{^According to psychiatrist Julie Holland, one in four American women are addicted to SSRI anti-depressants, many of which are harder to quit than heroin. Why? Because heroin rapidly leaves the system while SSRIs screw up one's brain chemistry for months if not years at a time -- by causing the very chemical imbalances that they purport to fix. (See Robert Whitaker's "Anatomy of an Epidemic" for more.) Yet our most addicted country demonizes non-addictive therapeutic godsends from Mother Nature.}{
Do you know why I pulled you over? That's right, I wanted to give you some links to more essays about addiction and the Drug War. Oh, how about these two and . Oh, and what was the name of that movie in which wine-swilling Glenn Close manifests all the worst qualities of the brain-addled Drug Warrior? Oh, yes: . But far be it from me to micromanage your browsing experience. Just search 'addiction' to find more. (Oh, and just between us, psst! your left rear signal light is out.)
Drug Warriors will publicize all sorts of drug use -- but they will never publicize sane and positive drug use. Drug Warrior dogma holds that such use is impossible -- and, indeed, the drug war does all it can to turn that prejudice into a self-fulfilling prophecy.
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.
The main form of drug war propaganda is censorship. That's why most Americans cannot imagine any positive uses for psychoactive substances, because the media and the government won't allow that.
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.
There are hundreds of things that we should outlaw before drugs (like horseback riding) if, as claimed, we are targeting dangerous activities. Besides, drugs are only dangerous BECAUSE of prohibition, which compromises product purity and refuses to teach safe use.
If I should die of some unusual concatenation of circumstances, I want my survivors to pass "Brian's Law," a law stating that we will no longer pass laws based on hard cases and so needlessly fill our prisons by taking common-sense discretion out of the hands of judges.
When the FDA tells us in effect that MDMA is too dangerous to be used to prevent school shootings and to help bring about world peace, they are making political judgments, not scientific ones.
The FDA approves of shock therapy and the psychiatric pill mill, but they cannot see the benefits in MDMA, a drug that brought peace, love and understanding to the dance floor in 1990s Britain.
Here is a sample drug-use report from the book "Pihkal":
"More than tranquil, I was completely at peace, in a beautiful, benign, and placid place."
Prohibition is a crime against humanity for withholding such drug experiences from the depressed (and from everybody else).
"The Legislature deliberately determines to distrust the very people who are legally responsible for the physical well-being of the nation, and puts them under the thumb of the police, as if they were potential criminals."
-- Aleister Crowley on drug laws
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