Getting off the merry-go-round

Today's post is about the outcome of last week's election -- but a part of it you might not have heard about, given the media furore surrounding the race for president.

Last week Oregon became the first state to legalize psilocybin -- more commonly known as "magic mushrooms."

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Arp, Psilocybe semilanceata 6514, CC BY-SA 3.0]

The change came about because of a pair of bills, Measure 109 and Measure 110, which (respectively) made the use of psilocybin legal in a therapeutic setting, including for reasons of "personal growth" (i.e. not to treat a specific condition), and decriminalized the possession of small amounts of a wide range of drugs, making it a minor non-criminal offense on par with a traffic ticket.  I'm not going to get into the second measure, by far the more controversial, except to say that Portugal did the same thing in 2001, diverting the money that would have been spent prosecuting and jailing drug users into treatment programs, and saw voluntary addiction treatment rates rise, and drug use amongst adolescents and deaths due to overdose both decline precipitously.

But passage of the psilocybin measure made me say, "About damn time."  Psilocybin was declared a "Schedule I drug" in 1970, meaning it was claimed to have "a high potential for abuse," "no currently accepted medical use," and "a lack of accepted safety."

All of which, in fact, turned out to be false.  It's non-addictive, rarely if ever causes deleterious side effects, and its efficacy for treating depression has been known for years.  Study after study has come out providing evidence that psilocybin works; so many that it's beginning to sound like the studies disproving the vaccination/autism connection, repeating the same protocol over and over, getting the same result, and saying, "SEE, WE TOLD YOU, IT HAPPENED AGAIN.  BELIEVE US NOW?"

In fact, just last week a study came out in the Journal of the American Medical Association showing that one or two administrations of psilocybin, in a controlled setting, triggered remission of the symptoms of treatment-resistant major depressive disorder for months, possibly years.

This kind of thing is a godsend, because the current state of treatment methodologies for depression resembles a blindfolded game of darts.  I went through three years of considerable hell trying to find an antidepressant that (1) actually mitigated my depression, and (2) didn't give me miserable side effects.  The frustrating part is that an antidepressant that works brilliantly for one person might not work at all for someone else, and no one knows why.  The first two I tried, citalopram (Celexa) and escitalopram (Lexapro), both made me sleepy and completely wiped out my sex drive.  The second one, lamotrigine (Lamictal) gave me thermonuclear-level acid reflux.  The worst was sertraline (Zoloft), which I know is a game-changer for some people, but made me feel like I was at the middle of a neural lightning storm.  I couldn't sit still, couldn't sleep, and couldn't stop out-of-control thoughts that included suicidal ideation.

I got off that stuff fast.

I was on the verge of giving up, but my doctor recommended trying one more, bupropion (Welbutrin).  Welbutrin doesn't give me side effects, which is kind of awesome.  I wouldn't say it erases my depression -- none of them really do that, pretty much for anyone -- but it blunts the edge of the worst of it.  On Welbutrin I don't have the crashing lows I used to get, and have experienced with clocklike regularity every four or five months for pretty much my entire adult life.

On the other hand, if psilocybin works for you (which it does for the vast majority), it works.  People report complete remission of symptoms, something I can't honestly imagine.  Best of all, it only takes one dose to get long-term positive effects.  

I take Welbutrin every day; for me it's a maintenance med.  The idea that I could take one dose of something and get off the merry-go-round of self-medication, to be able to throw away the little orange bottle I have to carry around with me when I travel, is incredibly appealing.

I find it somewhere between absurd and appalling that the government has dragged its heels on decriminalizing psilocybin and authorizing its use as a therapeutic.  Okay, fine, regulate it; allow it only under a doctor's orders and a doctor's care.  We can argue about whether recreational drugs should be legal another time.  But here we have something that could dramatically improve the lives of an estimated eighteen million people in the United States -- about seven percent of the population -- addressing the main reason for the sky-high suicide rate, averaging one person choosing to end his/her own life every twelve minutes.

Would I try it?

Damn right I would.  In a heartbeat.

I know whereof I speak about this.  I'm lucky to be alive.  I attempted suicide twice, ages seventeen and twenty, only pulling back from going through with it at the last minute out of fear.  I had another serious period of pretty much continuous suicidal ideation in my mid-thirties, and that time was saved by the knowledge of what it would have done to my kids.  I still struggle some days, but with the love and care of my wife and friends, and a medication that takes away the deepest lows, I'm on an even keel most of the time.  But the worst of what I've experienced I wouldn't wish on anyone, and it's unconscionable that our government is creeping along in addressing a disorder that is a direct contributor to the horrifying statistic that suicide is the second leading cause of death in the United States of people between the ages of ten and twenty-four, and the tenth leading cause of death overall.

It's time to start pushing our leaders into doing something, into following Oregon's lead, and into getting correct information to voters that "decriminalizing drugs" doesn't mean "encouraging everyone to become an addict."  That all current Schedule I drugs aren't the same -- lumping heroin, marijuana, ecstasy, and psilocybin in the same category is somewhere between scientifically inaccurate and downright idiotic.  That people with major depressive disorder should have a choice to try something showing tremendous promise not as a maintenance treatment, but something damn close to a cure.

Please write letters, make calls, get involved.  It could change lives.  Hell, it could save lives.  And I'll end with doing something I rarely do: ask my readers to share this post.  Link it, retweet or repost it, email it.  The word needs to get out there.

If we can get one person out from under the black shadow of depression, help one person to step out into the light, it'll be worth it.

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This week's Skeptophilia book-of-the-week is about our much maligned and poorly-understood cousins, the Neanderthals.

In Rebecca Wragg Sykes's new book Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death, and Art we learn that our comic-book picture of these prehistoric relatives of Homo sapiens were far from the primitive, leopard-skin-wearing brutes depicted in movies and fiction.  They had culture -- they made amazingly evocative and sophisticated art, buried their dead with rituals we can still see traces of, and most likely had both music and language.  Interestingly, they interbred with more modern Homo sapiens over a long period of time -- DNA analysis of humans today show that a great many of us (myself included) carry around significant numbers of Neanderthal genetic markers.

It's a revealing look at our nearest recent relatives, who were the dominant primate species in the northern parts of Eurasia for a hundred thousand years.  If you want to find out more about these mysterious hominins -- some of whom were our direct ancestors -- you need to read Sykes's book.  It's brilliant.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Devil's advocate

New from the "Not Poe's Law" Department, we have: some evangelical Christians who are concerned that demons are now "legally allowed to be" in Denver, Colorado.

I'm not making this up, but I wish I was.  Christian Post, which is usually marginally sane even if virulently anti-LGBTQ, posted a piece last week by Brandon Showalter that expressed concern for the legalization of "magic mushrooms" in the city.  And the problem, Showalter says, isn't just over what people might do when they're high; it's that this makes it legal for demons to get in:

The city of Denver is set to decriminalize psychedelic mushrooms, a move a former drug addict says is opening the city up to demonic activity, just as it does in the life of a drug user...  Seattle-area restaurant manager Shannon Twogood, who is the incoming president of the ministry Hope for Addiction and Dependencies (HAD) in Gig Harbor, Washington, believes that the spiritual ramifications that come with the use of potent drugs are often absent in discussions about legalization...  Policies like what will likely be implemented in Colorado may help a few people but it fails to consider the larger picture for the community, and the social ills that are invited in as a result which will require cleaning up later, she stressed, adding that culture cannot open doors for the demonic realm under the guise of "care" for anything. 

The Greek word for sorcery in the Bible is "pharmakeia," from which the word pharmacy is derived. 

When Twogood learned that, it transformed how she saw drug use, particularly given how occult practices and witchcraft often involve the smoking of illicit substances or using them to make teas and potions that cause hallucination. 

She now teaches in prisons and centers for recovering addicts that it is important to understand that they are operating in the courtroom of heaven, that God is the judge and Jesus is our intercessor and advocate.  Until the sin of drug use is repented from, the demons are legally allowed to be there through the open door of drug use.

Well, first of all, let's clear up the etymological issue.  Yes, φάρμακον can mean "poison" or "enchanted potion."  The problem is, it also means "medicine," "drug," and "dye."  Implying that pharmaceuticals are somehow evil because the word root once meant "magic spell" is as idiotic as thinking that someone left-handed is sinister.  (Yes, that's actually the root of the word "sinister."  And, as much as it pains me to admit it, there are people who say we should avoid medications because pharmacies are literally sorcery -- based solely on the fact that they share a common etymology.)

The Temptation of Saint Anthony (Martin Schöngauer, ca. 1485) [Image is in the Public Domain]

But what puzzles me most about Showalter's article is the whole thing about demons being legally allowed to enter Denver.  Since when do demons care about laws?  Aren't they demons because they don't give a shit about sinning and breaking rules and so on?

Lucifer:  Ha ha!  We shall enter Milwaukee and possess its inhabitants!  They shall suffer the fires of hell! 

Beelzebub:  Um, boss?  We can't do that.  Milwaukee has a strict no-demon policy. 

Lucifer:  Dammit!  I hate it when that happens!  Perhaps we should attack Denver instead. 

Beelzebub:  No problem there.

In all seriousness, there's a piece of this that pisses me right off, and that's the implication that all illegal drugs are equally bad.  This is especially egregious in this case, because psilocybin -- the active ingredient in "magic mushrooms" -- has shown tremendous promise in ameliorating treatment-resistant depression.  As a person who has suffered from depression my whole adult life, and for whom medication and therapy have had equivocal results at best, I would take psilocybin in a heartbeat.  The idea that these people are adding yet another layer to peel back before the medical establishment will be able to use this chemical to help people for whom nothing else has worked is profoundly infuriating.

But there you have it.  The legalization of drugs and/or demons.  It's getting so I can't tell the actual websites these people create and the ones that are parodies.  Or maybe that's just the legal demons clouding my mind.  You can see how that could happen.

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When the brilliant British neurologist and author Oliver Sacks died in August of 2015, he was working on a collection of essays that delved into some of the deepest issues scientists consider: evolution, creativity, memory, time, and experience.  A year and a half ago, that collection was published under the title The River of Consciousness, and in it he explores those weighty topics with his characteristic humor, insight, and self-deprecating humility.

Those of us who were captivated by earlier works such as The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Musicophilia, Awakenings, and Everything in its Place will be thrilled by this book -- the last thoughts of one of the best thinkers of our time.

[Note:  If you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Governmental facepalms

Because we evidently needed another reason to facepalm over a Trump appointee, today we consider: John Fleming, assistant secretary for health technology at the Department of Health and Human Services.

Fleming has some decidedly peculiar ideas.  In his book Preventing Addiction: What Parents Must Know to Immunize Their Kids Against Drug and Alcohol Addiction, Fleming states that opiates are proof of the existence of god:

Were it not for these drugs, many common and miraculous surgeries would be impossible to either undergo or perform.  In my opinion this is no coincidence at all.  Only a higher power and intellect could have created a world in which substances like opiates grow naturally.

Which brings up a couple of troubling questions:

1. Why do these miracle substances intelligently created by a deity so often lead to addiction and the potential for overdose?
2. If opiates are a blessed gift from god because they "grow naturally," why are people of Fleming's stripe virtually all against the legalization of marijuana?  Seems like an intelligent deity's creation of marijuana could be argued not only from the standpoint that it "grows naturally," but because its consumption is so beneficial to the tortilla chip industry.

 It's a bit like Dr. Pangloss said in Voltaire's masterpiece Candide:

It is clear, said he, that things cannot be otherwise than they are, for since everything is made to serve an end, everything necessarily serves the best end.  Observe: noses were made to support spectacles, hence we have spectacles.  Legs, as anyone can plainly see, were made to be breeched, and so we have breeches...  Consequently, those who say everything is well are uttering mere stupidities; they should say everything is for the best.

When, of course, rather than giving us noses to support spectacles, god could just have given us all perfect eyesight rather than noses built to support spectacles.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

This, however, is not the only bizarre thing in Fleming's book.  He says there's a correlation between tattoos and drug addiction:

Body art comes into play in drug addiction as well, although obviously, not all who have a tattoo are addicts.  A sailor who gets a single tattoo on his arm or an adult woman who has a small butterfly tattooed on her lower abdomen are not necessarily drug addicts or even rebellious — just dumb, at least temporarily!...  When you see that your child has become interested in body art or has a fascination with the Goth or other subculture, then be on alert, because your child is likely headed into rebellion and possible drug experimentation.

So this makes me wonder how my two rather large tattoos haven't resulted in my being addicted to cocaine or something.  Despite the size and elaborate nature of my own body art, maybe I'm still in the category of "temporarily dumb."

Last, it turns out that Fleming himself might not have much right to point fingers about temporary stupidity, because he is one of the people who fell for the story in The Onion that Planned Parenthood was building an "$8 billion abortionplex."  Then, not having learned the lesson "if you're not smart enough to recognize satire and fake news, at least be smart enough to check your sources," he delivered a speech on the floor of Congress in 2013 to communicate the alarming news that the Department of Defense was starting to round up and court martial Christians so as to "create an atheist military."

Where, you might ask, did Fleming get this "information" from?

From Breitbart, of course.

So come on, folks.  Is it too much to ask to have a few government appointees who are competent, intelligent, and sane?  Because the ones we have now, in my dad's trenchant phrase, couldn't pour piss out of a boot if the instructions were printed on the heel.

Myself, I'm beginning to wonder if this is an elaborate experiment being run by alien scientists to see how long it takes us to figure out that the whole American government is some kind of huge put-on.  The question they're trying to answer is whether we'll just go along with it unquestioningly.  At some point, maybe they're expecting us to say, "Okay, ha-ha, very funny.  Game's up.  Come out of hiding, alien overlords, and give us back some semblance of normalcy."  I don't know how else you'd explain people like Fleming, not to mention Steve Bannon, who looks like he's spent the last ten years pouring Jack Daniels on his breakfast cereal.

Homeopathy, allopathy, and the right to prescribe drugs

New from the "This Is Seriously Not A Good Idea" department: the Indian Medical Association has just announced a decision to allow homeopathic "doctors" prescribe real medicines, i.e., substances that have actual therapeutically active compounds in them.

Not everyone is thrilled by this idea, fortunately.  Dr. Jayesh Lele, who is the secretary of the IMA's Maharashtra chapter, didn't sound particularly sanguine.  "We have gathered over thirty judgments delivered in various Indian courts, including the Supreme Court, that ruled against practitioners of alternative therapy prescribing allopathic medicines," Dr. Lele told The Times of India.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the terminology, "allopathy" means "real medical science."

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

You'd think that the homeopaths would be elated to have this kind of Official Seal of Approval.  After all, the fact that they're being allowed to prescribe actual medicines could be construed as some sort of vindication of their skills as healers by the powers-that-be.  But in an odd twist, not all of the homeopaths are happy with the decision.  "Dr." Shreepad Khadekar, a Mumbai homeopath, hinted that the ruling would dilute homeopathic practice, which I find so ironic that it should somehow be added to the Alanis Morissette song.

Khadekar said, "It is definitely the darkest period in a real homeopath's life.  Soon my science will become extinct, thanks to the unfortunate decision."

My response, predictably, is I doubt that we'll be that lucky.   Khadekar's "science" has thus far survived a concerted effort by the folks over at the James Randi Educational Foundation, not to mention a whole list of lawsuits against the manufacturers of homeopathic "remedies" and the charlatans who dispense them.  Of course, the situation in India adds a whole new layer of crazy to the topic; do we really trust people who don't understand the concept of serial dilution, Avogadro's limit, and the placebo effect to dispense real drugs correctly?  Individuals who in order to prop up their bizarre concept of how the body works have to resort to blathering about "energies" and "vibrations" and "quantum imprints?"

I mean, at least before, all they were handing out were vials of water and sugar pills.  Sure, they weren't curing diseases, but at least what they were giving you was harmless.

I have a dear friend whom I watched studying for the board exams to become a nurse practitioner -- the amount of information you have to have at your fingertips in order to decide which drug to prescribe, not to mention correctly calculating dosage, is absolutely immense.  So the folks over in India think it's a good idea to allow people to do that who evidently don't understand the fact that zero atoms of an active ingredient have no effect?

I don't see this ending well.

I find it amazing that this nonsense is still out there, given what we now understand about biochemistry.  Here in the United States homeopathic "remedies" are ubiquitous -- they're on the shelves in our local pharmacy, row upon row of glass vials containing nothing of value (but quite expensive, I feel obliged to point out).  But at least we haven't taken the further step of allowing the homeopaths themselves to have access to real drugs.  That, fortunately, is still the purview of people who have the educational background to know what they're doing.  If you're in India, though, and you fall ill -- well, all I can say is, make sure you ask what your medical service provider's background is before you take his or her advice, and beyond that, caveat emptor.