It’s not an exaggeration to say that drugs, both illicit and prescription, saved my life. They helped me when nothing else would. It’s hard to see through the haze of propaganda, the false divide that’s been placed between medications and illegal substances. But, to me, that divide is much less clear. People use illicit drugs for the same reason they use prescription ones—to quell pain, to help them focus or get through the day, to ease their depression and anxiety. What differentiates these drugs is less a matter of their purpose, and more a matter of how our laws and media treat these drugs. They’ve associated them with the ravages of poverty, they’ve criminalized them so that users of these drugs end up in a constant cycle of violence. We’ve been led to believe that drugs cause the breakdown, when in truth they are part and parcel of it. If our minds are constantly burdened, constantly being reshaped by the trauma of capitalism, of course we’re going to need ameliorants. Of course we’re going to need a break.