I haven't been getting enough sleep lately... mostly because I tend to stay up too late nearly every night.:/ And then I sometimes randomly wake up about two hours before I'm supposed to get up - and can't fall asleep again. I think I need to get more serious about a regular sleeping schedule. As well as regular exercise. I haven't done ANYTHING in that department for a good few weeks.:/ Yes, I do walk a bit every day, since I no longer have a car - but that doesn't, just by itself, constitute a "healthy lifestyle". Basically, I need to spend less time glued to the computer. Which also means posting less often. It's either that, or muscle atrophy and a permanent headache... lol. I know I've been through this before, and I know I can improve my daily routine... but then, after a while, I tend to slip back into the old, unhealthy habits. So, every once and then, I need to give myself a reminder. And now is the time. Because I'm starting to feel crappy, and it just takes any fun out of "doing whatever the hell I want". *sigh* Luckily for me, this weekend we are moving back the clocks - which should help with the sleeping schedule readjustment. But regardless, I think I need to hit the pillows early tonight. As in, around 11 p.m. Yeah, that's early - which is, in itself, kind of disturbing during a work week.:/

So, if you hear a little less frequently from me over the coming weeks, this will be why. And today I just want to share an interesting link before I sign off. I was reading my favorite feminist blog at work today: http://tigerbeatdown.com/. And there was an article about the "war on drugs" and why Western society is so much more approving of alcohol (despite its obvious dangers) than, say, psychedelic mushrooms. The article quotes extensively from a book by botanist/philosopher Terence McKenna, "Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge – A Radical History of Plants, Drugs, and Human Evolution". And I find those quotes fascinating.

(...)the terror the ego feels in contemplating the dissolution of boundaries between self and world not only lies behind the suppression of altered states of consciousness but, more generally, explains the suppression of the feminine, the foreign and exotic, and transcendental experiences. In the prehistoric but post-Archaic times of about 5000 to 3000 B.C., suppression of partnership society by patriarchal invaders set the stage for suppression of the open-ended experimental investigation of nature carried on by shamans. In highly organized societies such Archaic tradition was replaced by one of dogma, priestcraft, patriarchy, warfare and, eventually, “rational and scientific” or dominator values.

This sort of ties in with the ideas of Carl Jung and Sabina Spielrein, as glimpsed in A Dangerous Method.:) But now let's see how alcohol comes into the picture:

The suppression of the feminine has been associated with the use of alcohol since very early times. One manifestation was the restriction of alcohol use to men. According to Lewin, women in ancient Rome were not allowed to drink wine.’ When Egnatius Mecenius’s wife drank wine from a barrel, he beat her to death. He was later acquitted. Pompiliu Faunus had his wife whipped to death because she had drunk his wine. And yet another Roman woman of the gentry was condemned to die of hunger merely because she had opened the cupboard wherein were kept the keys to the wine cellar.
Dominator style hatred of women, general sexual ambivalence and anxiety, and alcohol culture conspired to create the peculiarly neurotic approach to sexuality that characterizes European civilization. Gone are the boundary-dissolving hallucinogenic orgies that diminished the ego of the individual and reasserted the values of the extended family and the tribe.

The dominator response to the need to release sexual tension in an ambience of alcohol is the dance hall, the bordello, and the institutionalized expansion of a new underclass-that of the “fallen woman.” The prostitute is a convenience for the dominator style, with its fear and disgust of women; alcohol and its social institutions create the social space in which this fascination and disgust can be acted out without responsibility.

Yet how can we explain the legal toleration for alcohol, the most destructive of all intoxicants, and the almost frenzied efforts to repress nearly all other drugs? Could it not be that we are willing to pay the terrible toll that alcohol extracts because it is allowing us to continue the repressive dominator style that keeps us all infantile and irresponsible participants in a dominator world characterized by the marketing of ungratified sexual fantasy?

Seriously, this is so much food for thought I can feel my brainwheels overheating... LOL. Sadly, I'm too exhausted to formulate any valuable insights at the moment. I just wanted to share the source. Hopefully I'll be up to discussion later, should anyone feel inspired.;)