what 1950s horror movies can tell us about America's coldhearted drug policies
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
December 23, 2024
watched one of those B horror movies from the 1950s last night. It was called "She Devil" and concerned a poor but attractive young lady who was suffering from an apparently incurable case of tuberculosis. An ambitious doctor gets wind of the case and submits the patient to a new untested drug treatment, with the reluctant help of his more cautious and elderly advisor and mentor. The drug restores the woman's health but has the unintended side effect of changing her erstwhile meek disposition into that of a heartless egoist, one determined to have her way in life no matter what.
After noticing the change, the worried mentor asks his protege if the drug he had created could have affected the lady's personality:
"Do you suppose it could be the serum, that it produced an emotional as well as a physical change in her?"
Without missing a beat, the ambitious protege responds:
"I wouldn't know about that. As a biochemist, I don't deal with the emotions."
He is so self-satisfied and glib as he makes this pronouncement that a modern viewer wants to smack him right in the puss.
A modern biochemist might not be so frank as this B-movie scientist, but Behaviorism is still the order of the day in academia, even if it goes by other names. The drug researcher doesn't care about obvious emotions. Otherwise they would see at a glance that the strategic use of drugs like coca, opium and psychedelics could work wonders, and not just for the depressed and anxious but for those seeking help in achieving spiritual states and self-understanding and/or writing exotic prose and poetry. They cannot see this obvious fact because they believe that to be scientific, they have to ignore obvious emotions and look at brain chemistry instead under a microscope. Anecdote and historical usage mean nothing to them.
These drugs have inspired entire religions but that means nothing to today's scientists. They have accepted the anti-scientific Drug Warrior premise that a drug that can be misused, even in theory, by young American white people must not be used by anyone, anywhere, ever, that we are just too dumb to ever learn to use drugs wisely. These are the same people who insist that we can use guns wisely and that free climbing a sheer cliff face is a reasonable activity, as is driving a car, the same people who sign off on liquor and Jim Beam commercials for young adults, the same people who let Big Pharma advertise "meds" for which the recognized side effects include death itself.
Drug researchers today may be the smartest and nicest people in the world -- but they are forced to play dumb and be cold-hearted thanks to their adherence to the mendacious dogma of today's know-nothing and anti-scientific Drug Warriors.
Drug War Movies
Hollywood supports the war on drugs by refusing to show wise use while always depicting drug use in the worst possible light. Like all media, they refuse to show beneficial use -- and if they're not depicting drugs as dangerous dead-ends, they're at least showing use to be frivolous and dangerous. The producers kowtow to drug warrior sensibilities.
Prohibition is wrong root and branch. It seeks to justify the colonial disdain for indigenous healing practices through fearmongering.
SSRIs are created based on the materialist notion that cures should be found under a microscope. That's why science is so slow in acknowledging the benefit of plant medicines. Anyone who chooses SSRIs over drugs like San Pedro cactus is simply uninformed.
The press is having a field day with the Matthew Perry story. They love to have a nice occasion to demonize drugs. I wonder how many decades must pass before they realize that people are killed by ignorance and a corrupted drug supply, not by the drugs themselves.
Addiction was not a big thing until the drug war. It's now the boogie-man with which drug warriors scare us into giving up our freedoms. But getting obsessed on one single drug is natural in the age of choice-limiting prohibition.
The idea that "drugs" have no medical benefits is not science, it is philosophy, and bad philosophy at that. It is based on the idea that benefits must be molecularly demonstratable and not created from mere knock-on psychological effects of drug use, time-honored tho' they be.
"I can take this drug that inspires me and makes me compassionate and teaches me to love nature in its byzantine complexity, or I can take Prozac which makes me unable to cry at my parents' funeral. Hmm. Which shall it be?" Only a mad person in a mad world would choose SSRIs.
If politicians wanted to outlaw coffee, a bunch of Kevin Sabets would come forward and start writing books designed to scare us off the drink by cherry-picking negative facts from scientific studies.
The problem for alcoholics is that alcohol decreases rationality in proportion as it provides the desired self-transcendence. Outlawed drugs can provide self-transcendence with INCREASED rationality and be far more likely to keep the problem drinker off booze than abstinence.
There are neither "drugs" nor "meds" as those terms are used today. All substances have potential good uses and bad uses. The terms as used today carry value judgements, as in meds good, drugs bad.
There will always be people who don't use drugs wisely, just as there are car drivers who don't drive wisely, and rock climbers who fall to their death. America needs to grow up and accept this, while ending prohibition and teaching safe use.
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, She Devils and Substance Prohibition: what 1950s horror movies can tell us about America's coldhearted drug policies, published on December 23, 2024 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)
watched one of those B horror movies from the 1950s last night. It was called "She Devil" and concerned a poor but attractive young lady who was suffering from an apparently incurable case of tuberculosis. An ambitious doctor gets wind of the case and submits the patient to a new untested drug treatment, with the reluctant help of his more cautious and elderly advisor and mentor. The drug restores the woman's health but has the unintended side effect of changing her erstwhile meek disposition into that of a heartless egoist, one determined to have her way in life no matter what.
You have been reading an article entitled, She Devils and Substance Prohibition: what 1950s horror movies can tell us about America's coldhearted drug policies, published on December 23, 2024 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)
