re the elderly depressed? America wouldn't have it any other way.
How many readers know of an elderly friend or loved one wasting away in a nursing home? Let me see a show of hands.
Now, how many people know that this is a tragedy created by the Drug War?
Mother Nature's pharmacopeia contains a world of psychoactive substances that can be used in a strategic manner by a pharmacologically savvy empath to not only elevate mood, but to give the treated individual a new perspective on life, while encouraging the growth of new neurons in the brain.
But Drug Warrior America wants none of this. Why? Because they hold a masochistic Christian Science view that says it is somehow wrong to use psychoactive substances in this fashion, a view that's supported, unfortunately, by a breed of scientism that treats the human body as an interchangeable widget (a robotically functioning Newtonian animal) for which we must find one-size-fits-all 'cures' that can be marketed in pill form by any psychiatrist with a prescription pad.
The result: as much as we Americans wring our hands about the suffering of the elderly, we wouldn't have it any other way. The Drug War mentality has fostered in us a knee-jerk association between psychoactive substances and hedonism, and we use that as an excuse to willfully ignore the myriad utopian scenarios whereby such substances could, in the hands of a pharmacologically savvy shaman, give the depressed elderly new hope and even help them make their peace with death.
In this sense, drug law sharia is a godsend to modern psychiatrists because it gives them the perfect excuse for doing such a poor job in treating the elderly. If we confront these psychiatrists with the utopian possibilities inherent in nature's pharmacy, they have only to respond that all the substances that could be used in that fashion are illegal. And so drug law sharia keeps an entire new treatment paradigm at bay, leaving psychiatrists with nothing but a handful of heavily marketed addictive pharmaceuticals wherewith to treat severe emotional deficits - and then we have the gall to ask where the opioid crisis comes from. {^The opioid crisis results from the fact that we have outlawed all of the non-addictive substances that can powerfully affect mood, leaving those who seek self-transcendence with few choices except for the highly addictive ones offered by Big Pharma.}{
It should come as no surprise that the Drug War leads to such hideous outcomes, since the Drug War is anti-scientific by design. It represents the triumph of politics over science, propaganda over logic, common law over natural law, and if the casualties of that doctrine include the depressed elderly, then so be it. America really wouldn't have it any other way. After all, pharmacologically informed shamanism can't be neatly fit into a capitalist format that can enrich shareholders. Besides, it would involve ending the Drug War, which is the goose that lays the golden eggs for law enforcement and the corrections industry. And it would keep America from intervening in the country of its choice by playing the 'narcotics' card, saying in effect: 'You are dealing in plants that pose a threat to Big Liquor, therefore we can remove you from office.'
And so the honest Drug Warrior would stand by the side of the depressed loved one and say: 'Sorry, Mama, we'd like to make you feel better by ending the Drug War, but then America would no longer have an excuse to intervene in countries of whose politics we disapprove!'
Author's Follow-up: August 21, 2022
Speaking of anti-elderly, the Drug War ideology of substance demonization teaches us that it's morally right to 'take the elderly off of life support' should they request it, and yet it's morally wrong to allow them to use morphine in order to painlessly leave the world. This is the twisted morality of the Drug War, which is equally anti-children. Why? Not just because of all the drug-war orphans that America's imperialist Drug War leaves behind in South America, but because some countries refuse to give children in hospices morphine, under the twisted Drug Warrior belief that it's better to let children suffer than to give them dirty evil 'drugs.' This is Christian Science with a vengeance, supported by state governments in fealty to damnable Drug War superstition.
August 21, 2022
Brian should also add that the above-mentioned goose is laying golden eggs by the dozen for the healthcare industry, which, beginning in 1914, was slowly but surely given a complete monopoly not just for treating physical ills, but for treating mental states as well, thereby turning countless Americans into demoralized wards of the healthcare state, including the 1 in 4 American women who are hooked on Big Pharma meds for life. How did this come about? Because the Drug War was to eventually outlaw almost all effective psychoactive medicines in the world. And yet pundits today scratch their head and wonder why there are so many depressed and anxious. The answer is easy: an overreaching state has run interference between human beings and the botanical medicine that grows all around them. And so America is now simultaneously the most depressed nation in the world and the one that pops the most pills. Another one of the seemingly endless Pyrrhic victories for America's unprecedented political war on inanimate substances.
Pharmacologically Savvy Empaths
In an ideal world, we would replace psychiatrists with what I call pharmacologically savvy empaths, compassionate healers with a vast knowledge of psychoactive substances from around the world and the creativity to suggest a wide variety of protocols for their safe use as based on psychological common sense. By so doing, we would get rid of the whole concept of 'patients' and 'treat' everybody for the same thing: namely, a desire to improve one's mind and mood. But the first step toward this change will be to renounce the idea that materialist scientists are the experts when it comes to mind and mood medicine in the first place. This is a category error. The experts on mind and mood are real people with real emotion, not physical doctors whose materialist bona fides dogmatically require them to ignore all the benefits of drugs under the belief that efficacy is to be determined by looking under a microscope.
This materialism blinds such doctors to common sense, so much so that it leads them to prefer the suicide of their patient to the use of feel-good medicines that could cheer that patient up in a trice. For the fact that a patient is happy means nothing to the materialist doctor: they want the patient to 'really' be happy -- which is just there way of saying that they want a "cure" that will work according to the behaviorist principles to which they are dedicated as modern-day materialists. Anybody could prescribe a drug that works, after all: only a big important doctor can prescribe something that works according to theory. Sure, the prescription has a worse track record then the real thing, but the doctor's primary job is to vindicate materialism, not to worry about the welfare of their patient. And so they place their hands to their ears as the voice of common sense cries out loudly and clearly: "You could cheer that patient up in a jiffy with a wide variety of medicines that you have chosen to demonize rather than to use in creative and safe ways for the benefit of humankind!" I am not saying that doctors are consciously aware of this evil --merely that they are complicit in it thanks to their blind allegiance to the inhumane doctrine of behaviorism.
This is the sick reality of our current approach. And yet everybody holds this mad belief, this idea that medical doctors should treat mind and mood conditions.
How do I know this?
Consider the many organizations that are out to prevent suicide. If they understood the evil consequences of having medical doctors handle our mind and mood problems, they would immediately call for the re-legalization of drugs and for psychiatrists to morph into empathizing, drug-savvy shamans. Why? Because the existing paradigm causes totally unnecessary suicides: it makes doctors evil by dogmatically requiring them to withhold substances that would obviously cheer one up and even inspire one (see the uplifting and non-addictive meds created by Alexander Shulgin, for instance). The anti-suicide movement should be all about the sane use of drugs that elate. The fact that it is not speaks volumes about America's addiction to the hateful materialist mindset of behaviorism.
More proof? What about the many groups that protest brain-damaging shock therapy? Good for them, right? but... why is shock therapy even necessary? Because we have outlawed all godsend medicines that could cheer up almost anybody "in a trice." And why do we do so? Because we actually prefer to damage the brain of the depressed rather than to have them use drugs. We prefer it! Is this not the most hateful of all possible fanaticisms: a belief about drugs that causes us to prefer suicide and brain damage to drug use? Is it really only myself who sees the madness here? Is there not one other philosopher on the planet who sees through the fog of drug war propaganda to the true evil that it causes?
This is totally unrecognized madness -- and it cries out for a complete change in America's attitude, not just toward drugs but toward our whole approach to mind and mood. We need to start learning from the compassionate holism of the shamanic world as manifested today in the cosmovision of the Andes. We need to start considering the human being as an unique individual and not as an interchangeable widget amenable to the one-size-fits-all cures of reductionism. The best way to fast-track such change is to implement the life-saving protocol of placing the above-mentioned pharmacologically savvy empaths in charge of mind and mood and putting the materialist scientists back where they belong: in jobs related to rocket chemistry and hadron colliders. We need to tell the Dr. Spocks of psychology that: "Thanks, but no thanks. We don't need your help when it comes to subjective matters, thank you very much indeed. Take your all-too-logical mind back to the physics lab where it belongs."
We deal with "drug" risks differently than any other risk. Aspirin kills thousands every year. The death rate from free climbing is huge. But it's only with "drug use" that we demand zero deaths (a policy which ironically causes far more deaths than necessary).
That's the problem with prohibition. It is not ultimately a health question but a question about priorities and sensibilities -- and those topics are open to lively debate and should not be the province of science, especially when natural law itself says mother nature is ours.
The Drug War brought guns to the "hoods," thereby
incentivizing violence in the name of enormous profits. Any site featuring victims of gun violence should therefore be rebranded as a site featuring victims of the drug war. Otherwise, many people don't make the connection.
An Englishman's home is his castle.
An American's home is a bouncy castle for the DEA.
Psychiatrists keep flipping the script. When it became clear that SSRIs caused dependence, instead of apologizing, they told us we need to keep taking our meds. Now they even claim that criticizing SSRIs is wrong. This is anti-intellectual madness.
Drug Warriors rail against drugs as if they were one specific thing. They may as well rail against penicillin because cyanide can kill.
Imagine if we held sports to the same safety standard as drugs. There would be no sports at all. And yet even free climbing is legal. Why? Because with sports, we recognize the benefits and not just the downsides.
It also bothers me that gun fanatics support the drug war. If I have no rights to mother nature, then they have no rights to guns. If the Fourth Amendment can be ignored based on lies and ignorance, then so can the Second.
Researchers insult our intelligence when they tell us that drugs like MDMA and opium and laughing gas have not been proven to work. Everyone knows they work. That's precisely why drug warriors hate them.
More materialist nonsense. "We" are the only reason that the universe exists as a universe rather than as inchoate particles.
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, How the Drug War Punishes the Elderly published on April 1, 2020 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)
re the elderly depressed? America wouldn't have it any other way.
You have been reading an article entitled, How the Drug War Punishes the Elderly published on April 1, 2020 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)
