From an article from the Associated Press:
Healthy people should have the right to boost their brains with pills, like those prescribed for hyperactive kids or memory-impaired older folks, several scientists contend in a provocative commentary.
College students are already illegally taking prescription stimulants like Ritalin to help them study, and demand for such drugs is likely to grow elsewhere, they say.
“We should welcome new methods of improving our brain function,” and doing it with pills is no more morally objectionable than eating right or getting a good night’s sleep, these experts wrote in an opinion piece published online Sunday by the journal Nature.
How ironic that the journal “Nature,” which I actually know nothing about supports something so unnatural. What this article conjures up for me frightens me profoundly. I don’t have much to say right now. I hope comments will trigger more developed ideas for me later. And perhaps a nights worth of sleep will too.
I guess the only thing I want to say before posting this is that all “brain-boosting” drugs they speak of in this article are toxic, as are all psychiatric drugs in general. Why would anyone want to perpetually put toxins in their bodies? Of course we already have people doing it every day with junk food and over-use of alcohol and cigarettes etc.
It’s all too easy to see that human’s will jump on this opportunity to further poison themselves in the name of progress this time and without the stigma of other addictions most likely.
I am horrified to see bio-psychiatry, which relentless seeks new markets, is touting a “revolutionary” new treatment for drug addiction.
The Industry inaccurately calls it a “vaccine”. In truth, it is nothing of the sort. The drug works by permanently disabling the receptors that are responsible for sensing pleasure.
Once a patient has been “inoculated” and the pleasure zones in his brain are destroyed, the use of narcotics becomes pointless.
No doubt with an impaired sense of pleasure, the whole of his life feels pretty pointless, too. So bring on the anti-depressants as well, eh?
In every day life, those neuronal pleasure pathways are stimulated by a wide range of triggers. The pathways clearly didn’t evolve to be specifically stimulated by narcotics. So what sense in destroying them?
The “vaccine” sounds incredibly dangerous. And no doubt it is. Not that Risk has ever bothered Psychiatry before.
As ever, the motto of this ghastly Nazi-esque Industry is Profit Before Patient.
I expected this to happen, sooner or later. I didn’t expect it to happen this soon, though. Sickening, yes. And horrifying, and disgusting…
Incredible re-framing of addiction, plain and simple. Thanks for alerting us to this. Enjoyed all the comments, especially Jane’s.
Thank you for the post.
I absolutely agree Jane,
drugs only obscure our true selves and spirit…however you want to understand it…whether it’s through a spiritual world view or just a psychological one.
thanks.
From a spiritual seeker’s point of view drugs are bane. It does not matter what the drug is.
If you want to find the real you, you can not be on drugs. There must come a time when you abstain from all drugs, regardless of the type, if your intention is to genuinely clear the crap that obscures your awareness and consciousness.
If you are serious about finding yourself and attaining real inner equilibrium that you can rely on the drugs have got to go.
As long as you are on drugs you won’t have an accurate subjective baseline of who you are as a person and as a living animal.
Every drug in your body creates background neurological noise in your system. That noise literally masks the real inner landscape of your ongoing body-being and mind. It creates an illusory sense of your inner world like a mirage.
There is no way around it. Total holistic wellness is impossible if you are on drugs.
What I find so ironic is all the anti drug awareness and promotion in the 1980s compared to now.
When I was growing up drugs were B- A- D
It was seen as a constitutional weakness, a failure of character to use drugs. It was only something weak people did to escape from their problems.
If you used drugs you were a loser. If you popped pills you were a ‘pillhead’.
In less than 30 years there has been a complete turn around in public health awareness and culture.
Better living through chemistry is now considered a virtue not a vice. As a culture we move further and further away from spirituality and wellness.
The number of children on drugs in school is disturbing.
We live in a world now where parents, doctors, school admins all push drugs on kids. It’s disgusting.
well some of us still consider it drug abuse by the prescribers as well as those who take the drugs, huh?
yes, it’s very disconcerting…
thanks for stopping by…
thanks to everyone else who left comments…I’ve been limiting my commenting but greatly enjoying yours…please allow me a bit of a break…I’m struggling to keep the blog going right now…thanks.
This makes me feel confused and upset. A few years ago wasn’t this considered drug abuse? Oh wait, this was before people decided that they should further extend how they are making money off of peoples insecurity and weakness. Stupid me.
It’s like telling people it’s ok to be drug addicts–as long as they are taking the drugs “they” tell us to.
Sometimes I wonder if the key to human salvation — besides free continuing education — is in a critical mass of individuals learning self-mastery of their will power. I struggle with my will a lot; too many temptations for escapism and putting things off even though these things would create a deeper sense of well-being than the temporary distractions of escapist titillation.
If people start controlling their minds with booster drugs, they are abdicating their own authentic will. What about “moral objection” to that? To compare drug enhancement to purposeful, natural activities like eating properly, exercising, getting enough sleep… sigh
I’m not sure if this trend is more disturbing though, than the fact that we have no choice over the other substances that end up in our water supply and food. (flouride, mercury, hormones, antidepressants, antibiotics, etc.)
Fine then, if the authors feel that recreational use of potentially dangerous drugs is okay then they should be down with legalizing pot for the same reasons.
Medicating the healthy is simply irresponsible.
Thank you for informing us of this article. I am shocked that these ideas appeared in Nature. I have read Nature for many years; it is one of the most respected science journals.
Jim S
This is just terrible
well, I hope so, but I looked for quotes and it’s very unclear to me at this point what he means by that…do you have a good quote?
How do you know he is anti-NAMI? I can’t find anything on google with his name and NAMI’s.
Horror. Definitely horror.
On the plus side, General Shinseki, who has been named by Obama to head the Veterans Administration, appears to be anti-NAMI as well as anti-Rumsfeld. He has called for choices in the treatment of Iraq veterans, and used that word specifically.
Hugs,
Moss
I saw this article today and felt such a terror and sickness throughout my body that I thought I would lose consciousness.
I am honestly grateful to know that someone else is as horrified by this as I am…
Sometimes I just want to give up on the human race….
I really wonder how we can survive with our denial and profound stupidity of our true natures.
I saw this article today and felt such a terror and sickness throughout my body that I thought I would lose consciousness.
What amazes me is how f*ing stupid people are … if we did not live in a culture of distraction, we would not require drugs in order to multitask and concentrate. We are ruining our children’s brains with television and video games and video image … it’s been proven that babies who are exposed to video images such as “Baby Einstein” grow up with shorter attention spans.
It’s no wonder we have children with so-called ADHD … maybe it exists, but we’re creating it, every day. If we would wake up and reverse our cultural deterioration, we wouldn’t need to artificially convince our brains to concentrate.