Speed

[Hasbinbad]

"I do not approve of the so-called hippies, but I do not approve of any government control over drugs. The government does not have the right to tell any individual what to do with his or her health and life. You probably know that I received a prescription for the stimulant Benzedrine, or “speed.” I can say rationally that it increases my happiness and my productivity. For example, some time ago I went to Studio 54, because I love to dance on speed. I took fifteen speed pills, and I got into a contest with Liza Minnelli over who could roar most like a jaguar. She simply sounded like a stupid lion.

Then the inside of my head began to sound like a jet engine and so I went to the bathroom. I took maybe ten more speed pills and sat in a stall and wrote a new chapter of “Atlas Shrugged.” Perhaps twenty-five thousand words, all on toilet paper. I cannot include these words in a new edition, alas, because I did not write them so much as encode them on the toilet paper by biting it.

As I write this, I am drinking speed, and you cannot stop me. You cannot stop me, America, with your altruism and your Alan Alda and your Fresca cans biting at my skin. I shall speed across this country like a great high-speed train and the U.S. shall be forever changed in my wake."

-Ayn Rand

WHERE IS YOUR OBJECTIVE REALITY NOW?!?