By Lindsay Potter
What better way to herald the next nuclear detonation than with a rave? If the Bomb is going to fall, who doesn’t want to feel surges of dopamine and serotonin in a mosh of warm electric bodies swirling in color? In the latest chapter of “nuclear war on drugs,” it seems that personnel at the Kleine-Brogel Air Base in Belgium might be down for that. Two non-military suspects were arrested during a June 22nd police raid of an illegal laboratory producing the rave drug ecstasy, or MDMA, on base property. The Kleine-Brogel base is known to station ten to twenty US nuclear weapons for use by the Belgian Air Force, and the French Press Agency noted that the “base is often a target of Belgian anti-nuclear and anti-NATO protesters.” Belgian prosecutors reported that the lab was dismantled by federal officers. News of MDMA-assisted therapy for veterans has started to break down the stigmas around these drugs and expand the minds of the mental health profession. This June, Canada began a limited three-year trial decriminalizing small amounts of MDMA and several other drugs to try to help people suffering from addiction or mental illness. Maybe the Kleine-Brogel nuclear attack specialists are one step ahead of the curve, using ecstasy preemptively, since dope may be the only way to cope with insufferable military madness.
— Song lyric by R.E.M.; Agence France Presse, June 28; BBC, June 1; and King’s College London, April 11, 2022

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