William S. Burroughs

WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

Interview excerpts and photo by Gregory Ego.

Ego: What do you think about the drug czar?

Burroughs: Oh, the whole drug thing is nonsense, of course. Now look, the answer is so obvious. They don't even look at history. Now all through the 19th century drugs were sold across the counter from sea to shining sea. Did America collapse? It's the conservatives themselves--these rabid anti-drug people--who are always talking about the good old days, forgetting that that was the time when drugs were perfectly legal, so there was no problem. As soon as they made it illegal, then it became a problem. The answer of course is maintenance for people who don't want to stop and effective treatment for those who do. There is no problem. It's just a problem they're creating out of whole cloth.

Ego: You've said in your writings: Anything you can do with drugs you can do without drugs.

Burroughs: Well, presumably, that's obvious if you knew the principle of the precise effects, the precise brain areas that were influenced in a certain way by drugs, we can do it electronically. But, at that time, no one had the expertise to precisely reproduce the drug effects without drugs. It's just that they didn't know enough, that's all.

[Originally appeared in Journal Wired #3, http://www.sfsite.com/lists/mvz08.htm. Reprinted as a collaboration with Johnny Strike in Headpress #25, http://www.headpressbooks.com/HeadpressJournal.htm]