Why prohibitionism fanatics should stop obstructing research into psychoactive substances

Occasionally in life you get to meet one of your heroes. For me one of the great moments was the time I had the opportunity to meet Professor David Nutt, who is a neuropsychopharmacologist from the west country who was thrust into the media spotlight back in 2009 when the then Home Secretary Alan Johnson forced him out of his job as the government's leading "independent"* drugs advisor for daring to point out that certain prohibited substances like MDMA and cannabis are much less harmful and addictive than legal substances like alcohol and tobacco.

I admire David Nutt for the fact that he was prepared to stand up for his scientific research even though it cost him his job. Aside from his obvious integrity I also admire him because he's a leading expert in neuroscience, which is a field of study I'm fascinated by.

I remember Professor David Nutt decrying the massive obstacles put in the way of research into psychoactive substances by the ideological driven prohibitionists and their "war on drugs". He said that trying to conduct research into the brain without using psychoactive substances is like trying to conduct research into the cosmos without telescopes, or research into microbiology without a microscope.

Research findings

The astounding results of research that David Nutt and other scientific experts have conducted into substances like LSD, psilocybin mushrooms, DMT, ketamine and MDMA (in spite of all of the prohibitionist barriers to such research) provide a compelling case that Professor Nutt is absolutely right that psychoactive substances are vitally important tools for understanding the human brain.

Here are some of the fascinating findings over the last few years.

• University College London conducted brain scans on people using LSD. The results were incredible. David Nutt compared the findings to the discovery of the Higgs Boson in scale of importance.

• In 2014 King's College London did fMRI scans on people using psilocybin and found that the it creates a state of hyperconnectivity in the brain, causing areas of the brain that wouldn't normally connect to synchronise with each other.

• Modern meta-analysis of old LSD studies (that were carried out before the great purge of scientific investigation following prohibition of the drug in the 1960s) has found that there are good signs that LSD could be useful in treating alcohol addiction.

• Scientific research has shown that prohibited psychoactive substances like LSD and ketamine be used to effectively treat depression.

• A limited research study in 2012 found that MDMA could be an effective treatment for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. triggering a number of other studies. Experts believe that the US Food and Drug Administration could licence the use of MDMA for PTSD treatment by 2021.

• Research has shown that the drug Ibogaine (derived from the traditional medicinal plant iboga) is effective in treating opioid addiction. It has the added benefit of lessening the painful withdrawal symptoms too.

• An additional study of 135,000 people that didn't involve administering any psychoactive substances found that people with a history of psychedelic drug use are no more likely to suffer mental health problems than the general population.

The effect of ideological prohibitionism on scientific research

There are several ways that ideological prohibitionism interferes with scientific research into psychoactive substances. In many places research into proscribed drugs is simply banned. In other places like the US and the UK hugely expensive and time consuming bureaucratic barriers have been erected to deter scientific research.

Another way that the prohibitionist mentality obstructs legitimate scientific research is that most scientific funding organisations won't dare touch such research out of fear of the hysterical shrieking of the right-wing press damaging their public reputation. In a culture in which the drugs debate is dominated by those with the most hysterical voices, it's no surprise that the majority of scientific research into proscribed substances is reliant on the limited funds available from the likes of the Beckley Foundation.

Another way in which the political class are obstructing scientific research into the use of psychoactive substances as mental health treatments is the absurdly anti-scientific and unworkable Psychoactive Substances Bill that was voted into existence in January 2016 and will render all substances that produce a psychoactive effect illegal, even if they haven't even been discovered yet!

Now that we have a growing body of evidence that a large number of currently prohibited psychoactive substances have potential mental health benefits for millions of people who suffer conditions like depression, anxiety, addiction and PTSD, it becomes obvious that a political ideology that continues deliberately obstructing research into these substances is deeply immoral.

It's bad enough that the political establishment continue pushing a morality-not-science based mentality that if people ever begin using substances to have fun, those substances have got to be banned as soon as possible (whether there's evidence that they're harmful or not). But the real kicker is that the political establishment are not just denying people's liberty to have fun, they're preventing people with serious mental health conditions from accessing substances that could really help them.

Conclusion

Instead of concluding with my own opinion on the negative effects of the regressive anti-scientific ideology of the political establishment on legitimate scientific research into psychoactive substances, I'll leave the last word to a scientist who has conducted several of these fascinating research projects, despite all of the barriers put in place by the ideologically driven prohibitionism crowd.

"It would be nice if the government based their policy decisions on scientific evidence, and if they gave that primary consideration rather than secondary. Now they try and fit scientific data into their policies." - Robin Carhart-Harris

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* The reason I put the word "independent" in inverted commas is that if the government advisor can be forced out of his job for saying something that contradicts the prevailing ideology of the government, then they're clearly not independent at all.

Why dissent is positive

I was recently asked why I bother to complain so much beneath a protest image I'd created for Facebook. This is the comment:

"You're too angry and focused. Why? Has someone or something made you feel this resentment? I'm wondering, don't you have any good stuff, positive thoughts?

My initial response was; why is this guy trying to give me the "headshrinker treatment"? Not every motivation boils down to something that happened to us in the past. I consider much of the Freudian rooted "psychosciences" game to be a sham and a lucrative profit making opportunity above anything else. Of course our upbringing has some formative effect on who we are today, but raking through the past to try to identify incidents we can retrospectively assume are causal factors in our current behavioral tendencies, has always seemed like an abject waste of time to me. Past incidents certainly have an effect on who we have become, however I believe that attempts to establish direct causation simply reinforce the idea that our current behaviours are determined by our past circumstances, rather than our choices and actions in the present. More than that, once a causal narrative has been established, it is then easy for the individual to use such retrospective causation theories as justification techniques to excuse their current behaviour. 

I find it odd that someone would consider me worthy of impromptu "headshrinker analysis" for the fact that I complain, whilst so many others prefer to turn a blind eye to the environment of corruption and injustice they live in, or choose to carefully maintain a state of deliberate ignorance. Surely the psychosis of the masses is a more interesting (and important) subject than the motivation that drives some random blogger?

My second response was a reaction to the absurd snap judgement that I may have no life outside my protest activities. I do have a life outside of Another Angry Voice. I write other, explicitly positive things, I enjoy spending time with my family, I find pleasure in countless other activities too, such as photography, reading, teaching, film, good music, swimming, darts... But the most important thing, is that I thoroughly enjoy what I do here too. 

Critical analysis and dissent against tyranny may seem like burdensome occupations to many, but to me, there are fewer more positive feelings than having applied one's own critical judgement to form a conclusion that is entirely one's own, rather than having simply adopted something learned, derivative or crudely synthesised. 

To learn something new is a pleasure in itself, but to develop one's own idea is a greater pleasure still. It is a joy to think for ourselves, rather than accept at face value what we are told by the media or by "experts" but it is also a positive thing to take action. Boycotting a company that is engaged in unethical behavior, writing a blog post, attending a protest or creating a "Facebook meme" are positive things too. If we do nothing and simply allow the corruption and injustice to go on around us unchecked, this leads to feelings of resentment and despair. By attempting (in whatever small way we can manage) to change things, these feelings of frustration, despair and resentment are somewhat alleviated.

From a purely personal point of view, critical analysis and dissent (as opposed to intellectual laziness and lethargy) are overwhelmingly positive activities. One of the fundamental factors in depression is a feeling of powerlessness; an inability to change one's circumstances. However before we change our circumstances we must first change ourselves. Instead of allowing ourselves to get stuck in a negative loop, where we blame our past circumstances for our present condition or despair at our powerlessness to change our current circumstances, we must give ourselves the cognitive skills to break out of it.

Instead of allowing ourselves to sink into the pit of despair, fixate on the negative or traumatic experiences of the past or our perceived powerlessness in the present, we must recognise when we are allowing ourselves to slip into unconstructive thought processes or self-destructive coping strategies (alcoholism, over-eating, drug use, self-harm, lethargy ...) and break out of it. This is easier said than done, but it is achievable, myself and many other sufferers of depression have developed techniques to snap out of our depressive thought patterns, cognitive over-ride switches, if you like.

Instead of focusing on the trauma of the past, or the injustice of the present, we must focus on something constructive. Instead of fixating on our problems, we must make a conscious decision to focus upon what we can enjoy in the present and what steps we can take towards changing the circumstances that drive us to despair. This brings us back to protest and dissent. I enjoy critical analysis, to me it is a positive and rewarding pastime, and even though I am unlikely to ever change the world dramatically, by expressing myself in order to criticise corruption and injustice and to explain what I believe to be right, I am making a difference. I am making a difference within myself and I am making a difference to the thousands of people that read and share my work.

I think the problem with "protest" is that so many people see criticism and dissent as inherently negative things. They assume that you must be a negative person to in order to complain so much. But to complain about corruption and injustice is not negative. Protest and dissent are not inherently negative things because to protest against tyranny, corruption and injustice demonstrates an optimism that things should, and could be better.

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