Of all the major cities in the U.S., Philadelphia has the purest heroine -- about 73 percent pure last time the Drug Enforcement Agency checked. It's relatively cheap, widely available and can be easily administered nasally in the privacy of your own home. Possession of heroin, however, is illegal in this country and may not even be prescribed for medicinal purposes.
"Smack," or "horse" as it is sometimes referred to on the street, is a derivative of morphine. It interacts with regions in the brain that play important roles in controlling pain, movement and emotions. When affected by the drug, the brain produces a feeling of euphoria and relaxation. Many other narcotics act in a similar fashion, mimicking the body's naturally occurring opiates, the endorphins.
Because of its attractive psyche-altering properties and ability to induce desensitization and chemical tolerance, heroin is an extraordinarily addictive agent. As such, it is recognized in this country as a destructive, unnatural devise to which the human senses ought not be exposed.
Tragically, while many rightly recognize that certain mind-altering drugs should remain intolerable, the vast majority of students today do not see the dangers associated with pornography tolerance.
All Penn students have access to porn. In fact, thanks to Quake, the University's new literary erotica magazine, porn is now both distributed and funded by the University.
Many students seek out porn regularly, and those who don't either consider it harmless or object for religious reasons -- but generally still unable to explain why it is dangerous.
Few recognize that, like heroin, pornography is addictive and has negative consequences. Like a drug, pornography alters the user's perception of reality.
Porn sex is portrayed as effortless. A partner never needs to be coaxed, rarely are two-way concessions made and people who in real life would never give you the time of day are suddenly at your beck and call. It is a drug with which you are able to trick yourself into you are part of a fantasy relationship that does not exist.
Marketing strategists have recognized the deceptive power of porn for years. In an insightful article printed last month, Harper's magazine pointed out that television food networks have begun mimicking the cinematography of the sex industry in an attempt to create a false culinary utopia into which they can entice their viewers.
In reality, neither sex nor food is always as fulfilling as we assume it should be based on the perceptions we acquire from television and the Internet. The awkward moments, the blemishes, the sacrifices and concessions -- all the things on which real love is built -- are never edited out of life.
It is because of this incongruity between the porn world and the real world that pornography is alluring; it provides us with an escape. Unfortunately, the more time we spend using this drug the more we become accustomed to its false reality. What started off as novelty becomes normalcy.
As with heroin, pornography users build up a tolerance. Soft-core exposure no longer provides the original high. The porn junkie needs greater doses of his visual stimulant to create the same artificial levels of endorphins in his brain. Worse yet, the fiend finds that a basal level of smut is needed just to feel okay.
Whether the addict knows he's addicted or not, he'll usually admit that at least some desensitization has occurred.
Among Penn students, sexual desensitization is generally considered sexual "education," and so it is logical that a portion of every undergraduate student's general education fee should be used to fund a "literary" porn magazine.
The popular idea is this: exposure to sexual activity provides the enlightenment and creativity that every student needs to be savvy in the sack.
While it may be true that some individuals need a lesson in lovemaking, I'm fairly confident that most couples can master it on their own. Most sexual relationships last long enough for both partners involved to figure it out over and over again at least several times before reaching boredom.
In reality, they would probably both be better off going into the bedroom ignorant than entering with a distorted and narrowly defined porno-view of sex. As I'm sure even the editors of Quake would agree, social impairment, desensitization and narrow-mindedness in the bedroom is not a recipe for coital fireworks.
Unfortunately, these are risks associated with pornography exposure, which, like heroin exposure, has negative consequences. Sadly, while our heroin purity concerns us, our sexual purity does not.
Andrew Rennekamp is a first-year Biomedical Ph.D. student from East Stroudsburg, Pa. Any Ice Today Lady? appears on Tuesdays.
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