This discovery about fluvoxamine is a mixed blessing at best for a 64-year-old like myself who has been addicted to Big Pharma antidepressants for a lifetime. For all we know, natural and less-addictive antidepressants (from coca, to opium, to psychedelics) may have similar powers to combat COVID, but scientists are FORBIDDEN BY LAW to study such plants in the same detail in which we study drugs like fluvoxamine. FORBIDDEN BY LAW!
When is Science News going to start "coming clean" to their readers about the role that the Drug War plays in limiting scientific research on these sorts of problems? The anti-scientific Drug War has been muzzling scientists (albeit largely with their consent) for close to a century now. You say, "Oh, but we're dealing with SCIENTIFIC drugs!" Yes, the same kind of scientific drugs that have turned 1 in 4 American women into Stepford Wives by making them chemically dependent on BIG PHARMA FOR LIFE.
Why doesn't your article point out the true price of treating COVID with a Big Pharma antidepressant: namely, becoming addicted for life and becoming a ward of the healthcare state?
Please start to be honest with your readers and append a disclaimer to all such articles as this as follows:
"The research on treatments for COVID, like so much research these days, has been limited by the Drug War, which forbids and otherwise discourages all research regarding the therapeutic potential of plant medicine of which politicians disapprove."
The anti-scientific Drug War will never end if we refuse to acknowledge that it even exists! If you really think that the Church was wrong in censoring Galileo, then why are you not speaking up now about the government censoring you and the researchers that you study?!
In short, Science News has a moral and a scientific duty to start pointing out the role that the Drug War plays in limiting research -- a limit that is so successful that scientists and reporters like Esther have internalized the limitation and now consider the Drug War to be a natural baseline for all scientific research. If Galileo had reacted thus in his day, we would still be living in a geocentric universe.
Author's Follow-up: August 15, 2022
After acknowledging that science is hobbled by Drug War restrictions, Science News might wish to write a story about the thousands of children in hospice worldwide who suffer unnecessary pain every single day thanks to the Drug War and the way that it demonizes drugs. Morphine is now illegal in some 'civilized' countries in fealty to the Drug War ideology of demonization, forcing dying children to suffer unbelievable pain in the name of America's war on godsend medicines. Children suffer and die so that Big Liquor, Big Pharma and Big Police can maintain their grip on power around the globe -- all thanks to America's criminal and anti-scientific war on godsend medicine.
-- -- --
There are longstanding anecdotal reports of how opium can cure colds, but American scientists will never investigate those claims, not just because of the Drug War, which makes it career suicide to do so, but because the results thus alleged are produced in a very novel way. You see, opium brings about metaphorical dreams that allow you to see your problems -- including seemingly physical ones -- in a new light, and to vanquish those problems metaphorically. Opium thereby can leverage the mind's already significant power to outwit disease through concentrated thought, the same way that yogis can avoid the pain of burning embers through intense mental will.
Such an approach to healing is a non-starter for reductionist science, however. But luckily for materialists, the Drug War allows them to declare victory over such approaches to illness prematurely by outlawing them entirely. So a lot of the modern materialist's bluster about knowing the absolute truth these days is based on the fact that the opposition approach to the world has been outlawed. "See?" they cry. "No one cures or improves their condition through opium." "Yes," we reply, "because the Drug War will not allow them to do so and thereby creatively leverage the power of the mind."
I will try to provide some specifics with respect to the claims made above. As regards opium's method of action, consider the following words from Jim Hogshire in "Opium for the Masses":
"As a deadening agent, opium has almost no effect. If measured purely for its ability to alleviate the sensation of pain, morphine, opium, or any of the others would score no better than aspirin. It is the perception of pain that opium alters, and that makes all the difference in the world. It's as if the pain were happening to someone else or to no one at all.1"
I also advise the reader to peruse the short story "The Crawling Chaos" by HP Lovecraft2, in which a pain patient is treated with opium. The throbbing pain of the patient is converted from his perspective into the crashing waves of a tormented sea. The suffering ends because it is perceived differently, as not affecting the self. It is as if opium has given the protagonist the mental powers of one of those legendary mystics who has learned to "think away" pain. The difference is that the mystic required a lifetime to attain those powers, whereas the protagonist required only a few minutes.
For more on how opium use constitutes a cure for the common cold, see Hogshire's book "Opium for the Masses.3"
Almost all other books about opium discuss the drug from the viewpoint of a prohibitionist -- one who assumes that such drugs can never be used wisely. One other book that I can recommend, however, is "The Truth About Opium" by William Brereton4.
You need read no further than the titles of most books on opium to see that they have been written from a prohibitionist point of view. Consider John Halpern's book: "Opium: How a flower shaped and poisoned the world.5" John actually thinks that a flower can poison the world. A flower. Flowers do not poison the world. The world is poisoned by bad social policies -- like outlawing a desired substance. But John is writing from the Drug Warrior perspective that drugs are the problem rather than ignorance and superstition. He is writing from the prohibitionist perspective -- the perspective that has brought about a mass world dystopia, filled with the completely unnecessary violence and bloodshed that results from outlawing desired substances. Halpern is part of the problem.
But, of course, I hold my breath in vain waiting for John to write a book like: "Effexor: How antidepressants poisoned the world." The author will find no downsides in the daily use of antidepressants. And why not? Because he would never even think to look for any. That is how objective HE is. His job as a good Drug Warrior -- brainwashed since grade school in anti-drug propaganda -- is to demonize medicines that improve mind and mood without the permission of government. You can hardly blame John, however. Like the rest of us, he almost never sees or hears any reports of positive drug use. Why not? Because the government and media simply will not let that happen. It is the propaganda of almost complete censorship. It is this censorship that bars me from most philosophical forums on this subject, because Americans are brainwashed in the Great Cult of Substance Demonization -- and would rather "drink the Kool-Aid" than listen to reason (i.e., they would rather kill democracy and our most basic freedom: our right to control our own emotional and mental states).
But then Americans are not supposed to know the truth about opium -- they are supposed to fear it instead. The simple truth would tell us that there are benefits and risks for opium use as there are for all activities in the world. The idea that the risks are not manageable is a brazen lie. Drug laws and censorship exist therefore to make use as dangerous as possible. But the truth will eventually out. For the world would be a far better place if those who "abused" alcohol were nightly opium smokers instead. For starters, they would never beat their wives.
And please do not talk to me about the woes of dependency, not in a world in which 1 in 4 American women are dependent on Big Pharma meds for life, not in a world in which antidepressants like Effexor have a 95% recidivism rate for long-term users.
If I am going to be required to use a drug every day of my life, let it be time-honored opium, a drug of my own choosing, rather than a drug like Effexor that has turned me into a ward of the healthcare state.
Americans used to have that option, by the way, until 1914, when opium habitues essentially became "addicts" overnight by government decree.
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For more on how the Drug War penalizes children in pain, see Damon Barrett's
"Children of the Drug War: Perspectives on the Impact of Drug Policies on Young People.6"
Author's Follow-up: March 28, 2025
Notice above how I just casually mentioned the fact that opium can give one the mental outlook of a yogic sage! It can help us "think away" pain. It can help us get outside our selves, which fact alone suggests miraculous ways in which the drug could benefit talk therapy. The drug could help us tap the powers of the imagination and leverage the power of the human will to obtain beneficial and desired mindsets.
And yet literally NO ONE acknowledges these enormous benefits as benefits. We are completely bamboozled by Drug War pieties!
When it comes to "drugs," the government plays Polonius to our Ophelia:
OPHELIA: I do not know, my lord, what I should think.
POLONIUS: Marry, I'll teach you; think yourself a baby!
And Americans have obliged. When the Drug Warrior says we are babies, we effectively say, "Yes, Mommy! Don't worry, I won't even THINK of any positive uses for the substances that I am supposed to hate!"
To which the DARE counselor responds: "Good for you, sweetheart! Now, here is your plush toy for saying no to godsend medicines."
Opium
Young people were not dying in the streets when opiates were legal in the United States. It took drug laws to accomplish that. By outlawing opium and refusing to teach safe use, the drug warrior has subjected users to contaminated product of uncertain dosage, thereby causing thousands of unnecessary overdoses.
Currently, I myself am chemically dependent on a Big Pharma drug for depression, that I have to take every day of my life. There is no rational reason why I should not be able to smoke opium daily instead. It is only drug-war fearmongering that has demonized that choice -- for obvious racist, economic and political reasons.
You have been lied to your entire life about opium. In fact, the drug war has done its best to excise the very word "opium" from the English vocabulary. That's why the Thomas Jefferson Foundation refuses to talk about the 1987 raid on Monticello in which Reagan's DEA confiscated Thomas Jefferson's poppy plants in violation of everything he stood for, politically speaking. It's just plain impolite to bring up that subject these days.
It's hard to learn the truth about opium because the few books on the subject demonize it rather than discuss it dispassionately. Take the book by John Halpern: "Opium: How an ancient flower shaped and poisoned our world." It's a typical Drug Warrior title. A flower did not poison our world, John: our world was poisoned by bad laws: laws that were inspired first and foremost by racism, followed closely by commercial interests, politics, misinformation and lies.
To learn something approaching to "the truth about Opium," read the book of that name by William Brereton, written to defend the time-honored panacea from the uninformed and libelous attacks of Christian missionaries.
The Partnership for a Drug Free America should be put on trial for having blatantly lied to Americans in the 1980s about drugs, using our taxpayer money to do it!
We would never have even heard of Freud except for cocaine. How many geniuses is America stifling even as we speak thanks to the war on mind improving medicines?
It's a category error to say that scientists can tell us if psychoactive drugs "really work." It's like asking Dr. Spock of Star Trek if hugging "really works." ("Hugging is highly illogical, Captain.")
The DEA rating system is not wrong just because it ranks drugs incorrectly. It's wrong because it ranks drugs at all. All drugs have positive uses. It's absurd to prohibit using them because one demographic might misuse them.
The DEA should be put on trial for crimes against humanity for withholding godsend medicine from the depressed. Here is just one typical drug-user report that appeared in "Pihkal": "A glimpse of what true heaven is supposed to feel like..."
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.
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.
Until we get rid of all these obstacles to safe and informed use, it's presumptuous to explain problematic drug use with theories about addiction. Drug warriors are rigging the deck in favor of problematic use. They refuse to even TEACH non-problematic use.
Almost all talk about the supposed intractability of things like addiction are exercises in make-believe. The pundits pretend that godsend medicines do not exist, thus normalizing prohibition by implying that it does not limit progress. It's a tacit form of collaboration.
That's my real problem with SSRIs: If daily drug use and dependency are okay, then there's no logical or truly scientific reason why I can't smoke a nightly opium pipe.
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, The Drug War Cure for Covid: response to Esther Landhuis' story in Science News, published on October 28, 2021 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)
You have been reading an article entitled, The Drug War Cure for Covid: response to Esther Landhuis' story in Science News, published on October 28, 2021 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)
