How many of you have read Consciousness Medicine, by Francoise Bourzat? Let's see a show of hands.
Stay seated, everyone, I still haven't counted the folks in the back. Raise those hands up, high.
OK, let me see, now. 25, carry the one... It looks like... zero people have read that book.
Well, in fairness, it is pretty new.
It's all about the way that psychedelic medicines can heal psychological conditions.
Or rather, that's what it SHOULD be about. Unfortunately, Francoise keeps hawking the benefits of deep breathing and drum therapy, et cetera. Which I find a little off-putting, frankly.
Just like Stanislav Grof, when he came out with HIS breathing routine. I'd rather these folks stay focused on the value of psychedelic therapy rather than to start promoting second-best cures that simply don't work for the vast majority of cases.
Hey, listen, folks, been there done that, with every manner of self-help approach you can imagine. How many unfulfilled lifetimes do I have to live before self-help mavens get the message: "It's the drugs, stupid!"
You know what I'm saying? Time for some real politik in treating what ails me.
I mean, Freud did not turn to psychotherapy (let alone to self-help fads) to help him get through life successfully. Like it or not, he turned to cocaine and theory be damned. Freud was not going to sacrifice his own self-fulfillment by becoming a guinea pig to psychology's unproven "cures." And as long as modern psychology does not even acknowledge, let alone come to terms with, Freud's therapeutic use of cocaine, we are never, for all our scientific pretensions, going to understand human motivation. Instead, we'll live in a fairy land where the effects of drugs are established for psychologists, not by proof, but by strong political prejudices that insist, via law, on what the truth SHOULD BE, that fairy land in which we pretend that substance use is ALWAYS substance abuse. (The DEA lives by this absurdity, for when they say that a drug is subject to abuse, they mean simply that it might be obtained without a prescription -- which is a tautological definition if there ever was one, since an illegal drug CAN'T be obtained with a prescription. But it helps work the Drug Warriors up into a frenzy to tell them that drug X is subject to abuse, so they need not know the philosophically shabby way in which that definition was derived.)
But, Francoise, bless her, writes as if psychedelic therapy is just one of many helpful strategies in life. The unfortunate corollary of this opinion is that the outlawing of such therapy is no big deal -- since cures for depression and related psychological problems are a dime a dozen, to be easily found in the self-help section of any bookstore or library.
But as a veteran depressive, I would have zero interest in the psychedelic renaissance if it held no greater transformative promise than that of breath work or drum therapy. I mean, how many unfulfilled lifetimes do I have to live in order to prove to the fad peddlers that their nostrums don't work in the long run? And why not? Because they presuppose the incentive and follow-through and self-insight that a successful depression therapy should generate rather than take for granted.
Psychedelics alone among drug therapies offers the possibility of true change based on self-insight.
Am I right or am I right?
My name is Ballard Quass and I'll be here lambasting the Drug War until the government thinks up a way to outlaw free speech.
Which can't be far off, by the way, given that they've already had the chutzpah to criminalize the plants and fungi that grow at our very feet! I mean, how anti-scientific, fascistic, and downright childish is that? What? I'm just sayin'!
Author's Follow-up: May 17, 2024
It will be argued that Freud eventually soured on cocaine, but that is a little like sour grapes. He was prolific for a reason, and those who argue that cocaine had no role in that great output are living in the ideological fairyland of the Drug Warrior. In this way, Freud was like those pop stars who rise above their insecurity with the help of drugs, then, after achieving fame by help of a virtuous circle (for success breeds success), they publish morally posturing books about their struggles to get off those drugs after said drugs have helped them become secure both financially and emotionally speaking (for success breeds self-confidence).
Thus Americans take home the fairytale message that drugs are evil -- whereas the real message to an unbiased mind would be that drugs have to be used wisely, such that dependence is voluntary and can be removed with relative ease thanks to the legalization of all sorts of medicines that could help a drug user fight drugs with drugs. But for now, the idea of fighting drugs with drugs is so foreign to the kneejerk Christian Science metaphysic of the Drug Warriors that they simply never even think of that possibility, believing instead that the goal of all "addiction" therapy is to get the user off ALL drugs -- with the hypocritical exception of drugs like coffee and SSRIs, of course.
That said, I think that drum therapy and breathing exercises have their place and can surely "work" to varying extents in cases where the motivation is already there. It is only when such therapies are proffered as an equally good alternative to "drugs" that I cry foul. In fact, that's my problem with the whole self-help movement. It owes its very existence as a genre to the Drug War, which outlawed all REAL self-help. And yet almost zero self-help authors take the Drug War to task, or even mention it, in their books. The honest author would say: "Of course, psychoactive drugs could help you tremendously, but since they are outlawed, I have some second-best ideas that you might wish to try."
Even the worst forms of "abuse" can be combatted with a wise use of a wide range of psychoactive drugs, to combat both physical and psychological cravings. But drug warriors NEED addiction to be a HUGE problem. That's their golden goose.
Besides, why should I listen to the views of a microbe?
The drug war basically is the defeatist doctrine that we will never be able to use psychoactive drugs wisely. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy because the government does everything it can to make drug use dangerous.
FDA drug approval is a farce when it comes to psychoactive medicine. The FDA ignores all the obvious benefits and pretends that to prove efficacy, they need "scientific" evidence. That's scientism, not science.
Immanuel Kant wrote that scientists are scornful about metaphysics yet they rely on it themselves without realizing it. This is a case in point, for the idea that euphoria and visions are unhelpful in life is a metaphysical viewpoint, not a scientific one.
In the Atomic Age Declassified, they tell us that we needed hundreds of thermonuclear tests so that scientists could understand the effects. That's science gone mad. Just like today's scientists who need more tests before they can say that laughing gas will help the depressed.
Science today is all about ignoring the obvious.
And THAT's why scientists are drug war collaborators, because they're not about to sign off on the use of substances until they've studied them "up the wazoo."
Using grants from an agency whose very name indicates their anti-drug bias: namely, the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
In a sane world, we'd package laughing gas for safe use and give it to the suicidal -- saying, "Use before attempting to kill yourself." But drug warriors would rather have suicide than drug use.
David Chalmers says almost everything in the world can be reductively explained. Maybe so. But science's mistake is to think that everything can therefore be reductively UNDERSTOOD. That kind of thinking blinds researchers to the positive effects of laughing gas and MDMA, etc.
When Americans "obtain their majority" and wish to partake of drugs safely, they should be paired with older adults who have done just that. Instead, we introduce them to "drug abusers" in prerecorded morality plays to reinforce our biased notions that drug use is wrong.
Now the US is bashing the Honduran president for working with "drug cartels." Why don't we just be honest and say why we're REALLY upset with the guy? Drugs is just the excuse, as always, now what's the real reason? Stop using the drug war to disguise American foreign policy.
Listen to the Drug War Philosopher as he tells you how you can support his work to end the hateful drug war -- and, ideally, put the DEA on trial for willfully lying about godsend medicines! (How? By advertising on this page right c'here!)
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You have been reading an article entitled, It's the Psychedelics, Stupid! published on October 13, 2019 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)
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You have been reading an article entitled, It's the Psychedelics, Stupid! published on October 13, 2019 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)