To briefly comment on taboos, some of them have their uses, but many of them contain in them statements of power relation.
For example, consider the effects Coke can have on your body. You'll notice the effects of Coke compare to heroin, and the combination of effects of Diet Coke compare to cocaine, yet these substances are freely available; indeed, they are even abundantly available and very cheap.
Or consider that the neurological changes associated with meditation and fasting mirror those of certain psychoactive drugs, only they are not as compressed.
Instead of sitting down and deliberating over the many ways to go about something, and the merits associated with those ways, we generally opt for binaries, buttressed with strong opinions and emotions.
There is much to investigate in order to account for this phenomena, though I just wanted to touch on it for now.
