or why doctors and researchers are blind to common sense
by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
December 22, 2024
have written many essays on the connection between materialism and substance prohibition. I have shown how a dogmatic reductive materialism blinds drug researchers to common sense and helps them toe the Drug War party line by professing to be in doubt about the efficacy of many drugs that oh-so-obviously work, not only according to user reports and historical records, but according to psychological common sense (like the once-simple notion that drugs that cheer one up do actually cheer one up, even if they fail to do so in a way that materialist scientists can demonstrate on a pie chart!) However, I have not yet specified the name of the psychological theory that seems to have greenlighted this dogmatic obtuseness in the first place. That psychological theory is Behaviorism.
The icy coldness of that psychological doctrine is clear in the following words of its founder, JB Watson, as quoted in the 2015 book "Paradox" by Margaret Cuonzo:
"Concepts such as belief and desire are heritages of a timid savage past akin to concepts referring to magic.1"
What counts is what one can measure -- and since anecdotal and historical accounts of life-affirming drug use cannot be quantified, they are to be ignored. You say a drug helps you? What do YOU know? Doctors are the experts after all: doctors who are dogmatically deaf to your laughter and blind to your smiles while you are under the influence.
Behaviorism is the perfect ideology for a curmudgeon, because it lends a veneer of science to their inability to deal with human emotions. The Behaviorist is Dr. Spock with an attitude. The doctrine seems to justify all their inability to live large and fully. Indeed, taken to extremes, such curmudgeons would have to foreswear music itself, since there is nothing logical and quantifiable about the emotions that it inspires, even in Behaviorists. Such feelings are, after all, just "heritages of a timid savage past akin to magic."
Unfortunately, the attitude of such curmudgeons has knock-on effects because it teaches drug researchers to ignore common sense and to downplay or ignore all positive drug usage reports and historic lessons about positive drug use. The "patient" needs to just shut up and let the doctors decide what can help them. No need to even discuss one's hopes and dreams with the doc because that is all touchy-feely stuff and anti-scientific. Behaviorism is a doctrine that dovetails nicely with Drug War ideology, because it empowers the researcher to ignore the obvious: that all drugs that elate have potential uses as antidepressants.
That statement can only be denied when one assumes that "real" proof of efficacy of a psychoactive medicine must be determined by a doctor, and that the patient's only job is to shut up because their hopes and dreams and feelings cannot be accurately displayed and quantified on a graph or a pie chart.
Materialism
Materialist scientists collaborate with the drug war by refusing to see glaringly obvious drug benefits. They acknowledge only those benefits that they believe are visible under a microscope. The Hindu religion would not exist today had materialist scientists held soma to such a standard. But that's the absurd pass to which prohibition eventually brings us in a society wherein materialist science is the new god: scientists are put in charge of deciding whether we are allowed to imagine new religions or not.
This materialist bias is inspired in turn by behaviorism, the anti-indigenous doctrine of JB Watson that makes the following inhumane claim:
"Concepts such as belief and desire are heritages of a timid savage past akin to concepts referring to magic."
According to this view, the hopes and the dreams of a "patient" are to be ignored. Instead, we are to chart their physiology and brain chemistry.
JB Watson's Behaviorism is a sort of Dr. Spock with a vengeance. It is the perfect ideology for a curmudgeon, because it would seem to justify all their inability to deal with human emotions. Unfortunately, the attitude has knock-on effects because it teaches drug researchers to ignore common sense and to downplay or ignore all positive usage reports or historic lessons about positive drug use. The "patient" needs to just shut up and let the doctors decide how they are doing. It is a doctrine that dovetails nicely with drug war ideology, because it empowers the researcher to ignore the obvious: that all drugs that elate have potential uses as antidepressants.
That statement can only be denied when one assumes that "real" proof of efficacy of a psychoactive medicine must be determined by a doctor, and that the patient's only job is to shut up because their hopes and dreams and feelings cannot be accurately displayed and quantified on a graph or a bar chart.
The Drug War treats doctors like potential criminals and it treats the rest of us like children. Prohibition does not end drug risks: it just outsources them to minorities and other vulnerable populations.
Folks who believe in the drug war should consider that it is a multi-billion-dollar campaign to enforce the attitude of the Pizarro's of the world when it comes to non-western medicines. It is the apotheosis of the colonialism that most people claim to hate.
Think you can handle a horse? So did Christopher Reeves. The fact is, NOBODY can handle a horse. This message brought to you by the Partnership for a Death Free America.
The sad fact is that America regularly arrests people whose only crime is that they are keeping performance anxiety at bay... in such a way that psychiatrists are not getting THEIR cut.
The drug war basically 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.
It is consciousness which, via perception, shapes the universe into palpable forms. Otherwise it's just a chaos of particles. The very fact that you can refer to "the sun" shows that your senses have parsed the raw data into a specific meaning. "We" make this universe.
I know. I'm on SNRIs. But SSRIs and SNRIs are both made with materialist presumptions in mind: that the best way to change people is with a surgical strike at one-size-fits-all chemistry. That's the opposite of the shamanic holism that I favor.
The drug war has created a whole film genre with the same tired plots: drug-dealing scumbags and their dupes being put in their place by the white Anglo-Saxon establishment, which has nothing but contempt for altered states.
Yeah. That's why it's so pretentious and presumptuous of People magazine to "fight for justice" on behalf of Matthew Perry, as if Perry would have wanted that.
We deal with "drug" risks differently than any other risk. Aspirin kills thousands every year. The death rate from free climbing is huge. But it's only with "drug use" that we demand zero deaths (a policy which ironically causes far more deaths than necessary).
Buy the Drug War Comic Book by the Drug War Philosopher Brian Quass, featuring 150 hilarious op-ed pics about America's disgraceful war on Americans
You have been reading an article entitled, Behaviorism and the War on Drugs: or why doctors and researchers are blind to common sense, published on December 22, 2024 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)
have written many essays on the connection between materialism and substance prohibition. I have shown how a dogmatic reductive materialism blinds drug researchers to common sense and helps them toe the Drug War party line by professing to be in doubt about the efficacy of many drugs that oh-so-obviously work, not only according to user reports and historical records, but according to psychological common sense (like the once-simple notion that drugs that cheer one up do actually cheer one up, even if they fail to do so in a way that materialist scientists can demonstrate on a pie chart!) However, I have not yet specified the name of the psychological theory that seems to have greenlighted this dogmatic obtuseness in the first place. That psychological theory is Behaviorism.
You have been reading an article entitled, Behaviorism and the War on Drugs: or why doctors and researchers are blind to common sense, published on December 22, 2024 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)