How many of you have read Consciousness Medicine, by Francoise Bourzat? Let's see a show of hands.
Stay seated, everyone, I still haven't counted the folks in the back. Raise those hands up, high.
OK, let me see, now. 25, carry the one... It looks like... zero people have read that book.
Well, in fairness, it is pretty new.
It's all about the way that psychedelic medicines can heal psychological conditions.
Or rather, that's what it SHOULD be about. Unfortunately, Francoise keeps hawking the benefits of deep breathing and drum therapy, et cetera. Which I find a little off-putting, frankly.
Just like Stanislav Grof, when he came out with HIS breathing routine. I'd rather these folks stay focused on the value of psychedelic therapy rather than to start promoting second-best cures that simply don't work for the vast majority of cases.
Hey, listen, folks, been there done that, with every manner of self-help approach you can imagine. How many unfulfilled lifetimes do I have to live before self-help mavens get the message: "It's the drugs, stupid!"
You know what I'm saying? Time for some real politik in treating what ails me.
I mean, Freud did not turn to psychotherapy (let alone to self-help fads) to help him get through life successfully. Like it or not, he turned to cocaine and theory be damned. Freud was not going to sacrifice his own self-fulfillment by becoming a guinea pig to psychology's unproven "cures." And as long as modern psychology does not even acknowledge, let alone come to terms with, Freud's therapeutic use of cocaine , we are never, for all our scientific pretensions, going to understand human motivation. Instead, we'll live in a fairy land where the effects of drugs are established for psychologists1, not by proof, but by strong political prejudices that insist, via law, on what the truth SHOULD BE, that fairy land in which we pretend that substance use is ALWAYS substance abuse. (The DEA lives by this absurdity, for when they say that a drug is subject to abuse, they mean simply that it might be obtained without a prescription -- which is a tautological definition if there ever was one, since an illegal drug CAN'T be obtained with a prescription. But it helps work the Drug Warriors up into a frenzy to tell them that drug X is subject to abuse, so they need not know the philosophically shabby way in which that definition was derived.)
But, Francoise, bless her, writes as if psychedelic therapy is just one of many helpful strategies in life. The unfortunate corollary of this opinion is that the outlawing of such therapy is no big deal -- since cures for depression and related psychological problems are a dime a dozen, to be easily found in the self-help section of any bookstore or library.
But as a veteran depressive, I would have zero interest in the psychedelic renaissance if it held no greater transformative promise than that of breath work or drum therapy. I mean, how many unfulfilled lifetimes do I have to live in order to prove to the fad peddlers that their nostrums don't work in the long run? And why not? Because they presuppose the incentive and follow-through and self-insight that a successful depression therapy should generate rather than take for granted.
Psychedelics alone among drug therapies offers the possibility of true change based on self-insight.
Am I right or am I right?
My name is Ballard Quass and I'll be here lambasting the Drug War until the government thinks up a way to outlaw free speech2.
Which can't be far off, by the way, given that they've already had the chutzpah to criminalize the plants and fungi that grow at our very feet! I mean, how anti-scientific, fascistic, and downright childish is that? What? I'm just sayin'!
Author's Follow-up: May 17, 2024
It will be argued that Freud eventually soured on cocaine , but that is a little like sour grapes. He was prolific for a reason, and those who argue that cocaine 34 had no role in that great output are living in the ideological fairyland of the Drug Warrior. In this way, Freud was like those pop stars who rise above their insecurity with the help of drugs, then, after achieving fame by help of a virtuous circle (for success breeds success), they publish morally posturing books about their struggles to get off those drugs after said drugs have helped them become secure both financially and emotionally speaking (for success breeds self-confidence).
Thus Americans take home the fairytale message that drugs are evil -- whereas the real message to an unbiased mind would be that drugs have to be used wisely, such that dependence is voluntary and can be removed with relative ease thanks to the legalization 5 of all sorts of medicines that could help a drug user fight drugs with drugs. But for now, the idea of fighting drugs with drugs is so foreign to the kneejerk Christian Science metaphysic of the Drug Warriors that they simply never even think of that possibility, believing instead that the goal of all "addiction" therapy is to get the user off ALL drugs -- with the hypocritical exception of drugs like coffee and SSRIs, of course.
That said, I think that drum therapy and breathing exercises have their place and can surely "work" to varying extents in cases where the motivation is already there. It is only when such therapies are proffered as an equally good alternative to "drugs" that I cry foul. In fact, that's my problem with the whole self-help movement. It owes its very existence as a genre to the Drug War, which outlawed all REAL self-help. And yet almost zero self-help authors take the Drug War to task, or even mention it, in their books. The honest author would say: "Of course, psychoactive drugs could help you tremendously, but since they are outlawed, I have some second-best ideas that you might wish to try."
The drug war tells us that certain drugs have no potential uses and then turns that into a self-fulfilling prophecy by outlawing these drugs. This is insanely anti-scientific and anti-progress. We should never give up on looking for positive uses for ANY substance.
The DEA outlawed MDMA in 1985, thereby depriving soldiers of a godsend treatment for PTSD. Apparently, the DEA staff slept well at night in the early 2000s as American soldiers were having their lives destroyed by IEDs.
If our loved ones should experience severe depression and visit an emergency room for treatment, they will be started on a regime of dependence-causing Big Pharma drugs. They will not be given any drugs that elate and inspire.
Scientists are not the experts on psychoactive medicines. The experts are painters and artists and spiritualists -- and anyone else who simply wants to be all they can be in life. Scientists understand nothing of such goals and aspirations.
That's why we damage the brains of the depressed with shock therapy rather than let them use coca or opium. That's why many regions allow folks to kill themselves but not to take drugs that would make them want to live. The Drug War is a perversion of social priorities.
A pharmacologically savvy drug dealer would have no problem getting someone off one drug because they would use the common sense practice of fighting drugs with drugs. But materialist doctors would rather that the patient suffer than to use such psychologically obvious methods.
William James knew that there were substances that could elate. However, it never occurred to him that we should use such substances to prevent suicide. It seems James was blinded to this possibility by his puritanical assumptions.
The "acceptable risk" for psychoactive drugs can only be decided by the user, based on what they prioritize in life. Science just assumes that all users should want to live forever, self-fulfilled or not.
Drug prohibition is the perfect racist crime. It brought gunfire to inner cities, yet those who seek to end the gunfire pretend that drug prohibition has nothing to do with it.
Most prohibitionists think that they merely have to use the word "drugs" to win an argument. Like: "Oh, so you're in favor of DRUGS then, are you?" You can just see them sneering as they type. That's because the word "drugs" is like the word "scab": it's a loaded political term.
The drug war tells us that certain drugs have no potential uses and then turns that into a self-fulfilling prophecy by outlawing these drugs. This is insanely anti-scientific and anti-progress. We should never give up on looking for positive uses for ANY substance.