Like almost every other writer on the topic of addiction, you write as if we are living in a free country as far as scientific research is concerned and that we can therefore draw adequate generalizations from the status quo. To the contrary, we live under a drug-war sharia that strictly outlaws almost all research of psychoactive drugs, many of which could work wonders with alcoholics and other addicts. Although you don't mention this, Bill Wilson himself had great initial success in treating alcoholics with LSD. It was not science that stopped such treatment, but rather politics, when Richard Nixon decided to launch a war on Timothy Leary and hippies by outlawing their drugs of choice, namely psychedelics. And US-inspired drug law remains as anti-patient as ever, as therapist Gabor Mate was recently forced to stop his promising treatment of Canadian alcoholics with the entheogenic concoction known as ayahuasca.
So if AA is ineffective -- as I would definitely agree - it is as much the Drug War's fault as it is that of Bill Wilson and his theories.
Given the existence of the unscientifically motivated Drug War, it may well be true that Naltrexone is a relative godsend for alcoholics. That said, this is a huge 'given.' We should remember that we are choosing from a starkly limited pharmacopeia when we make that choice. There are thousands of potential psychoactive godsends out there that we are forbidden from studying, notwithstanding our pretensions at being a scientific country. By failing to acknowledge this outrage, we may be giving far more kudos to Naltrexone than it deserves. How good is it, you ask? How can we know until we compare it to the thousands of other potential therapies that we have chosen to ignore? It may well be the best thing currently 'going' for alcoholics, and for that I yield to the experts - while yet pointing out that there really are no experts on addiction treatment per se since the Drug War has essentially placed all the potentially valuable therapeutic substances off-limits, not merely to individuals but to addiction researchers as well. No surprise there. We'd have just as few aviation experts today if the only legally available planes were gliders.
Also there is a real irony in the use of Naltrexone to block the action of opiates, at least when used in a Drug Warrior country such as the USA. By waging drug-war colonialism, we have sent our military abroad to destroy opium crops that have been used in moderation in the east for millennia, forcing other countries to turn to the western drug called alcohol to achieve, in general, a far uglier form of self-transcendence and relaxation than that supplied by the judicious poppy user. Not content to destroy the poppy in the East (always against the will of the local people, who have no say in the matter), we now seek out a drug that will obviate the poppy's effects, thus ensuring the prosperity of American Big Liquor for centuries to come. This is fundamentally a racist and anti-scientific war on the poppy, one which dogmatically recognizes only evil in the plant, failing to acknowledge its role in providing human transcendence over the ages - a viewpoint that keeps Anheuser Busch heirs smiling on their way to the bank (just as they were no doubt smiling when the DEA stomped onto Monticello in 1987 to steal Thomas Jefferson's poppy plants).
This brings me to the other problem with the Naltrexone approach, namely that is all stick and no carrot. Yes, the substance helps to destroy the addiction but it also gets rid of the transcendence which the addict was seeking in the first place. Psychedelics, on the other hand, work by actually providing the sought-after transcendent experience and it is that very transcendent experience from which the psychedelic user often emerges with new insights into their earthly condition and a new mental flexibility in dealing with their drinking problem.
One other bone to pick: I would ask you to question your apparently strong faith in science, at least as practiced in the States.
It is the alleged 'scientific' approach to psychiatry that has led to the great but unacknowledged addiction of the American people, in which 1 in 8 Americans are now chemically dependent on antidepressants, all under the discredited theory (promulgated by a full-court media press by academic talking heads under the pay of Big Pharma) that these substances fix a chemical imbalance. As Robert Whitaker demonstrates, however (in 'Anatomy of an Epidemic'), this is pseudoscience, not science. These antidepressants (SSRIs and SNRIs) have been shown to CAUSE the imbalances that they purport to fix. They certainly don't work for me after decades of use, and I am now forced to take Effexor the rest of my life against my will - Effexor, a drug that has a relapse rate just as high as heroin.
But I've yet to hear of one single addiction 'specialist' wringing their hands on my behalf, or on behalf of the tens of thousands of unacknowledged antidepressant addicts actively cursing modern psychiatry online even as I speak - cursing it for one's loss of empowerment, one's unsought-for life-time role as an 'eternal patient,' having to apply to a doctor for their monthly fixes. (Part of the professional silence is based on the convenient myth that there's a meaningful difference between addiction and chemical dependency. Tell that to an Effexor addict after he or she has gone cold turkey for three days.)
Since psychiatry has no problem with thus addicting users like myself -- and to ineffective medicines at that - they have no leg to stand on in warning me that I might become chemically dependent upon, say, opium, should I be given the same legal access to that drug that I would have had in 1913, and they have even less standing in remonstrating against my use of totally non-addictive psychedelics. If such drugs are not even considered for treating alcoholism it is thus merely for political reasons, not scientific ones. So let's not write so as to imply that these therapies have somehow been tried and found wanting, when in reality such therapies remain unthinkable to Western researchers under the thrall of Drug War propaganda.
CONCLUSION: I believe we have no right to opine on the relative insolubility of addiction problems until we have re-legalized Mother Nature's medicines. Until then, any conclusions we reach on this topic should be followed by a huge footnote, both for the patient's benefit and by way of protest, stating that the addiction problem, for aught we know, could turn out to be far more soluble than we currently suppose, once the United States finally renounces its anti-patient Drug War, along with its efforts to enforce that war worldwide by way of the financial blackmail of its friends and foes alike.
Author's Follow-up: March 12, 2025
I wrote the above letter almost five years ago to the day, and I am happy to say that I still agree with every word that I wrote. I need hardly add that Gabrielle Glaser has not seen fit to respond. But this is not surprising. Why not? Because I have yet to find any pundit, researcher, academic or psychiatrist who will answer objections such as mine. They all know that their job status and reputation would be placed in jeopardy if they pushed back against the Drug War ideology of substance demonization. They know, moreover, that they cannot acknowledge the category error involved by putting materialists in charge of mind and mood medicine, because this would place them at odds with materialists in general, those who believe that science can conquer all. If scientists can devise hadron colliders and moon rockets, then surely they can solve the problems of mind and mood, right? That is the modern assumption. And to maintain otherwise is to become a heretic in the modern medical establishment.
And so our scientists continue to look under a microscope to see what they can do for the poor addict - steadfastly ignoring the fact that there are hundreds of outlawed drugs that could elate and inspire and which could be used with common sense protocols to get alcoholics back on their feet and keep them there. They will, of course, claim that there is no proof for that statement, to which I respond: 'Yes, but why is that so?' That is so because no one has ever sat down before the entire psychoactive pharmacopoeia available to humankind (both in nature and in the laboratory) and asked the question: How can we use these drugs, singly or in combination, as part of a psychologically common-sense protocol to keep the 'addicts' mind off an unwanted substance and to help them think outside the box of their ingrained thought patterns? Actually, this has been done before to certain extents and succeeded. It is just that all proof is hidden due to the fact that it involved illicit drug use about which no one is going to be publishing results. Besides, the Drug War's key propaganda strategy is to censor all positive reports of drug use - so such wise use would never be published even if it were to occur.
There is another reason why no proof of my thesis will be forthcoming, and that is because materialists are behaviorists when it comes to mood medicine. They assume a priori (i.e., in advance) that the only 'real' cures are those that can be quantified, from which it follows dogmatically that there can be no cures that 'simply work.' You may say that laughing gas cheers you up and that its use gives you something to look forward to, thereby dramatically improving your overall life. But the materialist will respond: 'That's what you think, but you cannot be REALLY cured unless we can change something in your biochemistry quantifiably speaking.' This latter attitude, of course, is a metaphysical conclusion on the part of materialists, not a logical one. It is an assumption of modern materialism, not a proof of that doctrine. It is nothing but the inhumane assumption of behaviorism, which discounts everything that the 'patient' says and forces them to wait for 'cures' that work according to materialist science - which is to say the kind of Big Pharma 'cures' that make them dependent for life and thus turn them into wards of the healthcare state.
Again, no one has ever responded to these objections of mine over the course of the six years now in which I have been broaching them. One can only conclude that modern psychology is a fake science - though for reasons far different from the ones that would be cited by Donald Trump and the gullible conspiracy theorists of our time. It is a pretend science, designed not to solve real-world problems but rather to flatter materialism. This is what happens when a science about subjective phenomena tries to rebrand itself as a 'hard science,' one based on objective facts alone. It adopts the inhumane principles of behaviorism, according to which doctors are the experts when it comes to matters of mind and mood. The only job of our psychological suffering humanity is to sit back and wait for 'cures' from the Dr. Spock's of the world, from those doctors who dogmatically ignore all common sense, such as the obvious power of laughter and anticipation to improve our lives. They search instead for one-size-fits-all biochemical fixes for the enormously variegated problem of human sorrow. This is a lucrative undertaking if there ever was one, for the materialist approach conduces to non-stop disease-mongering. Since the parts matter instead of the whole, the materialist doctor reifies conditions such as 'postpartum depression' and 'seasonal affective disorders,' claiming that each must respond to a unique biochemical intervention. This anti-holistic approach slows human progress to a glacial pace as we place all obvious godsends aside and wait instead for pharma-funded scientists to find discrete 'cures' for everything that ails us.
The result is an absurd world in which we actually prefer suicide to the use of 'drugs' - a world in which we actually prefer brain-damaging shock therapy to the use of 'drugs.' And so your loved one goes to an emergency room because of severe depression. Do they give her a drug that will quickly elate and inspire her? Of course not! That would not be scientific! They start her on a course of drugs that will tranquilize her and turn her into a ward of the healthcare state. If she kills herself before those Big Pharma drugs kick in, too bad! We must be scientific, after all!
The materialist will object that there are known biochemical and/or genetic correlates to given psychological conditions -- to which I say, of course there are! But the question is whether these correlations are both necessary and sufficient in causing the pathologies in question. The fact that these correlates can exist in the absence of pathology says otherwise. This is the whole problem with the drug-war mentality: it sees health and illness as something caused by a few specific things, rather than being the result of a balance of a vast variety of forces, which include an individual's upbringing, their genetics, their personality, ad infinitum. When we simplify the human being for the purposes of the materialist conception of life, we leave out so many things that matter -- not least of all that individual's attitude toward life. Only by thus blinding ourselves to common sense can we ignore the obvious power of drugs to cheer us up overall AND THEREFORE improve our ability to fight the many overlapping human conditions that the materialist dices up into discrete pathologies. Disease-mongering of this kind may be of benefit to insurance companies, but it is a disservice to the human beings whose emotional lives we thereby cheapen in the course of our self-congratulatory and hubristic prognoses.
The whole problem is caused by a category error: the crazy idea that materialists should have anything to do with mind and mood medicine in the first place. Who should? Someone whom I describe as a pharmacologically savvy empath. To learn more, please read the following.
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."
Classic prohibitionist gaslighting, telling me that "drugs" is a neutral term. What planet are they living on?
Morphine can provide a vivid appreciation of mother nature in properly disposed minds. That should be seen as a benefit. Instead, dogma tells us that we must hate morphine for any use.
Ug! Fire bad!
There were 4,731 fire-related deaths in America in 2023.
Learn more at the Partnership for a Death Free America.
The American Philosophy Association should make itself useful and release a statement saying that the drug war is based on fallacious reasoning, namely, the idea that substances can be bad in themselves, without regard for why, when, where and/or how they are used.
Even if the FDA approved MDMA today, it would only be available for folks specifically pronounced to have PTSD by materialist doctors, as if all other emotional issues are different problems and have to be studied separately. That's just ideological foot-dragging.
There are endless creative ways to ward off addiction if all psychoactive medicines were at our disposal. The use of the drugs synthesized by Alexander Shulgin could combat the psychological downsides of withdrawal by providing strategic "as-needed" relief.
When folks die in horse-related accidents, we need to be asking: who sold the victim the horse? We've got to crack down on folks who peddle this junk -- and ban books like Black Beauty that glamorize horse use.
Did the Vedic People have a substance disorder because they wanted to drink enough soma to see religious realities?
Using the billions now spent on caging users, we could end the whole phenomena of both physical and psychological addiction by using "drugs to fight drugs." But drug warriors do not want to end addiction, they want to keep using it as an excuse to ban drugs.
Until we legalize ALL psychoactive drugs, there will be no such thing as an addiction expert. In the meantime, it's insulting to be told by neuroscience that I'm an addictive type. It's pathologizing my just indignation at psychiatry's niggardly pharmacopoeia.
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, Open Letter to Gabrielle Glaser: author of 'The Irrationality of Alcoholics Anonymous', published on March 3, 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)
You have been reading an article entitled, Open Letter to Gabrielle Glaser: author of 'The Irrationality of Alcoholics Anonymous', published on March 3, 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)
