JUST SAY ‘YES’?

Lee Dembart’s provocative review of “Intoxication” has provoked me, not to read the book, but to offer to Prof. Siegel for his experiments one 6-foot, 7-inch, 30-year-old male hominid, “healthy as an ox” but for an emergency room visit for what I suspect was a miscalculation in dosage.

This specimen has been in what appears to me to be Siegel’s “fourth drive” and “feeling different” for about 14 years, and generally behaving like Siegel’s other laboratory animals.

My specimen has adopted a “minimalist” life style (working three hours in the afternoons) which provides him with enough revenue to “discover the pleasurable effects” of some substances; I provide him shelter. He goes into a trance-like condition for 11-12 hours, which is seemingly sufficient for him to recover his motor functions, and go back to work. My own observations corroborate Siegel’s findings that whatever these substances he appears to be using are, they are not, with the technicality of over-dosing excepted, harmful to his physical health.

I fear he is going to outlive me. I fear my successor will be the gutter and the gospel mission. Therefore, my offer to Prof. Siegel is not entirely magnanimous. By taking this individual into his lab, the professor can resolve this “care and maintenance” issue for me, and hopefully for others through his findings.

ROD GOFF

RENO, NEVADA