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The Placebo Effect and Drugs

How materialist doctors screw their patients in the age of the drug war

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

June 10, 2023



In "The Holographic Universe," Michael Talbot tells us how the placebo effect can do everything from excising cancer to removing warts. "Simple everyday belief can also have a powerful effect on the body," writes Talbot. "People with cancer live longer if they maintain a fighting spirit.... A slight change in attitude can mean the difference between life and death." In other words, attitude counts. The happy and optimistic individual lives longer.

Most doctors now accept this premise.

Unfortunately, most doctors fail to accept the logical corollary to this premise, namely, that the use of any substance that makes a person feel good can protect that person from disease and help them to heal easily. Any substance. That's why opium 1 smokers seldom get colds. They don't think the cold into existence in the first place, and if they're overcome in spite of this fact, they are enabled to think the cold out of existence, thanks to the mental agility and creativity inspired by the poppy plant. Other drugs that could help one stay healthy for the same reasons run the gamut from MDMA 2 to psilocybin, from methamphetamine to mescaline, from coca to ayahuasca. The mere fact that these drugs can make a person feel good - and, most importantly, look forward to feeling good - is health-making in and of itself.

How many millions have gone without godsend medicine over the last few centuries because western materialist doctors fail to recognize this fact? And yet, to repeat, this fact is but a natural corollary of the postulate that these same doctors readily accept, namely that positive attitudes can improve a person's health and cure or prevent disease.

Instead, most doctors toe the Christian Science Drug War line, which piously tells the patient that "drugs" do not "really" fix anything. For such doctors, cures have to come either from Jesus - or from reductive science, for which only the molecules under a microscope are real. Folks with chronic depression can tell such doctors that the above-mentioned drugs make them happy and optimistic till they're blue in the face, but the doctors will shake their heads and tell them to wait for a "real" cure - like the mind-numbing Big Pharma 3 4 meds upon which 1 in 4 American women are dependent for life.

Nothing will change until materialists recognize the obvious - that happiness is happiness, even if it is inspired or facilitated by the use of the drugs that we've been taught to hate since we were grade schoolers, since we were first fed the lie that so-called "hard drugs" can only be used irresponsibly and that psychoactive substances have no good uses for anyone, anywhere, ever.









Notes for essay entitled The Placebo Effect and Drugs: How materialist doctors screw their patients in the age of the drug war:

1: The Truth About Opium by William H. Brereton DWP (up)
2: How the Drug War killed Leah Betts DWP (up)
3: Seife, Charles. 2012. “Is Drug Research Trustworthy?” Scientific American 307 (6): 56–63. https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamerican1212-56. (up)
4: 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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Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US




We should no more arrest drug users than we arrest people for climbing sheer rock faces or for driving a car.

Amphetamines are "meds" when they help kids think more clearly but they are "drugs" when they help adults think more clearly. That shows you just how bewildered Americans are when it comes to drugs.

At best, antidepressants make depression bearable. We need not settle for such drugs, especially when they are notorious for causing dependence. There are many drugs that elate and inspire. It is both cruel and criminal to outlaw them.

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.

David Chalmers says almost everything in the world can be reductively explained. Maybe so. But science's mistake is to think that everything can therefore be reductively UNDERSTOOD. That kind of thinking blinds researchers to the positive effects of laughing gas and MDMA, etc.

It's no wonder that folks blame drugs. Carl Hart is the first American scientist to openly say in a published book that even the so-called "hard" drugs can be used wisely. That's info that the drug warriors have always tried to keep from us.

And we should not insist it's a problem if someone decides to use opium, for instance, daily. We certainly don't blame "patients" for using antidepressants daily. And getting off opium is easier than getting off many antidepressants -- see Julia Holland.

Pundits tell us that there are medical reasons not to "snort" cocaine. So what? There are medical reasons not to drive a car: you may have an accident. The question is: does cocaine use or car driving make sense in a given case! Details matter!

The government causes problems for those who are habituated to certain drugs. Then they claim that these problems are symptoms of an illness. Then folks like Gabriel Mate come forth to find the "hidden pain" in "addicts." It's one big morality play created by drug laws.

If we let "science" decide about drugs, i.e. base freedom on health concerns, then tea can be as easily outlawed as beer. The fact that horses are not illegal shows that prohibition is not about health. It's about the power to outlaw certain "ways of being in the world."


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