I’m looking for direct quotes from Rand on alcohol and drug use. I’ve read that she didn’t oppose casual drinking but I can’t find a quote to prove such. I also read that she deemed marijuana use as immoral (no disclaimer) and did read a quote proving she made that statement. Anything else would be helpful. I know the alleged stances, but I’d like evidence from the source.
Searching the Objectivism CD did not turn up too many direct references. There are scenes in her novels where her heroes and their friends drink. Searching, I found scattered negative references to drunkenness and “heavy drinking”. (In “Fountainhead”, we have Cameron who has become a drunk.)
Try her FHF talk “Apollo 11 and Dionysus at Woodstock”. In the Q&A she talks about being in favor of legalization of heroin, cocaine, the lot.
http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=reg_ar_apollo
I have a bound version of The Objectivist Volumes 5-10 1966-71, I could persue it for you , or perhaps it is somehow searchable online.
Hi Summer, welcome back.
There are three stretches on drugs in “Apollo and Dionysus,” the one near the end of the essay being especially important. Do you have this essay? We can post these stretches if not.
From “The Metaphysical and the Manmade,” we have:
“If any man feels the world is too complex and its evil too big to cope with, let him remember that it is too big to drown in a glass of whiskey.”
The protagonists in Atlas drink casually.
I doubt Rand ever made a blanket statement against marijuana. I smoked a joint with a friend once. I was about 32. I’m twice that now. I hated that kind of high. It messed up time somehow. The next day I had the worst sinus headache in my life. I never smoked pot again. However, that is just the effects it had on me, and I’m sure there are millions of pot smokers who enjoy it and for whom it does not become a negative effect on their life.
I never tried any other recreational drugs because I loved my mind and didn’t want to risk damage to it. Well, and my mind and ordinary wakefulness is very enjoyable to me. Occasionally the alteration of a wine or beer or Jack is nice, when I’m not planning on further big thinking that day. Rand’s remarks about drugs in A&D are definitely worth reflection.
Isn’t the lack of an overt statement just what you’d expect from Rand if she didn’t oppose social drinking?
(By the way, Francisco grew wines on his property. In this respect, as in so many others, Rand was ahead of her time; Argentinian wines didn’t get serious respect in the US until a decade or so ago.)
Hi Summer, welcome back.
There are three stretches on drugs in “Apollo and Dionysus,” the one near the end of the essay being especially important. Do you have this essay? We can post these stretches if not.
From “The Metaphysical and the Manmade,” we have:
“If any man feels the world is too complex and its evil too big to cope with, let him remember that it is too big to drown in a glass of whiskey.”
The protagonists in Atlas drink casually.
I doubt Rand ever made a blanket statement against marijuana. I smoked a joint with a friend once. I was about 32. I’m twice that now. I hated that kind of high. It messed up time somehow. The next day I had the worst sinus headache in my life. I never smoked pot again. However, that is just the effects it had on me, and I’m sure there are millions of pot smokers who enjoy it and for whom it does not become a negative effect on their life.
I never tried any other recreational drugs because I loved my mind and didn’t want to risk damage to it. Well, and my mind and ordinary wakefulness is very enjoyable to me. Occasionally the alteration of a wine or beer or Jack is nice, when I’m not planning on further big thinking that day. Rand’s remarks about drugs in A&D are definitely worth reflection.
In vino veritas aber ins beir ist etwas auch.
ruveyn1
“I do not approve of any government controls over consumption, so all restrictions on drugs should be removed (except, of course, on the sale to minors). The government has no right to tell an adult what to do with his own health and life. That places a much greater moral responsibility on the individual; but adults should be free to kill themselves in any way they want. I would fight for your legal right to use marijuana; I would fight you to the death that you morally should not do it, because it destroys the mind. What the government should do is protect citizens from the criminal consequences of those who take drugs. But drugs would be much cheaper if it weren’t for government.”
Source: “Ayn Rand Answers,” by Robert Mayhew, p. 14 , Nov 1, 2005
I remember Peikoff, I believe it was, saying that Rand gave it a go with marijuana use once, to see what it was like. She apparently hated it.
Personally I find that if it’s one drug that makes me a little bit stupider, it’s alcohol. Weed can make you paranoid, but nothing dumbs me down like a few mixed drinks.
I remember Peikoff, I believe it was, saying that Rand gave it a go with marijuana use once, to see what it was like. She apparently hated it.
Personally I find that if it’s one drug that makes me a little bit stupider, it’s alcohol. Weed can make you paranoid, but nothing dumbs me down like a few mixed drinks.
I think that was actually Branden, I’ve seen a clip of him talking about how she was interested in trying it once.
http://www.peikoff.com/tag/miscellaneous/page/28/
^^ the very first question.
I couldn’t find it, but there’s also a podcast where Peikoff briefly relates his experience trying drugs. It’s one of the most hilarious things I’ve ever heard. If anyone knows what I’m talking about and can link it, please do so. Basically he had a bad trip and was paralyzed for a short time. He said he would “never do it again, out of terror.”
Obviously that in itself is not hilarious, but the way he just calmly relates the story, and uses the word “terror” (which I can’t ever recall someone using in such a context), made me die laughing.
In The Fountainhead, Mallory drank. Leo did in We The Living, I think. Dagny and Rearden have brandy on Thanksgiving:
http://forum.objectivismonline.com/index.php?showtopic=24315&hl
Rand also used drugs, I can think of the name of them, I think there were some stimulants, amphetamines for many years.
Found it, from Anne Hellers book:
“There was her 30-year use of amphetamines, beginning with Benzedrine in 1942, as she was rushing to complete The Fountainhead, and continuing with Dexedrine and Dexamyl into the 1970s.”
So, you might want to check out Hellers book Ayn Rand and the World She Made, and try Jennifer Burns Goddess of the Market book, too.
Also, I thought I read somewhere she drank lots of vodka and may have been drunk for the opening of The Night Of January the 16th.
Hope that helps some, Summer. She may have said something about prohibition, like drinking on principle.
Here, just found the reference from her Don’t Let It Go:
“A dictatorship cannot take hold in America today. This country, as yet, cannot be ruled—but it can explode. It can blow up into the helpless rage and blind violence of a civil war. It cannot be cowed into submission, passivity, malevolence, resignation. It cannot be “pushed around.” Defiance, not obedience, is the American’s answer to overbearing authority. The nation that ran an underground railroad to help human beings escape from slavery, or began drinking on principle in the face of Prohibition, will not say “Yes, sir,” to the enforcers of ration coupons and cereal prices. Not yet.”
(her emphasis, not mine)
OP specifically said she’s looking for DIRECT QUOTES from Ayn Rand. How are Heller or Burns’ highly questionable claims about her helpful to that?
Highly questionable claims?
They pull from material, like the AR archives, Burns has access not sure if Heller did, somethings may be direct, like from letters. I think someone wanted her to stop using in a letter. I’m just providing reference for possible further exploration for Summer. One or both books, really went into said use from whatever references they were going by and they probably provided plenty of reference material in which one can read to see where they base or get what they are saying upon at least. Do you think the naming of the specific drugs and the years she used them listed above, is highly questionable?
Anyways, Dagny speaks about celebrating in Atlas, like she thought that parties are intended to be celebrations and should only be for those that have something to celebrate. If that helps any. (p.150 in my centennial kindle edition)
Here’s a good one: Roark was invited to speak-easy by Mike to have a glass of beer. He goes. They drink beer. Mike was on his fifth, doesn’t say how many Roark had. (p.85 centennial kindle edition)
On 1/13/2013 at 8:11 AM, Summer said:
I’m looking for direct quotes from Rand on alcohol and drug use. I’ve read that she didn’t oppose casual drinking but I can’t find a quote to prove such. I also read that she deemed marijuana use as immoral (no disclaimer) and did read a quote proving she made that statement. Anything else would be helpful. I know the alleged stances, but I’d like evidence from the source.
Direct quotes from Ayn Rand on alcohol and drugs, with sources. The most widely circulated one, “I do not approve of any government controls over consumption, so all restrictions on drugs should be removed,” is genuine but it is not from anything Rand wrote for publication: it comes from Ayn Rand Answers, ed. Robert Mayhew (2005), an edited transcript of her live Q&A sessions. That distinction is the reason half these quotes are hard to verify, so I have split the list by source type.
Spoken Q&A (Ayn Rand Answers, ed. Robert Mayhew, 2005). Edited from recordings, so treat the exact wording as approximate:
- “I do not approve of any government controls over consumption, so all restrictions on drugs should be removed (except, of course, on the sale to minors). The government has no right to tell an adult what to do with his own health and life… adults should be free to kill themselves in any way they want.”
- “I would fight for your legal right to use marijuana; I would fight you to the death that you morally should not do it, because it destroys the mind.”
Rand’s own published prose. These are the citable ones:
- “If any man feels the world is too complex and its evil too big to cope with, let him remember that it is too big to drown in a glass of whiskey.” (“The Metaphysical Versus the Man-Made,” The Ayn Rand Letter, March 1973; reprinted in Philosophy: Who Needs It, 1982)
- “The ‘pleasure’ of being drunk is obviously the pleasure of escaping from the responsibility of consciousness.” (The Virtue of Selfishness, 1964)
- “The nation that ran an underground railroad to help human beings escape from slavery, or began drinking on principle in the face of Prohibition, will not say ‘Yes, sir,’ to the enforcers of ration coupons and cereal prices.” (“Don’t Let It Go,” The Ayn Rand Letter, 1971; Philosophy: Who Needs It)
- Her sustained attack on the drug culture is “Apollo and Dionysus” (1969), collected in The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution, reissued as Return of the Primitive.
The pattern is consistent across all of it: legalize, and disapprove. She never wrote a blanket condemnation of social drinking, and her heroes drink. What she condemned was intoxication as escape from consciousness, which is a moral judgment, not a call for a law.
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