tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21291532607381171162024-03-18T16:33:36.220-05:00REFUSING PSYCHIATRY(WITHOUT PISSING OFF THE NEIGHBORS)SRKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18038834371981947620noreply@blogger.comBlogger404125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2129153260738117116.post-50811517206859285892024-03-15T13:40:00.007-05:002024-03-15T14:26:19.287-05:00Psychedelics vs. the Apotheosis of Reason<p>Jules Evans recently interviewed Steve Rolles about "What comes after the war on drugs?" <a href="https://www.ecstaticintegration.org/p/what-comes-after-the-war-on-drugs">A transcript</a> of that conversation is a fascinating demonstration or dramatization, in my opinion, of what Max Weber (and many others) have called "the apotheosis of reason."</p><p>Psychedelic drugs basically turn loose the best, and the worst, intentions and experiences accessible to individuals. Both the best and the worst are far more <i>extreme</i> than modern day humans can easily imagine. We have historical references like Christ/Buddha/Gandhi, and Torquemada/Hitler/Manson; but we do not find or confront those extremes regularly in our daily lives. When somebody gets crazy, like on October 7th in Israel, that merely precipitates a crazy reaction: lives and society are destroyed, but nothing is learned. In fact the world only becomes stupider.</p><p>No great patriotic war has ever helped humanity. Each and every one of them brought only dishonor, ruin and tragedy. Ideas, not battles, mark forward progress for Man. During battle, ideas literally disappear and only force exists. Battle <i>is</i> an absence of ideas, even if ideas are blamed or credited beforehand and afterward. Drugs, especially psychedelic drugs, produce <i>battle within a mind</i>.</p><p>The interview by Evans of Rolles is replete with the blissful ignorance and glib denial of evil. The whole framework of how to best regulate psychedelics so they provide benefits without causing harm hearkens back to classic lines from war movies like (two of my favorites) <i>Full Metal Jacket</i> and <i>Starship Troopers</i>:</p><p><span> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxUE8PIF9as">"How can you shoot women and children?</a> Easy--just don't lead them quite as much."</span><br /></p><p><span><span> "What's the matter, you want to live forever? <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_cpvapfAtc">Let's all get tattoos!</a>"</span><br /></span></p><p><span><span>Steve Rolles is charming to note that psychedelics can turn people into boring dickheads. But there may be nothing so boring as his own discussions about, "The core thrust of regulation (being) ...keeping people safe or at least safer, and mitigating known risks."</span></span></p><p><span><span>That's not why people take psychedelic drugs, it's only what they seem to get interested in after they've been turned into dickheads. </span></span>People take psychedelic drugs to overcome themselves, or in Nietzsche's own language, <i>zur Selbsüberwindung zum Übermenschen. </i>People want salvation, and that has never been a project for reason, but always a project for faith. </p><p>Galileo began the long historical trend away from faith and toward reason in the early Seventeenth Century; but not long after Nietzsche died insane and godless at the dawn of the Twentieth, Albert Hoffman, Richard Helms, Paul Tibbets, Rudolph Höss, Captain Al Hubbard and Timothy Leary certainly ended that trend.</p><p>Now people vote for Donald Trump or believe in woke-ism. And they fight each other. They appear to cherish only the artillery shell in the face and the bullet in the heart.</p><p>They want a trip, but it'll be a bad one now. Forget regulation.</p>SRKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18038834371981947620noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2129153260738117116.post-53509234799638024302024-03-09T12:34:00.001-06:002024-03-09T12:43:53.232-06:00Easter and Music<p>I have always loved the concept of the Christian Resurrection as an ultimate triumph over death. In retrospect, I'm not sure what sort of "death" needs to be triumphed over, or that human life is anything like an ultimate game. My favorite New Testament bit is the angel's question on Easter morning, "Why do you look in a place of the dead?"</p><p>I know my mother never feared death. (I'm not sure about my dad.) Among the other dead people whom I miss most are my wife's dad, a rare violin expert named Robert, and John Prine.</p><p>My parents loved music. When I hear certain Jimmy Buffet songs, or Don McClean's <i>American Pie</i>, or the Eagles, it sure seems to me like they are alive. My father-in-law listened to Harry Belafonte and sang along with Tennessee Ernie Ford's <i>16 Tons.</i> Music<i> is resurrection</i> in some far more significant way than any mere re-animation of a ruined meat body.</p><p>Nevertheless, I had a strange and wonderful dream.</p><p>My wife and I do an annual music cruise with another couple, which entails 41 bands and about two thousand paying fans on a ship for a week in the Caribbean. It's called Cayamo (a made-up word which means nothing beyond being the name of the event itself). This year we had the Mavericks, Brandy Clark, The War and Treaty, Rodney Crowell, Lyle Lovett, and various others too good to forget but too many to remember. Cayamo is not quite Woodstock, but it's fully beautiful, and much more comfortable.</p><p>The pool deck is our favorite of about six different venues on the boat. You can sit in the hot tub and listen to the show, watch old people dance, read your book and drink. It's not easy to find a seat in the shade. One afternoon this week we walked out and there were several shady seats available. Our friend (age 84) commented dryly, "Yep, people died." I hate to say it, but the crowd does seem to get more geriatric every year; anyone who appears to be under forty is almost certainly a member of a band. </p><p>There are just over three dozen patrons who have been there every year (of 16) without exception. Those guys always get an official shout-out from Shawn Mullins, the one performing musician who has never missed a year. They all parade down the aisle of the Stardust Theater in bathrobes. We've done nine Cayamo's in a row now, and we won't miss next year, because Emmylou Harris will be back on board.</p><p>Which brings me back to my dream.</p><p>We were sitting on the pool deck during a set by Buffalo Rose, when one of the female singers said, "Ladies and gentlemen we have a very special surprise for you. Please welcome my friend and hero, <i>back from the dead, Mr. John Prine!</i>" And to our shock, he actually walked out onto the stage with his guitar!</p><p>Needless to say the crowd was instantly hysterical, in unrestrained tears. No human being is more loved on Cayamo than John Prine. He is the patron saint of the event, everyone tells stories about him, most of the artists imitate him in some way, and they try to tell stories like he told stories. (One colorful example is Paul Thorn, who has some story to introduce every song he sings: "My daddy was a preacher and my uncle was a pimp... they taught me how to love and how to fight.")</p><p>Anyway... my dream continued with the most wonderful lyricist who ever lived stepping up to the microphone and speaking to us all in that same conversational, Kentucky-drawl tone as soon as the stunned pool deck multitude could calm down. "Thank you, I'm happy to be here. I'm sorry if I look tired. You know, I've been dead for several years, and that takes a lot out of a person. They say rest in peace, but man I gotta tell you, it ain't restful being dead. So I'm happy to be back on Cayamo, it's a lot better...." </p><p>Then he sang <i>Souvenirs</i>, and we all cried, and I woke up from the dream crying. Every year at Cayamo I have the same realization: music is the most important thing in my life!</p><p>Back from the ship, walking by the ocean on Miami Beach, a man was dragging a cross south by the water's edge. The cross wasn't quite big enough to actually crucify anyone on it, just big enough to theatrically remind sunbathers and spring breakers of The Crucifixion. An interviewer and a videographer followed about ten yards behind the man dragging the cross, to record people's reactions (and proselytize).</p><p>I suggested that the guy with the cross should fall down occasionally, and they'd see whether anyone named Simon could be convinced to help him carry it. The interviewer ignored that, but asked what the cross meant to me. I thought for a moment, and came up with something along the lines of... coming back from such a gruesome death would sure prove a person is tough. </p><p>I could have mentioned centuries of persecuted non-believers, brutal forced conversions, and prejudice that inspired the ruinous American Civil War. But these days Christians are decent, if boring, people.</p><p>The guy asked if he could pray for me. I told him pray for peace, that will be praying for me. </p><p>I should have said pray for <i>music</i>.</p>SRKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18038834371981947620noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2129153260738117116.post-74625859788529700142024-02-27T09:21:00.001-06:002024-02-27T11:19:33.398-06:00If you bite the groomer, you'll have to take meds <p>I have a 2-year-old Airedale Terrier named Spensur who weighs about 93 pounds. Big dog with no real manners, and we don't know everywhere he's been, he's a rescue. Trying to get him groomed, which should be done every couple months, has become an interesting project. One place after another has said no, they won't take him again, he doesn't cooperate and (just imagine!) nobody wants to get bitten.</p><p>The most recent groomer, Paul, called me after Spens had been at his place for about an hour last week, and told me to come get him, he couldn't get him into the washtub. I went in and tried to get him into the tub and also gave up. When a large dog growls or snarls at you, you just back off. Paul said well, maybe we could try again in a couple weeks, and maybe he'd give my dog half a Valium or something. I didn't like that idea, but we've got to get this beast cleaned up.</p><p>I called the vet, and explained the situation. Dr. Kramer said there's a "chill protocol." It's about four different meds, and you dose the dog once the night before grooming and once again, about an hour or two ahead of the appointment. So I got the prescriptions filled, and figured I'd test it one time before I took Spensur back to Paul. A cookie with peanut butter to disguise seven pills, plus a little cheese and a bit of turkey was the perfect contrivance, and the pills went right down.</p><p>The next morning, Spens was <i>slow</i>. He acted more like an old dog, not a puppy. I only gave him part of the second dose because I thought if I'd done the full protocol, he might not even get in the car by himself, and I wouldn't want to carry him. This was a Saturday. The drugs wore off slowly, and the dog seemed <i>suspicious </i>of me for most of the day, like, "<i>Dad!</i> What the hell was in that cookie?" I didn't like it. I left a message for the vet to call me, I had some questions.</p><p>You can count on a vet who practices in Chicago's North Shore suburbs to be pretty solicitous: they charge a lot more than makes any sense, and they want that business. Dr. Kramer listened carefully to my concerns, and ultimately suggested that the fine-tuning of the meds should consist of one less tablet of two drugs the night before, and then the full dose in the morning. I think he's right, and we'll probably do it that way in a couple weeks, to hopefully avoid the resentful attitude which might be a side effect of the meds wearing off. I really do not want Spensur to bite Paul, and he has to get groomed before he looks like a full-on, gnarly monster. So I'll try to reason with him, and explain the deal, and maybe get him less sensitive to somebody pulling on his facial hair or putting him in a washtub, before I take him back in.</p><p>Veterinarians are a lot like psychiatrists in that their solution to bad behavior is drugs. If dogs are <i>well </i>behaved, they can be easier to get along with and more lovable than some people. But they're also easier to drug and easier to kill when they behave badly.</p><p><i>Damn</i>, I love this dog, and I don't want him to be afraid or upset, or to think that I don't respect him. I really want him to learn that the groomer is OK. I should be able to teach him that. The meds probably aren't very good for him, and it would break my heart to hurt him.</p><p>But like all the rest of us, he has to get presentable in society, and he can't bite the groomer.</p>SRKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18038834371981947620noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2129153260738117116.post-56290157162167979822024-02-23T11:50:00.003-06:002024-02-27T11:52:49.611-06:00Barry Smoot on Peter Neumer and Kwame Raoul<p>Illinois' Attorney General and the Inspector General for the Illinois Department of Human Services recently announced a triumphant victory against sexual abuse of disabled people. Barry Smoot sent me the January 30, 2023, <a href="https://www.riverbender.com/articles/details/attorney-general-raoul-obtains-prison-sentence-for-du-quoin-man-convicted-of-sexually-assaulting-individual-with-disability-63523.cfm">article</a> from RiverBender.com, perhaps with the idea that I could find a good civil lawsuit in the story.</p><p>People reasonably believe that I am interested in bringing lawsuits because, like other attorneys, I want to make money. Well I do, and I really <i>should</i>,<i> but</i>... many people would also say that I am insufficiently motivated by financial gain for my own good. I am motivated most of all to "burn Atlanta and march to the sea." It's a long, total war of attrition against coercive psychiatry. I want to win it before I die, as the single most necessary effort to preserve human dignity and freedom.</p><p>The thing about litigating against a state bureaucracy is, the defendants never know they have lost unless somebody has to write a check big enough to require a special act of the Legislature to cover it. If that means millions to me, fine. I'll put it all back into the war effort anyway. I don't even worry that by revealing myself about this here, I might inspire fiercer defense against my clients' civil claims. That's because no individual in any position of authority faces any apparent existential threat: they are all complicit in criminal abuse, but only as little, tiny cogs in the wheels of a large machine which they believe is a perfect hiding place against responsibility. Regular prosecutors are rarely very interested in going after them. They're much like the Nuremberg defendants who only obeyed orders.</p><p>They don't even worry about anything happening to them if the machine is finally made to stop: their pensions are protected by the Illinois Constitution, so it's all on the taxpayers.</p><p>Barry says the reason the AG and the IDHS Inspector General don't protect "patients" at EMHC from abuse is, they consider that their jobs are really about protecting unionized state employees from lawsuits. The case which the article details is about a prosecution of a non-union, outside agency-contracted guy. That prosecution was a show. It was, "Hey, look over there, it's the Goodyear blimp! We'll show you some bad guys, but don't look at <i>our </i>people, they're <i>mental health professionals</i>."</p><p>As far as OIG is concerned, the only kind of employee who ever deserves to be punished for, or deterred from, sexually abusing involuntary mental patients is a non-union employee. If you're a member of AFSCME Council 31, then you're one of the owners of the slaves and you can do whatever you like with your property. </p><p>Peter Neumer and his predecessors did precisely <i>nothing</i> to protect Ben Hurt, Mark Owens, Mansoor Abdul-Hameed, Angelo Rotunno, Kevin Johnson, Sean Gunderson, Gustavo Rodrigues, Paul Olsson, Shanovia Fowlkes, Marci Weber, Mickey Russell, Michael Dopson, Jennifer Coleman, and various other current and future plaintiffs, from staff sexual abuse or staff appropriation of their sexuality, and all the trauma and dehumanization which results from that. </p><p>And Kwame Raoul runs his Office of the Illinois Attorney General, using huge taxpayer funded resources, paying enormous taxpayer funded salaries, to protect the abusers from the Plaintiffs. </p><p>It's corrupt. But throw taxpayers a bone like Larry Vancil once in awhile, find a scapegoat, and dues paying members of the right club can get away with it. Kwame Raoul can say, "Instead of insuring a safe environment for some of our most vulnerable residents, the defendant chose to instead violate the rights of an individual that did not have the capacity to speak up and protect themselves. I am committed to holding individuals accountable for taking advantage of people they are responsible for protecting." </p><p>No, he's not committed to that. He's committed to protecting the <i>racket.</i></p>SRKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18038834371981947620noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2129153260738117116.post-22970170757957713092024-02-16T20:58:00.013-06:002024-02-17T08:04:56.652-06:00Dr. Schmidt's astounding statement (and Joe Pierre's glib freedom)<p>I recently heard a psychiatrist say something in a staffing that absolutely astounded me: "Part of my job is to <i>not</i> write anything down that will hurt you with the court."</p><p>First of all, I'm pretty sure she meant anything <i>untrue</i>... because of course, if she in fact perceives an EMHC "patient" to be suicidal or threatening, or symptomatic of psychosis, it would certainly be part of her job to write that down, even though it would probably convince the court to deny requests for privileges, or release.</p><p>My question is: <i>Why</i> didn't it occur to the "doctor" to specifically clarify this? As a forensic mental health professional, she may be in a peculiar category of "experts" who are occupationally disabled from <i>knowing</i> what is true or untrue. They pretend to be medical professionals; courts like to think their opinions are minimally scientific and objective. But in mental health, we certainly aren't talking about "medicine" in the same sense as that term applies to oncology or cardiology. "Diagnosis" of mental disorders is bullshit; and "treatment" (if that means psychiatric drugs or shock) is useless or worse.</p><p>Each and every one of Dr. Schmidt's "patients," as a slave on the Elgin plantation, has frequently had untrue statements written down about them which <i>did</i> hurt them with the court. I often sue EMHC clinicians for exactly that, when I think the untruth can be objectively proven. </p><p>I could be very impressed by Dr. Schmidt's proclaimed intention to get people out of EMHC who can be gotten out. She almost sounds like a closet abolitionist, like she really believes the slaves should ultimately be freed! And I really <i>want </i>to believe her, but 20 years of experience warns me that maybe it's just a tactic.</p><p>What the slaves and their captors have in common is<i> incessant</i> lying, especially to themselves. The former say, "Sure, I believe I need the meds..." and the latter say, "He's sick, and I know best how to make him better." They all have short-sighted, cynical motives to lie.</p><p>I shouldn't mind. Lies are creative, they enable games. If we couldn't lie we'd all be bored as hell.</p><p>But most lies in "mental health" are too <i>little.</i> So the games suck.</p><p>Dr. Schmidt, I believe, is not an actual <i>employee</i> of the plantation. She's an outside, agency contracted psychiatrist. (There are more of them than in the past. The state can't keep people on the payroll, so many EMHC doctors are not the regular union guys now.) That status may enable a little more independence, especially if she has a substantial outside practice where her patients come willingly, or mostly so.</p><p>One interesting example of independence in psychiatric opinion might be my X (née Twitter) friend, Joe Pierre, a UCSF psychiatrist and author who recently penned an <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/contributors/joe-pierre-md">article</a> in <i>Psychology Today</i> harping on the old comparison between mental illness and a broken bone. Joe seems to be so independent in fact, that he doesn't even need to consider an obvious and <i>very practical</i> contrast between these two "medical" situations: broken bones regularly and predictably get completely fixed; but mental illness (virtually by definition) is never cured.</p><p>My wife broke her arm long ago, and no disability remains. If she had been called schizophrenic by a psychiatrist, she would still be considered mentally ill, and all the implied social disability and oppression would continue to impact her life.</p><p>That's probably why all Dr. Schmidt's "patients" would prefer a broken bone to mental illness. For a broken bone, their doctors wouldn't be able to keep them locked up.</p><p>Writing down "broken bone" never hurts anyone with the court!</p>SRKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18038834371981947620noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2129153260738117116.post-39075111063147082362024-02-09T12:29:00.166-06:002024-02-11T14:45:26.489-06:00A couple pages of history<p style="text-align: left;">The following is an excerpt from pages 139-142 of <i>The Last Innocent Year: America in 1964 (The Beginning of the "Sixties)</i>, by Jon Margolis (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1999).</p><p style="text-align: center;"><b>__________</b></p><p style="text-align: justify;"> <span style="font-family: verdana;"> Thanks to his engaging manner, his eagerness to please, and his velvety voice, radio host William B. Williams was master of most that he surveyed. He was the host of <i>The Make-Believe Ballroom</i>, the radio program created by Martin Block, the one-time shoe salesman who had become the world's first disc jockey. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span> That position made William B., as he called himself, first among equals of the disc jockey world. His program on WNEW, 1130 on the AM dial, could be heard all over the New York area, but its impact spread farther. William B. was unique among DJs because he didn't just spin platters. His show was so popular that the stars actually came into the studio to chat with him. Frank Sinatra came--later on Williams was the guy who first called Sinatra "Chairman of the Board"--and so did Ella Fitzgerald, Judy Garland, and even Louis Armstrong.</span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span><span> William B. would never have invited the Beatles. He referred to "I Want to Hold Your Hand" as "I Want to Hold My Nose" and played only a few bars of it before telling his engineer to switch over to some real music. Other disc jockeys, who were less restrained and sophisticated, were shamelessly promoting themselves and their stations as the most Beatle-crazy in anticipation of the group's imminent first visit to the United States. This wasn't William B.'s style. He promoted himself--calling himself "William B." was part of the promotion--but he did it quietly. His vanity, like his music, was tasteful, and although he knew enough to cozy up to whichever entertainer was hot at the moment, he would never slavishly link his entire persona to one singer, or even four of them.</span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span><span> On the other extreme, Murray Kaufman had no such inhibitions. He labeled himself "Murray the K," a hot rod sort of a nickname. His show on WINS, 1010 on the dial, was "Murry the K and his Swinging Soiree," and he had glommed on to the Beatles fad quicker than anyone, promoting himself as their biggest fan, their biggest booster, even--audacious as it was--"the fifth Beatle." That was the new way of doing things.</span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span><span> By then, even Jack Gould might have been wondering whether this British rock group had more staying power than he thought. It wasn't just that the first two single releases of the Beatles--"I Want to Hold Your Hand" and "I Saw Her Standing There"--immediately sold more than a million records and had been number one all over the country for almost a month. Nor was it simply that teenage girls sat enraptured next to radio or record player as the songs played, It was that the teenage boys were sitting there, too, and if the look in their eyes was not quite the same, it was nonetheless the look of an addiction.</span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span><span><span> It got even worse when American boys started trying to look like the Beatles. The barber business suffered throughout much of the country as teenage boys began to let their hair grow,</span> the better to look like John, Paul, George or Ringo. Family harmony suffered, too. In thousands of living rooms, kitchens and dens, parents pleaded, urged, cajoled,, bribed, and finally commanded their sons to get a haircut.</span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span><span><span> Most complied because they didn't have much choice. In 1964, fifteen-year-olds did as they were told... or else. But compliance was only scalp-deep; beneath millions of skulls, a rebellion brewed. Not that there was anything new about rebellious, long-haired youths. That's who the Students for a Democratic Society was composed of, as well as the group of University of Wisconsin students who sponsored an "unmilitary ball" to compete with the annual dance of the Reserve Officers Training Corps chapter. "Swords optional" was the motto of the rebels, who seemed to be having some impact. All over the country, ROTC enrollment was down.</span></span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span><span><span> The kids who were trying to look like the Beatles weren't longhairs. They weren't even in college. Most of them were high school students who weren't active in politics. The few teenagers who belonged to political groups were more likely to be folk song fans, their group was the Weavers, not the Beatles. The Beatles fans were white middle-class suburbanites.</span></span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span><span><span><span> Some of this "Beatlemania," as it was already known, sprang from teenage boys who were trying to make themselves attractive to teenage girls. But that explained only part of it. The Beatles had tapped into something, and if nobody was quite sure what it was, a great many people were sure that they didn't like it.Even at the beginning, there was the sense that this wasn't just a fad. It was an uprising. It was as though millions of well-bred. well-groomed suburban teenagers </span>were rejecting, implicitly but unmistakably, everything their parents held dear.</span></span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span><span><span><span><span> </span>Some of these parents reacted. Anti-Beatles groups sprang up around the country. One, in Detroit, asserted that its purpose was to "stamp out the Beatles." The more popular the group got with the teenage set--four of February's top hits were Beatles tunes--the more upset their elders got.</span></span></span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span><span><span><span><span> Even so, there weren't very many of these ant-Beatles organizations, and they weren't very big.Furthermore, they were moderate compared to the parents who had tried to ban performances or broadcasts of "Louie, Louie." Nobody was trying to get a law passed against the Beatles.</span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span><span><span><span><span> But it was definitely an unprecedented phenomenon. Older folks had ridiculed the early "bobby-soxers" who swooned over Sinatra in the 1940s, and more than a few observers feared the raw sexuality of Elvis Presley's country rock songs in the 1950s. But organizing in opposition to a few pop singers was bizarre, as though people thought differences in taste were political.</span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span><span><span><span><span> It turned out that they were. The fervor gripping so many teenagers over the Beatles did have social, and therefore political, ramifications, though exactly what they were did not become clear until the Beatles actually got here. And they got here to pandemonium. When Pan American Flight 101 landed at the recently renamed John F. Kennedy International Airport on the morning of Friday, February 7, Paul, George, John and Ringo were greeted by several thousand school-skipping teenagers and scores of reporters and disk jockeys.</span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span><span><span><span><span><span> Murray the K was the most successful, or the most shameless. Somehow he managed to get right down in front of the low platform where the singers stood. He was wearing a crumpled porkpie hat. He shouted questions, talking to the Beatles, who'd never seen him before, as though he were an old buddy.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span><span><span><span><span><span><span> Finally, John Lennon shouted, "Everybody shut up!" and the questioning began:</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span><span><span><span><span><span><span> REPORTER: Why do you sing like Americans but speak with an English accent?</span> </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span><span><span><span><span><span> LENNON: It sells better.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span><span><span><span><span><span> REPORTER: Are you in favor of lunacy?</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span><span><span><span><span><span> MCCARTNEY: It's healthy.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span><span><span><span><span><span> REPORTER: Do you ever have haircuts?</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span><span><span><span><span><span> HARRISON: I had one yesterday.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span><span><span><span><span><span> STARR: It's no lie; you should have seen him the day before.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span><span><span><span><span><span> REPORTER: How do you account for your great success?</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span><span><span><span><span><span> LENNON: If we knew, we'd form another group and be managers.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span><span><span><span><span><span> REPORTER: How about the Detroit campaign to stamp out the Beatles?</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span><span><span><span><span><span><span> MCCARTNEY: First of all, we have a campaign of our own to stamp out Detroit.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span><span><span><span><span><span><span> Poor William B. It must have been the fondest hope of all the Beatle-phobics that the singers would reveal themselves as semiliterate dunderheads, easily dismissed as beneficiaries of a shrewd publicity campaign. They were that, but they were also witty and irreverent. These four young men represented an affront to authority, which was all the more dangerous because it seemed so benign. They were mildly iconoclastic without being contentious, so suburban teenagers who didn't give a hoot about politics could express the unease they felt about school, neighborhood, and parental control simply through their taste in music.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span><span><span><span><span><span> As if to rub in the undeniable reality of Beatlemania, on Sunday, February 9, two days after the Beatles arrived, 73 million people watched them open and close <i>The Ed Sullivan Show.</i> World Series games and the Kennedy funeral had attracted more viewers, but this was the biggest audience for any entertainment program.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span> Just how many people found all this upsetting was never very clear. Even at the time, some observers found it easy to ridicule grown men and women who let themselves be bothered by nothing but the popularity of a few young singers. But it was more than that. The Beatles phenomenon did not occur in a vacuum. To the traditional-minded, the late winter and early spring of 1964 were full of vexing events in politics, entertainment, the arts, and even sports.</span></span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span><b>__________</b></span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I was recently in a staffing at EMHC, when I mentioned this sixtieth anniversary of the Beatles' arrival in the U.S. and the <i>Ed Sullivan Show</i> performance. A social worker whom I've known for some years remarked that she had really, really loved the Beatles. It occurred to me that this woman is probably about my age, and I imagined her being among the screaming teenagers in that audience on February 9, 1964.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I remember my mother showing me a picture of the Beatles in the paper, perhaps trying to test out my adolescent reaction. I had never heard of the Beatles before that moment. But I looked at the picture and read the article, thinking to myself that somehow my mom was a little too interested. I was suspicious of her purpose for inquiring, for observing me like some kind of specimen, or like she was thinking something about me that she wasn't saying.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Of course, it was no more than a few weeks later, when I and every kid my age were singing four different Beatles songs constantly. Our parents' skeptical inquiries were futile; ultimately we converted them to <i>our</i> tastes, maybe sometime after <i>Sergeant Pepper</i>... in what had <i>so quickly</i> become an entirely different world. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">My children have said they are occasionally jealous of their parents, because we lived in such an exciting time, and nothing as big as the Beatles ever happened during their youth. Yah, fine, we could have said the same thing to our parents, they of the so-called Greatest Generation (nothing as big as WW-II..?). Every generation has its stories, and each is as great as its dreams. The stories are told by musicians and the dreams are dreamed mostly by artists. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Surely, the dreams of generations are <i>not</i> dreamed by forensic psychiatrists or psychiatric plantation overseers. They're the kind of people who get converted to the dreams of others, that's their upside.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">If my social worker friend remembers once being a screaming teenage fan, she can probably still get a more honest job.</span></p>SRKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18038834371981947620noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2129153260738117116.post-20994670469896933152024-01-30T14:16:00.008-06:002024-01-30T14:47:22.757-06:00OK Gus!!<p>Other than Baker, the EMHC "patient" about whom I have most frequently written in recent years might be Gustavo Rodriguez. Gus' current slave cabin is on the section of the plantation known as N Unit (at least I think so--they move him around so much, I can hardly even keep track!).</p><p>Gus complains a lot, but probably quite appropriately. The thing about complaints by "patients" is, they are almost never believed, and they are very likely to draw retribution, from staff and other "patients" who act at the behest of staff or with apparent permission from staff.</p><p>Gus has been incessantly bullied lately, by a couple patients named David on N Unit. They repeatedly put post-it notes on the door to his bedroom with hearts, saying "I love you," implying Gus is gay. They disrespectfully mocked his Christianity, from which comes his morality to motivate his sincere complaints about the unjust way things are run. This week Gus admitted that he responded to the Daves in kind, for which he was very apologetic to me. I don't know exactly what he did, but it was probably not as bad as what I would have done. </p><p>I'd love to be targeted myself for "bullying" by guys like those two Daves! I'm pretty wedded to the old saw about "sticks and stones can break my bones" and it's very hard to hurt me. But I probably know more about power in human relations than anybody who will ever try to bully me, and high school football taught me to relish physical force, outgoing or incoming. I loved playing defensive line and a solid ground offense. A passing game is pretty, but the point should be <i>hitting</i>. Bullies are cowards and they ostentatiously identify themselves by never using sticks and stones, only pathetic words. They just throw the ball.</p><p>The popular concern over emotional damage from bullying is a waste of attention. Bullies can be ignored, or laughed at, or beaten to a pulp when a discrete opportunity presents itself. My youngest child was bullied for awhile in grade school. I explained to him how to confront the bully directly and aggressively. We drilled a routine together, and when my son applied it, the bully went away and never came back.</p><p>Anyway, here's the reason it's worth my time writing about this on my blog.... The recent "bullying" by the two Daves on N Unit was knowingly allowed and assisted by staff. As Gus walked through the day room, he was hit with derision and catcalls from patients who were sitting together at a table with STA Kristine Iglesias and STA Erica (last name under investigation). Patients at EMHC are supposed to be helped, to improve their mental, emotional and behavioral health. They are not supposed to be ganged up on, insulted, etc., by the whole combined environment. It would have been <i>extremely easy</i> for Kristine and Erica, sitting right there when this occurred, to say, "Hey guys, that's inappropriate and unnecessary, so just knock it off."</p><p>In fact, it was Kristine's and Erica's <i>job</i> to tell the Daves to knock it off. They didn't do their job on this occasion even as they fail to do their job most of the time. They have no clue how to do their job, they have no pride in their work, they are corrupt, hopeless and degraded. Long ago, my friend Rodney Yoder tried to explain to me that these people are <i>scum. </i>The professional title, "Security Therapy Aide," is a joke. STA's smoke weed in hotel parking lots with patients on conditional release, and go upstairs for promiscuous nights, never thinking about anyone they are betraying, including themselves. (Right, Kristine?)</p><p>Anyway, I sure am on Gus' side! And any of you idiots who might like to come after me for that.... Mmmmm! </p><p>Now this is going to seem <i>nonsequitur</i>, but maybe I can tie it in.</p><p>As I was writing, the Fox News show "Outnumbered" was featuring a discussion about implantable brain chips that could connect people to AI and digital devices for "enhancement" of various human abilities. One comment from the panel was about the potential benefits and the dangers of such technology being comparable to those which also come with psychedelic drugs. The point was essentially, "OMG, we just have to be sure these things are ethically controlled." Everybody agreed, "Oh yeah, excellent comparison!"</p><p>No, it's <i>not</i> an excellent comparison, because psychedelic drugs will certainly resist all attempts toward "ethical control." Those substances are the absolute personification of "<i>NO </i>CONTROL... <i>NO</i> ETHICS!" Like Jesus (from Matthew 10:34-36) they do not bring peace, but a sword. And in high irony, also like Nietzche's <i>last men</i> they say they have invented happiness, and they blink.</p><p>Will STA Kristine Iglesias ethically control psychedelic drugs? </p><p>Happy Super Bowl to all!</p>SRKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18038834371981947620noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2129153260738117116.post-84960470147902304642024-01-29T21:46:00.006-06:002024-01-30T09:48:52.787-06:00Court reports are incoherent: more on Baker, "testing" for delusions, liesThe overseers on the psychiatric plantations in Illinois are required to report to one court or another, at least once every three months in writing, about each and every slave. This serves to support the fallacy that "patients" are being "treated" for their "mental illnesses" according to a scientific medical plan, or at least a plan reasonably expected to improve individuals' mental conditions so they can be released into the community at less risk to themselves and others.<div><br /></div><div>Everyone wants to believe the fallacy, so the periodic court reports are very important. I recently spoke to a public defender from Rockford, IL who hasn't had a conversation with her client, a guy enslaved at EMHC as Unfit to Stand Trial (UST), for a couple <i>years</i>. In theory, it's <i>everyone's job</i> to get this guy fit for his day in court, to either be found guilty and sentenced, or not. He tells me he wants to go to trial, he wants a fair one, and I believe him. He certainly understands the charges against him and the legal process. But his attorney says she can't work with him (or "he's not capable of assisting in his own defense") because he's totally delusional.</div><div><br /></div><div>It's funny though, I know this guy, I've attended his monthly treatment plan review meetings ("staffings") a number of times over the last year while his lawyer was refusing to return his calls. He seems completely normal to me: articulate, good humor, no strange ideas that seem delusional at all. And no one on his treatment team ever mentions "delusions" that they notice. As best I can tell, the public defender in Rockford is the only person noticing "delusions."</div><div><br /></div><div>What she's talking about is likely just her disagreement with a client about how to defend a case. She doesn't believe his story, or she doesn't like him, he acts like he thinks he's smarter than she is. It's a PD's job to figure that out though, not to hire "doctors" to fix it (she already gets her salary, and the expense of her office is on the taxpayers). What's <i>supposed</i> to happen is a jury and a trial, not interminable, useless "treatment" (yes all my quotation marks are <i>extremely</i> sarcastic) for $800+/day. For godssakes, make it work, earn your salt! Fine, maybe this guy will be convicted. But he and the citizens of the state are your clients, you're a <i>Public Defender</i>.</div><div><br /></div><div>When I tried to question the whole situation, I was referred to the court reports, which the PD says she reads as authoritative proof (every one of them) that her client is hopelessly delusional. I doubt it, because the court reports are (at least ostensibly) written by the clinical treatment team, and I speak to those people. Those expert mental health professionals all say the only reason this slave is stuck on the EMHC plantation is the court (and the PD) won't take him back and give him a trial. They don't know any medical treatment for that.</div><div><br /></div><div>Court reports can <i>be said</i> to say almost anything because they are cobbled together out of competing viewpoints from hedging, insecure, corrupt bureaucrats, cut and pasted, and generally incoherent for any purpose beyond CYA. Following are excerpts from a recent court report.... I've written a lot about James Baker over the years. He played basketball every day when I first knew him, and kept up with much younger guys very well. Now he's a gentle and polite, charming elderly man who cannot walk without assistance; he's certainly no threat to anyone at EMHC, or anywhere else. I'm quite sure everyone on his treatment team would say the same. Just incidentally, he hasn't needed any psych drugs for decades.</div><div><br /></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Mr. Baker continues to maintain stability on the unit... (he) has maintained his assigned treatment group schedule.... </i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>He remains at his baseline behavior. He remains calm and not a threat to himself and to others and maintains stability on the unit. He completed his unit incentive program and participated in the unit monthly event. He is actively engaged in group and is often observed verbally contributing to discussions in a meaningful way. In Cognitive Behavioral Skills, Mr. Baker was noted as providing insightful responses and participating in the cognitive re-framing activity. </i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Mr. Baker advocated for himself properly with a new trust fund staff that did not complete a transaction as requested. His debit balance account was corrected on 01/03/2024.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Mr. Baker is is in the process of being referred for placements, then planning to be recommended for conditional release.... He has agreed to go to a nursing home as part of the conditional release process.... Mr. Baker consistently maintains appropriate behavior and observes all hospital protocols while in community.... </i></div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div>There is no rational justification for keeping this man under lock and key for $800+ per day on Illinois taxpayers. I honestly don't know who is perpetrating this injustice and this honest services fraud. At one point, it sure seemed like it was Richard Malis-with-malice. But the incriminating signatures on the quoted document are Rose Adler (Social Worker), and Tasheen Mohammed, MD (Psychiatrist).</div><div><br /></div><div>But back to that court report itself. It's Baker's most recent, with a cover letter dated "January 2024" from Victoria Ingram, Psy.D., to Honorable Tyria B. Walton, Circuit Court Judge in Room 304 at 26th and California. (Apparently Vicky Ingram is unable to figure out the precise date when she signs court reports, or she has some practical reason for not wanting to incriminate herself about timing.) In addition to the above positive portions, the text also includes:</div><div><br /></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>He has chronic delusions.... He needs to cooperate with additional testing to verify the extent of any cognitive delusions to assist in determining further treatment recommendations and appropriate aftercare placement. Due to the nature of his mental illness he constitutes a threat to public safety, if not treated in a properly supervised and structured setting.</i></div></blockquote><p>So according to Adler and Mohammed, on one hand Baker is well behaved, with adequate intelligence and self control, and EMHC is working on a conditional release recommendation to move him to a nursing home. But on the other hand, he has (unspecified) chronic "cognitive delusions" which they want to <i>test</i> for (I'd love to know how they'll do that!) to be sure he won't threaten public safety, even though he can barely walk.</p><p>What is a state's attorney and a judge supposed to make of this incoherent report from the mental health "experts" to whom they <i>sold this black man</i> back in 1987, during the ironically recalled "decade of the brain," supposedly to get his disordered brain medically fixed?</p><p>It's nonsense and fraud. I can hardly blame the poor, harried PD in Rockford for wanting nothing to do with the whole business, and simply burying her client in the state nuthouse.</p><p>It's just that <i>she lies</i> when she says she knows from the court reports he's totally delusional. </p><p>The people running this aren't delusional, they <i>lie</i>. It doesn't help.</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><i> </i></div></blockquote><div><br /></div>SRKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18038834371981947620noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2129153260738117116.post-22330494804894280462024-01-27T17:15:00.005-06:002024-02-16T21:38:03.461-06:00Two Carroll defamation cases<p>$83 million! </p><p>OK, so <i>Jean</i> Carroll was defamed by someone who is much more powerful than Michelle Evans, Ryma Jacobson, Marjorie Antona, Remedios Tiu and Terry Krystoff. But maybe <i>Lauren</i> Carroll (no relation to Jean) was defamed more severely.</p><p>Jean was merely called a nutjob, a liar, delusional or sick, when she complained that she had been raped. For that defamatory name-calling she won a huge jury verdict. Lauren was criminally prosecuted on a single, unsubstantiated report by someone<i> officially declared </i>to be mentally ill and dangerous, and the media was recruited to immediately trumpet the allegation that Lauren physically abused a disabled person. Lauren's attackers, like Jean's, have been sued for defamation.</p><p>I didn't closely follow the <i>Carroll v. Trump</i> case; but I filed the <i>Carroll v. Evans</i> case with claims for defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress, and I am the lead attorney for the Plaintiff. So far, I'm not expecting $83 million. But who knows? Trump was an idiot to go after Jean Carroll the way he did. He is losing, big-time, and no matter how that case eventually ends, after years of appeals and continuing bad media at the height of the presidential campaign, it won't be worth it to him. Likewise, EMHC and IDHS employees made a huge mistake by maliciously scapegoating Lauren Carroll. </p><p>It is said that the jury awarded Jean Carroll tens of millions in punitive damages to teach the Defendant in that case a lesson, to punish him, and deter him from doing what he did over and over again, as he says he will. He has a net worth of billions, so it arguably takes at least tens of millions to deter him. In fact, he even bragged about that himself. He <i>asked</i> for that verdict, thinking the Plaintiff was a nobody and he could just run over her and shut her up.</p><p>Similarly, somebody among the Defendants in <i>Carroll v. Evans</i> obviously thought Lauren Carroll was a nobody who had no practical recourse against false and defamatory public allegations. They figured they could manipulate the Illinois State Police, the local newspapers and TV stations, and the Kane County State's Attorney's office, to get some cheap publicity or credit to cover up their own horrible and still declining reputation as sexual abusers, and just get away with it. They have proven that they have no interest in righting the wrongs of psychiatric slavery or reforming the mafia culture of their bureaucracy.</p><p>The individual Defendants in my <i>Carroll </i>case don't have personal billions. But they have their union and the Illinois Attorney General: air cover from government and organized labor, who are far wealthier even than Trump. What jury award will deter them?</p><p>I think we'll just see.</p>SRKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18038834371981947620noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2129153260738117116.post-6419394978408230372024-01-23T16:53:00.005-06:002024-01-23T17:27:32.506-06:00Ketamine: Don't get fooled again... meet the new cure, same as the old cure!<p>For a few months, or maybe a year (but not two), it seemed as though ketamine therapy, either infusions or nasal spray (Janssen's Spravato) or both, had somehow slipped into some respectable status as medicine. There were innovative clinics and innovative therapists popping up everywhere. In Chicago, there's a business which even has the <i>name</i> "Innovative Ketamine" with multiple clinic locations. Here's their trendy North Side spot just off Clark Street, an easy walk from Wrigley Field:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGStWhNQGZFeLvktHofVZOpim0_59P8hufbcDigD8XrhAMqXUWDp4tcn-IMXAAlxrWkMgJ7xJrkkBqZB-l3r4_FI9mVN5O2NRMg_Fqh8G8UkvFHz4-lM1VFjtDCipVrCpRnUJWQiswxJ1BBSP07TEOreDJtigYSCV9pBiX2xIrAnM-x2_ySGqhd0G_pssE/s1807/IMG_4056.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1807" data-original-width="1127" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGStWhNQGZFeLvktHofVZOpim0_59P8hufbcDigD8XrhAMqXUWDp4tcn-IMXAAlxrWkMgJ7xJrkkBqZB-l3r4_FI9mVN5O2NRMg_Fqh8G8UkvFHz4-lM1VFjtDCipVrCpRnUJWQiswxJ1BBSP07TEOreDJtigYSCV9pBiX2xIrAnM-x2_ySGqhd0G_pssE/w290-h320/IMG_4056.jpg" width="290" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Maybe the guys who opened this one figured it's a location with excellent prospects, considering how chronically depressed Cubs fans have to be. Or are they chronically <i>manic</i>..? Which psychedelic is good for that again? Oh baseball!</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">A recent entrepreneurial operation in Phoenix tries to show some good cheer and possibly refer to 1966 Beatles nostalgia, from the height of the original psychedelic movement (<i>Sunday driver, yeah...</i>):</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRHsS_DwxmL7dBoWWJORL7zcdeKyQww2oT5tl9jp9qPtbfCQ31TzZUKHSiq_AQIc-DUmz6VluYD-XO2tEzn5ITSNgB6_yFFFhKHbLFQWPpDdgs39c3V17Hy7hyJus5pKsUSmRz8paDoeDkW7v679waF3UxaZ0UA5B_L0vlRt2Nwnlgbj5wqUP5ihUu4bDB/s1920/DaytrypInteriorPhx16.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="1920" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRHsS_DwxmL7dBoWWJORL7zcdeKyQww2oT5tl9jp9qPtbfCQ31TzZUKHSiq_AQIc-DUmz6VluYD-XO2tEzn5ITSNgB6_yFFFhKHbLFQWPpDdgs39c3V17Hy7hyJus5pKsUSmRz8paDoeDkW7v679waF3UxaZ0UA5B_L0vlRt2Nwnlgbj5wqUP5ihUu4bDB/s320/DaytrypInteriorPhx16.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">That graphic design above the name sure looks like dissociation to me, like somebody is K-holing and can't find their way back into the body.... And just by the way, <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/08/when-nostalgia-was-a-disease/278648/"><i>nostalgia</i> was long considered a serious mental health problem</a>. Soldiers who suffered from it had to be brutalized, of course, that has always been the "treatment" for "mental illness" and it still is. <i>It took me so-o long to find out. I found out.</i></div><p>But all of a sudden, ketamine "treatments" are looking less innovative, and more like... <i>just plain stupid</i>. You pay lots of money, apparently for nothing in the way of legitimate medicine that actually cures <a href="https://www.madinamerica.com/2023/05/ketamine-fails-to-beat-active-placebo-for-depression/">depression</a> or <a href="https://www.madinamerica.com/2024/01/ketamine-fails-to-beat-placebo-for-ptsd-in-new-analysis/">PTSD</a>. Of course, that goes for all of psychiatry. Except that stuff like SSRI antidepressants and other useless but harmful drugs, along with ECT and years of forced "hospital" confinement on a plantation like Elgin Mental Health Center doesn't get paid for by the patient. The taxpayers always foot those bills, so the patients don't have to be as wealthy as the ketamine suckers in Wrigleyville or the Valley of the Sun.</p><p>Cute "clinical" operations like Innovative Ketamine and Daytryp, or frustrated overseers like Vik Gill at EMHC, have to just hope against hope that insurance will eventually pay for these "services." But forget Medicaid! There's no way any psychedelic therapy will ever be safe enough or effective enough, without intensive counseling before and after a person takes the drug. That's <i>prohibitively</i> expensive, not to mention that nobody knows how to do it anyway. "Mental health" has been too medicalized for too long, and practitioners no longer have the slightest clue about, or any confidence or familiarity with, talking cures. It's just <i>MEDS über alles!</i> That's the total thought.</p><p>Ketamine is the bellwether for psychedelics in psychiatry. The drug is <a href="https://www.ecstaticintegration.org/p/dont-mention-ketamines-addictiveness">extremely addictive</a>. It doesn't do anything good that isn't done by a placebo. The whole idea is mercifully imploding. I give it a year max.</p><p>We should hope that Rick Doblin's pet ecstasy (MDMA) project will crash and burn in a couple years, too; and if there's no FDA approval for psilocybin, we won't worry as much about planes being crashed by pilots on shrooms. The only "promise" of psychedelic drugs is a nightmare!</p><p>The sooner we realize that, the better we'll avoid <i>Helter Skelter.</i></p><p style="text-align: center;"><img alt="Charles Manson - Wikipedia" data-atf="1" data-csiid="1" height="204" id="dimg_15" 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" width="238" /></p>SRKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18038834371981947620noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2129153260738117116.post-78160379181649051462024-01-11T13:49:00.003-06:002024-01-12T10:24:58.438-06:00Power<p>The issue of mental health (or at least the issue of psychiatry) is not morality, but power.</p><p><i>Practical</i> questions about how and what to think, appropriate emotions, and correct behavior are not asked by individuals in isolation from their neighbors. Rather, they are presented or negotiated socially. </p><p>For whom will you vote and why? What do you think of our political system? Are you influenced by prejudice or loyalty, or swayed by well written campaign ads produced with music and beautiful images of family and country? Are your beliefs the same as the beliefs of people you love? Do you know the law and the proper manners in common contexts? In whose presence do you use profanity? Why do you choose to follow or challenge such conventions? Thought... emotion... behavior...</p><p>If you were Elon Musk or the King of the world, you might be free to think, feel and behave almost any way you like. Being a bit less rich or having a bit less authority requires considering other people, or at least those other people who have more wealth or more authority than you.</p><p>It seems strange to me that what we call "mental health" (which is more or less ruled by psychiatry) contains almost no acknowledgement of fundamental social reality based in the dynamics of power. The "doctors" pretend that it's all a matter of scientific fact: thoughts are neurological pathways, emotion is a balance of neurotransmitters, behavior is commanded by functioning or malfunctioning brains. Mental patients simply have to be educated into the truth (which psychiatrists know best and will ultimately know perfectly if we just give them enough money) so they'll take the right drugs voluntarily.</p><p>Psychiatrists (Jeffrey "Freak of Nature" Lieberman and Richard "Malis-with-malice" come first to mind, although even nice guys like Vik Gill are equally guilty) are mistaken to think the deal is already done. Their mistake makes them arrogant, and in arrogance, they make poor presentations and become poor negotiators. The promised great breakthroughs in brain science never did happen, so now these guys are reduced to pandering to psychedelic gurus like Rick Doblin, hoping against hope that a whole new industry might emerge there, rather than a whole new "recovered memory" disaster.</p><p>It won't happen. Ketamine remains too expensive to be scalable, and all psychedelic assisted therapy will be useless or dangerous without skilled counselors and ethical facilitators who will remain few and far between. The whole psychedelic renaissance will likely collapse in the next year or two if the FDA refuses to approve ecstasy and 'shrooms as "medicine" for PTSD or depression, and LSD for alcoholism.</p><p>It's over-obviously ironic and clearly outrageous, that supposed medical professionals are now considering prescriptions of highly addictive drugs to cure addiction, drugs that were originally known to cause or mimic psychosis for mental illness, drugs that increase suicide and violence to save the world. But they <i>are</i> in actual fact considering prescriptions of ecstasy, psilocybin, and acid, because all they know how to do is prescribe drugs, and psychedelics momentarily look like the best high-potential power grab. The old drugs, like "antidepressants" and "antipsychotics" (sarcastic quotation marks) are discredited.</p><p>But there are even "designer" or niche psychedelic "research" drugs like "Moxy" now, with tactile and empathic effects rendering sexual boundaries in therapy almost impossible. <i>Perfect</i> for certain supposed "clinicians" at EMHC, Chicago Read, Packard, Alton, etc. </p><p>Never mind "First do no harm," or truth.</p>SRKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18038834371981947620noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2129153260738117116.post-14183633290987038222024-01-08T10:50:00.009-06:002024-01-08T11:26:08.634-06:00"Addictive"<p>The U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse adopts a distinctly <i>psychiatric </i>point of view on what drug addiction is. Their <a href="https://nida.nih.gov/publications/drugs-brains-behavior-science-addiction/drug-misuse-addiction#ref">web page</a> entitled "What is drug addiction?" defers directly to DSM5, and features lots of colorful pictures of brain scans. Hence, the U.S. Government officially endorses the orthodoxy, that this is a <i>brain</i> issue, a proper medical science issue: medical doctors must be in charge, and health insurance must pay.</p><p>But the brain is not what gets treated for addiction; or at least, the brain is not treated directly. Psychiatrists are not brain doctors, neurologists are. Google searches will bring up lots of information about the "neurology of addiction," but it's all theoretical, undemonstrated in the real world. There are no neurologists to go to for drug addiction, they might get paid to research it, but not to treat it. You go to psychiatrists, psychologists, or other "mental health professionals" or "substance abuse professionals" for actual treatment. The treatment is for behavior, emotions, cravings, and thinking, not for any specifically defined brain mechanisms or pathology.</p><p>Those professionals who do treat drug addiction come with a plethora of impressive sounding academic credentials and licenses, from clinical neuropsychologists to social workers to twelve-step facilitators. The only medical doctors in the crowd are psychiatrists, who fiddle with a lot of drugs that will randomly and unpredictably (mostly badly) affect your brain, and electricity that will damage it so you can't remember things. A new category may soon be psychedelic therapy facilitators, who will say psychedelic drugs are "non-addictive", and promote them to cure addiction.</p><p>But people who use psychedelics can become psychologically addicted to the altered perceptions and mystical revelations that come with "tripping." Repeated <a href="https://www.addictioncenter.com/drugs/hallucinogens/lsd-addiction/ ">LSD use quickly causes tolerance</a>, requiring a frequent user to take increasingly larger doses for the same effect. MDMA ("Molly"/"Ecstasy") is notorious as a <a href="https://americanaddictioncenters.org/ecstasy-abuse/addictive">"highly addictive drug"</a> for its production of <i>extreme</i> psychological dependence. But LSD and Molly are leading candidates as "treatment" of addiction, including alcoholism. Of course, this is awkward for branding of psychedelic therapy facilitators.</p><p>Addiction is a highly variable phenomenon. For example, some people actually <i>enjoy</i> cold turkey withdrawal from nicotine (I did, 40 years ago). Others suffer such nagging torture that they literally cannot quit smoking without complicated help. This variability in addiction may be true with most drugs. I've known psychiatric patients who stopped whole cocktails of psychotropics with no obvious problems, and others who went crazy just trying to taper off a single SSRI antidepresssant.</p><p>But <i>psychedelics</i> are unpredictable by a whole higher order of magnitude, and not only for possible addiction. The informed consent task is completely different or impossible, because risks of a "bad trip" depend on so many factors that will never be clinically controlled, and benefits are mostly extolled and sought by the public as mystical or spiritual breakthroughs. Only <a href="https://lykospbc.com/2023/12/12/maps-pbc-announces-submission-of-new-drug-application-to-the-fda-for-mdma-assisted-therapy-for-ptsd/">MAPS</a> tries hard to establish some modicum of what they think might pass for "science" with the FDA, so there can be enough money in "Psychedelic Assisted Therapy (PAT)" to pay for lawyers who will defend against <a href="https://qz.com/1809184/psychedelic-therapy-has-a-sexual-abuse-problem-3">sexual abuse lawsuits</a>.</p><p>It is tempting to predict that psychedelic drugs will be the death of psychiatry as a medical specialty. If the APA and British RCP (Royal College of Psychiatrists) make the mistake of hitching their wagons to the ongoing "psychedelic renaissance," they'll risk turning themselves into Timothy Leary apostles. They might as well just climb aboard that painted bus to the destination, "FURTHER."</p><p>The death of psychiatry will be good, but collateral damage will be terrible: <a href="https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/2810623?guestAccessKey=b8e3fa5a-a1ec-40cc-8f42-4d42e2b115b3&utm_source=silverchair&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=article_alert-jamapsychiatry&utm_content=etoc&utm_term=010424&utm_adv=000002980740">more people will take psychedelics</a>. Practical military and intelligence establishments won't be duped into <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1975/07/11/archives/detective-said-scientist-had-severe-psychosis.html">killing innocents</a> again, but we may see a fresh crop of Jim Joneses and Charlie Mansons.</p><p>And the sexual abuse will give therapy itself a bad name. </p><p><br /></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj_GA9gos_LDZmM6lsGl1AO6eW1oPvOXRaDQVe2N7MELGupy1GxVVR-lfU2_l4GS75euQp7nLRF9q_18XMQqqbJ5tOUPWOX4B58ypWas16F-fMuujiSHTCWsGGvuWJGQ1lOVOJcKjUCkSM5o40y1i2SuHIrKLiSwR35KEgVIzdKI2r-ngUQIgN3sAPYvhbQ" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="146" data-original-width="220" height="208" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj_GA9gos_LDZmM6lsGl1AO6eW1oPvOXRaDQVe2N7MELGupy1GxVVR-lfU2_l4GS75euQp7nLRF9q_18XMQqqbJ5tOUPWOX4B58ypWas16F-fMuujiSHTCWsGGvuWJGQ1lOVOJcKjUCkSM5o40y1i2SuHIrKLiSwR35KEgVIzdKI2r-ngUQIgN3sAPYvhbQ=w386-h208" width="386" /></a></div><br /><br /><p></p><p></p>SRKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18038834371981947620noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2129153260738117116.post-50130917326884875612024-01-02T13:35:00.011-06:002024-01-08T11:50:07.505-06:00Football<p>I was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan at the U of M Hospital. My father was an architecture student born in Battle Creek, Michigan, whose father was a general surgeon; my mother was a pre-med Southern belle whose father promised her she could do anything she wanted in her life. </p><p>As a baby, I was rocked to sleep to "Hail to the Victors Valiant!" But my maternal grandmother also had me singing, "I wish I was in the Land of Cotton" by the time I was in grade school. We had family in Alabama who were plantation owners long ago, and one of my own children now has the middle name Saunders, after them.</p><p>Until I was fifteen, no game came close to the Rose Bowl for importance. Michigan often won it, which made them "the champions of the west." My grandparents watched pro football, but it seemed to me as a kid that it never inspired the emotion my parents always had for Big Ten games in the Big House. There was no Super Bowl until 1967, the year everything changed in the American culture around me. (The missile crisis and assassinations alerted me to mortality, but the Summer of Love and rock 'n roll made me want to live, and create, forever.)</p><p>Funny, 57 years (<i>not</i> forever) later, I just spent New Year's Day in California only a few miles from the Rose Bowl. I watched Michigan beat Alabama with my whole family, some of them typing "Go Blue! and "Hail!" incessantly, on a group text for those Wolverines. <i>What a great game!</i> (It was hard to believe my mother wasn't watching, somewhere.) I also have a close friend who's an Alabama alum.... Oh well, Tide.</p><p>Maybe there is some symbolic reenactment of "The War" in this football game between Yankee and Southern schools. After all, the first Confederate capital was Montgomery, Alabama, and CSA President Jefferson Davis was an Alabamian. On the opposite side when Lincoln called the banners in 1861, he only requested one regiment from Michigan, but the governor enthusiastically sent him seven; one of those was George Armstrong Custer's "Michigan Wolverine Cavalry" which battled J.E.B. Stuart (my namesake!) at Gettysburg.</p><p>It's commonly thought that American football is violent, an imitation of warfare. The sport was invented in 1869, only four short years after Appomattox. Maybe this year's Rose Bowl result is a bad omen for the future of slavery (which is <i>exactly</i> what coercive psychiatry immitates). Lots of analogies, symbolism, emotion and hope in all this, right?</p><p>On the other hand maybe it's just football, and that's good enough.</p>SRKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18038834371981947620noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2129153260738117116.post-91011928101522078152023-12-12T21:55:00.000-06:002023-12-12T21:55:21.374-06:00NOTICE<p>To anyone I mention by name or otherwise identify in this blog (past, present or future):</p><p 12.61px="" arial="" font-size:="" ms="" quot="" rebuchet="" sans-serif="" verdana="">If I write anything about you that is not true, and you call me and tell me, I promise I will retract any untruth. If I insult you in a way that is not fair, and you call me to complain, I promise I will pay attention and amend my written comments to be less unfair. </p><p 12.61px="" arial="" font-size:="" ms="" quot="" rebuchet="" sans-serif="" verdana="">My cell phone is 847-370-5410. I’ll talk to anyone. I will never mention or reveal that you have called me if you ask me not to. I only want the truth to be known and justice to be served. I believe that an overwhelming majority of people are well intended and want to help others.</p>SRKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18038834371981947620noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2129153260738117116.post-18181322037278269932023-12-12T12:03:00.007-06:002023-12-12T12:29:07.383-06:00Packard MHC, Lincoln South UnitMuch the same as on all the plantations in the Illinois psychiatric slave system, the issue of "patient" phone use gets huge attention at the Packard (née McFarland) plantation. The Illinois Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities Code, 405 ILCS 5/1-100 <i>et seq.</i>, specifies, <i>inter alia</i>:<div><br /></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: small; text-align: justify;">Except as provided in this Section, a recipient who resides in a mental health or developmental di</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: small; text-align: justify;">sabilities facility shall be permitted unimpeded, private, and uncensored communication with persons of his choice by mail, telephone and visitation.</span></div></div></blockquote><div><div><br /></div><div>(Section 2-103.) This same section of the Code further states:</div><div><div><br /></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;"><code style="background-color: white; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier New; font-size: x-small;"><span> </span>(a) The facility director shall ensure that... telephones are reasonably accessible...</span></code><code style="background-color: white; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier New; font-size: x-small;"></span></code><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; text-align: justify;" /><code style="background-color: white; text-align: justify;"> </code><code style="background-color: white; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier New; font-size: x-small;">(b) Reasonable times and places for the use of telephones... may be established in writing by the facility director.</span></code><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; text-align: justify;" /><code style="background-color: white; text-align: justify;"> </code><code style="background-color: white; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier New; font-size: x-small;">(c) Unimpeded, private and uncensored communication by mail, telephone, and visitation may be reasonably restricted by the facility director only in order to protect the recipient or others from harm, harassment or intimidation, provided that notice of such restriction shall be given to all recipients upon admission. When communications are restricted, the facility shall advise the recipient that he has the right to require the facility to notify the affected parties of the restriction, and to notify such affected party when the restrictions are no longer in effect....</span></code></div></blockquote><p>Most slaves feel the right to use the phone is one of their most important rights. Without it, the plantation occupies their entire world, which becomes a world of dehumanizing oppression. The overseers know this, and they use it mercilessly against anyone who appears to question or doubt their superiority and their absolute authority over all aspects, no matter how broad or intimate, of an involuntarily committed person's mental, emotional, social and behavioral life.</p><p>My client Mickey was in the middle of a phone call with his family yesterday on Lincoln South Unit, when "STA Rob" (full name under investigation) arbitrarily ended the call from a switchboard in "the bubble" (nurses' station) by disconnecting the phone Mickey was using. This was rude and upsetting to Mickey and his family, and probably contrary to elaborate and voluminous statutory, administrative and local rules or procedures. </p><p>Mickey walked over to the bubble and asked who had shut off the phone in the middle of his call. Upon being told that the culprit was "STA Rob," Mickey asked why, no doubt in a clear tone of protest. Rob became quite hostile in response, yelling (according to multiple witnesses), "Get the fuck away from the bubble!"</p><p>Well, Rob probably disconnected Mickey's call by mistake, and knew he had screwed up but didn't want to admit it. He's a fairly new, low-level overseer on the plantation, only 23 years old. Rob once admitted to Mickey that he smokes a lot of weed, even while he's working, during breaks (probably in his car in the parking lot). If he was high when he disconnected Mickey's phone call, the incident and the hostility which ensued could easily have been almost accidental, not intended as personal retribution.</p><p>The problem is, Mickey knows he really has to watch his back right now. His <i>Thiem </i>date is in the first week of January, and given any slightest excuse, somebody might try to prevent him from walking out the door at the last minute.</p><p>Thankfully, the two most important members of his "treatment" team, Kasturi Kripakaran, MD (the psychiatrist, née "Dr. Cash") and Zachary Naylor (the social worker), seem to be on Mickey's side. They just authored a court report stating that Mickey is mentally stable, not a threat to himself or others, and not in need of mental health services on an in-patient basis. By that testimony there should be absolutely no legal cause to hold Mickey on the plantation any longer than the next three weeks.</p><p>However, I hasten to add, this same court report added an arbitrary comment that Mickey is in need of outpatient mental health services. I'm not sure why Dr. Kripakaran and Social Worker Naylor thought it was their business to include such recommendation in a court report. Neither they, nor anyone else in the Illinois Department of Human Services, nor the court itself, will have any jurisdiction to require Mickey to be a psychiatric patient after his <i>Thiem</i> date. He may want to be a patient or find it helpful to be one, but if he wants and chooses to refuse psychiatry altogether, no one can stop him unless he commits a crime or presents a clear and convincing danger to himself or others.</p><p>It may be that mental health professionals just habitually promote psychiatry whether anyone is likely or can be required to accept "services" or not. It may also be that Dr. Cash and SW Naylor are ignorant of the law (as they are sort of entitled to be, but not entirely), or that they are just so used to slaves obeying their every whim and believing their every opinion that their arrogance in the current circumstances of the court report completely escaped them.</p><p>But I don't need to cause trouble for the Packard treatment team. The stoned-on-the-job STA Rob is a good enough target for the time being.</p><p>It's not the peculiar fault of "STA Rob." If the system were at all honest, I'd have no targets.</p></div></div>SRKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18038834371981947620noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2129153260738117116.post-50563842837274549602023-12-06T11:42:00.006-06:002023-12-06T12:15:09.900-06:00Norman Lear and Henry KissingerNorman Lear made people talk by producing breakthrough TV sitcoms like <i>All in the Family</i>. Henry Kissinger made people talk by running an American foreign policy which employed waterboarding. <div><br /></div><div>Both Ashkenazi Jews died the same week at ages of 100+, and received long obituaries in the New York Times. Lear was an outstanding spokesman of American peace, and Kissinger was an outstanding spokesman of American war. One could go all Tolstoy over it.<div><br /></div><div>It is impossible for me to imagine that those who have lived great lives of war and peace could ever have believed in psychiatry. I don't mean "believed in it" just as a putative medical specialty which they have little or nothing to do with, or as an incidental fixture of philosophical or social theory, I mean in their hearts and in their guts. </div><div><br /></div><div>Kissinger didn't investigate whether Zyprexa or Adderall might help Menachem Begin or Mao Zedong be more amenable to peace. Lear didn't microdose psilocybin mushrooms to create Archie Bunker, the irascible right wing bigot we all still somehow liked.</div></div><div><br /></div><div>It's arguable whether either of these extraordinary people changed his world very much, though they both clearly wanted to. Neither man seems to have ever said he was especially disappointed. The lesson from Tolstoy is that happiness lies in finding and appreciating, or creating, beauty and meaning in everyday, mundane things. Rabbi Harold Stern said we don't blow shofar when Yom Kippur falls on shabbat, because the common discipline of observing a weekly ritual is more holy before God than the uplifting drama of observing an annual one.</div><div><br /></div><div>Psychiatry simply denies, or tries to remove, <i>all </i>meaning and beauty, all <i>creation</i>, from life. The only discipline that's accounted for at the EMHC plantation is imposed on slaves by their masters. It's a system of punishment, not self control. "Insight" is only professed (truthfully or not) agreement by slaves with the orthodox plantation line: you are <i>a brain</i>, your <i>illness</i> causes your behavior, mistaken thinking and inappropriate emotion; your meds are necessary to treat your behavior, thinking and emotion, which we understand and you don't. We own all of you, so take your meds <i>or you'll never get out of here!</i></div><div><br /></div><div>In such an environment, how can "doctor" or "patient" ever find and appreciate, or create, beauty and meaning? Perhaps only by recalcitrance, non-compliance. Slaves don't comply with "treatment" and overseers don't comply with rules against having sex with slaves.</div><div><br /></div><div>It makes them happy, but only for a while. They don't live to 100.</div>SRKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18038834371981947620noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2129153260738117116.post-89216832880596270562023-12-02T11:20:00.007-06:002023-12-04T11:57:30.229-06:00Psychiatry and Henry KissingerBen Rhodes' ungenerous eulogy in the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/30/opinion/henry-kissinger-the-hypocrite.html?campaign_id=39&emc=edit_ty_20231201&instance_id=109046&nl=opinion-today&regi_id=77773312&segment_id=151446&te=1&user_id=8a3b8a8731e6d369ebc62c4827888ff7">November 30 NYTimes</a> is such a beautiful piece of writing, about such a phenomenally significant character during my lifetime, that when I read it aloud to my wife this morning, it was hard for me not to cry. (Maybe it's my age, history makes me cry.) The first paragraph in this guest essay ended with the datum, "Ideas go in and out of style, but power does not."<div><br /></div><div>I'm not too sure about <i>style.</i> But when it comes to <i>power</i>, I am quite sure there is no substitute for an idea. You cannot bomb an idea out of existence. You cannot shoot an idea in the head. And contrary to the apparent <i>modus operendi</i> of medicalized mental health, you cannot drug an idea or manipulate people's brains to control ideas. Behind and beneath any form or any use of mechanical power, there is always an <i>idea</i>. And in the event, that idea might be very slippery. </div><div><br /></div><div>For the sake of argument, let's presume that the idea which motivated all the horrible powers of war in recent centuries, and probably throughout human history, has been, "We must reach farther to greater heights, we must get <i>bigger</i>, as individuals, as a group, as a race, as a species. This is the <i>only</i> game." </div><div><br /></div><div>Well... <i>what </i>greater heights? <i>Bigger how?</i> If you get bigger, does that mean I am smaller? How is this game organized? Who is the opponent? Do we have referees? </div><div><br /></div><div>Power serves ideas, and if ideas go in and out of style, then power changes hands. Saying ideas go in and out of style but power does not, puts the cart before the horse. <i>Purpose</i> and function monitor or control structure, not the other way around. </div><div><br /></div><div>I'm currently reading <i>Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare from 1945 to Ukraine</i>, by General David Petraeus and Andrew Roberts. The authors point out that the first and most vital job of any commander is to get the big picture, or the strategy, right, and then to make sure everyone else agrees on that big picture or that strategy. Hence, e.g., in the 1948 War of Independence, a small volunteer Israeli military managed to defeat five professional Arab armies on the other side. The Jews <i>all </i>understood the existential purpose of defending their nascent state, while the Arab soldiers were wondering why they had to be there.</div><div><br /></div><div>People who believe that <i>power</i> is the thing, <i>power is reality</i>, are usually people who have lost their own motivating ideas, and are therefore likely to lose their power. They only <i>hope</i> ideas will go in and out of style fast enough that their opponents won't stay or become strong.</div><div><br /></div><div>My clients often come to me in the belief that as a lawyer, I have my hands on the power of the law, which controls the locks on the nuthouse doors confining them as involuntary "patients". The thing they don't understand, and the thing I have to explain to them before I can be of any help, is that the law is not a mechanical power, it is in fact <i>agreements</i> between people, like judges, public defenders, psychiatrists, social workers, neighbors. </div><div><br /></div><div>People's <i>ideas</i> control the law. This is true in a big context of who becomes the next President or what nations are allowed to exist; it's also true in the small context of who is mentally ill and dangerous. You have to be able change one person's mind: that's the <i>only</i> way you change any existing power arrangement, whether it be international borders, or court ordered privileges and conditional release.</div><div><br /></div><div>Malis, Hussain, Corcoran and their ilk seem to believe that people's minds <i>are</i> their brains, and their brains can obviously be manipulated (with the power of drugs, shock, etc.) to affect their minds, to make them think, feel, and behave "better" (meaning more in line with the ideas of other people around them). This is exactly what psychiatry is about, <i>using power to change ideas.</i> </div><div><br /></div><div>This is also a source of huge trouble for the ongoing "psychedelic renaissance," which is <i>a mistaken psychiatric strategy</i>. Everybody can see that the drugs are powerful; but they fail to notice, e.g., that psilocybin-as-medicine is fundamentally irreconcilable with psilocybin-as-religion, and the power can never be predictably aimed to change any idea. The ideas, as set-and-setting, direct the power.</div><div><br /></div><div>The misconception is laughable but for so much blood and treasure wasted on it. Using ideas to change power is much easier. It's what you have to do anyway, because that's now the world works. And just incidentally, when you <i>think</i> you have changed someone's mind by application of mechanical power, you ignore the possibility that you are being deceived, and you render yourself defenseless against someone's real ideas which you can't know or predict. Is Baker King of Egypt?</div><div><br /></div><div>In Henry Kissinger's time we came to love the mechanical power of nuclear science and medicine, pretending that nuclear science and medicine are not actually our own ideas to begin with. That is hypocrisy.</div>SRKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18038834371981947620noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2129153260738117116.post-91066974375635036602023-11-28T15:29:00.007-06:002023-11-30T22:43:31.335-06:00Tell 'em a hookah-smoking caterpillar has given you the call...A little over five years ago, I published <a href="https://refusingpsychiatry.blogspot.com/2018/10/ketamine-in-proud-tradition-of-lsd.html">an article on this blog</a> which mentioned the enthusiasm of a particular state psychiatrist for Ketamine as a promising treatment for depression. I should hasten to point out that I do not know Vikramjit Gill personally. I don't know whether he self-treats for depression, or whether he has any experience with or affinity for psychedelics in general.<div><br /></div><div>But I do think it's a reasonable prediction... that frustrated "mental health professionals," who see their specialty criticized more and more frequently, who find themselves degraded as quacks or plantation overseers or human rights criminals, and who fail to help their patients every day... will be likely to reach for new and radical solutions.</div><div><br /></div><div>History suggests that people who get into psychedelics go quickly over-the-top-evangelical about it. Ken Kesey was desperately devoted to "pranking Amerika" with LSD, and Tim Leary dedicated much of his life to "internal freedom." They were both latecomers, and they both went to jail. In an earlier decade, the CIA's Richard Helms said LSD was "<i>dynamite!</i>" and celebrity nutritionist Adelle Davis recruited young teens for her Beverley Hills psychoanalyst friends to experiment on. Those enthusiasts of the 50's, unlike the Haight-Ashbury hippies ten years later, tripped with impunity, because they kept it private for their own elite circle. Psychedelic drugs have nevertheless always been an embodied imperative scream: "<i>NO</i> CONTROL!"</div><div><br /></div><div>That's why "treatment" team members and patients, inside or outside of proper clinical contexts and proper informed consent requirements, might just get a little <i>sly</i>. After all, I know an STA who stood lookout while her friend smoked a "blunt" in the car with an EMHC patient on conditional release. Then the STA spent the night with that patient at the Hyatt Rosemont. The tryst wasn't very sly, the STA used her own credit card for two hotel rooms! (Hey friend Kristine Iglesias: were you in Room 414 or 415?)</div><div><br /></div><div>Somebody in Vik Gill's position, or Michelle Evans' position (not to mention a position as the IDHS King of Psychiatry, AKA "Statewide Forensic Medical Director"), could figure out how to make a deal with a patient or a social worker somewhere, like maybe <i>way</i> out of sight where there's a statue of Popeye....</div><div><br /></div><div>Nobody wants to deal with violent psychotics or psychiatrists. That's exactly why we have the mental health system that we have. We are all eager to believe that guys like Gill, Corcoran, Evans and Bogle are professional "experts" to whom society has properly delegated the job, so we don't even have to look at Chester or Elgin. We don't have to think about it.</div><div><br /></div><div>But the "experts" don't do the job they are supposed to do. What the hell, they can't! So to take what could have been the title of an Adelle Davis book in 1959: <i>Let's All Trip On LSD!</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div>Who's gonna get caught?</div>SRKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18038834371981947620noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2129153260738117116.post-60019108295054504582023-11-28T11:09:00.001-06:002023-11-28T11:12:18.362-06:00NOTICE TO ALL (repeated again)<p>I would like to make an EXPLICIT promise to anyone whom I mention by name or otherwise identify in this blog. This is prospective and retrospective. </p><p 12.61px="" arial="" font-size:="" ms="" quot="" rebuchet="" sans-serif="" verdana="">If I write something about you that is not true, and you call me and tell me, I will retract any untruth. If I insult you in a way that is not fair, and you call me to complain, I will pay attention and amend my written comments to be less unfair. </p><p 12.61px="" arial="" font-size:="" ms="" quot="" rebuchet="" sans-serif="" verdana="">My cell phone is 847-370-5410. I’ll talk to anyone. I will never mention or reveal that you have called me if you ask me not to. I only want the truth to be known and justice to be served. I believe that an overwhelming majority of people are well intended and want to help others.</p>SRKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18038834371981947620noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2129153260738117116.post-48061528145440168882023-11-26T11:12:00.006-06:002023-11-30T22:19:08.471-06:00Rename EMHC!Illinois Goveror J.B. Pritzker recently renamed Andrew McFarland Mental Health Center as Elizabeth Parsons Ware Packard Mental Health Center. Packard née McFarland thus symbolizes the justice of victory over coercive psychiatry.<div><br /></div><div>Andrew McFarland was an Illinois doctor and nuthouse administrator. Elizabeth Packard was his victim. Much of the media about the renaming proclaimed the event to be a symbolic victory for women's rights, or for victims of marital abuse. But the more important story, and the more significant moral, points to abolition of psychiatric slavery (that is, abolition of <i>imprisonment</i> under the guise of "hospitalization" and <i>forced drugging</i> under the guise of "treatment"). The Governor, and his Department of (in)Human Services, and the clueless media <i>sure</i> don't want to think about or recognize <i>that </i>moral or<i> that </i>story.</div><div><br /></div><div>Well, I'd just like to point out: Ben Hurt, Mark Owens, Angelo Rotuno, Michael Dobson, Sean Gunderson, Mickey Russell, and plenty of others (including some who will probably be named plaintiffs in the near future), are not women who were abused by men. As a matter of fact, they are men who were abused by women. </div><div><br /></div><div>But the gender circumstances are less important than the understanding that these were psychiatric slaves abused by the supposed "mental health professionals" who presumed to <i>own </i>them, in a corrupt <i>plantation</i> system financed by Illinois taxpayers.</div><div><br /></div><div>Among those "mental health professionals" who oversee the slaves on these plantations in Illinois, the M.D. psychiatrists and top administrators are the masters living up in the big house. Occasionally there is an administrator who is also an M.D. psychiatrist. (The example that comes to my mind is His Excellency James Patrick Corcoran, Statewide Forensic Medical Director.) Everybody else, like STA's, social workers, nurses, security personnel, etc., are middling overseers who follow the masters' orders. They're neither slaves nor owners, some are decent and some are mean as hell.</div><div> </div><div>Two such middling overseers are Mary and Tiffany, STA's on Lincoln South clinical unit at Packard-née-McFarland. They seemed to think they wanted to get into the act for retribution against one especially uppity slave named Mickey, who they have been told sued an STA at Elgin MHC for sexual abuse.</div><div><br /></div><div>I can confirm that yes, Mickey did sue that STA, as well as a bunch of other people at EMHC and in IDHS. The STA seduced him because she was bored with her husband. She abused him physically, mentally, and emotionally, for <i>years.</i> Lots of other staff went along with it, or just buried their heads in the sand.</div><div><br /></div><div>Mickey will win a bunch of money which the state will have to pay. That will result in a lot of new rules, or a lot of bad publicity, or a lot of scapegoats, or all the above. Some reporter like Beth Hundsdorfer will blast it all over the media, and the almighty Statewide Forensic Medical Director, or the Secretary, or the Governor himself, will comment in righteous surprise and indignation. People like Barry Smoot (God forbid!!) will be proven correct one more time. In other words, it will be <i>frickin' Armageddon</i>!</div><div><br /></div><div>I hope to have some influence over how the ultimate, bloody battle can be avoided. My terms will include two items (in addition to millions of dollars, of course): 1. give me the framed, "Brains can get sick, too" poster, currently hanging in forensic program building reception at Elgin; and 2. rename EMHC as Hurt-Russell Mental Health Center.</div><div><br /></div><div>Then, once the media have their obligatory circus, close the plantations down forever.</div>SRKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18038834371981947620noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2129153260738117116.post-5421085485372315122023-11-23T10:02:00.003-06:002023-11-23T10:09:24.682-06:00Happy ThanksgivingIf he knew what was best for himself, he wouldn't have ended up in <i>her</i> involuntary "care"--right? Of course that's what <i>she</i> will say when he objects to her arrogance.<div><br /></div><div>When he claims his right to refuse what she calls "medication" but he nevertheless honestly experiences as <i>poison</i>, is he delusional or does she simply <i>own</i> him? It's an interpretation. Whoever has the guns and the gold authors the correct judgment and the true history.</div><div><br /></div><div>But how does one, rather than another, come to <i>have</i> the guns and the gold? Dr. Cash can keep Christopher locked up and brutally drugged as long as she likes. It's hard to say why this is just or sensible, if you talk to each of them.</div><div><br /></div><div>Well... guns are violent force. People tend to apply violent force when they have <i>failed</i> to control their environment with skill and other people with reason. Money flows with attention (both directionally and by volume).</div><div><br /></div><div>So are the authors of correct judgment and true history those who fail to control with skill and reason, and who yet direct the most attention? Perhaps. But judgment and history are only the past. Who needs <i>past</i> that can create future?</div><div><br /></div><div>I've worked with a lot of state psychiatrists, and a lot of slaves on state psychiatric plantations in Illinois, for more than twenty years. When I review which among them seemed to need <i>past</i>, as opposed to which could create <i>future</i>, I get an interesting analysis.</div><div><br /></div><div>Guys who can create future just don't hang around in state nuthouses very long; and guys who need past create (or make others create) <i>enormous</i> amounts of paperwork. That's how I tell the difference.</div><div><br /></div><div>Evaluating myself, it occurs that paperwork flows from me like Niagra Falls because (my excuse) I'm a lawyer; and I sure am <i>stuck</i> to Illinois nuthouses!</div><div><br /></div><div>I like to think I can create future and couldn't care less for past. So hmmm... what gives?</div><div><br /></div><div>Maybe I have a lot of work to do. This is Thanksgiving, and I am thankful for the work above all. The work I have been able to do, but more so the work I will do in the future.</div><div><br /></div><div>We are all Pilgrims landing at Plymouth's desolate wilderness in <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-desolate-wilderness-thanksgiving-pilgrims-plymouth-nathaniel-morton-william-bradford-adc12d50">1620</a>, to create a <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/and-the-fair-land-thanksgiving-editorial-18e8271c">fair land</a>.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>SRKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18038834371981947620noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2129153260738117116.post-46410251882860931262023-11-15T21:35:00.048-06:002023-11-16T08:39:38.339-06:00Cash it in!<p>Mickey was transferred to McFarland MHC (now under a new name, which I don't remember yet) from Chester MHC (same old name). McFarland is the only IDHS-operated slave plantation (laughingly, a "hospital") that I have not been to. I hope to get down there before Mickey <i>Thiems</i> out the beginning of January.</p><p>His new psychiatrist, Dr. Cash, sounded Indian or Pakistani over the phone connection by which I attended Mickey's staffing today. Her accent is very similar to Hasina Javed's accent. Javed is a Defendant in several of our federal lawsuits, so I've known her for a long time and deposed her or cross-examined her on various occasions. At one time, long ago when she thought she had nothing to worry about, Dr. Javed was as arrogant as Dr. Cash was today.</p><p>Mickey is not stupid, and he knows a bit about mental health law. Dr. Cash evidently wanted him to think she knows more. She told him that he's on a coed unit, and he'd "better not be inappropriate with female patients or staff...." I might agree with her that such a warning is appropriate and Mickey should heed it. But here's the problem: Cash added an implied threat, which might actually be illegal: "...<i>if you want to get out of here</i>."</p><p>The thing is, and Dr. Cash confirmed that she knows it when I questioned her, a <i>Thiem</i> date is a hard stop on involuntary commitment. She cannot keep Mickey past his <i>Thiem</i> date. The only way to do that would be to file a civil commitment petition. He will be entitled to a whole lot of due process (including, e.g., a <i>televised</i> trial by jury) if she does that. And the standard by which she has to prove that he is mentally ill, and that he is dangerous because of his mental illness, is elevated to <i>clear and convincing.</i></p><p>There actually isn't any such thing as <i>clear and convincing</i> proof of mental illness these days, let alone <i>clear and convincing</i> proof that a guy who never did anything worse than steel a car is dangerous because of mental illness. I'd sure love to defend Mickey in a jury trial of Dr. Cash's civil commitment petition!</p><p>But she won't file any petition. Mickey has too much self control to be incited or baited into looking mentally ill and dangerous between now and January. He can just laugh at Dr. Cash, or not, depending on his own judgment (which I have learned to trust) about what will best get the rest of the treatment team on his side. This is where the illegality might come in. Chart notes, reports to a court, etc., are evidential and presumed to be sworn to as under oath. Judges <i>absolutely</i> <i>hate</i> to discover that some supposed "medical expert" upon whose testimony they are supposed to rely is a bullshitter.</p><p>Then there is 405 ILCS 5/3-402, which is the statute that <i>prohibits</i> a psychiatrist from stating to a patient that he or she "may be subject to involuntary commitment," unless that psychiatrist has personally examined the patient within 72 hours prior, and is prepared to execute a certificate. Dr. Cash violated this, by her statements to Mickey and to me during the staffing today. She was willing to break the law, because she thought this implied threat would give her a little extra control over Mickey, which she was apparently very anxious she might not otherwise have.</p><p>Psychiatry is control, it is not help. Dr. Cash is a failed overseer on a plantation, not to mention a failed doctor. She ought to cash it in.</p>SRKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18038834371981947620noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2129153260738117116.post-68324713959515894892023-11-15T15:02:00.006-06:002023-11-15T15:41:29.573-06:00Baker<p>Over a lot of years, I've written quite a bit about James Baker. NGRI for murder, <i>Thiem </i>date June, 2025, getting free room & board at EMHC and nobody there apparently interested at all, in getting him out. </p><p>No EMHC administrative staff attended James' monthly staffing today, just three hapless Hartman Unit treatment team members. Perfectly pleasant, no complaints at all about James' behavior, etc. But they also had absolutely nothing to say about anyone wanting to get this patient released before he <i>Thiems </i>out in a little over a year and a half. </p><p>Usually, an administrator named Dr. Martha Welch attends. The last time we saw her was a couple months ago. On that occasion, she promised to find out when James might be scheduled for his fourth time through the "Community Reintegration Program," which is considered (quite incredibly if you ask me) to be important before a petition for James' conditional release can be put together.</p><p>Today Martha didn't show up to be asked what she had found out. That's probably because she hasn't found anything out, and maybe she never intended to find anything out. Some staff member who specializes in community reintegration has been on an extended LOA, and nobody knows when that staff member will be back. </p><p>Who knows why that staff member is on extended LOA? Maybe she's being investigated for sexually abusing a patient, there sure is plenty of <i>that</i> at Elgin. Or maybe she joined the growing exodus of mental health professionals headed out the door for more honest jobs. Anyway, the "Community Reintegration Program" is utter nonsense in James' case. It is in most cases, but especially here, when the patient has done it three times already! </p><p>So, Baker languishes at EMHC, for <i>no rational purpose</i>. The reason is bureaucratic incompetence, lack of caring. It's too easy to ignore James, and he does get ignored, completely. He's an easy slave to keep, they don't even have to drug him. His judge would grant a conditional release easily, if some semi-conscious human could go to court and say this patient isn't a danger now: he's old and gentle, well behaved, and he can barely walk. They could even brag that they cured him!</p><p>Baker is only three or four credits short of a bachelor's degree in computer science, by the way. But nobody can figure out how to let him use a facility computer to register for the last courses that would make him a college graduate. Some idiot named Dillard has told him his caseworker should handle that, but she was sitting there in the staffing today, and had no suggestions other than referring the issue back to the idiot Dillard. These guys are cogs in the wheels of a very dumb machine!</p><p>I've rarely if ever seen such easy, glib neglect. Maybe James isn't all that anxious to get out. After all, he's been a slave on the Elgin plantation for most of his adult life. Jeff Pharis used to worry that he might die there, and make the place look bad. If he does, I swear I'll turn him into an international anti-psychiatry martyr. Some day we'll have to put up a statue of him on the site of a closed-down IDHS plantation or some former departmental office building, and we'll hold ceremonies commemorating his sacrifice on Dunlap Day and Bye-bye Jeffrey Day.</p><p>Anybody who wants to say I'm crazy can only hope to be justified by James Baker's conditional release before June, 2025.</p>SRKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18038834371981947620noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2129153260738117116.post-40217741143328246632023-11-13T15:01:00.009-06:002023-11-14T07:13:23.865-06:00The fundamental problem part 2<p>The other conversation stopper is of course, war.</p><p>Watch Marie Avgeropoulos (as Octavia Blake in <i>The 100</i>) calmly announce from high on her horse: "I'm here for the war." Or Clint Eastwood (as William Munny in <i>Unforgiven</i>): "Now I'm here to kill you, Little Bill, for what you done to my friend." Imagine Sherman's adjutant, as the general quietly stated his simple solution to the recalcitrance of young Confederates: "Kill them. Kill them all."</p><p>My mother hated the song, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eve_of_Destruction_(song)">"Eve of Destruction"</a>, or she hated the way I loved it in 1965. The lyrics which she couldn't stand seemed to contradict her Episcopalian faith, her optimism that the world was in fact saved two thousand years ago by Christ's death and resurrection. The songwriter P. F. Sloan seemed to argue with the view that everything was fine and the world was getting better, with his lyrics:</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><i>You may leave here for four days in space, </i></p><p><i>but when you return it's the same old place, </i></p><p><i>the pounding of the drums, the pride and disgrace, </i> </p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><i>you can bury your dead but don't leave a trace, </i></p><p><i>hate your next door neighbor, but don't forget to say grace!</i></p></blockquote><p>Most of my intelligent suburban neighbors tend to protest that war never makes sense. They can't understand how any reasonable human being can ever allow it, or participate in it or fail to stop it. They implicitly claim immunity from the dark, <a href="https://www.ecstaticintegration.org/p/which-side-are-you-on">earliest human ecstacy</a>; and they surely neglect an obvious fact that there is an utterly unreasonable aspect to each and every human being. <i>Of course</i> war makes no sense and cannot be understood. As the movies and song lyrics document, that is <i>precisely</i> its appeal! It's the transcendent assertion of social will, into which, as <a href="https://refusingpsychiatry.blogspot.com/2018/12/slouching-part-13.html">Nathan Kline wrote</a>, we can "escape from our sweaty selves by dissolving our sense of individual being."</p><p>One of my best friends says he could never kill another human being, no matter what. He recognizes that there are people (e.g., child murderers) who do not deserve to live and need killing, but he wants someone else, or some machine, to punish them. He could not pull the switch himself.</p><p>My father-in-law was the kindest, most noble man I ever knew. He drove a Higgins boat to the beaches in thirteen Pacific landings against the Japanese, and walked in the dust of Nagasaki. Like many others, he never spoke about the war afterwards, but I know that was not because he didn't remember.</p><p>The purveyors of psychedelic solutions expect to be coddled in integrative therapy sessions against the horrors of their own subconscious. The pushers of psychiatric drugs want to pretend their brutal control is really medical help. </p><p>These efforts will all fail, because the world is what it is. Believing you can duck is a dangerous way to live, and drugs are even a bad way to duck.</p><p>The only viable strategy is <a href="https://www.scientologycourses.org/tools-for-life/communication/steps/what-is-communication.html">communication</a>: cause, distance, effect, with intention and attention, and a duplication at effect of what emanates from cause. Learning to really communicate is spiritual, and directly opposite to manipulating brains and other machines.</p><p>Without learning to really communicate, we might as well just hump on down to the Perfume River with <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufSGd58gjAM">Private Joker singing</a>, "Hey there, hi there, ho there, we're as happy as can be!"</p>SRKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18038834371981947620noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2129153260738117116.post-38426081430083819522023-11-10T15:29:00.004-06:002023-11-13T08:59:13.071-06:00The fundamental problemJust in case I never mentioned it or never explained this before 😂, my advocacy is for <i>total freedom</i>.<div><br /></div><div>I've been told that is a conversation stopper, because everyone instinctively aspires to total freedom or innately knows total freedom is their own true and natural state as an immortal individual. Everyone agrees it's the correct ultimate target, so no one really argues with you if you just continue to advocate total freedom.</div><div><br /></div><div>All lies derive their power from an earlier or underlying truth to which they connect by argument or opposition. The lie that we are human beings and must be controlled, that we are naturally slaves, derives its power from the truth that we can be totally free. Identifying and putting attention on the underlying truth, repeating it, tends to expose the connection and make the lie lose power.</div><div><br /></div><div>I wonder if this explains the appeal of psychedelic drugs. The <i>trip</i> can dramatically remind a drug user of the truth: freedom, oneness, brotherhood with the universe. The lie of mortal, complicated, or evil humanity becomes irrelevant.</div><div><br /></div><div>But a psychedelic trip is at best a <i>limited</i> reminder. The drug wears off and revelations fade, quickly like a bright dream before breakfast, or slowly like youthful energy over graying years. The only permanent reminder of the truth is the dreary lie we are stuck with. People either have to take the drug again and again, or they have to work hard, to really learn and live the truth without the drug.</div><div><br /></div><div>The project is to <i>continue</i> to advocate total freedom incessantly and forever. If you take the drug again and again to remind yourself of freedom, you might just empower a new lie (i.e., you can't just <i>be</i> free, once and for all..?). But if you have to work hard to learn and live the truth, isn't that religious discipline, in the most traditional sense?</div><div><br /></div><div>There's a very interesting, related internal conflict, from which the current "psychedelic renaissance" probably cannot escape. Enthusiasts for mushrooms, horse tranquilizers, frog venom, etc., desperately need to assert an idea of psychedelic <i>science</i> featuring controlled, validated research, safety protocols and informed consent. That's what might enable eventual FDA approvals of medical products that can make money in the real world. </div><div><br /></div><div>But the enthusiasts also, just as desperately, have to promote religious epiphanies, world peace, extraordinary states of consciousness, and breakthrough evolutionary leaps in human nature, to keep everyone interested. Real science (like hard work, in fact) just doesn't have much mass appeal. It's part of the dreary lie, it's not total freedom.</div><div><br /></div><div>So which way do we go: into science or back to religion; medicine or spirituality; hard, careful work or total freedom? These things are opposites. Trying to go in opposite directions at the same time brings confusion and disaster. The recent demise of the "TREAT California" initiative was predictable. Even if "Barbenheimer Fontana" didn't abscond with money, she certainly tried to go in opposite directions simultaneously, and people got confused.</div><div><br /></div><div>The fundamental problem is collapsing cause and effect: we can't be free beings and neurobiological machines at the same time.</div>SRKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18038834371981947620noreply@blogger.com0