual future squeeze. Which happened, months later (yes, I am very careful with expiration dates), as an experiment and with a reduced dose. A quarter of a pill and Moi-même, master of his self-esteem and confident that age had not yet passed me by, I tried the Love Philter once again. This I remember being a constant in my distant twenties. For those unfamiliar with the term, the Love Philter is that standard equipment in the male body that allows the penile appendage, when pulled down and then released, to counteract the resistance made above with a "pac", which is the sound that occurs when it touches the belly. Apparently, like any automobile shock absorber punished by the much-vaunted initiative of municipalities to reduce speed with speed bumps, the Love Philter also wears out. It is good to see that Viagra is the drug that saves marriages. That rekindles lost flames. That impresses when expectations are low. And the best thing is that taking it has, most of the time, the secrecy inherent to the consumption of any other drug. It's not going to the bathroom of the club to "snort a bump", but it's going to the kitchen to push it with a glass of water. Thus, the other (or others) intervening in the act that follows don't even dream that, after all, our heroic performance had such precious help (although they are bound to be suspicious). After all, this is what is going on at the most varied levels in the world around us. This is what I was getting at. And I apologize if I will so suddenly move from such a more interesting subject to a more general topic. But there is, in fact, all around us a whole of disabilities that can only be overcome with the help of legal drugs or illicit substances. In sex, as in life, the phrase "under pressure I can't" is a parable. The realities are those of each individual. But to come across it and the emotional charge it carries, whether because we have suffered a loss, because depression can strike anyone at any time and for any reason, because we can no longer even conceive of the eight hours a day working with colleagues we hate, or because responsibilities are unbearable, it is almost unimaginable how many people we come across every day who are, in fact, under the effect of something that helps them to be there, "alive and kicking," as Simple Minds would say. Let's leave, then, the theme "It's only through drugs that we get there" for the theme "It's only through drugs that we get here." And let's start right away with a fact that, for the most optimistic will be surprising, for the pessimists dramatic, and the most observant, obvious. In the first nine months of 2021 alone, the Portuguese bought, on average, twenty-eight thousand (28,000) packets of drugs for the treatment of mental illnesses. Per day. These are data from Infarmed (the Portuguese National Authority of Medicines and Health Products). In total, there are almost sixteen million (16 000 000) packages of anxiolytics, sedatives, hypnotics, and antidepressants. We are talking about legal and internationally approved drugs. Which, although they carry some dangers (such as Nimesulide or Antibiotics), can only be purchased if prescribed by a doctor. In light of these numbers, we gather that, through the co-payment of drugs of this type by the National Health Service alone, the State spent forty-six million euros (€46,000,000.00) in the first three quarters of the second year of the pandemic. It is understandable that tobacco packs, the cause of almost all types of cancer (whose treatments represent a gigantic slice of SNS expenses), have shocking pictures to discourage its consumption and, therefore, reduce expenses in state co-payments. But just as it is equally incomprehensible that there are no pictures of amputees due to diabetes on soft drink cans or fast food wrappers, the inaction of the competent authorities in the face of the undeniable growth of mental illnesses is a little more than worrying and ranges from disturbing to outrageous. No Ph.D. in the area is required. It is enough to use the popular wisdom contained in "In a house where there is no bread, everyone scolds and no one is right" [a Portuguese expression]. But there are no salary increases or measures to curb inflation to make life easier for families (next door, Spain has just put the brakes on rent increases that will accompany the rise in interest rates), or to prevent the liberalism of fuel prices or the reversal of the effect of the sale of EDP, at a bargain price, to make us have the most expensive electricity in Europe. What is our state doing, then, to reduce this scourge? It has to be us, right? How? With drugs. And if we cannot acquire them legally, we will opt for substitutes. And let it not be thought that "medical" drugs cannot be bought on the black market, as if they were heroin or cocaine.

Barbiturates (Phenobarbital, Hexobarbital, Mefobarbital, and Pentobarbital), for example, are sedatives. In small doses, they are merely analgesics. In moderate doses, they combat anxiety and insomnia. In considerable doses, they treat epilepsy. But the line between this and overdose is thin. Especially when mixed with alcohol (mixing with amphetamine is considered the most lethal drug cocktail, even compared to the speedball "kick" - intravenous injection of a mixture of heroin and cocaine). This becomes almost inevitable when we are talking about a drug to which the body acquires tolerance (requiring increased dosage) and whose continued use can lead to worsening of the conditions it is intended to treat. But the worst is the withdrawal syndrome (which comes with "weaning"), which can last two weeks and translate into a loss of appetite, anxiety, insomnia, tremors, convulsions, and even hallucinations with psychotic states, kidney failure, and cardiovascular collapse. Benzodiazepine (which has Valium as its top ambassador), a sedative and hypnotic (sleep-inducing) and anxiolytic (decreases anxiety) drug is considered safe by the scientific community because an overdose is rarely fatal. Constant drowsiness, dizziness, tremors, loss of motor coordination, depression, and headaches are quite common. Amphetamine, known in the 80s and 90s as speed (today "refined" to meth or crystal meth), is now illegal and hard to find in Portugal. But it was massively administered to North American soldiers who fought in World War II, in the 60s it was given free by the Swedish national health service, and, in Portugal at the end of the 20th century, Dinintel was still sold in pharmacies (and very popular among the student community). It also came to be known as the "Diet Drug" but, besides weight loss, it brought on tics in the jaw, pain in the muscles and joints, psychosis, suicidal ideas, and hallucinations for weeks. In the United States, meth is the epidemic of the 21st century. No other drug anywhere else in the world and human history has dragged with it such a social disaster. There are entire cities (not just "small towns") reduced to Walking Dead scenarios. Not even wine, that which was the main Portuguese painkiller against a disease called Salazar, has come close. Monday is the post-modern mass day. We all take communion, in the Reels of Instagram, saying "amen" to memes that attest to how much we revere coffee, that God. "Hello, Darkness My Old Friend", "May the first breakfast give us strength until the second breakfast", cute kittens with the caption "When that first breakfast touches your soul" or "there is no life without water because there is no coffee without water, and without coffee, I would kill you all" are just a few examples of the phrases that pulsate on social networks in the early hours of the week. Coffee is humanity's light drug of choice. Italy and Portugal dignify it with delicious espressos. Spain and France try with those buckets of burnt espresso from ladder-shaped roasting plants, but, in their way, they are making their way, which may be a long way off. Great Britain and the United States drink dirty water. At temperatures that ensure the annual molting of the skin on the roof of the mouth. But they also suffer from its deprivation, becoming living proof that faith can be fervent even when worshipping a lesser god. How can such a cheap drug be so tasty and simultaneously take away our headaches, malaise, fatigue, and constipation? Coffee carries the morning cheer of half the world on its back. And we, the hypertensives, are the protective shield of the addicts. We are the ones who hear in the doctor's office: "Tension at 18-12? We need to cut back on the coffee and do more exercise," and we leave the room, taciturn, heading for the snack bar, where we order a short drink and think about what kind of exercise we are going to start doing. Surfing? And where do you get a coffee on the beach at eight in the morning? Yoga? No way, because all those people are tea-drinkers. No gym either, because it's all protein shakes. And while we indulge in these considerations, we light up a cigarette, coffee's second best friend (the first being me), and wait for the colic (yes, the bowels are the first symptom of a withdrawal syndrome). Ah, that's right, tobacco, that devil. The world has evolved in an unheard-of way toward tolerance. And yet, today, the nicotine addict is looked at the way drug addicts were looked at from their attic in Rua do Corpo Santo, in Cais do Sodré, by Dona Etelvina Borrego in the 80s. We even have a kick room in airports now. The ex-smokers (the most boring and intolerant people on the planet) look at us with the same brow as the kids from Restelo, who had parents with enough money to pay for cures at Le Patriarche [an association created to rehabilitate drug addicts in a community living environment], they looked at the valets in Alcântara who, gathering enough coins, drove up Rua Maria Pia towards Casal Ventoso as fast as Carlos Sainz drove his Toyota Celica GT-Four off a gravel bend. In fact, smokers just don't want cancer to attack (as so often it attacks those who have never smoked in their lives), they don't want tobacco to increase any further, and they don't want the terraces to be outdoors. In other words, they don't want those who go there to complain about the diesel smoke from the Seat Ibiza that has just passed by, just as I don't complain about the Duck on a Hot Plate that stinks up my clothes at the next table because I, who chose the Chinese restaurant, knew that someone could order Duck on a Hot Plate.

In 2015, a new drug was discovered that had not yet been flagged in Europe. It was seized and then discovered in Portugal, the point of entry for so many tons of cocaine coming from South America (in sailboats, because there is a level of intrepid navigators to maintain), where studies carried out by Helena Gaspar, a researcher at the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry of the Faculty of Sciences of Lisbon, identified it as a psychoactive substance 4F-PBP, used for sexual abuse. Those were good times when such an achievement was news. Nowadays, the Judiciary Police laboratory has its hands full with the tons of daily "captures". Last year alone, 15 tons of hashish and 10 tons of cocaine were seized, but only 74 kilos of heroin, the drug that represented a European scourge at the end of the last century. Cocaine, the drug that solved any problem of self-esteem in nightlife, made sex epic, opened doors in high society, and made any professional the best in his field, has lost its status, associated with the wealthier class, due to the loss of quality. Its arrival in Portugal was late, and it was realized (too late) that the dependence it causes reduces any "betinho" [preppy kid] to a mere "beetle" that is a little different from those who roamed the darkest corners of Lisbon not so many years ago. These are the times of synthetic drugs, modernly known as Designer Drugs, of which the MDMA is just one example. In the last ten years over 100 new psychoactive substances have been identified by PJ. Nbome, Angel Dust (resurrected from the 1950s), Krokodil, and Special-K are some of those that can be easily found. But the biggest surprise is the ever-linear consumption of the socially accepted (and whose illegality has persisted for strange politico-economic games, as exquisitely explained in Jack Herer's book The King Goes Naked) cannabinoids. Cannabis, commonly known as "weed" and its derivatives (the most common being hashish) was even the star of the first CannaPortugal, held last June at the Lisbon Congress Center. The "highest authorities" from California to Amsterdam (as well as Palmela) attended the event on the cultivation and consumption, production and transformation, and industrial and/or medicinal use of the world's most beloved plant. There were conferences, debates, and, of course, many "product tests" made in an outdoor area created especially for the effect. It's not the minds that are opened. It is the awareness that the use of cannabis goes far beyond textiles or paper (and has lasted, exclusively, for many centuries). Its medicinal side, in the CBD and CBG variants (both cannabinoids without THC), treats, in a natural way and without contraindications, from "simple" menstrual cramps to chronic pains that affect cancer patients. Not containing THC (Tetrahydrocannabinol), the psychoactive substance responsible for euphoria, drowsiness, anxiety, and alterations in sensory perception, only the feeling of well-being and sedation remain, acting on other types of brain receptors. It treats Metabolic Syndrome (the explosive combination of high glucose, obesity, hypertension, and high cholesterol), Diabetes, increasing insulin sensitivity, and is effective in fighting antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Unfortunately, the law in Portugal still does not allow great adventures. I, for example, was one of those who registered for the fair, so that I could learn more about the subject, solely for this text. But, of course, I brought some seeds. If the police show up at my house, send me cigarettes. "They will keep me going." 

Translated from the original on The Sunny Vibes Issue, from Vogue Portugal, published July 2022.Full stories and credits on the print issue.

Nuno Miguel Dias By Nuno Miguel Dias

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