Dr. Drew Proves Once Again that He's an Asshole

Maia Szalavitz comes out swinging at "Dr". Drew in this expose of Drew's cruel, demeaning and unethical "treatment" for addiction. The mortality rate for patients treated at Drew's celebrity rehab? Nearly 13 freakin percent. "Dr." Drew is a 12-step fundamentalist who thinks methadone "steals your soul," and apparently sees no ethical problem with letting his patients suffer in order to increase ratings. Read the whole article by Szalavitz, some key paragraphs of which I reproduced below. Once again, "Dr." Drew proves he's an authoritarian asshole.  

"With the news last week of country star Mindy McCready’s suicide by gun, the death toll among Dr. Drew’s Celebrity Rehab patients now stands at five, giving the show an unusually high mortality rate of nearly 13%. But what’s even more disturbing is that most of those deaths—possibly even McCready’s—might have been prevented if the program had utilized treatment practices proven to be most effective.
"Although Dr. Drew appears to truly believe in what he does, addiction experts say that the treatment philosophy and policies demonstrated in his show and public statements often do not reflect the best evidence-based practices. His rejection of maintenance treatments, use of punitive detox practices and humiliating therapy and insistence that people cannot truly recover without complete abstinence through 12-step programs reflect the conventional wisdom of the 1980s, not the data of the 21st century. Indeed, Celebrity Rehab’s treatment—leaving aside the massive confidentiality violation of being televised—diverges dramatically from the National Institute on Drug Abuse’s (NIDA) Principles of Drug Treatment, a guide that lays out standards for the best addiction care.
[...]
"Seizures and other behavioral consequences of Pinsky's tough-love, no-medication, abstinence-only approach make for high drama, which is why some detractors have argued that Celebrity Rehab may put entertainment ahead of the most effective treatment—and even safety. For his part, Pinsky argues that drama is the only way to attract viewers. He told  The New York Times in response to criticism of such practices by other addiction specialists that “the problem with my peers is they don’t understand television…you have to work within the confines of what executives will allow you to put on TV.”
[...]
"O’Brien says that allowing people to suffer by abruptly stopping methadone is unethical. “It's a moral thing, and it doesn’t have anything to do with recovery,” he says. “Why should we be sadistic and want people to suffer just because they’ve become addicted? There’s not a shred of evidence that it’s good. This has absolutely no benefit.”
"On day two of Starr’s detox, Pinsky describes his withdrawal as “so bad that he’s becoming confused, paranoid and rageful.” However, the doctor apparently does not slow the detox process to ease these symptoms. Indeed, as Starr kicks things, curses at the staff, makes obscene gestures and demands the cameras be turned off, the production continues, ignoring what appears to be a removal of consent to tape.
[...]
"This is apparently news to Dr. Drew, who tells patients that “methadone takes your soul away,” which can’t mean that he thinks methadone is consistent with sobriety. When questioned about this statement, he  told VH-1, “If you get enough for it to work, you’re just on the couch. You can’t do anything.”
“That’s completely false,” O’Brien says. “We’ve had people on methadone going back to school, practicing law. There's hard evidence that methadone saves lives and probably a lot of souls, too.”
[...]
“Where I get really annoyed is when people say that they ‘don’t believe in’ medication or that it’s ‘against my philosophy,’” O’Brien says. “That’s not scientific. Maintenance has saved thousands of lives. People who have this prejudice are engaging in unethical behavior.”
[...]
"If someone were providing care on national TV for years that was as far away from what experts recommend for any other condition, it wouldn’t take a journalist to bring the misleading claims to the experts for debunking, especially after someone dies. But addiction still isn’t really seen as a disease where research evidence should determine the best treatment. Instead, it’s a matter of “philosophy” and faith. You can say, “Methadone steals your soul,” and still get a national TV show and be quoted every time a celebrity relapses—and no one even reports until after a death that all of the major bodies on addiction medicine disagree.

          Is Dr. Drew Too Dangerous for Prime Time? by Maia Szalavitz

The True Church

"This is the doctrine of the true church on the subject of opium: of which church I acknowledge myself to be the only member—the alpha and the omega: but then it is to be recollected that I speak from the ground of a large and profound personal experience: whereas most of the unscientific authors who have at all treated of opium, and even of those who have written expressly on the materia medica, make it evident, from the horror they express of it, that their experimental knowledge of its action is none at all."
-Thomas de Quincey "Confessions of an English Opium Eater"

    To be a member of the true church of opium one must be acquainted with opium, intimately. With due respect to the occasional user, the dabbler, and the chipper, that is the "recreational" users, one must have a large and profound personal experience opiates to be a member of the true church. In the second edition of the Confessions, de Quincey elevated himself to pope (consequently infallible). This article examines the religious or spiritual [1] aspect of opiate use and contrasts it with the medical or therapeutic use of opiates. For the purposes of this discussion, the occasional or "recreational" users are omitted.

 "One of the most important aspects of ceremonial drug use is that the desire for the drug is experienced as issuing from the very depth of the user; whereas, in the case of therapeutic use of drugs, the user experiences external necessity, or even compulsion, as the motive for drug taking. It is precisely this experience of an inner need or 'craving' that justifies our placing this behavior in the same class with other patterns of religious conduct and observance; what all these behaviors- that is, drug use recognized as religious, drug 'addiction' and habitual drug 'abuse'- share with other kinds of religious behaviors is the experience of a profound inner desire or urge, whose satisfaction gratifies the user's deepest sense of existence or being in the world. And herein, too, lies the reason why both the religious fanatic and the 'dope fiend' go to such great lengths to satisfy their desires; and why each feels fully justified in the moral righteousness of his conduct. This 'call' or 'craving'- which to the observer seems to come from without, from the voice of God or the lure of a drug, but which to the subject comes from within, from the recognition of the subject's 'calling' or from the conviction contrasted, if we are to appreciate its real import, with the universal human experience it opposes, and indeed tries to annihilate; namely, the experience of helplessness and powerlessness and of being manipulated by external agents and their hostile interests."

-Thomas Szasz, "Ceremonial Chemistry". p 40, from chapter on Communions, Holy and Unholy

    If Szasz is indeed right, we can make a distinction between two types of "addicts," the religious/spiritual  and the medical/therapeutic. The distinction can be elucidated by examining the motives of the individual. The medical user experiences an external need, be it pain or depression, and finds that the condition is relieved by the pain killing[2] and mood elevating properties of opiates. After the medicine is metabolized the individual finds that the symptoms recur, thus necessitating repeated dosing and setting up the conditions for dependence ("addiction"). When the original condition abates, the drug may be tapered and discontinued.
Superficially the medical and spiritual opiate "addicts" are indistinguishable. Without regular access to opiates they will exhibit similar drug-seeking behaviors [3].  Pain is a great motivator, to alleviate pain people will pay outrageous prices, both literally and metaphorically. Spirituality is similarly a great motivator, one does not need to look far to witness people making great sacrifices in the name of their religion. It is only by examining the motivations of the drug user does this distinction become clear.
    The religious "addict" uses the drug as part of a ritual, properly called in this context a ceremony. The motivation behind performing such a ceremony is to be whole. Similar to the religious Christian who does not feel "normal" without conversing with God in prayer, the religious opiate "addict" does not feel "normal" without performing their ceremony of opiate consumption. A pre-20th century conception of "addict" was not limited to drugs, but meant something closer to "fan" or "devotee." It is this conception of addiction that we then return to, the religious opiate user is addicted (devoted) to the ceremony of opiate consumption just as the Christian is addicted (devoted) to the ceremony of prayer. Both of these ceremonies are performed to make the individual feel whole.
    It should be noted that these views of addiction are not mutually exclusive. One can be (self-)medicating and participating in the religion of the true church of opium. This also explains the seeming contradiction of the individual who struggles for years to break the habit, then one day following a "moment of clarity" gives up the habit for good. The church is open to all races and creeds, and members are free to join or leave at their will. To the extent that Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and its off-shoots (NA) work, and the evidence that they work any better than nothing at all is debatable, they work by substituting one religion for another.
     There are also people who, for whatever reason, perhaps for "gonzo" journalism or for "life experience," decide to addict themselves to heroin. Contrary to popular belief, this is not an easy task. Overcoming the nausea and vomiting takes time, and not everyone experiences intense euphoria, though opiates are generally experienced as pleasurable. Such people may then walk away from the "addiction" with the same nonchalance as they walked in. It is the people who experience heroin intoxication as feeling "normal," sometimes for the first time in their lives, who are at risk for "addiction."
    The "drug abuseologists" claim that opiate use, outside some very narrow parameters, is a disease. While claiming it is a disease (drug "abuse" or "addiction"), it is not treated like other diseases. It is treated like a moral failing and crime. Drug abuse can hardly be called abuse in the sense that it is used in other contexts (sexual abuse, child abuse), most drug use causes little to no harm to the users. As I have said before, drug abuse is a "wrongful custom" in the sense that it is drug use that deviates from cultural norms (why is tobacco smoking never call drug abuse?). In the case of opiates, especially heroin, users are not so much choosing the wrong drug as the wrong ceremony.
    This is evidenced by the ritual performed to make a drug holy, the physician's prescription. Whether a drug is holy (good and therapeutic), or unholy (bad and toxic) has little to do with the drug. After all heroin and percocet are, pharmacologically, more similar than dissimilar; and drugs do not work differently just because they come from a doctor. It is the physician's prescription that completes the ritual between what is therapeutic, and thus the correct ceremony, and what is drug "abuse," and thus the wrong ceremony. An example of this, also offered by Szasz, is Dr. Max Jacobson and President John F. Kennedy:

"Mutual friends introduced JFK to [Dr. Max] Jacobson during the 1960 campaign. The first shot elevated his mood. From then on, it was clear sailing. Miracle Max shot up the president before the Kennedy-Nixon debates, the major state addresses, and even the 1961 Vienna summit meeting with Nikita Khrushchev. Secret Service files and the White House gate log confirm that Jacobson saw JFK no fewer than 34 times through May 1962.

"Did Kennedy experience any of the impatience, irritability, and grandiosity, an exaggerated sense of personal power, that amphetamines so often produce? Clearly not: Kennedy's court historians maintain that his illnesses and drug use didn't affect his presidency. In any case, in June 1962, when Attorney General Robert Kennedy advised his brother to stop using Jacobson's concoctions, the president replied, 'I don't care if it's horse piss. It works.' "

          "Dr. Feelgood" William Bryk. The New York Sun Spt 20th, 2005 [Link]

      When a doctor injects amphetamines into the bloodstream of a powerful politician, it is ostensibly done for medical reasons. In this case the amphetamines were administered not for treatment of a medical disease (eg narcolepsy), but to enhance the performance of a healthy man. When a college student takes Adderall or Ritalin to improve their concentration in preparing for an exam, or a truck driver uses illicitly manufactured methamphetamine to remain alert for long periods of time, it is drug "abuse." The same basic drug, amphetamine, is being used for the same reason, to enhance performance. It is the physician's prescription that differentiates drug "abuse" from medicine. Clearly this is not defensible on pharmacological grounds.
The prescription is a magic ritual, one that sanctifies a behavior (drug taking) as being holy (healthy, medicinal), provided it is done under the auspices of the high priest (the physician) . While similarly self-medicating is declared illicit healing, particularly because it is done without the authority of the high priest (physician). Only a priest has the power to make ordinary water holy. Only a physician has the power to decide what drugs are therapeutic, and who gets what drug. The appropriate analogy is Holy Communion. To a true believer bread and wine is literally transubstantiated into the body and blood of Christ. The heathen observer sees only bread and wine. Similarly the "drug abuser" sees no legitimacy in the physician's prescription, the wine ("dangerous and addictive" drugs) is still wine, not the blood of Jesus ("therapeutic" drugs).
    If an individual asserts their will to circumvent the doctor's prescription and self-medicate with illicit opiates, this is drug "abuse." It matters not how knowledgeable the individual is, the individual may be a professor of pharmacology and know more about drugs than most doctors. We have taken the right to be sovereign over our own bodies, to decide for ourselves what drug or treatment is therapeutic, and given that authority to the medical profession and government agencies. Verily we have turned a fundamental human right into a crime.
     Heroin users are persecuted not due to the pharmacological properties of heroin (after all heroin rapidly converts to morphine, considered by the World Health Organization to be an essential drug), but because they are performing a heretical ceremony in a prohibited religion. This is what Szasz has called the "religious nature of the war on drugs." This also explains why drug legalization is opposed even after arguments in its favor have been refuted by logic, pharmacological and sociological research. It matters little that alcohol and tobacco are among the most toxic drugs regularly consumed, reason has never been successful in toppling religious belief.
      In a world where individuals are constantly reminded of their helplessness and powerlessness, of human fragility and mortality, people develop strong attachments to things which oppose these feelings. It is this strong attachment, or devotion, that is the meaning of "addiction." The number of things people may become "addicted" (devoted) to is truly immense. These attachments are expressed by certain ritual behaviors, rituals which may include certain chemicals we call drugs. By completing the ritual, it reinforces the individual's sense of belonging in the world. This is true of peyote and the Native American Church, Wine and the Christian ceremony of Holy Communion, Coca and the ceremonies of the indigenous people of South America; it is no less true of opiates and the modern day drug culture in the modern world.
    The war on certain drug users is a war on our right to self-medicate. The fact that a majority of Americans seem willing to concede that right in no way invalidates the the minority who choose to assert sovereignty over their bodies, minds and medical decisions. Fundamental human rights cannot be legislated away. The drug war is also a religious war, waged against chemical ceremonies deemed heretical. Because it is ostensibly waged in the name of public health, its religious nature has been obfuscated as much as possible. It is only when the arguments of the prohibitionists are refuted by logic that the true motivation behind the war on drugs becomes clear. Truly the only way to end such a conflict is to tolerate a diversity of spiritual views, and the associated chemical ceremonies each entails.

[1] I am using the words "spiritual" and "religious" more-or-less interchangeably in this article.

[2] Opiates do not so much "kill" pain as change the perception of pain. People on opiates will still experience pain, but it does not bother them. Opiates widen the emotional experience of pain, creating an emotional "distance" between the painful stimulus and the emotional response. This is also why people who have experienced horrific childhood abuse respond so well to opiates. There is a false dichotomy between physical pain and emotional/psychological pain, using opiates for the former is grudgingly accepted by the medical establishment, using opiates to treat the latter is considered drug "abuse" and to be exterminated with the full force of the state's medical and law enforcement apparatus.

[3] Such a person is in an unenviable position, taken advantage of by both criminals and quacks, all the while serving as a scapegoat for all of societies ills. In the words of Dr. Charles E. Terry, "That to supply this drug is not only necessary, but is vital, that to deny it is to cause a physical and possibly a moral wreck, while to heap contumely upon narcotic drug addicts as a whole is to drive them to the underworld for their supply, It never must be lost sight of that among the sufferers from this disease are numbered many of the highest intellectual types of men and women in the business and professional worlds..."

Catnip: Egress to Oblivion?

From the artist's site:

Cat­nip is all the rage with today’s mod­ern feline, but do we really under­stand it? 

Is it a source for harm­less kicks, or a poten­tially crip­pling addic­tion? Is it a tool to expand one’s con­scious­ness, or a down­ward spi­ral­ing path that can even­tu­ally lead to insanity? 

Once and for all the facts about this con­tro­ver­sial sub­stance are frankly dis­cussed, in the long-lost drug edu­ca­tional film that never-was, “Cat­nip: Egress to Oblivion?”. 

Chief of psychiatry
Catnip Crisis Center: Sishigan Michigan
DR. NEIL KIGHT, ESQ.
Author of “Looking Within: The Catnip Conundrum”

"Much of the progress made by the feline rights movement during the 1960s has now been effectively eroded. Catnip prohibition and the selective enforcement of herbaceous perennial laws have become the successor system to Jim Puss. They selectively target cats of all color, removing them from Felid society while barring them from the right to keep mice on the run, inspire us to dream up cool cartoon characters and teach us how to land on our feet." -Byddaf yn egluro

Further reading on catnip:

Catnip: Its uses and effects, past and present by Jeff Grognet [another link]

Thanks to anonymous commenter for the paper.

Drug War Sponsored Sexual Slavery in Afghanistan

Opium Brides, a PBS Frontline special. (running time 32:45)

From investigating the sexual abuse of young boys to embedding with a group of insurgents allied with Al Qaeda, veteran Afghan reporter Najibullah Quraishi takes FRONTLINE cameras where few Western journalists can go. 

Today Quraishi spoke with The World‘s Marco Werman about his latest journey — airing on FRONTLINE tonight — deep into remote Afghan countryside to investigate a horrifying sex trade: young girls kidnapped or traded to smugglers to meet the debts of impoverished opium farmers whose crops have been destroyed by the government. 

Quraishi met several girls who were taken from their families, an existing problem that he says has increased as a result of poppy eradication programs. The girls “are only nine, 10, 11 [or] 12 and used for manufacturing heroin, or immediately married to traffickers or sold in other countries, like Iran.” 

The smugglers are “very powerful and stronger than the Taliban and the government,” Quraishi tells Werman. 

Listen to the interview below for more about what Quraishi sees as the prospects for helping the young girls, and tune in to Opium Brides tonight for the full story of how young girls, and even boys, are paying the price for counternarcotics policy in Afghanistan.

Why Eradication Won't Solve Afghanistan's Poppy Problem, PBS Frontline 

[Note: I have reproduced a few paragraphs from this article below, but I highly recommend reading the whole article to get a sense of the corruption in Afghanistan's government and drug trade. The article begins in the 1980's, with the Soviet destruction of Afghanistan's traditional crops]

In Afghanistan in the mid-80s, the Soviet Army ended up adopting a “scorched earth” policy [to systematically destroy agricultural resources]. That is because while the Soviets were able to control the cities, they were never able to control the countryside. The insurgency was always [launching] attacks from the rural areas on the cities and generating instability. The Soviets tried military operations in the countryside, which didn’t control the problem, so ultimately, they decided to destroy the agriculture in the countryside with the idea that this would drive the rural population into the cities, which they could control. 

The effect was the complete collapse of the agricultural production of Afghanistan: the destruction of orchards, irrigation canals. The only thing the population could grow was opium poppy, which didn’t require [so much] irrigation, fertilizers or transportation, because Pakistani traders would come to the farm and pick up the opium. So this really unleashed the first systematic cultivation of opium poppy at the time. 

Between 2001 and 2004, the U.S. very much had a hands-off policy towards the opium poppy, partially because Northern Alliance warlords, [whom the U.S. was] using for intelligence and for direct military operations against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, were knee-high in opium poppy. … So the U.S. said the priorities are to defeat the Taliban, not their human rights problems or that they are peddling in the drug trade. 

The promise was that [poppy eradication efforts] would end corruption and bankrupt the Taliban.  Neither happened. Corruption kept increasing and increasing, and the Taliban became stronger and stronger, for a variety of reasons, [including] that the Taliban drew a lot of support from the poppy farmers who were outraged by the poppy eradication policy. 

The big change comes in 2009, when the Obama administration says, eradication is not doing what it promised. There is no decrease in corruption; in fact, there is a huge amount of corruption associated with eradication. It’s not bankrupting the Taliban; there is more poppy than there was a few years back, and it’s losing the hearts and minds of the population, and making counterinsurgency really difficult. So we are going to change policy. 

The U.S. government decided to defund the centrally led eradication force, which was the main unit that was eradicating. But the Obama administration wanted to compromise somewhat, and they said if the Afghan government, local governors, wants to do some eradication, that’s their choice. If the local provincial governors decide the want to eradicate, we will provide them assistance, both equipment and technical assistance. 

What often happens is that when the governors push ahead with eradication, they lose the support of the population; they do it at gunpoint, essentially. 

To some extent, many governors engage in eradication, but it’s often extremely limited — maybe a few hundred to a thousand hectares eradicated, on the scale of having 15,000 to 60,000 hectares cultivated. But they feel they need to throw some bone to the internationals who are demanding eradication, so they take either actors who are very weak — the poorest farmers who have no capacity to intimidate the government or to corrupt the eradication teams — or they take opposition — rival politicians and their networks and their power base — and eradicate some elements of their poppy.

Afghan farmer beheaded with a PENKNIFE after refusing to let drug lords take his daughter and sell her as a sex slave, Daily Mail (UK)

Opium gangs are taking the sons and daughters of Afghan farmers as collateral for unpaid debts.
A documentary exposes the fate of those who borrow from drug lords to set up cultivation of the heroin plant but are left destitute when NATO-backed forces destroy their crops.
The drug lords then take their children, including girls as young as ten, to Pakistan and Iran to sell them into the sex trade or use them as drug mules.

Solution: Blame the Users

I have reproduced two comments posted in response to the Daily Mail article. Like many sites, comments can be voted either up or down, The rating reflects how many positive and negative responses the comment received, positive numbers reflect more "likes" and negative numbers "dislikes."

"To anyone who does illegal drugs: I know you won't care, but this is what your money is buying. You are paying for all this murder, suffering and misery to be done in you[r] name. It's just as well for you that you have no soul, otherwise you wouldn't be able to live with yourself."
- Steve, Gateshead, 29/1/2013 11:30
Rating: +566 

"This is why heroin MUST be legalized. Heroin has a large profitability because it is illegal, if you legalize it and tax it then the price will crash and these ruthless assassins won't gain anything from the stuff. WHEN WILL YOU LEARN????????"
- Getreal, Corby, 29/1/2013 11:03
Rating: -75

Clearly among the Daily Mail readers there is a lot of support for blaming heroin users for the mess in Afghanistan, and very little support for legalizing heroin. Also, illegal drug users apparently have no soul.

On the surface there is very little reason why using heroin should be considered morally wrong. Heroin is produced from opium, itself dead plant matter. Therefore using heroin is the moral equivalent of eating lettuce. The belief that using mind altering chemicals is morally wrong is a religious belief, no one who uses legal drugs (tobacco, alcohol, caffeinated beverages) ought feel morally superior to illicit drug users. Even those who completely abstain (Mormans, "Straight Edgers") from mind altering chemicals[1] should not consider themselves morally superior. Jesus was a drug user.

There may indeed be a moral argument for abstaining from heroin use, given the situation around its production. If purchasing heroin does contribute to terrorists' funding and the slavery of fellow human beings, especially children, a case against heroin consumption can be made even if heroin use is morally neutral. 

Are there other products out there, for which there is a demand that fuels human rights violations and civil unrest. I can think of an obvious analogy: oil (keeping in mind the word analogy means a comparison of similar features, there are obvious differences too). The developed world's "addiction" to oil certainly funds many regimes which then use the money to oppress their people. Oil money funded the Libyan dictator Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. 

Libya's Oil Money Buys Allies for Qaddafi NY Times

From Liberia to South Africa to the island of Madagascar, Libya’s holdings are like a giant venture capital fund, geared to make friends and win influence in the poorest region in the world. This may help explain how Colonel Qaddafi has been able to summon sub-Saharan African soldiers to fight for him in his time of need — Libyans have spoken of “African mercenaries” killing protesters and helping him rout rebel fighters — and why so many African leaders have been so slow to criticize him, even as his forces slaughter his own people. 

So lets insert gasoline in place for drugs in that Daily Mail comment:

"To anyone who buys gasoline: I know you won't care, but this is what your money is buying. You are paying for all this murder, suffering and misery to be done in you[r] name. It's just as well for you that you have no soul, otherwise you wouldn't be able to live with yourself."

The parallels now become obvious. People need oil to live their lives, our entire economy is based on oil, without it our economy would grind to a halt. We will, and have, gone to war over oil (does anyone believe Iraq was all about WMDs anymore?). Nobody wants their gas money to fund dictators who use it to commit human rights violations, but they don't have a lot of choices. Similarly heroin users would prefer to buy "free trade" heroin, but have to take what they can get. Much like oil, consumers do not need heroin (that is they will not die without heroin), but there is a large demand because heroin makes life better. As to why heroin users use heroin, that will be a subject for another day, but suffice to say many users need heroin in their lives  in the same way many citizens need gasoline and petroleum products.

I have no sensible suggestions on how to solve the world's oil "addiction". Unlike the "addiction" to oil, the world's "addiction" to opiates is eminently solvable. The answer is to legalize and regulate the trade in opium. Allowing the heroin users in the destination countries to purchase opium and opium products (morphine, heroin, ect) directly from the farmers in the producer countries would completely end the drug-related corruption in Afghanistan. Opium legalization will not solve all of Afghanistan's problems, but we are currently funding both sides of the conflict. Drug users fund the crops and traffickers while governments fund (completely corrupt and counter-productive) eradication efforts. After years of this, and unbelievable "collateral damage" (eg "Opium Brides") caused by our war on opium, there is no end in sight. It is well past time for a new approach.


[1] What exactly is a mind altering chemical, or drug, will be the focus of a future post. The distinction between food and drug is mostly cultural/sociological, we call some substances people consume drugs and others food.

Further Reading:
 The Opium Brides of Afghanistan, Newsweek
What You Should Know About Women's Rights in Afghanistan, Huffington Post

Some Thomas Szasz Quotes

The Second Sin (1973)
The wise treat self-respect as non-negotiable, and will not trade it for health or wealth or anything else.
p. 56

Marx said that religion was the opiate of the people. In the United States today, opiates are the religion of the people.
p. 63

The Nazis spoke of having a Jewish problem. We now speak of having a drug-abuse problem. Actually, “Jewish problem” was the name the Germans gave to their persecution of the Jews; “drug-abuse problem” is the name we give to the persecution of people who use certain drugs.
p. 64

Since this is the age of science, not religion, psychiatrists are our rabbis, heroin is our pork, and the addict is the unclean person.
p. 64

We speak of a person being “under the influence” of alcohol, or heroin, or amphetamine, and believe that these substances affect him so profoundly as to render him utterly helpless in their grip. We thus consider it scientifically justified to take the most stringent precautions against these things and often prohibit their nonmedical, or even their medical, use. But a person may be under the influence not only of material substances but also of spiritual ideas and sentiments, such as patriotism, Catholicism, or Communism. But we are not afraid of these influences, and believe that each person is, or ought to be, capable of fending for himself.
pp. 65-66

Although both the natural and moral sciences seek to understand the objects of their observation, in natural science the purpose of this is to be able to control them better, whereas in moral science it is, or ought to be, to be better able to leave them alone. The morally proper aim of psychology, then, is self-control.
p. 115

Formerly, when religion was strong and science weak, men mistook magic for medicine; now, when science is strong and religion weak, men mistake medicine for magic.
p. 115

The Myth of Mental Illness: Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct (1974)
I became interested in writing this book approximately ten years ago when, having become established as a psychiatrist, I became increasingly impressed by the vague, capricious and generally unsatisfactory character of the widely used concept of mental illness and its corollaries, diagnosis, prognosis and treatment.
Although (mental illness) might have been a useful concept in the nineteenth century, today it is scientifically worthless and socially harmful.
In non-psychiatric circles mental illness all too often is considered to be whatever psychiatrists say it is. The answer to the question, Who is mentally ill? thus becomes: Those who are confined in mental hospitals or who consult psychiatrists in their private offices.
-Preface to the First Edition

Ceremonial Chemistry (1974)
If, nevertheless, textbooks of pharmacology legitimately contain a chapter on drug abuse and drug addiction, then, by the same token, textbooks of gynecology and urology should contain a chapter on prostitution; textbooks of physiology, a chapter on perversion; textbooks of genetics, a chapter on the racial inferiority of Jews and Negroes.
p. 11

Why is self-control, autonomy, such a threat to authority? Because the person who controls himself, who is his own master, has no need for an authority to be his master. This, then, renders authority unemployed. What is he to do if he cannot control others? To be sure, he could mind his own business. But this is a fatuous answer, for those who are satisfied to mind their own business do not aspire to become authorities.
Revised edition, 1985. p. 175.

Our Right to Drugs (1992)
As Justice Olive Wendell Holmes, Jr. put it, censorship rests on the idea that “every idea is an incitement.” Perhaps he should have specified “every interesting idea,” for a dull idea is not. By the same token, every interesting drug is an incitement. And so is everything else that people find interesting.
p. 35

The Manufacture of Madness: A Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement (1997)
The disease concept of homosexuality—as with the disease concept of all so-called mental illnesses, such as alcoholism, drug addiction, or suicide—conceals the fact that homosexuals are a group of medically stigmatized and socially persecuted individuals. ... Their anguished cries of protest are drowned out by the rhetoric of therapy—just as the rhetoric of salvation drowned out the [cries] of heretics.
p. 168

The homosexual is a scapegoat who evokes no sympathy. Hence, he can only be a victim, never a martyr.
p. 169

So long as men denounce each other as mentally sick (homosexual, addicted, insane, and so forth)—so that the madman can always be considered the Other, never the Self—mental illness will remain an easily exploitable concept, and Coercive Psychiatry a flourishing institution.
p. 170

There is a fundamental similarity between the persecution of individuals who engage in consenting homosexual activity in private, or who ingest, inject, or smoke various substances that alter their feelings and thoughts—and the traditional persecution of men for their religion. ... What all of these persecutions have in common is that the victims are harassed by the majority not because they engage in overtly aggressive or destructive acts, ... but because their conduct or appearance offends a group intolerant to and threatened by human differences.
pp. 208-209

Thomas Szasz died on September 8, 2012
Read an obituary by Jeffrey Schaler here.

Dr. Charles E. Terry on the Aftermath of the Harrison Narcotic Act

"At this stage the truth of my opening sentence is apparent, for while I recognized the medical and public health angles of the problem, I still felt that rigid laws offered great promise. I felt with others that national law which would control interstate traffic in these drugs would solve the greatest part of the difficulties confronting us. It must be home in mind that at this period only a few states had restrictive laws that were not openly broken on every side and for the most part the formality of a physician's prescription was rarely observed by druggists in dispensing any of the addiction or habit forming drugs'. Effectual restrictive legislation had never been tried and it was perhaps not unnatural to suppose that with the well-known sources of supply curbed, the use of these drugs would be very materially if not entirely prevented. It is obvious, however, that we had counted without the peddler. We had not realized that the moment restrictive legislation made these drugs difficult to secure legitimately the drugs would also be made profitable to illicit traffickers.

"I had had practically no experience with this fraternity for a reason which I now understand well, namely because we furnished in the health office free prescriptions for those unable to pay for them, nor did we try to dictate to them the quantities they should take or for that Matter humiliate or persecute them in any other way. As a consequence the peddler could not make a living in our town, though he had begun to flourish in Massachusetts and New York.


"Feeling as I did about the need for further restrictive legislation, I looked forward to the Passage of the Harrison Act, and during the months immediately preceding its beginning operation in May 1915 we tried to prepare our indigent cases for the drug deprivation which we believed was in store for them. They were urged to reduce their daily amount to the lowest possible limit, and they earnestly cooperated, and looked forward as did we to the time when they would be cured. Meanwhile, a fund was raised by private subscription and hospital and nursing facilities provided for about 20 beds. These beds were filled and refilled until between 65 and 75 patients had been treated. This is one of the experiences in my attempts to work out this problem which I do not like to recall. A local physician kindly volunteered to treat these cases. Although not practicing I visited them daily, and the nursing attention they received was of the highest order. The method of treatment employed was that known as the Towns treatment [rapid withdrawal plus administration of a belladonna mixture]. We felt, as do most when contemplating drug addiction treatment, that a certain amount of suffering was necessary, but I was not prepared for the extreme suffering which I witnessed in these cases, nor was I prepared for one death which occurred in an apparently healthy woman. With the exception of 2 or 3, all of these cases relapsed within a very short time after their discharge as cured, and I realized more than ever that here was indeed a medical problem and I began to harbor my first doubts as to the wisdom of blind restrictive legislation. And by this I mean legislation based upon habit and vice theories of drug addiction and upon the assumption that satisfactory methods of treatment are generally available.

"That my experience was not unique was determined by the committee on habit forming drugs of the American Public Health Association, through a questionnaire submitted to the medical schools of the country.
It would seem unnecessary to state that the narcotic drug addict must be supplied with his drug in doses physically necessary until such time as he may receive treatment which will leave him in at least as good condition as that in which it found him. That to supply this drug is not only necessary, but is vital, that to deny it is to cause a physical and possibly a moral wreck, while to heap contumely upon narcotic drug addicts as a whole is to drive them to the underworld for their supply, It never must be lost sight of that among the sufferers from this disease are numbered many of the highest intellectual types of men and women in the business and professional worlds, and that individuals of this type May not contemplate the indignities which many administrators seek to heap upon them, through their ignorance of the true nature of this condition and their apparent misconception of the character of its victims."

-Dr. Charles E. Terry, who had been working with addicts in Jacksonville, Florida, from 1911 until the Harrison Act went into effect in 1915

Quoted from "the Addict and the Law" by Alfred Lindesmith [Bold added -Ed]

Afterword:
I am compiling a list of fatalities resulting from opiate detoxification for a future post. This is one of the earliest records I have been able to uncover that refutes the notion that nobody dies from opiate withdrawal. While the evidence in this particular case isn't overwhelming, as the patient may have died as a result of the belladonna mixture, there are other cases in which people have died from going "cold turkey" (usually while incarcerated). If anyone has evidence of other cases of people dying from an opiate (opioid) withdrawal please send me an email or leave a link in the comments.

Methadone, Origins

    Methadone was first synthesized in Germany during World War Two. There are a few apocryphal stories about methadone. One version claims that methadone was first synthesized at the behest of Luftwaffe Commander Hermann Goering, who also happened to be a junkie, out of fear that morphine supplies might be cut off if Turkish opium imports were cut off. This is doubtful, for one Goering could easily have stockpiled a personal supply of narcotics for himself, and Germany did produce the synthetic narcotic  Pethidine [1] in bulk.
     The second oft-repeated story about methadone involves its trade name, Dolophine. The notion that Dolophine was named in for Adolf Hitler has become part of what I call "junkie lore," urban legends of dubious veracity passed around by members of the drug culture (I have even been told that methadone was made by Hitler himself, making it an evil drug for sure). Methadone was originally given the unimaginative name Hochst-10820, Hochst being the name of the factory in which it was first synthesized. During the war methadone was never synthesized in any quantity, and its pharmacological properties mostly unexplored.
    Following WW2, methadone became part of the plundering of German scientific and technical research. The patent for methadone was purchased by the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly, reportedly for one dollar (Hogshire, 1999). It wasn't until 1947 when clinical trials began, and the new drug christened "Dolophine." As for the word "dolophine," I have read conflicting reports. It appears to be a contraction of the words for "pain" and "end," either from the French ("douleur" and "fin") or Latin ("dolor" and "finis").

[1] The generic name of Pethidine is meperidine, known is the US as Demerol. Most of the world knows meperidine by the name Pethidine

Further Reading:

Hogshire, Jim. Pills-a-Go-Go: A Fiendish Investigation into Pill Marketing, Art, History & Consumption. 1999 [Link]

Methadone – The History of Juice by Black Poppy Magazine (UK)