Leaving Behind Life To Catch A Glimpse Of Life
The State of the Modern "Drug Problem," and the Art of Bryan Lewis Saunders
Bryan Lewis Saunders is not a person who can be accused of stumbling his way to fame via a succession of half-measures. The affable Tennessee-based artist’s exploratory artworks, notable for starting with an apparently simple action and then applying it to as many contexts or situational variations as possible, are alternately ecstatic and agonizing psycho-physical tests existing in a phenomenological category all their own: Saunders’ simple experimental queries (e.g. “what happens when I live in a room saturated with a single color for a full month,” “what happens when I willfully blind myself for a month”) result in artistic creations with a clear aesthetic value to them, yet which are too concerned with the exact sciences of behavior modification and the limits of psychic resilience to be understood by aesthetic criteria alone. Meanwhile, the sincere interest in a scientific methodology is probably too off-putting or frightening to practitioners used to observing test subjects in fairly controlled environments rather than offering themselves as the raw material for experimentation. So what exactly are some of Saunders’ works to have leapt back and forth across this supposedly unbridgeable chasm between artistic self-expression and scientific self-assessment? In addition to actions already hinted at above, Saunders has spent a full month documenting (always via a series of shockingly accurate and communicative self-portrait sketches) the effects of extreme cold and heat on his perceptual apparatus, or the effects of torture techniques innovated by professional interrogators and secret police agencies, or the effects of sampling a different psychoactive drug every day for several weeks.
This last item on the list is, judging from the number of mentions it receives in an exhaustive interview collection provided to me by the artist, remains the most popular of Saunders’ many demanding projects. Granted, this popularity is well deserved when looking at the available documentation, the Just Noticeable Difference: Under the Influence journal. This document compiles all of the self-portraits Saunders has composed under the influence of drugs (Saunders has composed some tens of thousands of daily self-portraits, a significant number of which are based on the principle of “somatosensory drawing,” and around 1% of which were drug-induced at the time of their compiling). Each entry in this journal, comprised of a sketched self-portrait of Saunders along with some very fluid storytelling about the technical peculiarities of each portrait and the bizarre psychic circumstances which guided his hand, also features brief but trenchant commentary about our misperceptions of drugs’ true potentiality and their unpredictable interactions with highly individualized human brain chemistry and a hyper-complex civilization. Some of the entries in Under the Influence are nakedly terrifying, such as the tortured monochrome sketch accompanying Saunders’ experience with the antipsychotic Seroquel (whose unique hell is attributed to its jarring separation of brain from body), or the mangled primitive vision associated with “bath salts” (choice quote: “severe restlessness is an understatement […] attention span of a gnat”). Others, like the giddy but tightly focused portrait drawn on psilocybin mushrooms, are a peek into a much more inviting, liminal type of experience. Still others, like the artist’s Viagra voyage, handily mix a visual hilarity with poignant reminders of just how popular it is to resort to such a potentially extreme treatment.
Despite my own positive assessment of this work’s honest execution, with its unusually natural blending of humor and horror, I’ve repeatedly wondered why exactly the “drug”-related works remain the most newsworthy and / or the “calling card” which introduces Saunders to the general public. That particular project has probably had a longer time to germinate in the minds of the art-seeking public than his other works have, yet that alone isn’t a sufficient explanation, particularly in a culture so hopelessly saddled with historical illiteracy and “recency bias” as our own. Even though Saunders is fond of pointing out how the need to take calculated risks is “American as apple pie,” the number of people willing to take the precise risks associated with Saunders’ projects is still in the minority. My personal belief is that the interest in Bryan’s pharmaceutical odyssey, as well as the wide-ranging number of reactions to it, provide one of many hints that the drug-enhanced psychonaut is still something “other” to the majority of the population. For that majority, it is only a matter of whether that “other”-ness is seen as frightening or comical, and in this way the character of the drug user is an endlessly convenient one for a society that needs its clowns and its devils as means of recalibrating its own sense of morality: the drug-motivated individual is highly useful to these ends because of the ease with which he or she can oscillate between clownishness and devilishness in the public eye. With this in mind, it is interesting to note that Bryan also has some skill as a stage performer, and his personal innovation in this field – “stand-up tragedy” – adopts the technical and gestural aspects of live comedy while plumbing depths of modern human despair.
The luminous rippling faces that leap out from Saunders’ drug journal, besides being technically impressive, are surprising in the sense that they could even be put to paper in the first place while in states of disembodiment: at one point Saunders even confesses that he has something deeply ingrained in his “autonomic nervous system or something” that will force him to create a daily self-portrait no matter what the circumstances. All of this will likely confirm for “straight” society that they are dealing with a separate species altogether, and those who do not pay equally close attention to Saunders’ written insights will come away from this project with a comforting affirmation of not one, not two, but perhaps all their preconceptions regarding drug-induced behavior: here we see the psychotic PCP user, there the stumbling and reckless drunk, over there the lugubrious and self-sabotaging “heavy drinker.” Saunders is careful to add disclaimers throughout this journalistic adventure, noting how most of the drugs administered for these self-portraits were done so exclusively to facilitate those works, and haven’t been returned to again. Nevertheless, audience perception has its ways of overwhelming and becoming reality, and this will be the focus going forward here.
As with other omnipresent social vices like pornography, the disapproval of drug-centric leisure cultures and drug-abetted spiritual quests comes from a chaotic synthesis of different actors who do not necessarily share common goals. The religious among us warn of drugs’ Luciferian character and the two-fold social and spiritual evil of men becoming as gods. The socially conscious activist similarly sees drug-enhanced experience as a false paradise, deliberately encouraged by power elites as a means of siphoning off energy from radical social justice movements. Somewhat related, and in the estimation of Wolfgang Schivelbusch, the drug problem is merely an acceleration of the worst and most repressive elements of modern civilization, something “made in [modernity’s] own image…cheap, impersonal, addictive, ruthlessly efficient, and highly profitable”.[1] Other criticisms, like that of cultural conservative Roger Scruton, are a little more finely honed and have more to do with the infantilizing power of recreational drugs, particularly their power to “blot out” the “demands, trials, and embarrassments” of human interaction that he sees as the sine qua non of reaching maturity. An additional criticism from Scruton is worth repeating, namely his lament that drugs are “the means whereby exaltation is put on sale”:
It is essential to the appeal of drugs that they are not found but purchased; and their consumption is bound up with the expertise of purchase. The person who dispenses the drug is not a priest but a salesman, and his product is etherealized and enchanted by his salesman’s patter. Those who consume the drug do nothing to alter their spiritual standing; nor do they set themselves apart from other consumers. At the same time, they are offered an experience of collective elevation, a sudden release of dammed-up social feeling as they melt into the crowd of affectionate strangers.[2]
Leaving aside the question of why something like Saunders’ experiments would not rise to the level of legitimate “demands, trials, and embarrassments,” Scruton’s criticism is noteworthy for castigating drug users’ special brand of false consciousness; namely their belief that they have successfully opted out of a needlessly demanding society in the way that Timothy Leary once recommended (for those unfamiliar: “tune in, turn on, drop out”). In re-casting the enlightened libertine drug user as a flatterer of harsh modernity rather than as modernity’s natural enemy, the assessments of Scruton and Schivelbusch still represent the avant-garde of critical attacks against recreational use of psychoactive drugs. That means they are already a few lengthy strides ahead of the mainstream critique of drug culture, which certainly cannot admit that “modernity” itself is riddled with flaws and contradictions. While that critique cares somewhat less for the spiritual losses and disowned maturity that Scruton finds to be the true tragedy of a youthful fixation on recreational drugs, it does retain the disdain for drug users as being wreckers of the economy, either by setting up a black market perversion of the “official” economy or by simply rendering themselves useless as contributors to same.
Sea changes in the public attitude towards drug use, which were inconceivable just 30 years ago, have given a black eye to the United States’ flailing “War on Drugs,” and have preceded a wave of legislation and ballot initiatives aimed at de-stigmatizing recreational use of psychoactive drugs. However, many of the attitudes that did feed into these legislative changes are still based in pragmatism based on the hopelessness of fully eliminating illicit drug use (i.e. “not enough room in our prisons for non-violent drug offenders,” “put the drug cartels out of business”) rather than stemming from an increasingly empathetic view towards the drug user and the varying circumstances which influence drug-centric lifestyles. Simply stated, a plurality of Americans may agree that drug offenders do not belong in a penal environment better suited to murdering psychopaths, but this does not imply any earnest support for a class of people that are still seen to be immoral by way of their un-productivity. Mitch Earlywine, in his authoritative study on marijuana and the public policy crafted around it, does not outright confirm an across-the-board hatred of productivity by drug users, but nevertheless does discuss the “amotivational syndrome” associated with marijuana smokers, and posits that “they have rejected the conventional notion that motivation and productivity are essential for fulfillment […] Perhaps people who do not make productivity a priority subsequently choose to use marijuana.”[3] Again, a plurality of American citizenry do likely understand this, but that understanding again stops short of empathy or identification with the drug user. Our popular cultural output is no clearer confirmation of that fact.
The unpredictability of drug-induced social behavior, from the very moment that it became an acceptable topic to discuss in an amoral fashion, was revealed to be a goldmine for comics and comedy writers. The comic trope of the drug user experiencing a fantastic inner world, yet still having to negotiate mundane reality, has continued to exert a gravitational pull on audiences after decades’ worth of comic scenarios. From Richard Pryor’s hilariously self-effacing standup bits “Cocaine” and “Acid,” to essentially the entire careers of Cheech & Chong and the Canadian troupe responsible for Trailer Park Boys and the Drunk and On Drugs Happy Funtime Hour, the argument can well be made that drug humor is now its own self-contained genre. Very much a reflection of the diversity of American drug culture itself, there are variations on the theme aimed at all denominations from “slapstick” fans to consumers of more wry and knowing humor, and naturally there are further variations based on the specific type of drug fueling the comic scenarios. There is one common denominator that almost always be expected from this cultural output, though: the comedic energy is generated by depicting the tension between illicit drug users’ having to maintain at least a minimal acceptable level of productivity while carrying on a love affair with their drug of choice. Plenty of material does exist which shows the drug experience - particularly the hallucinogenic one – to be “funny” in its own rite, given the randomness and absurdity that the inner world can attain to when sensory filtering mechanisms are suddenly removed. However, I would argue that the most reliable comedic storylines stick with us because they show this randomness and absurdity stunting characters’ growth as producers and, perhaps even more relevant for a services-based economy, inspiring them to be derelict in their duty as consumers as well, developing highly personalized inventories of personal needs separate from what is currently being marketed towards them.
Incidentally, this same theme of the stunted producer and/or consumer animates some of the most successful tragedy and drama in recent cultural memory, swapping out the comedic trope of the fool oblivious to his dereliction of duty with the more sinister depiction of characters willfully perverting the utilitarian logic of productivity and consumption. It is difficult to imagine a storyline like that of Breaking Bad / Better Call Saul having such a tenacious hold on the public imagination without the story being organized around the sale and manufacture of illegal narcotics; the well-known addictiveness of crystal methamphetamine frames the main characters’ own addictions to emotional states and places their inflexible self-conceptions in particularly stark relief. Likewise, generation-defining film dramas like Trainspotting are difficult to conceive of without addictive opiates acting as the motor for the characters’ irrational behavior and amplifying their existing flaws to mythical degrees. Again, the dramatized negative experiences of drug users are compelling enough (see the infamous “baby-on-the-ceiling” hallucination sequence in Trainspotting or the meth paranoia of Jesse Pinkman in Breaking Bad), but generally do not come into their own without being further contextualized, i.e. being shown as the most vivid manifestations of an inability to make more significant contributions to a progressive society.
Certainly advocates for the normalization and legalization of illicit drugs have already thought of one counter to this pervasive cultural commentary, namely that the relationship between drug use and productivity is not a simple, inversely proportional one: certainly not one that would be applicable across all different phases of human development and across different cultures. Earlywine’s research, for example, has unearthed some counter-intuitive nuggets such as the fact that “[Jamaican] farm hands who smoked marijuana actually worked harder than those who did not (Comitas, 1976)”, and “other studies of employment histories and drug use reveal that marijuana smokers do not appear to lose their jobs more often than non-smokers”.[4] Test subjects using chemicals as apocalyptically intense as DMT also note some productivity-enhancing effects such as greater interest in their chosen fields of employment.[5] Then there is also the paradoxical evolutionary situation whereby much of our conception of “productivity” was formed initially by experimentation with hallucinogenic plants; see e.g. Richard Rudgley’s research on the Australian aboriginal harvesting of plants for their psychoactive properties. Such “hidden productive potential of the drug user” defenses are ones which, though occasionally veering into the fantastic and the discredited – i.e. Terence McKenna’s conviction that the mutagenic powers of psilocybin mushrooms played a key role in human encephalization[6] - is valid enough for the purposes of winning some additional public sympathy and thus influencing bodies of legislation and reform.
However: these are all defenses concocted in order to make a social vice seem more palatable to non-users of it, and I believe they imply a degree of willing complicity with “productive” society that simply does not exist among the regularly drugged. That society remains something to be escaped from or nullified by drug use, precisely because of its dogmatic emphasis on productivity as the road to total and irrevocable emotional well-being. And so, Earlywine’s realization that there are drug users who are “less motivated but more satisfied with their lives” is particularly telling. However ill-gotten society determines their contentedness to be, however “synthetic” or “virtual” or however much a substitute for the happiness that shows itself only after years of hard physical or intellectual ordeals, we still have to face the reality that millions of individuals do find this to be the most reliable route to happiness, and are not dissuaded from following this route simply because it is “artificial”. It is therefore important to ask why exactly these millions who have found their pleasure should be expected to defer it in favor of struggling towards a utopia that will never manifest in their own lifetimes. As the artist and mescaline experimenter Henri Michaux said in his Miserable Miracle (something of a spiritual predecessor to Saunders’ experiments), “I left behind my life to catch a glimpse of life”[7]: suffering the “demands, trials and embarrassments” of a society singularly focused on productivity may make one an authentic human being, but not necessarily a happy one.
As we know, the industry built upon federally approved mood enhancers and stabilizers continues to expand and profit tremendously by offering treatments that are structurally similar to their illegal counterparts. But the damage has already been done, if this industry’s intent was ever to act as a genuine competitor to the unapproved psychoactive drugs: the overlap between subscribers to the official pharmacology industry and users of illicit drugs is considerable, bringing with it a growing number of drug experiences that hybridize the effects of both approved and unapproved chemicals. As Saunders’ drug journal makes abundantly clear, the distinction between the “official” pharmacopeia and its black market shadow is increasingly ignored by experimenters and pleasure seekers: as moronic or shiftless as these individuals are often made out to be, they at least seem to have a more refined knowledge of their chosen vices than those who perceive wildly divergent types of drug experience as a single monolithic entity, and who thus insist on a single type of therapeutic intervention for all categories of drug. It is also worth reminding how, given past admonitions against the potential of marijuana to become the “gateway” towards more lethal pharmaceutical pleasures, there are more than enough active imbibers of illegal intoxicants whose pathway towards these drugs began with the more prescribed and regulated forms of mood stabilizers, tranquilizers, stimulants and opioids. As a whole, the parallel neuro-pharmaceutical industry aimed at maintaining a productive society has merely hastened the evolution of the degeneracy it was intended to reduce or wipe out. Its failure could have been very easily predicted simply by surveying the promotional literature and info-mercials associated with its leading products; plenty of references appear to emotional holding patterns e.g. “lessening pain” or “maintaining” and “recovering,” but rare is the mention of anything that would approach the promises of “PLUR [peace, love, unity and respect]” that the “rave” generation associated with its chosen sacrament, MDMA. I would content that regular drug users prefer even a known simulacra of these ideal states to a deepening involvement with a culture of “progress for its own sake,” and that a significant number of them view that supposed path to happiness as a doctrine of self-preservation given a thin coating of humanitarian paint.
Saunders, in one of several side commentaries included in Under the Influence, states the following: “We don’t have to suffer to make great art. In fact, we have a responsibility as individuals living in a society of others, to not suffer.” Here, in one simple statement, we have a compelling alternative vision that re-casts the seeker of happiness not as an anti-social dropout but as someone fulfilling a societal duty by first instilling happiness in themselves and then allowing this to radiate outwards. So long as this is not considered as a viable means of structuring one’s life, and so long as the quantitative imperatives of productivity are mistaken for the qualitative improvements of happiness, we will continue to have a “drug problem.”
Note: a full interview with Bryan Lewis Saunders was also conducted for episode 16 of the “Anechoic Chamber” podcast.
[1] Clarke, D. B. & M.A. Doel (2011). “Mushrooms in Post-Traditional Culture: Apropos of a Book by Terence McKenna.” Journal for Cultural Research 15(4): pp. 389-408.
[2] Scruton, R. (2019). Modern Culture. Bloomsbury / Continuum: London / New York.
[3] Earlywine, M. (2002). Understanding Marijuana: A New Look at the Scientific Evidence. Oxford University Press: Cambridge / Oxford.
[4]Ibid.
[5] See Strassman, R. (2001). DMT: The Spirit Molecule. Park Street Press: Rochester, VT.
[6] See McKenna, T. (1992). Food of The Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge. A Radical History of Plants, Drugs and Human Evolution. Rider: London.
[7] Michaux, H. (2002). Miserable Miracle. Trans. Louise Varese and Anna Moschovakis. New York Review Books: New York.