Psychiatrists Still Promote Drug Use, Whether Legal or Not
There is an intimate connection between psychiatry and pharmaceuticals, each benefiting from the other financially. The drug companies pay the doctors to do clinical trials or for other research and promotion of new drugs to boost sales. In addition to the research funding, pharmaceutical manufacturers also promote the practice of psychiatric treatment by saying that people's problems are chemically driven and that it requires a chemical to fix it, neither one happens to be the truth.
Long gone is the approach of helping people by getting them to face their problems by confronting them and through communication. Now, it's 'a pill for every ill.'
This destructive connection, that is making billions of dollars annually from consumers and the federal government, has been in place for a long time and is still finding ways to promote drug use in society, whether the substance is legal or not.
The latest abhorrence comes from a psychiatrist in South Carolina who is using the illegal drug ecstasy (MDMA) in a study of people who've had difficult situations in life and are having trouble dealing with them, which if looked at closely enough could actually include the majority of the world's population at one point or another in their lives.
Ecstasy is a dangerous drug with psychedelic and amphetamine components and was first synthesized by a pharmaceutical company in the early 1900's. Though the drug was largely promoted by the psychiatric community for its 'therapeutic qualities,' it was finally made illegal in 1985.
Use of the drug in the United States surged around the turn of the century, but was recently reported by the Partnership for a Drug-Free America to have leveled off and is starting to decline. Though this is a good sign, president and CEO of the Partnership Steve Pasierb told CNN that more than half of the teenagers surveyed still see no great risk in trying the drug, which poses a big threat.
Narconon Arrowhead, a highly successful drug education and rehabilitation program based on the drug-free methodology of L. Ron Hubbard, agrees with the Partnership and continues to stress the fact that this drug is dangerous, and that all drugs have side effects. A spokesperson from the group says that the majority of the people under 25 that enter its rehabilitation facility from around the country have reported ecstasy use, regardless of what their drug of choice was.
Ecstasy is a Schedule I controlled substance by the Drug Enforcement Administration, meaning that it has been declared to have no medical use.
Ecstasy is extremely damaging and withdrawal symptoms include severe depression. Other side effects include hyperthermia, involuntary teeth clenching, altered perceptions and a false sense of empathy.
The question here is why won't the psychiatric community learn that all drugs are potentially poisons and that by encouraging society to use them is endangering the future of our civilization? For proof, one only needs to talk with someone lucky enough to have made it out from under the trap. Every person in America is affected by drug use, whether by paying for public health costs or due to themselves or a family member becoming addicted.
For more information about the Partnership for a Drug-Free America's teen survey visit www.drugfreeamerica.org. For more information about ecstasy or to get help for a loved one in need contact Narconon Arrowhead at 1-800-468-6933 or log on to www.ecstasyaddiction.com.
