In response to receiving a self-help quote from a friend.
The problem is, it's all so unnecessary. I felt so liberated when I was off of Effexor just a month ago. Then I had a really bad day and I went back on the drug. But had laughing gas or coca or opium been available to me (and not outlawed based on fearmongering) I would have gotten thru that patch and continued drug-free.
So, I appreciate all the advice of the Brene Browns of the world, but for me they are what the poet Shelley called "frail spells" when confronting the problems of depression and antidepressants.
In fact, I would claim that the entire self-help field is a product of the Drug War because it outlaws everything that works, psychologically speaking. Self-help authors are then reduced to the expedient of describing how a sane person would behave, in the hopes that their readers will be able to translate those words into feelings. This can help, but from my impatient point of view, such help is a "frail spell" - and irritating, too, because almost none of these authors realize - let alone point out - that we have outlawed all the drugs (extant and potential) that could help us achieve these goals, something that their Christian Science biases seem to reject up front.
Meanwhile materialist researchers completely ignore the power of psychological common sense. They do not care that laughing gas would make me laugh -- they do not care that coca would lift me up -- they do not care that opium would give me pleasant dreams. They see no benefits in those things. They are, in fact, blind to everything that would truly help me, as they search under their microscopes for a "real" cure -- which is just a metaphysical search for a sort of holy grail of materialist morality. This understanding of the world has been cemented into the American mind by the sheer money that it has generated for the medical industry, and so it's hard to get a fair hearing, because almost everyone involved owes their very career to the materialist mindset.
Marcus Aurelius had plenty of great things to say about living successfully with oneself -- and it's comforting to read them, something that I did on a daily basis for years. However, he was a big fan of opium, too, and I dare say I might have written some such thoughts were I able to indulge on occasion in that drug, which, despite drug-war dogma, CAN be used safely -- and I believe should be a legal alternative to daily antidepressant use. It would not just be the opium that would help me - but the looking forward to nightly use, as the drinker looks forward to their beer. It's the therapeutic power of anticipation, something that materialist science does not seem to recognize. I see no moral difference between daily opium use and daily antidepressant use - and in fact the former is time-honored while the latter is a modern invention based on the materialist dogma of targeted neurochemical intervention.
In a sane world that recognizes psychological common sense, a vast array of psychoactive drugs could be used strategically on an as-needed basis, such that dependence would not be acquired, unless actually desired.
If the previous paragraphs sound absurd, it is only because Americans (and the world) have accepted a bunch of lies and assumptions as facts thanks to Drug War propaganda - above all, the propaganda of censorship, thanks to which we are not allowed to read or see anything that shows "drugs" in a good light.
But I very much appreciate your concern. Thanks!
I think you raise a good point about lowering one's expectations, however. One does not have to change the world but to simply do their part and should try to be satisfied with that. My part, as I see it, is to try to spread the word about the poisonous tendrils of the Drug War, which has destroyed the 4th amendment, outlawed free speech about drugs, and suppressed religions based on spiritual states. I do this by writing essays and by sending snail mail correspondence to the movers-and-shakers in the psychiatric, philosophical and psychological realms, in the hope of having someone at last say, "Aha!"
One of the reasons the Drug War is tolerated is because the victims suffer in silence, countless millions around the world living with unnecessary grief and pain because politicians have conspired with materialists to outlaw a whole pharmacy's worth of psychoactive drugs in advance, a totally anti-scientific and inhumane situation.
Thanks again.
Brian
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.
If we cared about the elderly in 'homes', we would be bringing in shamanic empaths and curanderos from Latin America to help cheer them up and expand their mental abilities. We would also immediately decriminalize the many drugs that could help safely when used wisely.
Drug testing labs are the modern Inquisitors. We are not judged by the content of our character, but by the content of our digestive systems.
Even fans of sacred medicine have been brainwashed to believe that we do not know if such drugs "really" work: they want microscopic proof. But that's a western bias, used strategically by drug warriors to make the psychotropic drug approval process as glacial as possible.
At best, antidepressants make depression bearable. We need not settle for such drugs, especially when they are notorious for causing dependence. There are many drugs that elate and inspire. It is both cruel and criminal to outlaw them.
Chesterton might as well have been speaking about the word 'addiction' when he wrote the following: "It is useless to have exact figures if they are exact figures about an inexact phrase."
Imagine if there were drugs for which dependency was a feature, not a bug. People would stop peddling that junk, right? Wrong. Just ask your psychiatrist.
This is why it's wrong to dismiss drugs as "good" or "bad." There are endless potential positive uses to psychoactive drugs. That's all that we should ask of them.
The FDA is not qualified to tell us whether holistic medicines work. They hold such drugs to materialist standards and that's pharmacological colonialism.
Drug use is judged by different standards than any other risky activity in the western world. One death can lead to outrage, even though that death might be statistically insignificant.
I'm told that science is completely unbiased today. I guess I'll have to go back and reassess my doubts about Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy.
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 Inhumanity of Drug Prohibition: and its roots in materialist morality, published on November 23, 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)
You have been reading an article entitled, The Inhumanity of Drug Prohibition: and its roots in materialist morality, published on November 23, 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)