Tag: Addiction

(the following is an excerpt from my book)

There is an absolutely brilliant 92Y interview that Hamilton Morris, one of the most prominent psychedelic advocates in America, did of Michael Pollan, the mainstream journalist who recently wrote a book on the current renaissance called How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence. I think the book will probably ultimately be positive for the movement to mainstream psychedelics simply because he is such a square type of mainstream media figure, normies will be far more inclined to read him less antagonistically than they would read someone like me.

But he does problematically talk mad shit on Dr. Leary and the counterculture in that book, which is why Hamilton’s interview was so great. He pushed back on Pollan’s central thesis, which is that psychedelics seem like they could be great psychiatric medicines, but there is not enough science yet to fully prove their efficacy and they need to be used in strictly controlled clinical settings with guides to help people through their trips. As somebody who has tripped hundreds of times and never had a “guide,” I really object to the assertion that everybody needs a professional tripsitter in order to do these things safely and get great benefits out of them. Surely, it would be great if guides were available to folks who wanted one, especially on their first psychonautical expedition, but most people can get on just fine without one.

My favorite part of the interview was when Hamilton makes a profound analogy between the Prohibition on psychedelics and a hypothetical Prohibition on music. It’s perfect because both of those cultural phenomena are quite similarly foundational to the human experience:

“And of course I agree with all this, you know, I’m a believer. I want all of this to be true. I want them to be legal. I want them to be medicines. I want all this research to have tremendously promising results, but I’m also extremely worried because I think if we look at them exclusively as medicines and don’t emphasize just cognitive liberty—the freedom to do things regardless of whether or not they’re medicinal—it’d be like if somebody made music illegal, and instead of saying, “Well it should just be legal because why not? Just make it legal; it doesn’t hurt anyone,” everyone said, “Oh, no, we can prove that it’s a medicine. And then, if it’s a medicine, then then it’s okay for everyone to use it. And look, it actually helps people with neurodegenerative diseases and certain people with PTSD if they listen to a certain type of music under very controlled circumstances, it can actually be tremendously therapeutic. We need to make this legal.” But then it would cost money and the whole thing would be a mess, and you would sort of neglect the overarching issue, which is: Why is this even controlled in the first place?”

“What the Health is a 2017 documentary film which critiques the health impact of meat and dairy products consumption, and questions the practices of the leading health and pharmaceutical organizations. Its primary purpose is to advocate for a plant-based diet. Filmmaker Kip Andersen uncovers the secret to preventing and even reversing chronic diseases, and he investigates why the nation’s leading health organizations doesn’t want people to know about it.”

watch on Netflix or watch on watchdocumentaries.com

“Addiction treatment doesn’t cure addicts, it creates addicts. Our current approach fails by teaching helplessness. We can help by changing our attitudes, and treating problematic substance users as our capable equals rather than helpless addicts. Steven Slate is the Author of The Clean Slate Addiction Site. He is co-author of the Saint Jude Program 13th Edition taught at Saint Jude Retreats. He’s authored articles on addiction for textbooks. He continues to work in research and development at Baldwin Research Institute to create the best solution for problematic substance use. His writings are based on his own personal experiences with addiction. He is not a doctor or PHd, but rather an autodidact, studying for the past decade the principles around addiction. He is also a trained life coach through New York University.”

“What really causes addiction — to everything from cocaine to smart-phones? And how can we overcome it? Johann Hari has seen our current methods fail firsthand, as he has watched loved ones struggle to manage their addictions. He started to wonder why we treat addicts the way we do — and if there might be a better way. As he shares in this deeply personal talk, his questions took him around the world, and unearthed some surprising and hopeful ways of thinking about an age-old problem.”

“Following on from his explosive & controversial interview on BBC Newsnight, Russell Brand sat down for an evening with Mehdi Hasan to discuss his opinions on the world order, politics, drugs & their treatment & also anything else that Russell felt like talking about.”