 |
| Money-addicted Fox and Skunk |
In my previous post, “A
Brief History of Portsmouth’s Psychotropic Addictions,” I said there is a drug, loosely speaking, that
has been even more pervasive and addictive than the cocaine, Valium, Oxycontin, Suboxone, etc., that have plagued Portsmouth. That drug is money. Unlike
addictions caused by chemicals, the addictions caused by money are called process or behavior addictions, in which, through the release of pleasure-producing dopamines,
the brain gets rewired neurologically and as a result compulsively repeats the
pleasurable pursuit of money. "In the brain," Wikipedia says, "dopamine functions as a neurotransmitter—a chemical released by nerve cells to send signals to other nerve cells. The brain includes several distinct dopamine systems, one of which plays a major role in reward-motivated behavior. Most types of reward increase the level of dopamine in the brain, and a variety of addictive drugs increase dopamine neuronal activity."
 |
| Dopamine molecules |
A couple of enterprising money addicts, whom I called the Skunk and the Fox in a poem
I posted five years ago (click here),
realized they could get rich quick by capitalizing on Portsmouth’s pervasive poverty, the crumbling
housing stock and eminent domain being the skunk’s bailiwick, the legal monkey
business of estate planning and tax
write-offs being the Fox’s. In
1963, in a speech before Congress, President Lyndon Johnson declared War on Poverty. The federal government’s
weapon of choice in that war was not tanks and battleships but money.
In that same year, 1963, a handful of Portsmouth entrepreneurs formed a now infamous private corporation that ended up with the name Southern Ohio Growth Partnership, Inc. (SOGP), with the Fox being the brains behind the operation. The mission of the SOGP was to distribute the War on Poverty money that was flowing into southern Ohio in the form of grants and loans for deserving businessmen. (Just as there are "deserving poor," there are deserving businessmen.) In deciding which deserving businessman got how much of the addictive drug, money, the SOGP Fox was the equivalent of a powerful drug lord. The SOGP went out of business last year after it was discovered they were cooking the books. The Fox has since retired but the Skunk has not. Some years ago I was told of an exchange somebody had with the Skunk. When asked why he hadn’t retired seeing he had already made a lot of money, the Skunk said, or so the story goes, “There’s never enough money.”
In that same year, 1963, a handful of Portsmouth entrepreneurs formed a now infamous private corporation that ended up with the name Southern Ohio Growth Partnership, Inc. (SOGP), with the Fox being the brains behind the operation. The mission of the SOGP was to distribute the War on Poverty money that was flowing into southern Ohio in the form of grants and loans for deserving businessmen. (Just as there are "deserving poor," there are deserving businessmen.) In deciding which deserving businessman got how much of the addictive drug, money, the SOGP Fox was the equivalent of a powerful drug lord. The SOGP went out of business last year after it was discovered they were cooking the books. The Fox has since retired but the Skunk has not. Some years ago I was told of an exchange somebody had with the Skunk. When asked why he hadn’t retired seeing he had already made a lot of money, the Skunk said, or so the story goes, “There’s never enough money.”
The War on Drugs
As the Skunk
and Fox had profited from the money the government spent on the War on Poverty, a couple of younger money addicts have come
along in Portsmouth who are profiting not from the passé War on Poverty but from the War on Drugs. They
see themselves as drug counselors acting out of humanitarian and even religious motives, but their critics think of them more as consiglieres, which is Italian for "counselors." Just recently, one of these consiglieres has had his two Portsmouth counseling centers raided by the police and he has been charged with money laundering and racketeering.
The term War on Drugs was coined by President Nixon in a special message
to Congress on June 17, 1971, in which he promised federal resources would be
devoted to “the prevention of new addicts, and the rehabilitation of those who
are addicted.” Thirty-five years after Nixon declared War on Drugs, that
war rages on, with no end in sight, with an estimated $51,000,000,000 (that's 51 billion!) being spent annually on it, dwarfing what had been spent on the
War on Poverty, which did not last beyond the 1960s. Of the 50 states in the
U.S., Ohio is the 11th most addicted and Scioto County among the highest per
capita addicted Ohio counties, and no where more so than in the county seat, Portsmouth, which attracts money addicts like honey attracts flies. For soldiers of fortune, Portsmouth
is a very profitable place to fight the War on Drugs.
In my next post I will provide a peek
inside the Scioto County Counseling Center, Inc., the oldest, largest, and most profitable of the local "non-profit" counseling centers. I will also throw a little light on the shadowy but well-paid "consigliere" behind it.
"The brain includes several distinct dopamine systems, one of which plays a major role in reward-motivated behavior. Most types of reward increase the level of dopamine in the brain, and a variety of addictive drugs increase dopamine neuronal activity." For more on brain circuitry as a result of process addiction, see my previous post "Just Say No to Ed Hughes" (click here).
. . .
 |
| Brain circuitry |
"The brain includes several distinct dopamine systems, one of which plays a major role in reward-motivated behavior. Most types of reward increase the level of dopamine in the brain, and a variety of addictive drugs increase dopamine neuronal activity." For more on brain circuitry as a result of process addiction, see my previous post "Just Say No to Ed Hughes" (click here).
