800 Milligrams

inks on found index card divider / 2008

"Remedy" is the theme for this week on Illustration Friday.  There really were a lot of works to pick from today to suit this posting.  I grew up and live in a society with a deep-rooted drug culture.  Being a midnight toker, I am often inspired by this facet of our carnival of life through cognitively altering my consciousness via the few relatively safe substances I'm willing to use.  These experiences and the drugs themselves do surface in my work from time to time.

There is a remedy for every malady in the circus we call America- and you can have them all.  For 40 years, our country has waged a world-wide War on Drugs, hemorrhaging over $1,000,000,000,000 (yes- that's trillion) in a grossly failed attempt to stop drug trafficking.  All of this money, time, resources, and human life were squandered on battling the importation of natural substances such as cocaine and marijuana.  How much of that money was spent of drug education and drug treatment?  A very small fraction- we got Just Say No and D.A.R.E.

The truly frightening statistics with drug-related deaths and illnesses aren't found in the shady world of street trafficking, but right in front of our faces.  We are exposed on a daily basis to a LEGAL drug industry which makes far more money than the ILLEGAL one with Big Business and their pharmaceuticals. While 10,000 people die from Illegal Drug Use per year in our country, a whopping 100,000 die from legal prescription drugs which were pushed by Doctors, Television Ads, Clinics and anyone else getting their pocket lined by Drug companies.  These manufacturers hire lobbyists to corrupt Washington AND the FDA into not holding them accountable for these preventative deaths.  Pharmaceuticals are the #1 cause of death in the United States annually and are statistically 10x more lethal than all street drugs combined.

An American is arrested every 30 seconds for violating Marijuana laws.  $500 is spent by our government EVERY second to fight such illegal drugs.  Marijuana has NEVER killed a single person throughout thousands of years of medicinal, holistic, and cognitive use.  The Top 20 Big Pharma drug manufacturers average nearly $25 Billion in revenue EACH...and caused 1 MILLION deaths in the past decade.

Aldous Huxley Rolls in His Grave

Monday will mark what would have been Aldous Huxley's birthday (well... his like 114th). Huxley explored the boundaries of fiction and nonfiction alike over his amazing and proficient career. Huxley was a scientist but when a condition in his early twenties left him blind for a few years, he turned to writing. Huxley infamously penned Brave New World in 1932, which is what's really always blown my mind since I read it as a teenager. This book which deals with a controlled society and pharmaceuticals and book banning, was sooooo far ahead of it's time.

For my Cult of Personality exhibit at MIR Gallery in Nashville this past December, I illustrated some of my favorite authors. Huxley of course made the cut. Many of the elements of this illustration center around the visionary side of Huxley's work (via the use of mescaline.) The central theme, however, is the concept of him rolling in his grave at his prophesies (really urgent warnings in the form of fiction) taking hold of our world today. Behavior-altering medications are common-place and many societies are facing constant stifling of their freedoms of speech and expression (even in the U.S., there is now twittercide where people are losing their jobs based on tweets they made or blogs they wrote on their own time.) Huxley was one of the most unique voices and minds of the past century. He brought to the forefront of the arts world many issues which effect us today including mood-controlling mediation, the role of government in spiritual freedom, and our cognitive liberties.

Click HERE for Artist Prints of this Portrait from my Web Store!