

Yesterday's Drugs Are Tomorrow's Medicines - chesterfield
http://aeon.co/magazine/health/yesterdays-drugs-are-tomorrows-medicines/

======
netcan
There's a lot here. It's mostly hidden behind a thickets of taboo, bias, laws
and paradigms that have no room for it. Politics, in short.

There's the universally unacknowledged right of adults to freedom in this
regard. There's the potential for new medicines. There's the value of non
rational thought and states of mind. This is plain in art, but generally
derided everyone else because of the relationship to antirational arguments,
insanity and other persona non grata. There's the always nebulous concept of
personal, indescribable spiritual experience. There's an unavoidable wrestling
with philosophical ideas about reality from Des Cartes' solipsism, to
Socrates' Parable of the Cave even The Matrix.

There's possibly more to the treatment of mental disorders with psychedelic
medicines than simply new and useful drugs. There might be a different
approach here to supplement, compliment or partly displace the prevailing
paradigms of mental illness. Diagnosis. Pathology. Symptoms. Treatment. The
language of medicine is somewhat awkward when dealing with mental illness.

I wish someone had worked out a way to to HN with threaded posts. Something
that works in like a collective wikipedia wormhole starting with elephants and
ending in Archeology of the early Holocene. but for now, here's a link:

Incredible photographer Phis Borges photographed a lot of indigenous people
and developed an interest in Shamanic or Animistic cultures. These usually
have a medicine man who performs a role in the culture usually involving
trances, healing and visions. He asks them how they got the job and most
describe an experience early in life which is diagnosed as schizophrenia
inhere psychiatrists are available.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFtsHf1lVI4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFtsHf1lVI4)

~~~
emotionalcode
> here's the value of non rational thought and states of mind. This is plain
> in art, but generally derided everyone else because of the relationship to
> antirational arguments, insanity and other persona non grata. There's the
> always nebulous concept of personal, indescribable spiritual experience.
> There's an unavoidable wrestling with philosophical ideas about reality from
> Des Cartes' solipsism, to Socrates' Parable of the Cave even The Matrix.

I am currently reading a book called "Privacy in Context" by Helen Nissenbaum.
A portion of the book was pointed out to me,if I may quote.

>> .."for even when we are uncertain whether or not we are being watched, we
must act as if we are. When this happens, when we have internalized the gaze
of the watchers and see ourselves through their eyes, we are acting according
to their principles and not ones that are truly our own (Bentham 1995;
Foucault 1995). But pan-optic effects might be even more insidious than this,
leading to a diminishment in our capacity to formulate principles, plans, and
desires with which we truly identify. According to this framing of the
relationship between privacy and autonomy, it is not conceptual but causal for
privacy is claimed to be an important aspect of an environment in which
autonomy is likely to flourish, and its absence likely to undermine it."

~~~
netcan
I can't quite understand it either.

Is he saying we should act as if watched or that we're being forced to act as
if we are?

I assume it's the latter. BTW, I've actually heard recently a description (in
the context of Adam Smith) of internalizing the voice of a watcher as the
origin of 'Moral Sentiments.' He considered it a good thing. IE, your parents
tell you hitting is bad. You eventually tell yourself its bad to hit and
morality ensues.

There's a parallel to moral shifts in culture, like the ban on gay bashing,
domestic abuse, littering & such. In the beginning a few police the many
deriding them for littering. Then everyone stops doing it in public.
Eventually the ethic is internalized.

------
krylon
The definition of what makes a "good" drug (i.e. one that is used medicinally)
and a "bad" drug (i.e. one that is addictive and/or used recreationally) is
somewhat arbitrary to begin with, and in quite a few cases, it solely depends
on how a substance is used (and/or by whom) - ethanol is a prime example,
being used medicinally as a disinfectant and sometimes to treat methanol
poisoning. The recreational uses of ethanol are, of course, well known,
although the line between enjoying a good wine or whiskey or whatever
(something that is considered kind of sophisticated by some people) and making
a fool of yourself or even being an alcoholic is fairly fuzzy.

The situation is not entirely different for a number of prescription drugs.
Sometimes, the benefits of medicinal use are considered to outweigh the
possibility of "abuse" (as is the case with codeine, oxycontine, ketamine, a
number of benzodiazepines and so forth), sometimes the possibility of non-
medicinal use kind of poisons the well (heroin, psychedelics).

Personally, I think it is time to rethink the public policies on drugs.
Prohibition has been shown - repeatedly - not to work and to cause a number of
problems. Lifting the restrictions on many mind-altering substances would also
make it easier to evaluate their possible medicinal uses (and to actually put
those substances to use if they are found to be beneficial). Also, it would
allow society and politics to start viewing addiction and all the problems
that go along with it as a health issue rather than a law enforcement issue.
The only substantial difference between an alcoholic and a meth or heroin
addict is that alcohol is legal and that alcoholism is - to a degree -
tolerated (or ignored) by society.

~~~
Donzo
>>Prohibition has been shown - repeatedly - not to work

Unfortunately, those promoting the drug enforcement agenda do not care whether
it works. In fact, they are probably most familiar with the fact that it
doesn't "work" in the sense of healing social ills.

The way it does "work," however, is by giving purpose to large and politically
powerful organizations and structures, such as the prison industrial complex.

The fact of the matter is that without a war on drugs, effectively a war
against a subset of a nation's own citizens, there would be little
justification for large standing police forces in small towns. They need these
laws to give them something to do, as solving actual crimes with victims is
difficult. So, by some accounts, the war on drugs is "working" just fine.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Drug wars are nothing new. Its almost cyclic - drugs considered harmless,
followed by overuse and destroyed lives, followed by harsh campaigns
suppressing their use, followed by laws and 'wars'. When a generation gets
appalled at the inconsistencies in prosecution of what are now 'victimless'
crimes, rinse and repeat.

In the 1700's and 1800's these cycles were repeated; today we're where we are.
But now there are really effective drugs that are both less corrosive to
general health, and simultaneously shockingly addictive and dysfunctional.
We've upped the ante by 100X.

So where do we go from here? Suggestions? And 'repeat the cycle' is not going
to really solve anything.

~~~
Nursie
Allow modern science to develop drugs of recreation that minimise the
downsides. We have a far greater understanding of pharmacology and
Neuroscience now than ever before.

It would have to be done carefully - a pure market-based solution would likely
optimise for addictivity so other constraints may need to be imposed.

But for an example, have a look at some of Prof. David Nutt's propositions
about creating a less harmful alcohol substitute.

At the moment any research into making a 'better' recreational drug is highly
controversial. Particularly where harm reduction is concerned - many on the
'anti' side consider it a moral issue and reducing harm goes directly against
their sense of justice and punishment of those that transgress.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
I remember that syphilis was considered a just reward of the promiscuous.
There was much resistance to the idea of a cure. AIDS was considered by some
to be the judgement of God. Some things never change.

------
kendallpark
And in the case of heroin, yesterday's medicines are today's drugs.

~~~
makeset
Or cocaine, or ecstasy...

------
mikkom
And vice versa (see Heroin, MDMA, LSD...)

------
RankingMember
Welp, now I have a slight interest in making poppy water. I didn't know
quinine had those effects either.

~~~
josefresco
I think most reading the article had that same thought, which is why the
author didn't go into much detail on the preparation or exact process. Not
that this article was the place, but when you combine an intellectual audience
with the idea of mind altering substances your bound to pique some interest.

------
Alex3917
Although it's undoubtedly true that much of allopathic medicine is based on
religious superstition and racism, probably even more of the superstition
underlying western medicine comes from modernity, the patent system, and
arbitrary regulations.

~~~
gjm11
1\. "Allopathic" is a term used by some medical cranks to refer to real
medicine. (It simply means medicine that isn't based on the principle that
"like cures like", i.e., that a remedy for a disease with certain symptoms
will be something that causes those same symptoms. Since that principle is
bullshit, and cases where "like cures like" arise only rarely and by
coincidence, essentially all medicine is allopathic.)

2\. It is not undoubtedly true that much medicine is based on religious
superstition and racism (nor does the article linked here either make or
justify that claim). In particular, I doubt it. (Unless you take "much" to
mean something way too weak like "at least one instance".)

3\. It may well be true that "the patent system" and "arbitrary regulations"
have bad effects in western medicine. I see no reason to categorize those bad
effects as having anything to do with "superstition", nor have you given any.
Would you like to expand on your claims?

4\. "Modernity" is waaaaaaaay too broad a category for it to be useful to
blame things on. Again, would you like to say what you actually mean? Are you,
e.g., objecting to the idea that medical treatments should be evaluated by
scientific experiments that compare their effectiveness with that of
alternatives?

~~~
Alex3917
> "Allopathic" is a term used by some medical cranks to refer to real medicine

It's just a synonym for mainstream medicine, but one that specifically
highlights the assumptions underlying mainstream medicine. It's not a great
term, but it's probably the least worst alternative that exists... Other terms
like evidence-based medicine, western medicine, modern medicine, etc., are
inherently misleading or biased. E.g. the term 'evidence-based medicine'
presupposes the idea that mainstream medicine is mostly or entirely based on
evidence, 'modern medicine' presupposed the idea that everything outside of
mainstream medicine is inherently inferior, the phrase 'western medicine' is
hegemonic, etc.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Another post on HN yesterday shows that 'allopathic' medicine is deeply
fractured. Most follow the 'pastoral care' model where folks are kept
comfortable in a recreation of their normal environment. Instead of modeling
different care regimens and using statistics to choose treatments with the
best outcome. Individual medical professionals tend to use personal experience
alone in guiding their decisions. Medical researchers struggle to convince
them to try varied regimens so they can measure and prove what is best.

This schism is slowing down adoption of good treatment, as well as enshrining
pointless protocols far beyond the time they are known to be ineffective.

