Surprise! The Media Doesn't Understand Why People Take LSD
In medical practice, the term "drug abuse" is typically understood to describe habitual consumption with harmful consequences to the user. It's also sometimes used to describe non-therapeutic or unintended use of a medical drug. But when it comes to illegal substances, the press routinely -- and ignorantly – calls it full-blown "drug abuse," even if you try the substance just one time.
Here's the latest example from a CBS News story about LSD:
In 2009, the last time data was taken, 779,000 Americans age 12 and older said they had abused LSD at least once in the previous year.
I have a feeling that very few of these 779,000 people would consider themselves drug abusers. It says right there that you only had to drop acid one time in '09 to get counted, and as far as I'm concerned, doing acid one time doesn't make you much of a drug abuser. If it did, then we'd have to come up with a whole new term for some of the people I've had the good fortune of encountering at Burning Man, or for that matter, liberal arts college.
But as silly as all of this is, it gets worse when you take the context into account. The above quote, tragically, is actually the last line contained in this otherwise interesting article:
LSD should be considered for alcoholism treatment, study says
(CBS News) Decades ago, researchers would examine LSD's effects on various health conditions including pain, anxiety, and alcoholism. A new study suggests it might be time to revisit the mind-altering drug's therapeutic uses. The study found lysergic acid diethylamide, also known as acid, could help serious alcoholics sober up…
What we have here is entire article that goes on for several paragraphs about renewed scientific interest in the therapeutic benefits of LSD, only to conclude by implying idiotically that every single LSD user in the country is a drug abuser. Did it not occur to the author that some – perhaps a substantial portion – of the people using LSD were doing so for the same sort of therapeutic purposes being studied by these scientists? If the drug is in fact beneficial, then maybe, just maybe, people could be using for its benefits rather than as part of a pattern of abuse?
Seriously, this isn't even complicated. If CBS News has a hard time grasping the concept of beneficial, non-abusive drug use, my first recommendation would be to reread the first 8 paragraphs of their own article.
Hello! This is not a
Hello! This is not a surprise. The media knows what they are doing. ANY illegal drug is considered abuse in the system, even against science and reason. It's called a PSYOP. It is hard selling the public that any association with illegal drugs constitutes addiction and abuse. Period. They do not want the public to learn the truth.
Bad Image Association
Using the word ‘abuse’ brings to mind images of indifference, harassment and violence. So does abusing a drug mean someone let their weed get all wet and moldy? Did some bad-parent chemist neglect a drug during its formative moments in the test tube? Did someone attack their drug with a stick? Certainly no decent drug user would abuse their drugs in this way.
The CBS News piece infers that merely taking a drug prohibited by know-nothing twits and authoritarian fear-mongers automatically makes it abuse. But how could CBS know this? They didn’t even bother to check with their staff reporters to find out if they abused themselves the last time they took LSD. At least no one spoke up. Seems like any competent journalism is done on the blogs.
Giordano
cbs like all corporate news
cbs like all corporate news outfits puts out propaganda, not journalism, on all topics, not just 'drugs'.
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OT:
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Jeff
What's new
TV producers also don't get certain things. In an episode of "Criminal Minds", the team remarked that a suspect had a marijuana addiction.
I thought marijuana was not addictive.
MJ=non addictive. But let's
why ?
LSD is illegal because it is anti-war . People on LSD don`t want to kill other people . Very simple . LSD use promotes peace and not war . Our government is pro-war . War propaganda is much more effective on drunks than users of LSD . LSD is also not addictive .
Albert and me
When my wife and I had the good fortune to spend a long afternoon with Albert Hofmann and his wife Anita in their lovely Swiss home back in 2003, Albert told me what he considered to be the proper medicinal use for LSD. He recommended LSD be taken medicinally 3 times: first at around 20 years of age, again in your 40s and, lastly, as you entered your golden years. This regime would, Albert believed, keep everyone sane and the world safer.
I thought about that for a moment and said, well, what about those of us - and I included Albert - that have taken LSD considerably more often? He grinned a bit and replied that I had only asked his opinion on medicinal use... Albert was 97 when we met, and still sharp as a tack. We met again in Basel on his 100th birthday, and remained pen pals til his passing. The original tripster was quite the dude.
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