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Scientism and America's Drug War hypocrisy

by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

May 16, 2021



America's addiction to scientism has addicted 1 in 4 American women to SSRIs, because of the mistaken belief that such therapy is "scientific" and therefore warrants the creation of such an unprecedented pharmacological dystopia -- dystopia for human beings, but a godsend for Big Pharma of course, whose bottom line has increased by several orders of magnitude over the last half century. Americans feel all warm and cuddly when they hear the party line that such antidepressants 1 fix some chemical imbalance in the brain, failing to realize that, A, this was originally a PR line, not a medical claim, and B, the latest evidence shows that such meds cause the imbalance that they claim to fix.

Even if we grant the idea that some chemical imbalance is being fixed, the real question is, what constitutes a cure for depression? Is depression cured when a tranquilizing med keeps folks from worrying as much about their lack of satisfaction in life, or is depression cured when a patient sees through the fog of masochistic bad habits and begins seeing the wonders in the world around them? The psychoactive medicines that we fear and criminalize hold the ability to waken new worlds in our minds and make us finally see the world around us in all its wonderful detail and possibility. But psychiatry is never so ambitious as to aim for that kind of cure, one that can restart a life. A real solution for depression does not pay very well, and if they truly championed such a move, they would have to risk their jobs by publicly holding the Drug War in contempt, something very few American professionals are willing to do.

So we westerners shrink in horror at the thought of tribal men in robes availing themselves of non-addictive psychoactive plants to cure what ails a person -- or an entire community -- yet we have our own superstitions. We worship the kindly men and women in white robes who lead us through the ritual of clinic visits and prescription writing, even though the meds in question make us lifelong patients. Well, at least we're being cured scientifically, we think, and not by those evil plants of the rainforest. So we're addicted for life? So what? We're still proudly scientific!

This is just one of those problems that is just too enormous to be seen by anyone in America, immersed as we are in the omnipresent self-congratulatory banter of the status quo, our proud scientific country marching forth with "cures" -- cures that make everyone cheer except the patient, who finds themselves disempowered and abandoned, even by the so-called addiction experts who know better than to characterize Big Pharma 2 3 dependency as addiction. Why not? Because "addiction" is a political term in a Drug War society, where we ban medicines, not based on science but based on the fears and prejudices of pharmacologically challenged politicians.









Notes:

1: Antidepressants and the War on Drugs DWP (up)
2: Seife, Charles. 2012. “Is Drug Research Trustworthy?” Scientific American 307 (6): 56–63. https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamerican1212-56. (up)
3: LaMattina, John. n.d. “Why Is Biopharma Paying 75% of the FDA’s Drug Division Budget?” Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnlamattina/2022/09/22/why-is-biopharma-paying-75-of-the-fdas-drug-division-budget/. (up)




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I looked up the company: it's all about the damn stock market and money. The FDA outlaws LSD until we remove all the euphoria and the visions. That's ideology, not science. Just relegalize drugs and stop telling me how much ecstasy and insight I can have in my life!!

The best step we could take in harm reduction is re-legalizing everything and starting to teach safe use. Spend the DEA's billions on "go" teams that would descend on locations where drugs are being used stupidly -- not to arrest, but to educate.

If Americans want less government, they should get rid of the Drug War Industrial Complex, rather than abandoning democracies around the world and leaving a vacuum for Russia and China to fill.

Think you can handle a horse? So did Christopher Reeves. The fact is, NOBODY can handle a horse. This message brought to you by the Partnership for a Death Free America.

To say that taking SSRIs daily is better than using opium daily is a value judgement, not a scientific one.

Mayo Clinic is peddling junk. They are still promoting Venlafaxine, a drug that is harder to kick than heroin.

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.

Musk vies with his fellow materialists in his attempt to diss humans as insignificant. But we are not insignificant. The very term "insignificant" is a human creation. Consciousness rules. Indeed, consciousness makes the rules. Without us, there would only be inchoate particles.

Check out the 2021 article in Forbes in which a materialist doctor professes to doubt whether laughing gas could help the depressed. Materialists are committed to seeing the world from the POV of Spock from Star Trek.

DEA Stormtroopers should be held responsible for destroying American Democracy. Abolish the American Gestapo.


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