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Behaviorism and the War on Drugs

or why doctors and researchers are blind to common sense

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

December 22, 2024



I have written many essays on the connection between materialism 1 and substance prohibition. I have shown how a dogmatic reductive materialism blinds drug researchers to common sense and helps them toe the Drug War party line by professing to be in doubt about the efficacy of many drugs that oh-so-obviously work, not only according to user reports and historical records, but according to psychological common sense (like the once-simple notion that drugs that cheer one up do actually cheer one up, even if they fail to do so in a way that materialist scientists can demonstrate on a pie chart!) However, I have not yet specified the name of the psychological theory that seems to have greenlighted this dogmatic obtuseness in the first place. That psychological theory is Behaviorism.

The icy coldness of that psychological doctrine is clear in the following words of its founder, JB Watson 2 , as quoted in the 2015 book "Paradox" by Margaret Cuonzo:

"Concepts such as belief and desire are heritages of a timid savage past akin to concepts referring to magic.3"


What counts is what one can measure -- and since anecdotal and historical accounts of life-affirming drug use cannot be quantified, they are to be ignored. You say a drug helps you? What do YOU know? Doctors are the experts after all: doctors who are dogmatically deaf to your laughter and blind to your smiles while you are under the influence.

Behaviorism is the perfect ideology for a curmudgeon, because it lends a veneer of science to their inability to deal with human emotions. The Behaviorist is Dr. Spock with an attitude. The doctrine seems to justify all their inability to live large and fully. Indeed, taken to extremes, such curmudgeons would have to foreswear music itself, since there is nothing logical and quantifiable about the emotions that it inspires, even in Behaviorists. Such feelings are, after all, just "heritages of a timid savage past akin to magic."

Unfortunately, the attitude of such curmudgeons has knock-on effects because it teaches drug researchers to ignore common sense and to downplay or ignore all positive drug usage reports and historic lessons about positive drug use. The "patient" needs to just shut up and let the doctors decide what can help them. No need to even discuss one's hopes and dreams with the doc because that is all touchy-feely stuff and anti-scientific. Behaviorism 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 4.

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 pie chart.











Notes for essay entitled Behaviorism and the War on Drugs: or why doctors and researchers are blind to common sense:

1: How materialists lend a veneer of science to the lies of the drug warriors DWP (up)
2: JB Watson Britannica (up)
3: Paradox Cuonzo, Margaret, 2015 (up)
4: Antidepressants and the War on Drugs DWP (up)




read more essays here





Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US




There are endless ways that psychoactive drugs could be creatively combined to combat addiction and a million other things. But the drug warrior says that we have to study each in isolation, and then only for treating one single board-certified condition.

There would be little or no profiling of blacks if the Drug War did not exist.

In his treatise on laws, Cicero reported that the psychedelic-fueled Eleusinian Mysteries gave the participants "not only the art of living agreeably, but of dying with a better hope."

This hysterical reaction to rare negative events actually creates more rare negative events. This is why the DEA publicizes "drug problems," because by making them well known, they make the problems more prevalent and can thereby justify their huge budget.

Americans outlaw drugs and then insist that those drugs did not have much to offer in any case. It's like I took away your car and then told you that car ownership was overrated.

The DEA is still saying that psilocybin has no medical uses and is addictive. They should be put on trial for crimes against humanity for using such lies to keep people from using the gifts of Mother Nature.

In fact, there are times when it is clearly WRONG to deny kids drugs (whatever the law may say). If your child is obsessed with school massacres, he or she is an excellent candidate for using empathogenic meds ASAP -- or do we prefer even school shootings to drug use???

"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies." -- Groucho Marx

This is why the foes of suicide are doing absolutely nothing to get laughing gas into the hands of those who could benefit from it. Laughing is subjective after all. In the western tradition, we need a "REAL" cure to depression.

Most psychoactive substance use can be judged as recreational OR medicinal OR both. The judgements are not just determined by the circumstances of use, either, but also by the biases of those doing the judging.


Click here to see All Tweets against the hateful War on Us






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