The War on Drugs has destroyed America's faith in the power of education. In fact, it has made us think of education as WRONG in and of itself, at least when it comes to drugs! This fact alone should make freedom-loving Americans renounce prohibition on principle, as an affront to the core ideas upon which democracy is based: first and foremost, the idea that education is actually a GOOD thing.
The materialists of the western world are like Washington Irving's Rip Van Winkle when it comes to drugs. They are just now awakening from an intoxiphobic slumber that has lasted millennia. It never even occurred to us during this dogmatic downtime of ours that we should actively seek out and use psychoactive medicines for the psychosocial benefit of humankind. We are just now, in the 21st century after Christ, beginning to realize what the indigenous peoples of the world have known all along: that the world is full of psychoactive substances with obvious beneficial effects: substances found in lichen, fungi, animals, trees, flowers -- yea, even in our own so-called "sober" biochemistry. Unfortunately, our response to this newly discovered truth about the world, that it is a world full of drugs, has been the response of a frightened ostrich. We have refused to accept the world as it is and have used censorship and fearmongering to remake the world in accordance with our jaundiced perception of it. Rather than acknowledging the fact that nature is full of potential godsend medicines, we have the hubris to travel the globe to physically destroy such substances, so great is our pathological desire to re-create the world so that it accords with our drug-hating prejudices.
The drug war is a whole wrong way of looking at the world. It tells us that substances can be judged "up" or "down," which is anti-scientific and blinds us to endless beneficial uses.
The DEA is a Schedule I agency. It has no known positive uses.
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.
The benefits of outlawed drugs read like the ultimate wish-list for psychiatrists. It's a shame that so many of them are still mounting a rear guard action to defend their psychiatric pill mill -- which demoralizes clients by turning them into lifetime patients.
In the 19th century, author Richard Middleton wrote how poets would get together to use opium "in a series of magnificent quarterly carouses."
We've created a faux psychology to support such science: that psychology says that anything that really WORKS is just a "crutch" -- as if there is, or there even should be, a "CURE" for sadness.
Capitalism naturally results in disease-mongering by a self-interested medically establishment -- and disease-mongering requires the suppression of medicines that work holistically.
Today's doctors are "quacks" because they fail to see any of the many obvious uses for psychoactive substances.
We need a Controlled Prohibitionists Act, to get psychiatric help for those who think that prohibition makes sense despite its appalling record of causing civil wars overseas and devastating inner cities.
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.
(up)