"The evolution of modern medicine gave us our current, bifurcated view of drugs: the good ones that treat illness and the bad ones that people use to change their minds and moods." --Jacob Sullum, from Saying Yes: In Defense of Drug Use, p. 25119
America's religion is science -- that's why everyone from George Bush to Carl Hart thinks that I should keep taking my meds. WRONG! The only reason the pill mill 21 was created was because we outlawed endless uplifting godsends, like the hundreds created by Alex Shulgin.
Now, if the question is: would a woman be better off to stop taking an SSRI at this very moment, that's an entirely different question. The question is: should they have been started on them in the first place, or should we not rather have re-legalized MOTHER Nature? Psychiatrists try to shut down discussion on this topic by confusing the two questions. The question of whether SSRIs make sense is a completely different question from, 'Should I personally stop using them at this moment in time?'
Alex Shulgin synthesized chems that occur in the human brain. The outlawing of the godsends he created was absurd. The best we can say about SSRIs against the backdrop of this prohibition is that they are probably better than nothing in some cases -- but that's not saying much. Also, whatever benefits they create must be weighed against the fact that they turn the user into a patient for life by causing chemical dependency. This is a hugely demoralizing arrangement, or I think should be for a freedom-loving individual -- and it is expensive and time-consuming into the bargain.
It's our faith in this materialist science that makes us think it's okay to fry the brain of the depressed but it's not okay to give them medicines that elate and inspire. It's the same doctrine at work with SSRIs: Don't elate them -- try to 'cure' them -- a fool's errand.
This is why I tend to lose half the followers I get -- because science is America's religion and I am a heretic. Even Carl Hart tells me that I should take my pills, not use drugs. It's this warped belief that science has conquered depression. My entire 65 years of life says otherwise.
Let's give SSRIs real competition, then we can talk about popularity and efficacy. Let's see: 'I can take a drug that inspires me, puts me on seventh heaven, and is not addictive -- or I can take an SSRI that dulls my mind and which I have to take for an entire lifetime!'
I can't say that SSRIs destroy creativity, but it is a frequent complaint of pundits on this subject. So we should at least not recommend their use except for the suicidal -- and then ONLY BECAUSE we've outlawed everything that's much much better.
The problem is, almost EVERYONE ignores the Drug War when they write. For instance, they'll say, 'SSRIs are a godsend.' But what does that mean? That they're a godsend in and of themselves? Or they're a godsend because we have outlawed everything else? There's a huge difference.
Is depression an intractable problem per se, or is it intractable because we have outlawed almost every substance that could help the depressed?
'The substantial reason for rejecting a philosophical theory is the 'absurdum' to which it reduces us.29'
The Cabinet of Caligari ('62) ends with a shameless display of psychiatric triumphalism. Happy shock therapy patients waltz freely about a mansion in which the "sick" protagonist has just been "cured" by tranquilizers and psychoanalysis. Did Robert Bloch believe his own script?
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.
What prohibitionists forget is that every popular but dangerous activity, from horseback riding to drug use, will have its victims. You cannot save everybody, and when you try to do so by law, you kill far more than you save, meanwhile destroying democracy in the process.
I've found that almost no one in the medical establishment has a clue about the endless positive uses that there would be for drugs in a world in which we decided to use them as wisely as possible for human benefit.
I don't have a problem with CBD. But I find that many people like it for the wrong reasons: they assume there is something slightly "dirty" about getting high and that all "cures" should be effected via direct materialist causes, not holistically a la time-honored tribal use.
M. Pollan says "not so fast" when it comes to drug re-legalization. I say FAST? I've gone a whole lifetime w/o access to Mother Nature's plants. How can a botanist approve of that? Answer: By ignoring all legalization stakeholders except for the kids whom we refuse to educate.
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.
We need to start thinking of drug-related deaths like we do about car accidents: They're terrible, and yet they should move us to make driving safer, not to outlaw driving. To think otherwise is to swallow the drug war lie that "drugs" can have no positive uses.
Drug Warriors never take responsibility for incentivizing poor kids throughout the west to sell drugs. It's not just in NYC and LA, it's in modest-sized towns in France. Find public housing, you find drug dealing. It's the prohibition, damn it!
My impression has been that the use of cocaine over a long time can bring about lasting improvement..." --Sigmund Freud, On Cocaine, 1884
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