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The Placebo Effect and Drugs

How materialist doctors screw their patients in the age of the drug war

by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher



June 10, 2023



n "The Holographic Universe," Michael Talbot tells us how the placebo effect can do everything from excising cancer to removing warts. "Simple everyday belief can also have a powerful effect on the body," writes Talbot. "People with cancer live longer if they maintain a fighting spirit.... A slight change in attitude can mean the difference between life and death." In other words, attitude counts. The happy and optimistic individual lives longer.

Most doctors now accept this premise.

Unfortunately, most doctors fail to accept the logical corollary to this premise, namely, that the use of any substance that makes a person feel good can protect that person from disease and help them to heal easily. Any substance. That's why opium smokers seldom get colds. They don't think the cold into existence in the first place, and if they're overcome in spite of this fact, they are enabled to think the cold out of existence, thanks to the mental agility and creativity inspired by the poppy plant. Other drugs that could help one stay healthy for the same reasons run the gamut from MDMA to psilocybin, from methamphetamine to mescaline, from coca to ayahuasca. The mere fact that these drugs can make a person feel good - and, most importantly, look forward to feeling good - is health-making in and of itself.

How many millions have gone without godsend medicine over the last few centuries because western materialist doctors fail to recognize this fact? And yet, to repeat, this fact is but a natural corollary of the postulate that these same doctors readily accept, namely that positive attitudes can improve a person's health and cure or prevent disease.

Instead, most doctors toe the Christian Science Drug War line, which piously tells the patient that "drugs" do not "really" fix anything. For such doctors, cures have to come either from Jesus - or from reductive science, for which only the molecules under a microscope are real. Folks with chronic depression can tell such doctors that the above-mentioned drugs make them happy and optimistic till they're blue in the face, but the doctors will shake their heads and tell them to wait for a "real" cure - like the mind-numbing Big Pharma meds upon which 1 in 4 American women are dependent for life.

Nothing will change until materialists recognize the obvious - that happiness is happiness, even if it is inspired or facilitated by the use of the drugs that we've been taught to hate since we were grade schoolers, since we were first fed the lie that so-called "hard drugs" can only be used irresponsibly and that psychoactive substances have no good uses for anyone, anywhere, ever.




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Some Tweets against the hateful war on drugs

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.
I have yet to find one psychiatrist who acknowledges the demoralizing power of being turned into a patient for life. They never list that as a potential downside of antidepressant use.
Anyone who has read Pihkal by Alexander Shulgin knows that the drug warriors have it exactly backwards. Drugs are our friends. We need to find safe ways to use them to improve ourselves psychologically, spiritually and mentally.
Prohibition turned habituation into addiction by creating a wide variety of problems for users, including potential arrest, tainted or absent drug supply, and extreme stigmatization.
I have dissed MindMed's new LSD "breakthrough drug" for philosophical reasons. But we can at least hope that the approval of such a "de-fanged" LSD will prove to be a step in the slow, zigzag path toward re-legalization.
I might as well say that no one can ever be taught to ride a horse safely. I would argue as follows: "Look at Christopher Reeves. He was a responsible and knowledgeable equestrian. But he couldn't handle horses. The fact is, NO ONE can handle horses!"
We need a scheduling system for psychoactive drugs as much as we need a scheduling system for sports activities: i.e. NOT AT ALL. Some sports are VERY dangerous, but we do not outlaw them because we know that there are benefits both to sports and to freedom in general.
Americans think that fighting drugs is more important than freedom. We have already given up on the fourth amendment. Nor is the right to religion honored for those who believe in indigenous medicines. Pols are now trying to end free speech about drugs as well.
The FDA should have no role in approving psychoactive medicine. They evaluate them based on materialist standards rather than holistic ones. In practice, this means the FDA ignores all glaringly obvious benefits.
How else will they scare us enough to convince us to give up all our freedoms for the purpose of fighting horrible awful evil DRUGS? DRUGS is the sledgehammer with which they are destroying American democracy.
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You have been reading an article entitled, The Placebo Effect and Drugs: How materialist doctors screw their patients in the age of the drug war, published on June 10, 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)