y 96-year-old mother who suffers from progressive dementia was in quite "a state" last night at the assisted living complex. It was difficult to figure out what the problem was, or if there even was a problem, objectively speaking, especially since I was speaking with her via my computer screen and so was not actually in the room with her. She would point, first to her TV screen and then at the nearby hallway, complaining (as far as I could tell) of a group of conspiring children (the young caretakers on site?) who were foiling her in her attempt to do something: perhaps to leave the building in search of her parents, or perhaps merely to watch TV undisturbed, I could not tell precisely. The only thing that I knew for certain was that she was quite "worked up" and that there was very little that I could do or say to help her.
I say there was very little that I could do. But upon looking back on this incident this morning, I realize a still greater problem: that there is very little that modern medicine can do, either. When we call a doctor in on such cases, we expect a pep talk for the patient and perhaps the prescription of a one-size-fits-all cure for extreme anxiety, which today means nothing more than a tranquilizer. We do not really want to make the patient feel good - that would be giving her "drugs." We want them to be quiet and peaceable. This has been the leitmotif of psychiatry through the 20th century and beyond: a search for treatments and drugs that pacify the patient rather than inspire them. That is why Antonio Moniz won a Nobel Prize for creating the protocol of electroshock therapy: not because it inspired patients or made them feel good, but because it quieted them down so that they caused less trouble for their overseers. Lithium, Thorazine, enemas and ice baths: all were used with the same goal in view: to render the patients placid, either by using these treatments or by merely threatening their use. Nor have the goals of psychiatry changed much over the years. Whatever one says about SSRIs today, no one has accused them of making users leap for joy and see the world in a new and brighter way.
But that's what my mother really needed last night.
The funny thing is, however, I cannot imagine a doctor administering this kind of medicine. Today's doctor qua doctor is a materialist who wants to "really" fix something and it's beneath their dignity merely to make their patients laugh. "Any drug dealer could do that, after all," they would sniff.
But that's the whole point: any drug dealer COULD do that, and doctors won't. So much the worse for doctors.
The fact is that my mother did not need a doctor last night in any case. By assigning doctors to such cases we are medicalizing and pathologizing an entirely natural manifestation of spiritual angst. That's not a field in which doctors have any special insight. My mother did not need a doctor looking down at her from the icy realm of professional objectivity. She needed an empathic individual, albeit one who is trained in psycho-pharmacology from a scientific and a sociocultural point of view. She needed a friend who is ready and authorized to use ANY SUBSTANCE IN THE WORLD that can help her deal with her extreme angst and confusion by elating and inspiring her! (Any substance in the world - imagine that!) And drugs for this purpose abound, starting with MDMA and the hundreds of related substances synthesized by Alexander Shulgin.
The empath I envision would listen to my mothers concerns while hugging her and drinking tea with her, which in this case would contain the medicines that the empath deemed useful under the circumstances for calming and clearing the sufferer's mind of worry. Nor would these medicines be administered "on the sly" but rather with the patient's full knowledge that they are receiving a medicine to help them process their current situation -- not just their immediate physical situation, such as one's residency in a care home, but also their overall situation in the grand scheme of things, as a unique human being on planet earth with connections to the world around them. The goal? Make them happy with simply sitting and talking about their situation and concerns with this newly minted shamanic "professional" by their side, perhaps while leafing through a scrapbook of old photographs from the sufferer's past.
Just imagine the enormous amount of psychological suffering that is going on right now in care homes and assisted living facilities around the world, all because we have been taught from grade school that we should hate drugs rather than use them for the benefit of humankind. If we really care about preventing suffering, then this attitude must change. We must consider psychoactive medicines as our friends, not our enemies. When that day comes, I hope that the above suggestions will provide at least a hint of a protocol that can be used to leverage the power of psychoactive medicine for the elderly.
"Chemical means of peering into the contents of the inner mind have been universally prized as divine exordia in man’s quest for the beyond... before the coarseness of utilitarian minds reduced them to the status of 'dope'." -- Eric Hendrickson
What is the end game of the drug warrior? A world in which no one wants drugs? That's not science. It's the drug-hating religion of Christian Science. You know, the American religion that outsources its Inquisition to drug-testing labs.
As great as it is, "Synthetic Panics" by Philip Jenkins was only tolerated by academia because it did not mention drugs in the title and it contains no explicit opinions about drugs. As a result, many drug law reformers still don't know the book exists.
Clearly a millennia's worth of positive use of coca by the Peruvian Indians means nothing to the FDA. Proof must show up under a microscope.
Peyote advocates should be drug legalization advocates. Otherwise, they're involved in special pleading which is bound to result in absurd laws, such as "Plant A can be used in a religion but not plant B," or "Person A can belong to such a religion but person B cannot."
In 1886, coca enthusiast JJ Tschudi referred to prohibitionists as 'kickers.' He wrote: "If we were to listen to these kickers, most of us would die of hunger, for the reason that nearly everything we eat or drink has fallen under their ban."
New article in Scientific American: "New hope for pain relief," that ignores the fact that we have outlawed the time-honored panacea. Scientists want a drug that won't run the risk of inspiring us.
Prohibition is a crime against humanity. It forces us to use shock therapy on the severely depressed since we've outlawed all viable alternatives. It denies medicines that could combat Alzheimer's and/or render it psychologically bearable.
Every time I see a psychiatrist, I feel like I'm playing a game of make-believe. We're both pretending that hundreds of demonized medicines do not exist and could be of no use whatsoever.
We might as well fight for justice for Christopher Reeves: he was killed because someone was peddling that junk that we call horses. The question is: who sold Christopher that horse?! Who encouraged him to ride it?!
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, Helping the Elderly with Drugs: Call for a new paradigm and protocol, published on June 23, 2023 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)
y 96-year-old mother who suffers from progressive dementia was in quite "a state" last night at the assisted living complex. It was difficult to figure out what the problem was, or if there even was a problem, objectively speaking, especially since I was speaking with her via my computer screen and so was not actually in the room with her. She would point, first to her TV screen and then at the nearby hallway, complaining (as far as I could tell) of a group of conspiring children (the young caretakers on site?) who were foiling her in her attempt to do something: perhaps to leave the building in search of her parents, or perhaps merely to watch TV undisturbed, I could not tell precisely. The only thing that I knew for certain was that she was quite "worked up" and that there was very little that I could do or say to help her. 
You have been reading an article entitled, Helping the Elderly with Drugs: Call for a new paradigm and protocol, published on June 23, 2023 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)