The Global Conversation

Tag: dis-ease

  • The war on drugs

    (This week’s Addiction & Recovery column is hosting a guest article written and contributed by Mary Warner.)

    If only the symptoms of a disease are treated, the victim may feel better for a while, but the symptoms will eventually return because the disease was not cured.
    One cannot cure the dis-ease of illegal drug use by trying to eliminate drugs. The cause must be found and eliminated. “The real question is why are millions of people so unhappy, so bored, so unfulfilled that they are willing to drink, snort, inject, or inhale any substance that might blot out reality and give them a bit of temporary relief?” (Ann Landers, syndicated columnist)

    The cause can be discovered by talking respectfully and nonjudgmentally to drug users and listening to how they feel (perceiving the feelings behind the words) and to what they believe.

    The cause and cure can be discovered by caring and by putting ourself in another’s place, imagining what we would do if we had the same experiences, the same educational background, and the same beliefs as the illegal drug user and then treating others as we would want to be treated if we were in someone else’ shoes.

    Drug abuse by young people could be eliminated by respecting our children, paying attention to them, treating them the way we want them to treat us, and educating them about using drugs – telling them what to expect, letting them know the consequences of their actions (aside from being punished) and trusting them to make the right decision, and by setting the example that we want them to follow.

    Children learn the right way to live by watching the behavior of the older people whom they respect and look up to and following the example that is set for them. If they see these people using cold medicine, painkillers, tranquilizers, sleeping pills, diet pills, alcohol, and tobacco, they learn that using drugs is the right thing to do.

    If children are not trusted to think for themselves, after having been told what to expect, the consequences of their actions, and after observing the right example set for them by their respected elders, they feel powerless. They may deliberately use something that they know will harm them. They might think that if they do, then at least they will feel powerful and accepted for a moment, or they won’t care, or they will hope that someone will understand how they feel and make their life all right for them.

    A feeling of powerlessness often leads people to rebel and deliberately choose the very thing they have been told to not choose (at best) or it leads to violence. It has been said that over half of the murders committed in this country are committed by people between the ages of 14 and 21.

    The cause of the dis-ease of selling drugs is the mistaken belief that money and material things will bring power, happiness, and satisfaction. This belief is the result of an education that is lacking in spiritual values, such as the kind of education that is forced upon children in public schools. The belief is further fed by advertisements and TV commercials.

    Making it illegal to sell drugs is not a cure, obviously. It makes the problem worse, just as it did with alcohol prohibition, by creating the opportunity for criminal hangs to make huge profits. Then gangsters kill each other (and many innocent bystanders) to protect their territories/markets and pay police and judges to not prosecute them. They adulterate their drugs in order to make more money, consequently causing injury and death to the users who will not protect themselves or get help because they know they are breaking the law and are afraid of punishment.

    Putting people in prison for using drugs is not a cure, obviously. According to an inmate at the Federal Correctional Institution in El Reno, Oklahoma, drugs are readily available in prisons.

    Punishing people for trying to make it in life the best way they know how – trying to pursue happiness – is against the Declaration of Independence and is inhumane. “If even a small fraction of the money we now spend on trying to enforce drug prohibition were devoted to treatment and drug rehabilitation, in an atmosphere of compassion, not punishment, the reduction in drug usage and in the harm done to users would be dramatic.” (Milton Friedman, Nobel Prize Winner, Economics)  Today’s illegal drugs were legal before 1914. Cocaine was in the original recipe for Coca-Cola. Drugs were not a problem. Addiction was treated as a health issue and not a crime.

    (Mary Warner is an aging (or perhaps “aged”) flower child/”hippie.” She lives with her husband in a 420-square-foot cabin in the woods with a black and white fur-ball and a black lab where she is creating a garden paradise.)

  • Moving from ‘fight or flight’ to ‘love and light’

    (This article was contributed by Guest Author Herby Bell, DC)

    After watching the militant Muslim reaction around the world — the purely insane response to a substandard film created by another fanatic about God knows what — I got to thinking about a startling analogy.

    I’m in the healthcare business.  My biggest competitor is the sick care business, and here’s how it works (and stay with me–I’ll connect the dots):

    We have an innate genetic intelligence that responds in a healthy way to whatever is in the environment.  Our environment has become increasingly deficient and toxic in terms of the water we drink to the air we breathe, along with countless other modern living stressors.  Accordingly, our body’s healthy, genetic response is to place us in a state of “fight or flight” in order to survive.

    The problem arises when this fight-or-flight state of being becomes the rule, rather than the exception, due to the ever-present and increasing environmental stressors. Dis-ease and ultimately disease ensue.  Maybe you’ve heard mention lately of addiction, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, osteoporosis, fibromyalgia, depression, fatigue, decreased sex drive, anxiety, obesity, indigestion, lack of sleep…etc., etc.

    All of us are in some state of fight or flight, more often than not, when living in this culture–in this world.  Instead of decreasing the stress and improving adaptability by being taught to eat well, move well, and think well — the health care business — we are carpet bombed by literally dozens of sound bytes and video images per day about “taking” something to “kill” the pain or to trick our bodies out of their pristine, invariably reliable intelligence — the sick care business.

    Recently I gave lectures about this well-documented stress response to a local high school human biology department.  I asked the students to close their eyes as I played the audio only, including the side effects disclaimer of one of the drug commercials we hear on television, day in and day out.  The students reported that they did not even listen to or hear the words anymore, that it had become just background noise. The pretty images on television stick and the devastating side effects get reduced to white noise.  Good news for the sick care business, a subliminal auto suggestion marketing vehicle that pays off handsomely.  Repetition is the mother of all invention…

    All right, now back to the militant Muslims.  If the human ecosystem is barraged with stress and its correct and healthy response is to develop chronic lifestyle diseases, doesn’t it stand to reason that the collective ecosystems or the culture –any culture — is susceptible to the same reaction after being inundated with sick propaganda–here, there, everywhere!–and certain factions of that culture, like a neoplastic growth in cancer, will react in that deadly, perhaps unpredictable, but inevitable way?  It’s happening.

    We have to stop kidding ourselves.  The world is in a chronic state of fight or flight.  THE SICK CARE INDUSTRY IS NOT HELPING. Let’s teach our kids to eat well, to move well, and to think well and decrease our stress while bolstering our immune systems instead of waiting for some magic pill or potion to come along to save us.

    Let’s be honest that the preventable, man-made atrocities and insanity all around the world are directly related to how well a culture’s individuals are caring for themselves, how well they are eating, moving, and thinking.

    Let’s get out of the sick care business and into the health care business.  The well-being of the world may just depend upon it.  Let’s move from fight or flight to love and light.

    (Dr. Herby Bell is owner and director of Recovery Health Care, an integrated approach to addiction treatment in Redwood City, California. For more information please call 650 474 2121 or email:  herbybell@me.com.)