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 psychologists, 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 speech.
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 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 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."
Ten Tweets
against the hateful war on US
The Drug War is based on two HUGE lies: 1) that prohibition has no downsides, & 2) that drug use has no upsides.
Cocaine use is a blessing for some, just a little fun for most, and a curse for a few. Just like any other risky activity. We need to educate people about drugs rather than endlessly arresting them for attempting to improve their mental power!
Imagine if we held sports to the same safety standard as drugs. There would be no sports at all. And yet even free climbing is legal. Why? Because with sports, we recognize the benefits and not just the downsides.
"The Legislature deliberately determines to distrust the very people who are legally responsible for the physical well-being of the nation, and puts them under the thumb of the police, as if they were potential criminals."
-- Aleister Crowley on drug laws
Prohibition turned habituation into addiction by creating a wide variety of problems for users, including potential arrest, tainted or absent drug supply, and extreme stigmatization.
To understand why the western world is blind to the benefits of "drugs," read "The Concept of Nature" by Whitehead. He unveils the scientific schizophrenia of the west, according to which the "real" world is invisible to us while our perceptions are mere "secondary" qualities.
And where did politicians get the idea that irresponsible white American young people are the only stakeholders when it comes to the question of re-legalizing drugs??? There are hundreds of millions of other stakeholders: philosophers, pain patients, the depressed.
Besides, why should I listen to the views of a microbe?
I'm looking for a United Healthcare doctor now that I'm 66 years old. When I searched my zip code and typed "alternative medicine," I got one single solitary return... for a chiropractor, no less. Some choice. Guess everyone else wants me to "keep taking my meds."
The Drug Warriors say: "Don't tread on me! (That said, please continue to tell me what plants I can use, how much pain relief I can get, and whether my religion is true or not.)"
The Drug War is based on two HUGE lies: 1) that prohibition has no downsides, & 2) that drug use has no upsides.