| THE TITLE of this issue is big and ambitious, but you'll notice two things right off: One is that we're talking about only certain drugs, specifically psychoactive substances, whether that's whiskey or MDMA, Paxil or peyote. And you actually won't find a lot of future-shock prophecies. There is a lot of delving into the present. That's the only way we can fathom what's ahead. And in taking a hard look at the present, we were dismayed to find out how much information about drugs lies in the realm of the unknowable, and so couldn't be included here. For instance, we wanted to know how much prescriptions for SSRIs (Prozac and its siblings) have risen over the last decade and whether the number of people taking lithium has increased or declined. These were elusive figures. It's not that nobody knows this information, it's that you have to pay to get a hold of it. A lot. On the other hand, if you want to know how many people used marijuana in 1998, that's comparatively easy (18.7 million) or if coke is really back (it's not -- the number of cocaine users has decreased by 62 percent since 1979). The more illegal the drug, the easier it is to find out about its users. The whole nation might be on Zoloft, but we'd have only anecdote and Pfizer's profits as proof. A few decades ago, Hubert Selby, Jr. vividly depicted New York as a world in which aimless kids become smack fiends while their mothers become speed freaks. Selby hammered the point that the junkie hustling for a fix is no different, no worse, than the one who simply calls up her doctor for more diet pills. The trajectory of both addicts into abjection was direct and inexorable. We don't romance excess so much anymore. We're more focused on balance and optimal performance. Even the psychonauts concocting new psychedelics do so methodically, scientifically, as Erik Davis discovers, in "Adventures Through Inner Space." But there is still profound confusion about the role drugs should play in our lives, a confusion that has been abetted by misguided public policy and genuine parental concern. The source of the confusion is a faulty taxonomy. Fatuous distinctions between various mind- and mood-altering substances have justified billions in federal spending, indifference to many who want drug treatment but can't afford it, quasi legal searches and seizures, and nonsensical sentencing laws. It's enough to make you want to get high. If you look back a little at the history of drug use in America, which we do in our timeline, "Long Strange Trip," you can see the roots of this madness and the points at which one intoxicating substance, say alcohol, is stitched more tightly into our culture, while another, say marijuana, is pushed underground. The effects of this marginalization on the drug -- its potency and purity -- and its users are numerous and usually negative. The fact is, humans dose themselves. To see God, to dig deeper into the nature of consciousness, to calm down, to get it up, or to just live. Well-financed media campaigns to reprogram this impulse, as most American teens know, are comically ineffective, which Alex Abramovich documents in "Just Say...Oh No!" How could they work anyway, when the incoming president of the United States has a public record of illegal drug use? Besides failing to materially affect drug use by kids, the propaganda supports indefensible categories and obscures real science that has unraveled the effects of drugs on the brain. In our Dialog,"The War on the War on Drugs" Ernest Drucker, professor at Montefiore Medical Center/Albert Einstein College of Medicine; Richard Doblin, head of MAPs (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies); Deborah Small, from the Lindesmith Center; and Dave Miller, New Mexico governor Gary Johnson's advisor on drug policy, discuss alternative strategies for integrating drugs into your life -- reforms that reject the official distinctions between good and bad drugs, between legal and illegal psychoactive substances. Also in this issue are two stories coproduced with Wired News: The first, "Prospecting for Drugs," looks at technology that accelerates the discovery of new drugs, and the second, "High and Inside," reports on the use of psychedelics in psychotherapy. Drugs that make you happier and more productive are a legacy of the 20th century. Drugs that make you measurably smarter are definitely on the way. And then there are the drugs that are pure entertainment, the ones that end up turning you around and fucking you up. In "What I Did on My Chemical Vacation," Ben Neihart, David Berman, Brenda Shaughnessy, Geoff Dyer, Tim Page, Hubert Selby, Jr., Michael Musto, Jonathan Ames, Lisa Carver, and Sam Lipsyte share potent memories of intoxication and the strange situations that resulted. The stories are funny and sad. Their radically different experiences show us how tricky it is to put mind-altering drugs into neat, enforceable categories. Hopefully, the whole issue does as much. We'll be rolling one to two stories out every day for the next week. So go on, FEED your head. -- Stefanie Syman 
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