Gossip is the opiate of the oppressed.

-Jong, Erica ne¤  e Mann
  Fear of Flying, ch.6.

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk, Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk: 'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot, But being too happy in thine happiness That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees, In some melodious plot Of beechen green, and shadows numberless, Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

-Keats,John
  Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St.  Agnes and Other Poems,'Ode to a Nightingale', stanza1.

Communism is the opiate of the intellectuals, with no cure except as a guillotine might be called a cure for dandruff.

-Luce, Clare Booth
  In Newsweek, 24  Jan.