The amphetamine-assisted, physician-abetted social adjustment of yore is back as a mass phenomenon.
How did a dangerous drug, all but banned for very good reasons, become a pharmaceutical best seller once again? To get a handle on America's enduring attraction to speed, we must step back and explore how amphetamines became part of the fabric of American life.
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When Allen Ginsberg helped open the counterculture's own anti-amphetamine campaign in 1965 under the slogan "speed kills," he wasn't referring just to the drug that so many Americans relied on to keep up. He was also thinking of the demand that amphetamine satisfies. It might be time to think again about heeding his call.
To be sure, time marches on.
Yet for many Californians, the looming demise of the "time lady," as she's come to be known, marks the end of a more genteel era, when we all had time to share.
