PS I'm one of psychiatry's millions of "eternal patients" in these days of the addictive pill paradigm, and so I have 40+ years of experience on the receiving end of psychiatric nostrums for fighting depression and anxiety. Given this vast experience, I hope you'll consider it worthwhile to read a criticism that I have of the scientific method when it comes to seeking out and justifying cures for depression.
The reductionist approach is always looking for "mechanisms of action," but it is my belief that this focus blinds researchers to common sense in many cases. Take MDMA, for instance. Given my secondhand knowledge of the effects of MDMA (as described both by "ravers" and by your study participants), I have sufficient information to know that MDMA would be an effective psychotherapeutic adjunct when used, say, between once a week and once a month in a psychiatrist's office. My conclusion, however, is based on a knowledge of human nature to which reductionist science gives little attention: the fact that a human being looks forward to positive experiences, and that this very anticipation can improve the quality of one's mental life.
If I were to propose such therapy, the reductionist might instinctively object: "But we want to know the mechanism of action before we proceed: namely, how does MDMA decrease depression in this case: what are the chemical mechanisms involved?" This statement, however, merely indicates that the scientist "just doesn't get it." The scientist wants to go in search of a phantom. The MDMA does not have to decrease depression directly in order to decrease depression. Its use simply constitutes an extremely positive experience, and anticipation of use does the rest of the work in decreasing the user's overall depression.
This is why drugs like cocaine and opium can be successfully vilified by Drug Warriors: they can (perhaps correctly) say that there is no direct chemical link between use and self-fulfillment or happiness in life. What they fail to realize, however, is that there need not be a direct link between drug and effect if the drug use provides anticipation. The mere knowledge that there is "a port in the storm" of internal mental life (whether it be provided through cocaine, opium, MDMA, marijuana, or prayer) can provide one with happiness indirectly. Again, this is a psychological truism that reductionists seem always to ignore, constantly asking: "Yes, but how exactly does drug x, y or z decrease depression? What are the chemicals involved?"
The answer is, of course, that the drugs do not, strictly speaking, decrease depression at all: rather, they provide the user with anticipation of upcoming mental relief through use of said substances - and that mere anticipation does all the heavy lifting: anticipation does all the positive psychological work that the reductionist wants to ascribe scientifically to the drug itself.
And so the approval of MDMA as a drug to treat depression becomes unnecessarily problematic, as reductionist science scrambles to show chemical pathways whereby the MDMA can bring about the increased happiness with which it's associated, completely ignoring the powerful role that anticipation of regular MDMA therapy can play in boosting mood and one's own patience with the downsides of daily experience. (At least I fear that this could happen. I have no specific knowledge of the actual state of affairs viz. such research.)
I'm not saying that MDMA cannot have a direct and positive effect on the brain. I'm saying that this is not the only way that we can justify the use of such a substance in a psychotherapeutic setting. We need not downplay and ignore the simple fact that occasional scheduled MDMA use can improve a user's life through mere anticipation of the psychological relief and insights that the drug can supply in a positive setting.
Speaking personally, I would definitely look forward to such a psychiatric appointment and be happier simply in knowing that this appointment loomed on the horizon. What a contrast to the depression I currently feel knowing that a pro forma office visit is coming up: a visit that I'm forced to make every 3 to 6 months of my life in order to obtain re-authorization for my purchase of yet another expensive set of prescription drugs. (That's the problem with the DEA: they fetishize drugs, making them so "awesome" that even a user of 40 years cannot be trusted to use his medicine wisely without constant bureaucratic oversight, approval and reapproval.)
PPS I hope you don't mind, but this email will also appear on my website, where I hope my thoughts on this topic will inspire thinkers to unravel the tangled web of superstition and pseudoscience that currently constitutes America's anti-scientific attitude toward this fetishized scapegoat for social problems that we call "drugs." I trust that it "goes without saying" that these are simply general philosophical observations, not criticisms directed toward you personally. So thank you for your patience and attention, and I wish you best of luck in your important work with MDMA as a psychotherapeutic tool.
The Links Police
Do you know why I stopped you? That's right, because the Drug War has given me carte blanche to be a noxious busybody. That, and I wanted to give you a few more links showing how drugs can help us stop mass shootings, as soon as we drop the drug-war ideology of substance demonization, that is.
Michael has not yet quite seen his way clear to get back to me, but then this was written three years ago when I was still a kid -- scarcely 62 years old if I was a day! What I was trying to say above is that the use of drugs like coca and opium can create a virtuous circle of effects -- by giving someone something to look forward, taking one's mind off of negative thoughts, thereby improving performance, thereby making one happy, thereby taking one's mind off negative thoughts, thereby improving performance, etc.
That's a virtuous circle to which modern scientistic psychology is blind! And so they do not want to give drugs that will merely help: no, they want to "cure" me with drugs that work based on what one can see under a microscope. The result of such scientism, of course, is today's psychiatric pill mill, thanks to which 1 in 4 American women are hooked on Big Pharma meds that purport (wrongly, as it turns out) to treat depression and anxiety on a "scientific" basis. I'm something of an expert on this topic, as I have been on the receiving end of such nostrums for 40+ years, and the one thing I can say about tricyclics, benzodiazepines, SSRIs and SNRIs is that they are and have been all about TRANQUILIZING ME, not about making me happy or giving me a feeling of success or giving me something to look forward to in this life.
MDMA/Ecstasy
The FDA approves of brain-damaging shock therapy but will not approve MDMA for soldiers with PTSD. This is the same FDA that signs off on the psychiatric pill mill upon which 1 in 4 American women are dependent for life. This is the same FDA that approves Big Pharma drugs whose advertised side effects include death itself! (Can somebody say "follow the money"?)
Check out the conversations that I have had so far with the movers and shakers in the drug-war game -- or rather that I have TRIED to have. Actually, most of these people have failed to respond to my calls to parlay, but that need not stop you from reading MY side of these would-be chats.
I don't know what's worse, being ignored entirely or being answered with a simple "Thank you" or "I'll think about it." One writes thousands of words to raise questions that no one else is discussing and they are received and dismissed with a "Thank you." So much for discussion, so much for give-and-take. It's just plain considered bad manners these days to talk honestly about drugs. Academia is living in a fantasy world in which drugs are ignored and/or demonized -- and they are in no hurry to face reality. And so I am considered a troublemaker. This is understandable, of course. One can support gay rights, feminism, and LGBTQ+ today without raising collegiate hackles, but should one dare to talk honestly about drugs, they are exiled from the public commons.
Somebody needs to keep pointing out the sad truth about today's censored academia and how this self-censorship is but one of the many unacknowledged consequences of the Drug War ideology of substance demonization.
The Cabinet of Caligari ('62) ends with a shameless display of psychiatric triumphalism. Happy shock therapy patients waltz freely about a mansion in which the "sick" protagonist has just been "cured" by tranquilizers and psychoanalysis. Did Robert Bloch believe his own script?
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.
In fact, there are times when it is clearly WRONG to deny kids drugs (whatever the law may say). If your child is obsessed with school massacres, he or she is an excellent candidate for using empathogenic meds ASAP -- or do we prefer even school shootings to drug use???
The drug war is the defeatist doctrine that we will never be able to use psychoactive drugs wisely. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy because the government does everything it can to make drug use dangerous.
This is the mentality for today's materialist researcher when it comes to "laughing gas." He does not care that it merely cheers folks up. He wants to see what is REALLY going on with the substance, using electrodes and brain scans.
The 1932 movie "Scarface" starts with on-screen text calling for a crackdown on armed gangs in America. There is no mention of the fact that a decade's worth of Prohibition had created those gangs in the first place.
Even when laudanum was legal in the UK, pharmacists were serving as moral adjudicators, deciding for whom they should fill such prescriptions. That's not a pharmacist's role. We need an ABC-like set-up in which the cashier does not pry into my motives for buying a substance.
I, for one, am actually TRYING to recommend drugs like MDMA and psilocybin as substitutes for shock therapy. In fact, I would recommend almost ANY pick-me-up drug as an alternative to knowingly damaging the human brain. That's more than the hateful DEA can say.
Did the Vedic People have a substance disorder because they wanted to drink enough soma to see religious realities?
Some fat cat should treat the entire Supreme Court to a vacation at San Jose del Pacifico in Mexico, where they can partake of the magic mushroom in a ceremony led by a Zapotec guide.
Do you know why I stopped you? That's right, because the Drug War has given me carte blanche to be a noxious busybody. That, and I wanted to give you a few more links showing how drugs can help us stop mass shootings, as soon as we drop the drug-war ideology of substance demonization, that is.
The Cabinet of Caligari ('62) ends with a shameless display of psychiatric triumphalism. Happy shock therapy patients waltz freely about a mansion in which the "sick" protagonist has just been "cured" by tranquilizers and psychoanalysis. Did Robert Bloch believe his own script?