Why Louis Theroux is Clueless about Addiction and Alcoholism
like almost every other would-be Drug War reformer on the planet
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
April 9, 2022
When Louis Theroux saw a young alcohol addict outside a London hospital, he mused: 'What struck me was the sense of impotence I felt about how to help him. I only hoped he could find his way back to happiness and sobriety.'
Louis fails to realize that it is the Drug War which renders us impotent in treating alcoholism because it outlaws all the psychoactive medicine that might be of real help to the alcoholic. That impotence is reinforced by our Christian Science focus on sobriety as a goal, thanks to which the patient is only considered 'cured' if they are using no psychoactive medicine whatsoever (with the possible hypocritical exception of dependence-causing Big Pharma tranquilizers). If we thus counsel the addict both to foreswear medical godsends and to strive to achieve a state of completely drug-free sobriety, it's little wonder that we feel impotent when it comes to truly helping them. We might as well just tell the alcoholic, 'Let go and let God,' and then move on to the next alcoholic who is waiting for our 'help.'
The sane alternative to this Christian Science prescription for alcoholics and other addicts is to treat them with strategically chosen psychoactive medicines with the goal, not of making them sober (i.e. drug-free) citizens but rather of helping them to wisely use precisely those substances that allow them to succeed in life rather than to fail. That should be the goal in treatment, after all, not to turn the addict into a good Christian Scientist who dogmatically eschews the use of all psychoactive medicine whatsoever. To enforce the latter goal is to ignore the needs of the addict and to turn their experience into a morality tale, instead, a narrative that follows the usual drug-warrior narrative: a person is entrapped by evil substances, turns to God (or a higher power) , and finally realizes that he or she can do all that they need to do in life by becoming completely sober. Most Americans would be shocked by such Christian Science advice when it comes to physical disease, yet we feel justified in enforcing those same Christians Science principles by law when the goal of treatment is to expand or improve one's mental outlook.
Author's Follow-up: April 3, 2023
Besides popularizing MDMA 1 , Alexander Shulgin has synthesized hundreds of drugs that could cheer up the alcoholics and help them screw their heads on straight, especially when employed therapeutically with the help of a pharmacologically savvy shaman 2 or empath. It is really a crime that all substances of this kind are illegal -- it means that curing alcoholism is illegal. In the age of a Drug War, we do not want to help alcoholics, we want to make them 'sober' as that term is hypocritically defined by western society. We want the alcoholic to go through hell so that we can turn their plight into a morality play, whose moral is that we should all turn to the Christian god for help, the god whom we conveniently disguise as a 'higher power,' of course.
Author's Follow-up: January 20, 2025
Imagine that we had been taught from childhood that operating on a human being is wrong. Then we walk down the street as an adult and encounter a guy with a broken leg. We would think to ourselves: 'Oh, dear! I wish I could think of some way to help that guy -- but the problem of broken legs just seems to be completely insoluble!'
That would be idiotic -- but no more idiotic than looking at a drunkard on the street and saying, 'Oh, if only there was a way to help him!'
Of course there's a way to help him -- one that no one has ever really pursued. That is to use common sense and select drugs that can get his mind off of his obsession with liquor and give him new alternatives and new ways of thinking. But we have been brainwashed since childhood to think that drugs are bad and so this does not even occur to us.
The fact is, we don't want to help such people. We would rather they remain drunkards than to have them using opium peaceably at home. We would rather they remain drunkards than letting them use ecstasy-providing non-addictive entheogens synthesized by Alexander Shulgin. We would rather they remain drunkards than letting them get insights and a new improved attitude from LSD.
We don't WANT to help such people. In the age of the Drug War, substance demonization comes first, THEN people.
Of course, in a sane world, we would not have to do anything for such people, because they would be empowered to act for themselves. Imagine, people being free to care for themselves! The concept must send chills up the spines of Drug Warriors and healthcare mavens alike.
Author's Follow-up:
May 05, 2025
Let's get specific. Suppose that we allowed alcoholics to use the sorts of drugs that inspired the following user reports in "Pihkal" by Alexander Shulgin3:
"I acknowledged a rapture in the very act of breathing."
"I experienced the desire to laugh hysterically at what I could only describe as the completely ridiculous state of the entire world."
"Excellent feelings, tremendous opening of insight and understanding, a real awakening."
"I feel that it is one of the most profound and deep learning experiences I have had."
It is blazingly obvious that drugs of this kind can be of help for any troubled mind -- or for any sanguine mind, for that matter.
And yet what do we do when we see a drunkard on the street? We wring our hands and wish that there was something that we could do about it? Well, there is something we can do about it. We can decry drug prohibition and insist that Americans start using psychoactive substances for the benefit of humankind
We could also place the so called "irreclaimable" drunkard on a regimen of nightly opium smoking -- but that would be only if we value the drunkard's health more than we do our commitment to demonizing drugs. We live in a world in which 1 in 4 American women are dependent on Big Pharma 45 drugs for life. In such a world, there is no reason whatsoever why daily opium 6 smoking should be frowned upon, especially when our outlawing of such drugs created the American Mafia and destroyed the rule of law in Latin America.
The fact that we ignore all these options shows that Americans do not REALLY want to end alcoholism or drug addiction. Why not? Because they have a prior commitment to the Drug War ideology of substance demonization.
The "acceptable risk" for psychoactive drugs can only be decided by the user, based on what they prioritize in life. Science just assumes that all users should want to live forever, self-fulfilled or not.
The drug war tells us that certain drugs have no potential uses and then turns that into a self-fulfilling prophecy by outlawing these drugs. This is insanely anti-scientific and anti-progress. We should never give up on looking for positive uses for ANY substance.
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.
That's so "drug war" of Rick: If a psychoactive substance has a bad use at some dose, for somebody, then it must not be used at any dose by anybody. It's hard to imagine a less scientific proposition, or one more likely to lead to unnecessary suffering.
Today's drug laws tell us that we must respect the historical use of sacred medicines, while denying us our personal right to use them unless our ancestors did so. That's a meta-injustice! It negatively affects the way that we are allowed to experience our world!
"If England [were to] revert to pre-war conditions, when any responsible person, by signing his name in a book, could buy drugs at a fair profit on cost price... the whole underground traffic would disappear like a bad dream." -- Aleister Crowley
Almost all of today's magazine articles about human psychology should come with the following disclaimer:
"This article was written from the standpoint of Drug War ideology, which holds that outlawed substances can have no beneficial uses whatsoever."
The fact that some drugs can be addictive is no reason to outlaw drugs. It is a reason to teach safe use and to publicize all the ways that smart people have found to avoid unwanted pharmacological dependency -- and a reason to use drugs to fight drugs.
Rick Strassman reportedly stopped his DMT trials because some folks had bad experiences at high doses. That is like giving up on aspirin because high doses of NSAIDs can kill.
The FDA uses reductive materialism to justify and normalize the views of Cortes and Pizarro with respect to entheogenic medicine.
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