{"id":504,"date":"2009-11-11T16:10:43","date_gmt":"2009-11-11T21:10:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/suburra.com\/blog\/?p=504"},"modified":"2013-06-04T19:24:48","modified_gmt":"2013-06-04T23:24:48","slug":"the-ph-d-candidate-who-said-too-much-a-drug-history-whitewash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/suburra.com\/blog\/2009\/11\/11\/the-ph-d-candidate-who-said-too-much-a-drug-history-whitewash\/","title":{"rendered":"The Ph.D. Candidate Who Said Too Much: A Drug History Whitewash"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.suburra.com\/images%20-%20PD%20blog\/PhD%20Said%20Too%20Much%20%20WEB%201109.jpg\" alt=\"PhD Who Said Too Much\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The chapter rejected by Dr. David Hillman&#8217;s doctoral committee eventually became the basis of his book, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/0312352492\/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&#038;camp=1789&#038;creative=9325&#038;creativeASIN=0312352492&#038;linkCode=as2&#038;tag=suburra-20\"><em>The Chemical Muse<\/em> (2008)<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>As he writes in its introduction:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I wanted the modern West to see that its founding fathers were drug users, plain and simple; they grew the stuff, they sold the stuff, and, most important, they used the stuff. The modern antidrug campaign is not a democratic movement at all; the ancient world didn&#8217;t have a Nancy Reagan, it didn&#8217;t wage a billion-dollar drug war, it didn&#8217;t imprison people who used drugs, and it didn&#8217;t embrace sobriety as a virtue. It indulged &#8230; and from this world in which drugs were a universally accepted part of life sprang art, literature, science, and philosophy. (Hillman, p. 3)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>On his doctoral experience:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Unfortunately, the moral bent that so characterizes contemporary Classicists forces them to write histories that best promote the cultural agendas of our times, rather than the actual facts of the past &#8230;. Blacklisting is not a cruelty of the distant, uninformed past; it&#8217;s a very real phenomenon that flourishes within academic circles today, whether in the humanities or the sciences. (Hillman, p. 222)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Hillman is not alone. The classicist, <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Carl_A._P._Ruck\">Dr. Carl A.P. Ruck<\/a>, contributed to the book, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/1556437528\/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&#038;camp=1789&#038;creative=9325&#038;creativeASIN=1556437528&#038;linkCode=as2&#038;tag=suburra-20\"><em>The Road to Eleusis<\/em> (1978)<\/a>, that explored the Athenians use of a natural version of LSD in a sacred ceremony. (A co-contributor was Albert Hofmann.) Ruck&#8217;s scholarship in this area, which has been published in a peer reviewed journal, is not challenged but simply ignored. Ruck has said about the stigma of his work:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>One anonymous reader, before the book finally found a publisher complained that &#8220;the author had had a good education at the best schools,&#8221; but that somehow I&#8217;d gone wrong &#8230;. Students who work with me have been warned that they will be blacklisted. My textbooks in grammar, as well, as if by contagion, are viewed by some as suspect and a threat to normalcy. (Hillman, p. 209)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><strong>Link of Note:<\/strong> A 2008 article on Hillman in the Madison, Wisconsin weekly, <em>Isthmus<\/em>, that includes his doctoral committee&#8217;s response. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thedailypage.com\/isthmus\/article.php?article=24178\">LINK<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Next Post:<\/strong> A peek at some of the evidence of classical drug use found in Hillman&#8217;s book. <a href=\"http:\/\/suburra.com\/blog\/2009\/11\/16\/classical-drug-use-greek-and-roman-drug-freedom\/\">LINK<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Sources:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>1. D.C.A. Hillman, <em>The Chemical Muse: Drug Use and the Roots of Western Civilization<\/em> (2008). <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/0312352492\/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&#038;camp=1789&#038;creative=9325&#038;creativeASIN=0312352492&#038;linkCode=as2&#038;tag=suburra-20\">LINK<\/a><br \/>\n2. Kevin Revolinski, &#8220;Everybody Musta Got Stoned,&#8221; <em>Isthmus<\/em>, 31 Oct. 2008. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thedailypage.com\/isthmus\/article.php?article=24178\">LINK<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The chapter rejected by Dr. David Hillman&#8217;s doctoral committee eventually became the basis of his book, The Chemical Muse (2008). As he writes in its introduction: I wanted the modern West to see that its founding fathers were drug users, plain and simple; they grew the stuff, they sold the stuff, and, most important, they [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[82,216,19],"tags":[212,213,214,63,217,208,207,234,209,349,205,215,403,235,202,583,177,404,448,204,565,206,236,211],"class_list":["post-504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drugs","category-history","category-legalization","tag-academia","tag-academia-bias","tag-academic-blacklisting","tag-albert-hofmann","tag-ancient-greeks","tag-ancient-romans","tag-ancient-rome","tag-carl-a-p-ruck","tag-carl-ruck","tag-cartoon","tag-chemical-muse","tag-classics","tag-comic","tag-d-c-a-hillman","tag-david-hillman","tag-drugs","tag-illegal-drugs","tag-illustration","tag-infographic","tag-ivory-tower","tag-lsd","tag-pharmacology","tag-recreational-drugs","tag-road-to-eleusis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/suburra.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/suburra.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/suburra.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/suburra.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/suburra.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/suburra.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/suburra.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/suburra.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/suburra.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<!-- WP Super Cache is installed but broken. 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