Chemical Euphoria and Human Dignity

Ebriety is a very uncommon term in English now, even though it appears in the Webster's Dictionary, defined as: "1.Drunkenness, habitual intoxication", and "2.Exhilaration". My intention is understanding ebriety as an experience of the human spirit, so allow me to start with a distinction between inebriation -methe in old greek, ebrietas in latin- and drunkenness (habitual or not)...

The Pharmacological Crusade: A Historical Summary

At the end of the 80`s, a visit to the Dominican Republic, familiarized me with the peculiar situation of  countries neither developed, nor very underdeveloped. I was surprised there to read some declarations by the Archbishop of Santa Domingo, lamenting "excessive clemency" in drug cases. In the same page of the newspaper appeared the notification that a certain man had been sentenced to 20 years for possession of a gram and a half of cocaine. In December of 2007, when I returned to the country, I could assess that the tone had not harshened, but the arbitrariness remains prominent. A distracted Spanish tourist was caught with a small matchbox of marijuana, and has a pending sentence of five years for "attempting to exit  the country in  possession of narcotics"...