Bill
![[Image: Baby reaching for cup of coffee]](babycoffee1.gif)
From 35 years of experience as a philosophy teacher, alcohol and other drug counselor, computer data manager, community organizer, and bureaucrat, I'm promoting a strategy of drug abuse prevention regarding recreational chemical use, called "psychoactive management", for use at both a personal and a policy level.
![[Image: blinking words, sillhouette of construction project]](construction2.gif)
This page is like a scratchpad. Still under development. It links my thoughts.
(Parts of this page are as old as 1980. Other parts are updated as of September 7th, 2022. ---WW)
[**] "The Five Rules" was created
Here are the "Five Rules of Psychoactive Management"[**]
1- When considering consuming (note:"consuming" may or may not include "using"[*] ) a psychoactive substance, think about the reasons for doing it, and consider alternatives. (Abstinence)
2- When consuming psychoactively, consume as little as necessary to get an effect, instead of as much as possible before harm results. (Conservation)
3- Discuss sought effects with others. (Consequences)
4- Discuss side effects with others. (Contexts)
5- Include among those "others" people who don't practice this variety of psychoactive consumption, and be willing to practice it around them. (Feedback)
Psychoactive substances include pot, coffee, tobacco, chocolate, cocaine, heroin, ecstasy, eucalyptus, etc.
[*] Example: I (WW) *consumed* over a quarter million tobacco joints (18 years, 2 packs a day; 18 x 365.25 x 40 = 262,980), but I wasn't *using* them, deliberately, to deal with nicotine withdrawal etc. ( That cost me about $5,000. At today's prices, about $11 a pack, that would be about $147,000. Click here to see today's prices, as of September 2022.)
Psychoactive substances operate by directly altering brain chemistry, replacing or interfering with normal (i.e., behaviorally mediated) alterations of brain chemistry, and the values and behaviors related to recreational psychoactive substance consumption can be greatly changed without our awareness, unless we practice the Five Rules. That's the meaning of the slogan at the top of the screen: "If we don't manage our psychoactives, they will manage us." (Note: This is NOT a strategy of "harm reduction". That would go against the spirit of Rule 2 :) Harm reduction would happen, most likely-- But in the spirit of Aristotle's saying (I think), "Happiness, to be got, must be forgot." (Well... something like that.)
by Ken Renshaw, Joan Konopka[***], and myself, Bill Weitzel, at the C.E.M.P.
Counties Alcohol and (Other) Drug
Abuse Counseling Center / Maple Manor, Coudersport PA in 1978. I taught those rules in five classes on "Psychoactive Management" at an annual week-long Pennsylvania statewide conference on alcoholism and other drug abuse, and as part of the day-to-day C.E.M.P. A&D public education
[***] This page is solely my responsibility, WW, although none of what I've done here would have happened without the inspiration and support of Ken and Joan.
See the
taxonomy diagram.
Read the
Quasi-FAQ.
href="mailto:bill34543@yahoo.com">
Email me at
bill34543@yahoo.com.
Click on the images, too; they are also links.
Naval Observatory audio Master Clock (about 1/2 min. behind)
More about Psychoactive Management
Various resources. This page is a list of
things I'm looking at and have looked at. There's no
particular emphasis intended in most of this list.
ONDCP D&A Advice
(White House Office of National Drug Control Policy)
Self-help and intervention
Slang terms
More miscellany.... There will be a quiz on Friday....
Another "natural high" (sorry, I couldn't resist the .GIF
or the pun, and I do get a thrill watching the moon through
a telescope. OK, go ahead and click on it; I found
a "Moon and drugs" link with Google.
Semantic Networks (See also 'Delta-wye semantic network transformation' above)
An interactive semantic network search engine (I think you can download the program there.)
or 202/762-1401 (accurate within a millionth of a second)