As a 64-year-old lifelong depressive, I would suggest that science is not free in the age of the Drug War and that it is therefore pseudoscience. The proof can be seen by looking at academic articles about drugs that elate and inspire. Almost all of the articles are about abuse and misuse. This is because organizations like NIDA are all about abuse and do not generally fund articles about positive use. This again is in line with the ideology of the ONDCP which is to ignore positive talk about "drugs" for fear of encouraging use. This is politics, not science. Moreover, scientists know that their jobs are at stake if they adduce positive evidence about the use of the drugs that we have been taught to hate since childhood.
Scientists do not seem to realize the anti-science nature of the Drug War, which tells us falsely that drugs can be panned entirely based on their worst imaginable usage -- which, of course, is a standard whereby no drug in the world could ever pass muster.
I would further suggest that modern science IS pseudoscience when it comes to mental health. It is focused exclusively on reductive "evidence" for things like happiness, meanwhile ignoring obvious things like laughter, first-person user testimony, and the history of psychoactive substances through the ages, some of which have inspired entire religions, as coca inspired the Peruvian Indians, Soma inspired the Vedic-Hindu religion and the psychedelic kykeon inspired a who's-who of western elites for 2,000 consecutive years -- until the ritual was tellingly outlawed by Emperor Theodosius in 392ce as a threat to Christianity. Dr. Robert Glatter epitomizes this purblind reductionism in his 2021 article in Forbes magazine asking "Can laughing gas help those with treatment-resistant depression?" The answer is an obvious yes for the depressed like myself, but Glatter has to ask because mere laughter and user reports are not considered "scientific."
That is why, in order to save a few kids whom we refuse to educate about safe use, drugs like laughing gas can be made illegal for everybody in the world -- notwithstanding the fact that William James himself said we should study the effects of such substances to learn about the ultimate nature of reality. That's how depressed folk like myself are thrown under the bus by science. That's why I have had to go my entire lifetime now without godsend medicines that grow at my feet, because scientists are collaborating with the Drug War to normalize prohibition by ignoring all the many obvious benefits of illegal drugs. This is why I've been asking science magazines like SciAm and Science News to start adding disclaimers to their articles about subjects like consciousness and depression, to make it clear that the authors and researchers are taking Christian Science substance prohibition as a natural baseline from which to draw deductions and inferences about the topics in question. My many suggestions on this topic have never even been acknowledged, let alone acted upon.
Consider the state of affairs for the folks on the receiving end of science's current treatments: If I am depressed, the doctor can prescribe me Big Pharma meds that will fog my brain and turn me into an eternal patient via chemical dependency -- but they cannot prescribe me the drugs that grow at my feet and which obviously inspire and elate. They tell me laughing gas won't REALLY make me happy, that chewing the coca leaf won't REALLY make me happy, but that is all scientism and politics. God save me from drugs that "REALLY" make me happy, because they have turned me into a patient for life.
If, as a result of prohibition, I get really depressed, what is the scientific go-to treatment? Shock therapy! Talk about scientism and politics!
Currently we would rather damage the brain of the depressed with shock therapy than to let them use time-honored substances that obviously cheer one up and elate. My uncle was subjected to that treatment 40 years ago and if the treatment "worked," it was only in the sense that it made him more docile and easier to be around -- because he simply muttered rather than musing gloomily.
This is why I am somewhat taken aback by your fierce attacks on mental health pseudoscience on Twitter. Based on my 60+ years of experience, mental health treatment is and will continue to be pseudoscience until scientists stop collaborating with the Drug War while tacitly agreeing with them that drugs that elate and inspire do not "really" elate and inspire. Until they do so, they are not advancing the cause of science, but rather the cause of Christian Science, which tells us that drugs are immoral.
Not only is this Christian Science ideology, but it is fanatically so. Many states and countries now allow euthanasia. This means that the depressed can kill themselves with drugs, but they are not allowed to use drugs in order to make them want to live.
I also am unclear as to what you meant by your August 12th Tweet about "weaponizing kindness" (which is the vague but button-pushing post that inspired me to write to you in the first place). It did not seem to be in response to any other Tweet, so it's hard to agree or disagree with it. However, I would say that we SHOULD be weaponizing kindness when it comes to drugs like MDMA. These drugs can inspire compassion in users and should therefore be "weaponized" -- that is, used therapeutically to stop haters from shooting up grade schools. Instead, drugs like ecstasy are pilloried for killing a handful of people, all of whom died because the prohibitionists failed to teach safe use. In short, if we fail to weaponize kindness with drugs like Ecstasy, then we are tacitly weaponizing real weapons in the hands of mass murderers.
Open Letters
Check out the conversations that I have had so far with the movers and shakers in the drug-war game -- or rather that I have TRIED to have. Actually, most of these people have failed to respond to my calls to parlay, but that need not stop you from reading MY side of these would-be chats.
I don't know what's worse, being ignored entirely or being answered with a simple "Thank you" or "I'll think about it." One writes thousands of words to raise questions that no one else is discussing and they are received and dismissed with a "Thank you." So much for discussion, so much for give-and-take. It's just plain considered bad manners these days to talk honestly about drugs. Academia is living in a fantasy world in which drugs are ignored and/or demonized -- and they are in no hurry to face reality. And so I am considered a troublemaker. This is understandable, of course. One can support gay rights, feminism, and LGBTQ+ today without raising collegiate hackles, but should one dare to talk honestly about drugs, they are exiled from the public commons.
Somebody needs to keep pointing out the sad truth about today's censored academia and how this self-censorship is but one of the many unacknowledged consequences of the drug war ideology of substance demonization.
Ann Lemke's case studies make the usual assumptions: getting free from addiction is a morality tale. No reference to how the drug war promotes addiction and how banned drugs could solve such problems. She does not say why daily SSRI use is acceptable while daily opium use is not. Etc.
Prohibition is a crime against humanity. It forces us to use shock therapy on the severely depressed since we've outlawed all viable alternatives. It denies medicines that could combat Alzheimer's and/or render it psychologically bearable.
Unfortunately, the prohibitionist motto is: "Billions for arrest, not one cent for education." To the contrary, drug warriors are ideologically committed to withholding the truth about drugs from users.
There are times when it is clearly WRONG to deny kids drugs (whatever the law may say). If your child is obsessed with school massacres, he or she is an excellent candidate for using empathogenic meds ASAP -- or do we prefer even school shootings to drug use???
That's why I created the satirical Partnership for a Death Free America. It demonstrates clearly that drug warriors aren't worried about our health, otherwise they'd outlaw shopping carts, etc. The question then becomes: what are they REALLY afraid of? Answer: Free thinkers.
In a sane world, we'd package laughing gas for safe use and give it to the suicidal -- saying, "Use before attempting to kill yourself." But drug warriors would rather have suicide than drug use.
I, for one, am actually TRYING to recommend drugs like MDMA and psilocybin as substitutes for shock therapy. In fact, I would recommend almost ANY pick-me-up drug as an alternative to knowingly damaging the human brain. That's more than the hateful DEA can say.
The UK just legalized assisted dying. This means that you can use drugs to kill a person, but you still can't use drugs to make that person want to live.
"They have called thee Soma-lover: here is the pressed juice. Drink thereof for rapture." -Rig Veda
(There would be no Hindu religion today had the drug war been in effect in the Punjab 3,500 years ago.)
FDA drug approval is a farce when it comes to psychoactive medicine. The FDA ignores all the obvious benefits and pretends that to prove efficacy, they need "scientific" evidence. That's scientism, not science.
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, The Pseudoscience of Mental Health Treatment: an open letter to Dr. Jonathan Stea, published on August 13, 2023 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)
ear Dr. Stea:
You have been reading an article entitled, The Pseudoscience of Mental Health Treatment: an open letter to Dr. Jonathan Stea, published on August 13, 2023 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)
