Do you know that the aptly named National Institute on Drug Abuse has a ground rule that forbids it from ever advocating the legalization of any outlawed substance? The Institute is not allowed to do that. And no wonder. As its very name suggests, the institute is dedicated to drug bashing, to only pointing out the downsides of drug use1. Combine this with the fact that the media refuses to publish positive reports of drug use and the result is that the American population is completely indoctrinated to hate drugs. And perhaps the most hated drug of all is cocaine, which could have cured my depression in a trice2. Instead, I have been shunted off onto a Big Pharma drug that is far harder to kick than heroin 3: one, in fact, which has a 95% recidivism rate 4 for long-term users (a fact of which my ex-psychiatrist informed me shortly before he was terminated by his employer for his honesty on that topic).
So let's look at what your outlawing of cocaine has done. (I say "your" because odds are that you are a prohibitionist when it comes to cocaine like almost everybody else in the west.)
By outlawing cocaine, you have destroyed inner cities around the world and turned folks like myself into patients for life. Far from keeping folks off drugs, you have forced me to use a drug every single day of my life!
Say, here's an idea: instead of playing a trillion-dollar game of whack-a-mole5 with every new dangerous substance that comes on the public radar, let's treat drug use like every other dangerous activity in the world: let's teach safe use and best practices for achieving various desired results!
I know, it sounds crazy, right? Using education to solve problems?
You guys want to save everybody, and what's the result? Your prohibition has killed hundreds of millions since 1914 totally unnecessarily6, not only through contaminated product but through lack of education and the eruption of gunfire at country borders and on city streets. And yet you have the nerve to shudder at the election of Donald Trump? You (you prohibitionist) brought him to power by sitting by while prohibition put hundreds of thousands of minority voters in jail for using substances of which politicians disapprove.
I'm picking on independents and democrats here, because the insurrectionists of our time apparently know what they're doing and don't give a damn.
IMAGINE
Imagine if there were a drug that killed 3,000 citizens a year in the United Kingdom alone! Wouldn't we want to ban it at once?!
Er, not exactly. Because the drug in question is called aspirin -- and we all agree that aspirin has positive uses7.
Now, who is telling us that cocaine has no positive uses. Answer: Doctors. No one asked the depressed what they thought about cocaine before doctors started their op-ed demonization campaign.
The premise of the doctors seems to have been this: If we can save 400 people from cocaine issues, then hundreds of millions of the depressed can go to hell8!
This is a calculation that nobody questions.
No other risky activity on earth is evaluated in this puerile way.
Horseback riding could easily be outlawed if we held it to such standards, since horseback-riding is the main cause of sports-related traumatic brain injury in the United States9.
But everyone agrees that freedom is more important when it comes to horse lovers. Somehow, freedom is not important when it comes to the rights of the depressed. We have to remain depressed for life because drug prohibitionists are determined to hold cocaine to unheard-of safety standards.
Sure, cocaine is not for everyone. Neither is penicillin. But it does not follow that it should be for NO ONE. And that is the depressed-damning conclusion that our doctors have reached on behalf of folks like myself. And, of course, my ideas on the subject can be ignored because I am just a patient. What counts are the opinions of those with endless titles beside their names who write papers full of nepotistic footnotes and place them behind expensive academic firewalls. They don't have to take into account anything but their own theories and footnote-supported prejudices -- and to hell with the depressed.
By placing scientists in charge of mind and mood medicine, the whole discussion on such topics has moved to the ivory tower -- giving Google and everyone else an excuse to ignore the people who suffer based on the prejudices of academia -- based on their absolute refusal to hear from those who pay the price for their assumption-laden ideas about mind and mood.
Cocaine is one obvious treatment for depression. Obvious! And yet when I search the web for "cocaine and depression," what do I see? There is nothing about using cocaine for depression -- but rather I find wild speculation about how cocaine might actually CAUSE epression.
But then drug law does everything it can to make cocaine a problem drug -- by refusing to educate, refusing to regulate, and refusing to offer other drug choices for those who don't really need cocaine or who (for whatever reason) cannot "handle" cocaine.
We need a few brave folk to "act up" by shouting "It's the drug war!" whenever folks are discussing Mexican violence or inner city shootings. The media treat both topics as if the violence is inexplicable! We can't learn from mistakes if we're in denial.
First we outlaw all drugs that could help; then we complain that some people have 'TREATMENT-RESISTANT DEPRESSION'. What? No. What they really "have" is an inability to thrive because of our idiotic drug laws.
3:51 PM · Jul 15, 2024
If anyone manages to die during an ayahuasca ceremony, it is considered a knockdown argument against "drugs." If anyone dies during a hunting club get-together, it is considered the victim's own damn fault.
Drugs like opium and cocaine should come with the following warning: "Outlawing of this product may result in inner-city gunfire, civil wars overseas, and rigged elections in which drug warriors win office by throwing minorities in jail."
The depressed Canadian Claire Brosseau wants the state to kill her. This is the same state that refuses to let her use drugs that could make her want to live. https://abolishthedea.com/drug_use_is_not_worse_than_death
In America, they save the depressed from cocaine and opium by turning them into patients for life with dependence-causing "meds." Now 30-year-old doctors get to treat 67-year-olds like children, with new visits every damn three months.
That's why I created the satirical Partnership for a Death Free America. It demonstrates clearly that drug warriors aren't worried about our health, otherwise they'd outlaw shopping carts, etc. The question then becomes: what are they REALLY afraid of? Answer: Free thinkers.
Oregon's drug policy is incoherent and cruel. The rich and healthy spend $4,000 a week on psilocybin. The poor and chemically dependent are thrown in jail, unless they're on SSRIs, in which case they're congratulated for "taking their meds."
In the age of the Drug War, the Hippocratic Oath has become "First, do no good."
Jim Hogshire described sleep cures that make physical withdrawal from opium close to pain-free. As for "psychological addiction," there are hundreds of elating drugs that could be used to keep the ex-user's mind from morbidly focusing on a drug whose use has become problematic for them.
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