A Drug For Everything?
It seems like that is the way that we are headed. Clearly, there's an alarming trend toward medicalizing everything, even personality, and then making nearly every aspect of the human condition "treatable". Looked at from this standpoint, this is appalling. I believe strongly that people need to look deep within themselves and deal with what they find. Taking pills to cure a gambling problem keeps people from doing that. And, of course, it won't work. I hate the ads for drugs. They are creating conditions and then creating cures. It's madness.
But, I do feel that there are situations where the pharmaceutical industry has made important strides in saving human lives. It's not a very popular viewpoint, especially in the non-western health world, but I thank God for things like the polio vaccine having heard about my parents' lives as kids, and seeing pictures of gymanasiums filled with kids in iron lungs. It's easy to say, well we need to be comfortable with letting go. But, I feel very deeply the fundamental human impulse to heal and preserve lives. (I am pro-choice). Each person is truly precious, and if the pharmaceutical industry can come up with cures for things like polio, leukemia, other cancers, I'm all for it.
Raising Levels of Dopamine in Ourselves
Apparently, we can increase levels of dopamine in our brains if we think we are being injected with its precursors. I'm not surprised. It's been shown time and again that treatments are both positively and negatively affected by what we believe. What would be interesting would be if we could teach people to raise levels of dopamine without injecting them with anything. That would truly be self healing, and would result in an incredible sense of empowerment.
I think that so much of disease and poor health arises from a sense of powerlessness: a belief that our bodies are separate from us, like our cars or something. Therefore, there is a sense that they need to be cared for by doctors, the equivalent of the car mechanic. People don't think they can fix themselves; it's too complicated. So, they take the back seat. It's a vicious downward spiral into sickness.
How Did Chimps and Humans Diverge?
I think the most likely theory is the one that we read this week, specifically that the chimps and humans diverged more gradually rather than in one single event. Toumai, discovered in Chad, seems to represent a hybrid human-chimp creature that existed after the date that we believed that pre-human and chimp speciation occurred. Apparently, there was interbreeding creating creatures like Toumai, and modern humans emerged from one of those hybrid species.
So, pre-humans bred with chimps! No wonder evolution scares the ultra right so deeply. But, that's a subject for psychology...
3 comments:
I agree that some allopathic drugs and vaccines have become essential to our lives and am grateful for their existence. I too have heard horror stories about polio and measles from family and friends. However, when it comes to treating addictions with pharmaceutical medication, I am concerned and doubtful. Like you said, I think its an important part of healing to look inside and manifest the will power to overcome an addiction. How else would a person learn from such an experience? On the other hand, I think of my friend Nicky who just had a relapse with alcoholism. She has fought so hard, pursued therapy, AA, rehab, etc. with short-term success only. I don't think a pill, however, is going to take away the demons she struggles with. There is a part of me that wishes such a pill could help her truly heal, but healing comes over the course of a lifetime.
I agree with your thoughts on 'drugs for everything', especially the comment on the plethora of ads for pharmaceuticals. I am always amazed when I see them, how the industry is literally marketing drugs in order to get more people to BUY them. Of course, the exposure can be significant. Should someone not be aware there is a new drug for arthritic pain and it happens to be on TV during primetime, then perhaps that person will have a conversation about it with their PCP. However, what gets me every time is the subtle, baritone voice at the end of the commercials with warnings and side effects! They are always so absurd and shocking... as long as the shooting pain in your arms has diminished, then don't worry about the nausea, vomit, blurry vision, palpitations and insomnia. The pain is gone! Frightening, really.
Healing comes through a reconnection with oneself; one's own loving self that it forever and deeply interconnected to all people and things and times and spaces...
I always am reminded of the amazing success doctors had with LSD in the 50s and 60s with alcoholism - it wasn't that the chemicals rearranged peoples' body chemistry to remove their addiction, it was that they had an experience of themself and reality that made them realize how horribly wasteful their old way of being had been and how beautiful and empowering their life could be. It is all regulated by our MINDS and is manifest in various levels of our selves - psyche, physical bodies, and subtle bodies.
The mind is the navigational tool through the process that we must engage in in order to experience transformation. Taking a pill is disempowering, especially if it doesn't work; we are told that we can't do anything to heal ourselves and that we are hopeless without medication and that we need to take this in order to be fixed.
Of course, this is more true with regard to psychological illness... which is often the root of physical illness, but I think this misunderstanding is what leads us to where we are.
I do agree about the amazing benefit from discoveries of chemicals that have cured painful diseases - this is a powerful and amazing way to bring about healing.
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