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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



hen 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.'

Update: May 05, 2025

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, 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 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

picture of clock metaphorically suggesting a follow-up





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

picture of clock metaphorically suggesting a follow-up





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 Shulgin1:

"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 drugs for life. In such a world, there is no reason whatsoever why daily opium 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.


Addiction






"The irreducible core of the disease theory of addiction is still as strong as ever -- the significant distinction between good and bad opiate use is whether it's medically supervised." --Emperors of Dreams by Mike Jay


Addiction is a hugely fraught subject in the age of the drug war. This is because the Drug War does everything it can to make drug use dangerous. It encourages addiction by limiting our access to all but the handful of drugs that dealers find it practical and lucrative to supply. It fails to regulate product so that drug users cannot know the dose or even the quality of what they are ingesting. Meanwhile, the drug war censors honest talk about drug use.

In short, until we end the drug war, we will not know how much addiction is a true problem and how much it is an artifact of drug-war policy. And yet materialist researchers tell us that addiction is a "disease"? Why is it a disease to want to improve one's life with drugs? One could just as easily say that people are diseased, or at least masochistic, if they accept their limitations in life without doing everything they can to transcend them.

Indeed, the very idea that materialists are experts on psychoactive drug use is wrong. It is a category error. The proof is extant. Materialist researchers today are in total denial about the glaringly obvious benefits of drugs. They maintain the lie that psychoactive drugs can only be proven effective by looking under a microscope, whereas the proof of such efficacy is right in front of them: in endless anecdotes, in human history, and even in psychological common sense, the kind of common sense that scientists ignore in the name of both drug war ideology and the inhumane philosophy of behaviorism.

  • Addicted to Addiction: in Drug War USA
  • Addicted to Ignorance: problems with the 'no pain, no gain' school of de-tox therapy
  • Addiction
  • America's Great Anti-Depressant Scam
  • America's Invisible Addiction Crisis: And what it tells us about drug war hypocrisy
  • Four reasons why Addiction is a political term
  • How Addiction Scientists Reckon without the Drug War: an open letter to Professor Thad Polk
  • How Drug Prohibition Causes Relapses: an open letter to Jeffrey A. Singer of the Cato Institute
  • How Prohibition Causes Addiction
  • How the Drug War Turns the Withdrawal Process into a Morality Tale
  • In the Realm of Hungry Drug Warriors: How the Drug War has blinded Gabor Maté to the great addiction crisis of our time
  • Introduction to the Drug War Philosopher Website at AbolishTheDEA.com
  • Libertarians as Closet Christian Scientists
  • Modern Addiction Treatment as Puritan Indoctrination
  • Night of the Addicted Americans
  • Open Letter to Addiction Specialist Gabor Mate: ending the torture-friendly 12-step programs
  • Open Letter to Richard Hammersley: about addiction
  • Prohibition Spectrum Disorder: an open letter to Twitter follower Frank Smith
  • Public Service Announcements for the Post-Drug War Era
  • Sherlock Holmes versus Gabor Maté
  • Tapering for Jesus: how drug warriors moralize the withdrawal process
  • The aesthetic difference between addiction and chemical dependency
  • The Myth of the Addictive Personality
  • Why Louis Theroux is Clueless about Addiction and Alcoholism: like almost every other would-be Drug War reformer on the planet

  • Pharmacologically Savvy Empaths






    In an ideal world, we would replace psychiatrists with what I call pharmacologically savvy empaths, compassionate healers with a vast knowledge of psychoactive substances from around the world and the creativity to suggest a wide variety of protocols for their safe use as based on psychological common sense. By so doing, we would get rid of the whole concept of 'patients' and 'treat' everybody for the same thing: namely, a desire to improve one's mind and mood. But the first step toward this change will be to renounce the idea that materialist scientists are the experts when it comes to mind and mood medicine in the first place. This is a category error. The experts on mind and mood are real people with real emotion, not physical doctors whose materialist bona fides dogmatically require them to ignore all the benefits of drugs under the belief that efficacy is to be determined by looking under a microscope.

    This materialism blinds such doctors to common sense, so much so that it leads them to prefer the suicide of their patient to the use of feel-good medicines that could cheer that patient up in a trice. For the fact that a patient is happy means nothing to the materialist doctor: they want the patient to 'really' be happy -- which is just there way of saying that they want a "cure" that will work according to the behaviorist principles to which they are dedicated as modern-day materialists. Anybody could prescribe a drug that works, after all: only a big important doctor can prescribe something that works according to theory. Sure, the prescription has a worse track record then the real thing, but the doctor's primary job is to vindicate materialism, not to worry about the welfare of their patient. And so they place their hands to their ears as the voice of common sense cries out loudly and clearly: "You could cheer that patient up in a jiffy with a wide variety of medicines that you have chosen to demonize rather than to use in creative and safe ways for the benefit of humankind!" I am not saying that doctors are consciously aware of this evil --merely that they are complicit in it thanks to their blind allegiance to the inhumane doctrine of behaviorism.

    This is the sick reality of our current approach. And yet everybody holds this mad belief, this idea that medical doctors should treat mind and mood conditions.

    How do I know this?

    Consider the many organizations that are out to prevent suicide. If they understood the evil consequences of having medical doctors handle our mind and mood problems, they would immediately call for the re-legalization of drugs and for psychiatrists to morph into empathizing, drug-savvy shamans. Why? Because the existing paradigm causes totally unnecessary suicides: it makes doctors evil by dogmatically requiring them to withhold substances that would obviously cheer one up and even inspire one (see the uplifting and non-addictive meds created by Alexander Shulgin, for instance). The anti-suicide movement should be all about the sane use of drugs that elate. The fact that it is not speaks volumes about America's addiction to the hateful materialist mindset of behaviorism.

    More proof? What about the many groups that protest brain-damaging shock therapy? Good for them, right? but... why is shock therapy even necessary? Because we have outlawed all godsend medicines that could cheer up almost anybody "in a trice." And why do we do so? Because we actually prefer to damage the brain of the depressed rather than to have them use drugs. We prefer it! Is this not the most hateful of all possible fanaticisms: a belief about drugs that causes us to prefer suicide and brain damage to drug use? Is it really only myself who sees the madness here? Is there not one other philosopher on the planet who sees through the fog of drug war propaganda to the true evil that it causes?

    This is totally unrecognized madness -- and it cries out for a complete change in America's attitude, not just toward drugs but toward our whole approach to mind and mood. We need to start learning from the compassionate holism of the shamanic world as manifested today in the cosmovision of the Andes. We need to start considering the human being as an unique individual and not as an interchangeable widget amenable to the one-size-fits-all cures of reductionism. The best way to fast-track such change is to implement the life-saving protocol of placing the above-mentioned pharmacologically savvy empaths in charge of mind and mood and putting the materialist scientists back where they belong: in jobs related to rocket chemistry and hadron colliders. We need to tell the Dr. Spocks of psychology that: "Thanks, but no thanks. We don't need your help when it comes to subjective matters, thank you very much indeed. Take your all-too-logical mind back to the physics lab where it belongs."

  • Addicted to Addiction: in Drug War USA
  • Addicted to Ignorance: problems with the 'no pain, no gain' school of de-tox therapy
  • Addiction
  • After the Drug War: what a free world would look like
  • After the Drug War part 2
  • Another Cry in the Wilderness: open letter to US Senators Mark Warner and Tim Kaine
  • Assisted Suicide and the War on Drugs
  • Beta Blockers and the Materialist Tyranny of the War on Drugs
  • Brahms is NOT the best antidepressant: A critique of The Emperor’s New Drugs
  • Case Studies in Wise Drug Use
  • Common Sense Drug Withdrawal: an open letter to Austin of the Huachuma Project
  • Declaration of Independence from the War on Drugs
  • Drug Use as Self-Medication
  • Drugs are not the enemy, hatred is the enemy: an open letter to Joshua Falcon, author of Designing Consciousness: Psychedelics as Ontological Design Tools for Decolonizing Consciousness
  • Ego Transcendence Made Easy: or how Schopenhauer was reckoning without drugs before it was cool to do so
  • Elderly Victims of Drug War Ideology
  • Four reasons why Addiction is a political term
  • Getting off antidepressants in the age of the drug war: an open letter to Charley Wininger, author of 'Listening to Ecstasy'
  • Goodbye Patient, Hello Client: a new shamanic approach to drug use and mental healing
  • Harold & Kumar Support the Drug War
  • Heroin versus Alcohol: an open letter to Professor Steven Gimbel of Gettysburg College
  • How Cocaine could have helped me
  • How Drug Prohibition Leads to Excessive Drinking and Smoking
  • How Psychiatry and the Drug War turned me into an eternal patient: and what we should do about that
  • How the Drug War Blinds us to Godsend Medicine
  • How the Drug War is a War on Creativity
  • How the Drug War Killed Amy Winehouse
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  • How the Drug War Punishes the Elderly
  • How the Myth of Mental Illness supports the war on drugs: and leads to the preventable suicides of our loved ones
  • How to Unite Drug War Opponents of all Ethnicities: Open letter to Sean McAllister, drug policy reform lawyer
  • Hypocritical America Embraces Drug War Fascism: a warning to any remaining friends of freedom
  • In Praise of Doctor Feelgood: Why psychiatry must become pharmacologically informed shamanism
  • In Praise of Drug Dealers: replacing the modern barbaric treatment of so-called addicts with pharmacologically informed shamanism
  • In Praise of Thomas Szasz
  • Introduction to the Drug War Philosopher Website at AbolishTheDEA.com
  • Let's Hear It For Psychoactive Therapy: as opposed to just Psychedelic Therapy
  • Medications for so-called 'opioid-use disorder' are legion: it's just that we have outlawed them all
  • Open Letter to Dr. Carl L. Hart: author of 'Drug Use for Grown-Ups: Chasing Liberty in the Land of Fear'
  • Open Letter to Erowid: about a misleading 2018 article by Karolina Zieba
  • Open Letter to Gabrielle Glaser: author of 'The Irrationality of Alcoholics Anonymous'
  • Open Letter to Lisa Ling: whose documentary about Chicago violence does not even mention the Drug War!!!
  • Pihkal 2.0: Finding drugs that work for users rather than for pharmaceutical companies
  • Replacing 12-Step Programs with Shamanic Healing
  • Replacing Psychiatry with Pharmacologically Savvy Shamanism: The post that got me banned for life from the Reddit Psychiatry group
  • Science is not free in the age of the drug war: an open letter to The American Council on Science and Health
  • Shannon Information and Magic Mushrooms
  • Someone you love is suffering unnecessarily because of the war on drugs
  • Thank God for Erowid: in response to a 2015 Vice article by Adam Rothstein
  • Thank God for Soul Quest: It's time to stop blaming others for the problems caused by drug prohibition
  • THE ANTI DRUG WAR BLOG: combatting drug war propaganda and lies, one post at a time
  • The Drug War and Armageddon: An open letter to Bryan Walsh, author of End Times
  • The Great Philosophical Problem of Our Time
  • The Mother of all Western Biases: an open letter to Science News
  • The Muddled Metaphysics of the Drug War: How modern science helps normalize prohibition
  • The Myth of the Addictive Personality
  • The Origins of Modern Psychiatry: How to create a billion-dollar industry in three easy steps
  • The Philosophical Idiocy of the Drug War
  • The real reason for depression in America
  • Using Opium to Fight Depression: on replacing psychiatry with pharmacologically savvy shamanism
  • What Jim Hogshire Got Wrong about Drugs: a philosophical review of Pills-a-Go-Go
  • Why America's Mental Healthcare System is Insane: and how the work of Alexander Shulgin can inspire us to fix it
  • Why Americans Prefer Suicide to Drug Use: how the drug war blinds us to lifesaving medicine
  • Why Louis Theroux is Clueless about Addiction and Alcoholism: like almost every other would-be Drug War reformer on the planet
  • Why Scientists Should Not Judge Drugs: an open letter to a reader




  • Notes:

    1 Shulgin, Alexander, PIHKAL: A Chemical Love Story , Transform Press, 1991 (up)



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    You have been reading an article entitled, Why Louis Theroux is Clueless about Addiction and Alcoholism: like almost every other would-be Drug War reformer on the planet, published on April 9, 2022 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)