Introduction

The drug war is a multiplex struggle between various fungi, yeasts and plants for control of the human nervous system: life-forms which triumph in this war gain the enormous evolutionary advantage of utilising human beings for their propagation and for the destruction of their competitors.

To understand this evolutionary struggle, it is necessary to comprehend the nature of symbiosis, parasitism, and predation. Symbiosis means co-operation: you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours ... flowers provide nectar while the bees deliver pollen. Men and horses live in symbiosis: men provide protection, shelter and medical care, horses provide transport and (until recently) muscle power. Lice or fleas, on the other hand, are purely parasitic, gaining their sustenance from humans, but providing no benefit in return.

The best-known example of parasitism is the cuckoo, which builds no nest of its own but lays its eggs in other birds' nests: the hosts are unable to distinguish the cuckoo's eggs or chicks from their own and the cuckoo, having evolved a short gestation period, hatches first and immediately pushes the other eggs out of the nest. The baby cuckoo grows very rapidly, and most people have seen harrowing pictures of a tiny host struggling to feed an enormous baby cuckoo, which so long as it gapes, engages the (hard-wired) parental instincts of the host who has no choice as to whether or not it co-operates.

Men and dogs were once symbiotes (when they formed mixed hunting packs to the benefit of both). But this relationship has degenerated into parasitism, dogs having evolved to mimic the physical traits (cuddly shape, domed forehead, large, soulful eyes) by which human children engage automatically the hard-wired (instinctive) nurturing instincts of adults. This is why it is common to find dogs treated like children, and all too often, children treated like dogs!

Cats, cabbages, beans, and foxgloves are examples of symbiotes who provide vermin(parasite)-control, food, or medicine, and are in return protected, cultivated, and propagated, and protected from their competitors and enemies such as cat-fleas, weeds and slugs.

Of course, from the point of view of a predator, its prey is fair game, whereas from the point of view of the prey, the predator is a parasite.

Among the life-forms competing (and sometimes forming alliances among themselves) to control human beings and thereby assure their own propagation are the tobacco plant, the coca bush, the opium poppy, the tea bush, the cannabis (hemp) plant, the ergot fungus, the sugar-fermenting yeast organism, the coffee tree, and many others.

To differentiate amongst all these life-forms, and to recognise friend from enemy, symbiote from predator, it is necessary to have a clear understanding of the function (job) and organisation of the nervous system, and the nature of the processes of perception, habituation and consciousness which govern behaviour, and the nature of the techniques of camouflage and mimicry by which predators and parasites evade the perceptions of their prey.