*This article is an excerpt from The Emotional Plague, Dr. Konia’s book.
The function of the emotional plague is to destroy the life of the individual and, by extension, that of society. Orgonometrically, we know that the function defines the goal. It is the goal of the emotional plague to destroy individual and social life and bring both down to the lowest level of existence. There is no phenomena in the United States today more destructive than drug use, and the use of drugs is one of the principal symptoms of the emotional plague. It therefore follows that the war on drugs is also a war against the emotional plague. Unfortunately, contactlessness, the byproduct of armor in American society, severely compromises society’s ability to fight the drug war effectively.
There is no doubt that the increased use of illicit drugs has been an important factor in the breakdown of the authoritarian social order. Biophysically, drugs increase ocular armor while at the same time weakening muscular armor in the lower segments. The net result for the individual is a dramatic reduction in ocular functioning, particularly in the ability to make and sustain contact with both the self and with the environment. This is accompanied by a simultaneous rise in anxiety, which, in a vicious circle, necessitates greater dependency and further degradation in social life. Currently, however, there is no realistic understanding of the underlying cause of drug use and therefore no satisfactory solution. Instead, discussion of the drug problem focuses mechanically on the influx of drugs into the United States and how to prevent it—the so-called “war on drugs.” Little or nothing is said about why drugs are brought into the country in the first place. Clearly, the economic gain to be realized cannot be the only reason, because without demand and a market for drugs there would be no drug problem. The basic question that arises is: Why did drugs become such a serious problem, with a sharp rise in the demand for them in the 1960s? Overall the incidence of drug use rose steadily in the following decade, reaching a peak of nearly 14 percent of the population in 1979.1
What was the reason for this sharp rise in the demand for illegal drugs? Certainly increased availability had something to do with it, but this is not the whole answer. The reason is that prior to around 1960, the authoritarian social order was intact. This system functioned effectively to contain not only the secondary destructive impulses held in muscular armor, but also impulses from the biological core. The rational basis for the authoritarian social order is that, because of armor, people are not capable of living from their core and are unable to regulate themselves. It therefore follows that people need external regulation by society. When society was transformed from an authoritarian to an antiauthoritarian structure in the decade of the 1960s, enormous quantities of energy, primarily sexual, were suddenly released in the masses of adolescents and young adults. This gave rise to intense sexual longing that clashed head-on with their armor. Because of armor, however, this sexual longing could not be gratified and it turned instead into sexual anxiety and destructive rage, manifesting and unleashed on society as intense social unrest. Thus the breakdown of the authoritarian social order was fueled in part by the failed “sexual revolution” of the 1960s resulting from genital anxiety in the younger generation. The masses of adolescents and young adults were drawn to substitute measures to obtain relief from their intolerable emotions. Some were duped and enlisted by political activists on the Left and became involved in anti-Vietnam War and anti-American demonstrations. But political activism discharged only a relatively small amount of energy. By far the greater amount was handled by the use of illegal drugs in an attempt to obtain relief through substitute means—”self-medication.” At the same time, the hard rock music that emerged was an attempt to break through the armor and feel more.
Thus the sharp rise in drug consumption during this period was directly related to the inability of youth to achieve genital satisfaction. That is the reason that illegal drugs, sexual promiscuity and defiance of authority became the hallmarks of the counterculture, all a result of the social transformation that occurred at that time. Illicit drug use thus served two functions, one in the service of defense against and the other in the service of expressing secondary layer impulses. If it had not been for the transformation of society from authoritarian to antiauthoritarian, there would not have been a serious drug problem in the first place.
The Drug War as Civil War
In the 1960s, approximately one hundred years after the start of the American Civil War, the United States became embroiled in the drug war. In contrast to the Civil War, which had a definite onset and conclusion, the drug war started insidiously, slowly escalated, became protracted, and after more than forty years still has no end in sight. In contrast to the Civil War, which was fought mainly on the battlefield, the drug war is being fought in practically every area of social life, public and private. In contrast to the Civil War, whose casualties were restricted to able-bodied men of military age, the use of drugs destroys people of all kinds in every stage of life, either directly or indirectly, including children, infants, and even the unborn. The destructiveness of drugs extends to the very core of life, as they attack the germinal (genetic) as well as the somatic protoplasm of the individual. Because drugs affect the biological core, they also destroy sexual and work functioning. In contrast to the Civil War, which was mainly limited to the use of military weapons, the drug war occurs at all levels of social engagement, from paramilitary-style battles between drug dealers and law enforcement officers, to ideological battles between those for and against legalization, to those who believe there is nothing wrong with taking certain drugs, such as marijuana, and those who believe all drugs are dangerous. In contrast to the significant but limited cost that the Civil War extracted from both individual and social life, the cost of the drug war, in terms of money spent and its destructiveness to human life, is incalculable. In contrast to the Civil War, which resulted from fundamental differences of opinion regarding basic social issues (the question of the sovereignty of the states and of the legitimacy of slavery), the ideological battleground of the drug war remains vague and confused. In contrast to the national scope of the Civil War, the drug war is international. As a result of the Civil War, slavery ended in America. Drug use, on the other hand, has been little affected by the war on drugs. In fact, the war has only helped create a multi-billion dollar black market.
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Charles Konia, M.D. 
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