> turtoni wrote:

>> On Aug 6, 2:53 pm, John Jones aol.com> wrote:

>>> turtoni wrote:

>

>>>> In our western culture we pretty much live as small individual family
>>>> units with many people living alone or with a partner and with often
>>>> little contact with other possible family members.
>>>> If we can accept that the body can become ill and that includes the
>>>> brain then we generally consult external people from our family units
>>>> that have studied an accumulation of information that has been
>>>> generated over thousands of years.
>>>> In our culture the most cost effective method to treat an illness is
>>>> often by ingesting chemicals that have been clinically studied over
>>>> decades of time.
>>>> Smoking tobacco and marijuana, drinking alcohol or taking LSD to treat
>>>> a mental illness does not appear to the best type of chemical options
>>>> available. In fact they often appear to be counter productive. Your
>>>> attraction to these types of methods likely stems from your
>>>> connections to your peer (family type) groups.
>>>> They might make you feel good in the short term but in the long term
>>>> those peer groups will move away and at best you might be left with a
>>>> few close friends or perhaps just a lover. Couple that with the fact
>>>> that with some of those substances being illegal you're also
>>>> endangering your future physical safety.
>>>> It might be true to say that mental illness in *some* instances could
>>>> be better treated by employing purely environmental factors like
>>>> having a very supportive understanding family unit helping the person
>>>> to get through the illness but in many cases this has proven to have
>>>> been ineffective and often impossible.
>>>> Taking mind altering chemicals that appear to provide the user with a
>>>> better lifestyle under a controlled situation (like in going to a
>>>> doctor) within the structure of our western culture would seem to our
>>>> way of dealing with these situations.
>>>> Most of us are not prepared to pay for the needs of others to provide
>>>> the very best form of care. That's just plain and simple the facts of
>>>> our culture.
>>>> Non chemical types of interaction are generally extremely expensive
>>>> and often (likely in part due to our cultural conditioning) the
>>>> patient proves to be non-compliant.
>>>> We're all often pretty self destructive. People have trouble in just
>>>> even eating the right types foods in order to remain healthy as just
>>>> one example.

>>> I can't begin to argue for the methods which work best for mental
>>> illness, because the term 'mental illness' is not a coherent idea; it is
>>> a catch-word for the conditions for the implemnntation of psychiatric
>>> medication regimes and other interventions. Even the psychiatrists are
>>> loathe to use the term against other cultures.

>

>>> It is not in the interest of these disease-mongers to understand
>>> experience and how it reflects human nature. It is merely sufficient to
>>> impose an information black-out by outing an 'illness'.

>

>>> Outing an ill experience doesn't mean that you have to understand
>>> anything about it. You only have to make it go away. This censorious
>>> attitude, which is after all a commercial ploy, is proving disastrous
>>> for vulnerable, gullible groups.

>

>>> LSD and other psychedelics like marijuana, work through entirely
>>> different pronciples. That is why psychiatrists have difficulty
>>> promoting them. They cannot be employed within the model of disease.

>

>> John you appear to be personifying your position in respect to widely
>> accepted various conditions of mental illnesses.

>

>> In order to rationally debate you on this subject you'd need to
>> provide me with details of *your* experiences.

>

>> Millions of people have shown signs and reported that they have a
>> better quality of life in the treatment of their mental illness.

>

>> Could you explain why you don't believe these treatments have been
>> effective from your own personal experiences.

>
> I don't think my position is unreasonable - it is more than likely that
> this society's promotion of disease as a useful tool for describing
> human experience will turn out to be a passing, and very curious,
> historical blip.
>
> There haven't been any treatments for "mental illness"; in much the same
> way as there haven't been any redemptions for "original sin", or
> succesful moral safe-guards against the demands of the "selfish gene".
> These three examples point to mythical entities or conditions which we
> have no reason to entertain or justify. IF the soul is immportal, then
> I, for one, would be glad that in future earths I didn't go along with
> what didn't make sense.
>
> While 'clinical' attempts to use LSD, ketamine, marijuana, etc, are
> still going on, they are always conducted through the model of disease
> and its associated ideas of the chemical 'magic bullet' and 'treatment
> regimens'. Another characteristic of the clinical approach is the
> refusal to acknowledge some of the most powerful and natural 'healing'
> methods that the body, and society, employ. e.g., hyperventilation and
> ritual. I have some knowledge of these.
>
> The alternative to the mechanics of the illness model of experience is
> to employ these drugs, ritual, or bodily methods as adventures in
> experience, as bringing people together, or as ways of entering
> experiential realms without the stigma of disease - an approach which is
> anathema to the clinician, and often punishable in law.