In an ideal world, we would replace psychiatrists with what I call pharmacologically savvy empaths, compassionate healers with a vast knowledge of psychoactive substances from around the world and the creativity to suggest a wide variety of protocols for their safe use as based on psychological common sense. By so doing, we would get rid of the whole concept of 'patients' and 'treat' everybody for the same thing: namely, a desire to improve one's mind and mood. But the first step toward this change will be to renounce the idea that materialist scientists are the experts when it comes to mind and mood medicine in the first place. This is a category error. The experts on mind and mood are real people with real emotion, not physical doctors whose materialist bona fides dogmatically require them to ignore all the benefits of drugs under the belief that efficacy is to be determined by looking under a microscope.
This materialism blinds such doctors to common sense, so much so that it leads them to prefer the suicide of their patient to the use of feel-good medicines that could cheer that patient up in a trice. For the fact that a patient is happy means nothing to the materialist doctor: they want the patient to 'really' be happy -- which is just their way of saying that they want a "cure" that will work according to the behaviorist principles to which they are dedicated as modern-day materialists. Anybody could prescribe a drug that works, after all: only a big important doctor can prescribe something that works according to theory. Sure, the prescription has a worse track record then the real thing, but the doctor's primary job is to vindicate materialism, not to worry about the welfare of their patient. And so they place their hands to their ears as the voice of common sense cries out loudly and clearly: "You could cheer that patient up in a jiffy with a wide variety of medicines that you have chosen to demonize rather than to use in creative and safe ways for the benefit of humankind!" I am not saying that doctors are consciously aware of this evil --merely that they are complicit in it thanks to their blind allegiance to the inhumane doctrine of behaviorism.
This is the sick reality of our current approach. And yet everybody holds this mad belief, this idea that medical doctors should treat mind and mood conditions.
How do I know this?
Consider the many organizations that are out to prevent suicide. If they understood the evil consequences of having medical doctors handle our mind and mood problems, they would immediately call for the re-legalization of drugs and for psychiatrists to morph into empathizing, drug-savvy shamans. Why? Because the existing paradigm causes totally unnecessary suicides: it makes doctors evil by dogmatically requiring them to withhold substances that would obviously cheer one up and even inspire one (see the uplifting and non-addictive meds created by Alexander Shulgin, for instance). The anti-suicide movement should be all about the sane use of drugs that elate. The fact that it is not speaks volumes about America's addiction to the hateful materialist mindset of behaviorism.
More proof? What about the many groups that protest brain-damaging shock therapy? Good for them, right? but... why is shock therapy even necessary? Because we have outlawed all godsend medicines that could cheer up almost anybody "in a trice." And why do we do so? Because we actually prefer to damage the brain of the depressed rather than to have them use drugs. We prefer it! Is this not the most hateful of all possible fanaticisms: a belief about drugs that causes us to prefer suicide and brain damage to drug use? Is it really only myself who sees the madness here? Is there not one other philosopher on the planet who sees through the fog of drug war propaganda to the true evil that it causes?
This is totally unrecognized madness -- and it cries out for a complete change in America's attitude, not just toward drugs but toward our whole approach to mind and mood. We need to start learning from the compassionate holism of the shamanic world as manifested today in the cosmovision of the Andes. We need to start considering the human being as an unique individual and not as an interchangeable widget amenable to the one-size-fits-all cures of reductionism. The best way to fast-track such change is to implement the life-saving protocol of placing the above-mentioned pharmacologically savvy empaths in charge of mind and mood and putting the materialist scientists back where they belong: in jobs related to rocket chemistry and hadron colliders. We need to tell the Dr. Spocks of psychology that: "Thanks, but no thanks. We don't need your help when it comes to subjective matters, thank you very much indeed. Take your all-too-logical mind back to the physics lab where it belongs."
Addicted to AddictionAddicted to IgnoranceAddictionAmerica's Great Anti-Depressant ScamAmerica's Invisible Addiction CrisisFour reasons why Addiction is a political termHow Addiction Scientists Reckon without the Drug WarHow Drug Prohibition Causes RelapsesHow Prohibition Causes AddictionHow the Drug War Turns the Withdrawal Process into a Morality TaleIn the Realm of Hungry Drug WarriorsLibertarians as Closet Christian ScientistsModern Addiction Treatment as Puritan IndoctrinationNight of the Addicted AmericansNotes about the Madness of Drug ProhibitionOpen Letter to Addiction Specialist Gabor MateOpen Letter to Richard HammersleyProhibition Spectrum DisorderPublic Service Announcements for the Post-Drug War EraSherlock Holmes versus Gabor MatéTapering for JesusThe aesthetic difference between addiction and chemical dependencyThe Myth of the Addictive PersonalityWhy Louis Theroux is Clueless about Addiction and Alcoholism'Intoxiphobia' by Russell NewcombeAddicted to AddictionAmerica's Blind SpotBeta Blockers and the Materialist Tyranny of the War on DrugsCanadian Drug Warrior, I said Get AwayDisease Mongering in the age of the drug warDrug Dealers as Modern WitchesFentanyl does not kill! Prohibition does!Fentanyl does not steal loved ones: Drug Laws DoFive problems with The Psychedelic Handbook by Rick StrassmanFour reasons why Addiction is a political termIgnorance is the problem, not drugsIntoxiphobiaKevin Sabet and What-About-IsmMarci Hamilton Equates Drug Use with Child AbuseMatthew Perry and the Drug War GhoulsMore Weed Bashing at the Washington PostOregon's Incoherent Drug PolicyPartnership for a Death Free AmericaStigmatize THISThe problem with Modern Drug Reform EffortsWhat Goes Up Must Come Down?Why Kevin Sabet is WrongWhy Kevin Sabet's approach to drugs is racist, anti-scientific and counterproductiveAddicted to AddictionAddicted to IgnoranceAddictionAfter the Drug WarAfter the Drug War part 2Another Cry in the WildernessAssisted Suicide and the War on DrugsBeta Blockers and the Materialist Tyranny of the War on DrugsBrahms is NOT the best antidepressantCase Studies in Wise Drug UseCommon Sense Drug WithdrawalDeclaration of Independence from the War on DrugsDrug Use as Self-MedicationDrugs are not the enemy, hatred is the enemyEgo Transcendence Made EasyElderly Victims of Drug War IdeologyFour reasons why Addiction is a political termGetting off antidepressants in the age of the drug warGoodbye Patient, Hello ClientHarold & Kumar Support the Drug WarHeroin versus AlcoholHow Cocaine could have helped meHow drug prohibition destroys the lives of the depressedHow Drug Prohibition Leads to Excessive Drinking and SmokingHow Psychiatry and the Drug War turned me into an eternal patientHow the Drug War Blinds us to Godsend MedicineHow the Drug War is a War on CreativityHow the Drug War Killed Amy WinehouseHow The Drug War Killed Andy GibbHow the Drug War Punishes the ElderlyHow the Myth of Mental Illness supports the war on drugsHow to Unite Drug War Opponents of all EthnicitiesHypocritical America Embraces Drug War FascismIn Praise of Doctor FeelgoodIn Praise of Drug DealersIn Praise of Thomas SzaszLet's Hear It For Psychoactive TherapyMedications for so-called 'opioid-use disorder' are legionNotes about the Madness of Drug ProhibitionOpen Letter to Dr. Carl L. HartOpen Letter to ErowidOpen Letter to Gabrielle GlaserOpen Letter to Lisa LingPihkal 2.0Replacing 12-Step Programs with Shamanic HealingReplacing Psychiatry with Pharmacologically Savvy ShamanismScience is not free in the age of the drug warShannon Information and Magic MushroomsSomeone you love is suffering unnecessarily because of the war on drugsThank God for ErowidThank God for Soul QuestTHE ANTI DRUG WAR BLOGThe Drug War and ArmageddonThe Great Philosophical Problem of Our TimeThe Mother of all Western BiasesThe Muddled Metaphysics of the Drug WarThe Myth of the Addictive PersonalityThe New Age of Pharmacological SerfdomThe Origins of Modern PsychiatryThe Philosophical Idiocy of the Drug WarThe real reason for depression in AmericaUsing Opium to Fight DepressionWhat Jim Hogshire Got Wrong about DrugsWhy America's Mental Healthcare System is InsaneWhy Americans Prefer Suicide to Drug UseWhy Louis Theroux is Clueless about Addiction and AlcoholismWhy Scientists Should Not Judge Drugs
Drug warriors will no doubt point to the case of hospital patients who are given a substance for pain relief and then become psychologically and perhaps even physically dependent on that drug. I have just three comments to attempt to pacify these statistically-challenged worrywarts.
Harm Reduction is not enough. We need Benefit Production as well. The autistic should be able to use compassion-enhancing drugs; dementia patients should be able to use the many drugs that improve and speed up mental processes.