I'm always startled by the non-critical allusion to ECT in stories that discuss controversial psychoactive drugs like Ketamine, as if administering so-called "shock therapy" for depression was no more problematic, morally speaking, than prescribing aspirin for a headache. I beg to differ for the following reason.
I think it's bizarre that doctors can bring themselves to knowingly injure the brain through ECT while failing to have explored the value of drugs like psilocybin, LSD, and the coca leaf, all of which have the potential of relieving long-standing depression without inflicting lasting damage to the brain. I would have no problem with ECT as a last resort, but the fact is that it is not being used as a last resort for the severely depressed; instead, it is being administered by doctors who have never sufficiently advocated for the above-mentioned alternatives that would fulfill the Hippocratic oath of "first do no harm." Doctors may not be able to single—handedly change drug laws, of course, but they still have a moral obligation to speak up when drug-law restrictions oblige them to use a dangerous treatment for which safer alternatives are available.
Yes, patients may seem "happier" after ECT, but it is a sad success indeed, coming as it does thanks to a loss of brain function.
If, in the supposedly enlightened 21st century, we still are forced to use a harmful treatment such as ECT thanks to drug law, then the medical community owes it to society to publicize that fact loudly and clearly each time it throws the switch to shock a patient, saying: "American drug law is forcing us to take this potentially harmful step; American drug law is forcing us to put this patient at this unnecessary risk of having his or her brain damaged by ECT."
Instead, ^{the medical community remains largely silent, claiming that ECT is defensible on its own terms, when in reality it's a dangerous expedient that is only rendered necessary thanks to the fact that drug law in the U.S. has senselessly outlawed all the promising psychoactive alternatives.}{
AFTERTHOUGHTS about America's Pathological and Childish War on Mother Nature's Plant Medicines: Nothing demonstrates Americans' pathological fear of Mother Nature's plants more than their willingness to inflict brain injury on patients rather than resort to the therapeutic use of such godsend natural medicines. There are even Drug Warrior regions where they'd prefer that patients DIE rather than use natural medicines -- places where a doctor can legally kill you (via euthanasia) and yet that same doctor would be arrested if he or she tried to make you want to live by giving you natural plant medicines, such as psychedelics. America's attitude is beyond pathological to the point of being childish, when you consider the oppressive security regimes that the DEA imposes in those rare cases where it allows a psychoactive substance to be studied. On those blue-moon occasions, the superstitiously fretful DEA requires such burdensome security protocols (including bank vaults and security guards) that you'd think the substances being studied were highly enriched uranium, not a plant or fungi grown by Mother Nature herself.
Author's Follow-up: November 1, 2022
Turns out ketamine is being promoted more for economic reasons than for safety ones. But that's the Drug War for you: it's never about safety. Folks like Kevin Sabet keep dreaming of a perfectly scientific approach to drugs (which has its own drawbacks: see ), but that's never going to happen in a capitalist country where Big Pharma advertises meds like candy in prime-time. Instead, what REALLY happens is folks like Kevin take a jaundiced super-close and unforgiving look at Mother Nature's bounty while giving Big Pharma 12 a great big mulligan for its enormous shortcomings, like the fact that it has rendered 1 in 4 Americans chemically dependent for life.
But if you ever want to know how fanatical the Drug War ideology truly is, philosophically speaking, just remember that, even as we speak, doctors can shock your brain if you're super depressed but they can't give you any of thousands of psychoactive medicines that could make you feel better without damaging your gray matter. That's not just anti-scientific, it's hardcore Christian Science, the religion that first told us that we should say "no" to drugs.
Related tweet: November 1, 2022
Low drug use is not a good goal in and of itself. If a teen has chronic depression, I would pray that we could give him or her a psychoactive godsend from Mother Nature rather than shock therapy!
Author's Follow-up: November 10, 2022
Depression in America could be cured overnight and the war in Mexico ended, were we to re-legalize Mother Nature, and especially the coca leaf. But Drug Warriors are such Christian Science zealots that they would prefer "treating" the depressed with electroshock therapy and lobotomies rather than allowing them to chew coca leaves. They show the same heartlessness in their foreign policy, where they prefer a civil war that kills tens of thousands to the re-legalization 3 of such naturally occurring godsends.
Euthanasia and Shock Therapy in the age of the Drug War
That's how antidepressants came about: the idea that sadness was a simple problem that science could solve. Instead of being caused by a myriad of interrelated issues, we decided it was all brain chemistry that could be treated with precision. Result? Mass chemical dependency.
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.
Proof that materialism is wrong is "in the pudding." It is why scientists are not calling for the use of laughing gas and MDMA by the suicidal. Because they refuse to recognize anything that's obvious. They want their cures to be demonstrated under a microscope.
Someone needs to create a group called Drug Warriors Anonymous, a place where Americans can go to discuss their right to mind and mood medicine and to discuss the many ways in which our society trashes godsend medicines.
The term "drugs" is no more objective than the term "scabs." Both are meant to defame the things that they connote.
Folks point to the seemingly endless drugs that can be synthesized today and say it's a reason for prohibition. To the contrary, it's the reason why prohibition is madness. It results in an endless game of militaristic whack-a-mole at the expense of democratic freedoms.
So he writes about the mindset of the deeply depressed, reifying the condition as if it were some great "type" inevitably to be encountered in humanity. No. It's the "type" to be found in a post-Christian society that has turned up its scientific nose at psychoactive medicine.
If they're going to throw doctors in jail for prescribing too much pain medication, they should also throw them in jail for prescribing too LITTLE.
The American Philosophy Association should make itself useful and release a statement saying that the drug war is based on fallacious reasoning, namely, the idea that substances can be bad in themselves, without regard for why, when, where and/or how they are used.
Richard Evans Schultes seems to have originated the harebrained idea (since used by the US Supreme Court to suppress new religions) that you have no right to use drugs in a religious ritual if you did not grow up in a society that had such practices. What tyrannical idiocy!
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