This discovery about fluvoxamine is a mixed blessing at best for a 64-year-old like myself who has been addicted to Big Pharma antidepressants 1 for a lifetime. For all we know, natural and less-addictive antidepressants (from coca, to opium, to psychedelics) may have similar powers to combat COVID, but scientists are FORBIDDEN BY LAW to study such plants in the same detail in which we study drugs like fluvoxamine. FORBIDDEN BY LAW!
When is Science News going to start "coming clean" to their readers about the role that the Drug War plays in limiting scientific research on these sorts of problems? The anti-scientific Drug War has been muzzling scientists (albeit largely with their consent) for close to a century now. You say, "Oh, but we're dealing with SCIENTIFIC drugs!" Yes, the same kind of scientific drugs that have turned 1 in 4 American women into Stepford Wives by making them chemically dependent on BIG PHARMA FOR LIFE.
Why doesn't your article point out the true price of treating COVID with a Big Pharma antidepressant: namely, becoming addicted for life and becoming a ward of the healthcare state?
Please start to be honest with your readers and append a disclaimer to all such articles as this as follows:
"The research on treatments for COVID, like so much research these days, has been limited by the Drug War, which forbids and otherwise discourages all research regarding the therapeutic potential of plant medicine of which politicians disapprove."
The anti-scientific Drug War will never end if we refuse to acknowledge that it even exists! If you really think that the Church was wrong in censoring Galileo, then why are you not speaking up now about the government censoring you and the researchers that you study?!
In short, Science News has a moral and a scientific duty to start pointing out the role that the Drug War plays in limiting research -- a limit that is so successful that scientists and reporters like Esther have internalized the limitation and now consider the Drug War to be a natural baseline for all scientific research. If Galileo had reacted thus in his day, we would still be living in a geocentric universe.
Author's Follow-up: August 15, 2022
After acknowledging that science is hobbled by Drug War restrictions, Science News might wish to write a story about the thousands of children in hospice worldwide who suffer unnecessary pain every single day thanks to the Drug War and the way that it demonizes drugs. morphine 2 is now illegal in some 'civilized' countries in fealty to the Drug War ideology of demonization, forcing dying children to suffer unbelievable pain in the name of America's war on godsend medicines. Children suffer and die so that Big Liquor, Big Pharma and Big Police can maintain their grip on power around the globe -- all thanks to America's criminal and anti-scientific war on godsend medicine.
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There are longstanding anecdotal reports of how opium can cure colds, but American scientists will never investigate those claims, not just because of the Drug War, which makes it career suicide 3 to do so, but because the results thus alleged are produced in a very novel way. You see, opium brings about metaphorical dreams that allow you to see your problems -- including seemingly physical ones -- in a new light, and to vanquish those problems metaphorically. Opium thereby can leverage the mind's already significant power to outwit disease through concentrated thought, the same way that yogis can avoid the pain of burning embers through intense mental will.
Such an approach to healing is a non-starter for reductionist science, however. But luckily for materialists, the Drug War allows them to declare victory over such approaches to illness prematurely by outlawing them entirely. So a lot of the modern materialist's bluster about knowing the absolute truth these days is based on the fact that the opposition approach to the world has been outlawed. "See?" they cry. "No one cures or improves their condition through opium." "Yes," we reply, "because the Drug War will not allow them to do so and thereby creatively leverage the power of the mind."
I will try to provide some specifics with respect to the claims made above. As regards opium's method of action, consider the following words from Jim Hogshire in "Opium for the Masses":
"As a deadening agent, opium has almost no effect. If measured purely for its ability to alleviate the sensation of pain, morphine 4 , opium, or any of the others would score no better than aspirin. It is the perception of pain that opium alters, and that makes all the difference in the world. It's as if the pain were happening to someone else or to no one at all.5"
I also advise the reader to peruse the short story "The Crawling Chaos" by HP Lovecraft6, in which a pain patient is treated with opium. The throbbing pain of the patient is converted from his perspective into the crashing waves of a tormented sea. The suffering ends because it is perceived differently, as not affecting the self. It is as if opium has given the protagonist the mental powers of one of those legendary mystics who has learned to "think away" pain. The difference is that the mystic required a lifetime to attain those powers, whereas the protagonist required only a few minutes.
For more on how opium use constitutes a cure for the common cold, see Hogshire's book "Opium for the Masses.7"
Almost all other books about opium discuss the drug from the viewpoint of a prohibitionist -- one who assumes that such drugs can never be used wisely. One other book that I can recommend, however, is "The Truth About Opium" by William Brereton8.
You need read no further than the titles of most books on opium to see that they have been written from a prohibitionist point of view. Consider John Halpern's book: "Opium: How a flower shaped and poisoned the world.9" John actually thinks that a flower can poison the world. A flower. Flowers do not poison the world. The world is poisoned by bad social policies -- like outlawing a desired substance. But John is writing from the Drug Warrior perspective that drugs are the problem rather than ignorance and superstition. He is writing from the prohibitionist perspective -- the perspective that has brought about a mass world dystopia, filled with the completely unnecessary violence and bloodshed that results from outlawing desired substances. Halpern is part of the problem.
But, of course, I hold my breath in vain waiting for John to write a book like: "Effexor 10 : How antidepressants poisoned the world." The author will find no downsides in the daily use of antidepressants. And why not? Because he would never even think to look for any. That is how objective HE is. His job as a good Drug Warrior -- brainwashed since grade school in anti-drug propaganda -- is to demonize medicines that improve mind and mood without the permission of government. You can hardly blame John, however. Like the rest of us, he almost never sees or hears any reports of positive drug use. Why not? Because the government and media simply will not let that happen. It is the propaganda of almost complete censorship. It is this censorship that bars me from most philosophical forums on this subject, because Americans are brainwashed in the Great Cult of Substance Demonization -- and would rather "drink the Kool-Aid" than listen to reason (i.e., they would rather kill democracy and our most basic freedom: our right to control our own emotional and mental states).
But then Americans are not supposed to know the truth about opium -- they are supposed to fear it instead. The simple truth would tell us that there are benefits and risks for opium use as there are for all activities in the world. The idea that the risks are not manageable is a brazen lie. Drug laws and censorship exist therefore to make use as dangerous as possible. But the truth will eventually out. For the world would be a far better place if those who "abused" alcohol were nightly opium smokers instead. For starters, they would never beat their wives.
And please do not talk to me about the woes of dependency, not in a world in which 1 in 4 American women are dependent on Big Pharma 1112 meds for life, not in a world in which antidepressants like Effexor have a 95% recidivism rate for long-term users.
If I am going to be required to use a drug every day of my life, let it be time-honored opium, a drug of my own choosing, rather than a drug like Effexor that has turned me into a ward of the healthcare state.
Americans used to have that option, by the way, until 1914, when opium habitues essentially became "addicts" overnight by government decree.
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For more on how the Drug War penalizes children in pain, see Damon Barrett's
"Children of the Drug War: Perspectives on the Impact of Drug Policies on Young People.13"
Author's Follow-up: March 28, 2025
Notice above how I just casually mentioned the fact that opium can give one the mental outlook of a yogic sage! It can help us "think away" pain. It can help us get outside our selves, which fact alone suggests miraculous ways in which the drug could benefit talk therapy. The drug could help us tap the powers of the imagination and leverage the power of the human will to obtain beneficial and desired mindsets.
And yet literally NO ONE acknowledges these enormous benefits as benefits. We are completely bamboozled by Drug War pieties!
When it comes to "drugs," the government plays Polonius to our Ophelia:
OPHELIA: I do not know, my lord, what I should think.
POLONIUS: Marry, I'll teach you; think yourself a baby!
And Americans have obliged. When the Drug Warrior says we are babies, we effectively say, "Yes, Mommy! Don't worry, I won't even THINK of any positive uses for the substances that I am supposed to hate!"
To which the DARE counselor responds: "Good for you, sweetheart! Now, here is your plush toy for saying no to godsend medicines."
If I want to use the kind of drugs that have inspired entire religions, fight depression, or follow up on the research of William James into altered states, I should not have to live in fear of the DEA crashing down my door and shouting: "GO! GO! GO!"
Anytime you hear that a psychoactive drug has not been proven to be effective, it's a lie. People can make such claims only by dogmatically ignoring all the glaringly obvious signs of efficacy.
Med-dependent patients of the world, unite -- to end drug prohibition, that is. You have nothing to lose but your prescription bottles and your status as a ward of the healthcare state.
The DEA outlawed MDMA in 1985, thereby depriving soldiers of a godsend treatment for PTSD. Apparently, the DEA staff slept well at night in the early 2000s as American soldiers were having their lives destroyed by IEDs.
Just saw a prosecutor gloating about the drug dealers she has taken down.How much is she getting paid to play whack-a-mole?
When we outlaw drugs, we are outlawing far more than drugs. We are suppressing freedom of religion and academic research.
Drug Prohibition Downside #1,529:
aviation accidents caused by pilots who failed to use mind-sharpening drugs to improve their situational awareness. (See, for instance, Comair flight 5191)
Typical materialist protocol. Take all the "wonder" out of the drug and sell it as a one-size-fits all "reductionist" cure for anxiety. Notice that they refer to hallucinations and euphoria as "adverse effects." What next? Communion wine with the religion taken out of it?
When Rick Strassman and Michael Pollan call for continued prohibition to protect young people, they ignore the ENORMOUS fact that prohibition has destroyed inner cities around the world. Wake up, guys! Prohibition is evil, not drugs! Ignorance is evil, not education!
Even the worst forms of "abuse" can be combatted with a wise use of a wide range of psychoactive drugs, to combat both physical and psychological cravings. But drug warriors NEED addiction to be a HUGE problem. That's their golden goose.
Unless otherwise indicated, no AI is used in the creation of site content. These essays represent the original ideas of their author and not the ideas that the author SHOULD have based on an algorithmic parsing of existing data. For more on this subject, consider the AI-related viewpoints to which the author subscribes as delineated in the New York Times opinion piece entitled "What 370,000 College Essays Tell Us About A.I.’s Effects on Creativity" by Rebecca Winthrop of the Brookings Institution.
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