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Behaviorism and the War on Drugs

or why doctors and researchers are blind to common sense

by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher



December 22, 2024



have written many essays on the connection between materialism 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, 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.1"


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.

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.

Materialism






In "The Varieties of Religious Experience," William James demonstrated how materialists are blind to the depth and meaning of psychological states of ecstasy and transcendence -- or in other words the states that are peculiar to mystics like St. Teresa... and to those who use psychoactive substances like laughing gas. The medical materialist is dogmatically dismissive of such states, which explains why they can pretend that godsend medicines that elate and inspire have no positive uses whatsoever:

To the medical mind these ecstasies signify nothing but suggested and imitated hypnoid states, on an intellectual basis of superstition, and a corporeal one of degeneration and hysteria. Undoubtedly these pathological conditions have existed in many and possibly in all the cases, but that fact tells us nothing about the value for knowledge of the consciousness which they induce.


And so 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.





  • A Quantum of Hubris
  • Assisted Suicide and the War on Drugs
  • Behaviorism and the War on Drugs
  • Beta Blockers and the Materialist Tyranny of the War on Drugs
  • Common Sense and the Drug War
  • Constructive criticism of the MAPS strategy for re-legalizing MDMA
  • David Chalmers and the Drug War
  • Dogmatic Dullards
  • Every Day and in every way, you are getting more and more bamboozled by drug war propaganda
  • Five problems with The Psychedelic Handbook by Rick Strassman
  • How AI turned William James into a Drug Warrior
  • How materialists turned me into a patient for life
  • How Scientific Materialism Keeps Godsend Medicines from the Depressed
  • I've got a bone to pick with Jim Hogshire
  • In Praise of Thomas Szasz
  • Introduction to the Drug War Philosopher Website at AbolishTheDEA.com
  • Materialism and the Drug War
  • Materialism and the Drug War Part II
  • Open Letter to Dr. Carl L. Hart
  • Open letter to Wolfgang Smith
  • Science News Unveils Shock Therapy II
  • The Inhumanity of Drug Prohibition
  • The Poorly Hidden Materialist Agenda at Scientific American
  • Unscientific American: the hypocritical materialism of Elon Musk
  • What Can the Chemical Hold?
  • Why Scientists Should Not Judge Drugs
  • William James rolls over in his grave as England bans Laughing Gas
  • Without Philosophy, Science becomes Scientism




  • Notes:

    1 Cuonzo, Margaret, Paradox, 2015 (up)



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    You have been reading an article entitled, Behaviorism and the War on Drugs: or why doctors and researchers are blind to common sense, published on December 22, 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)