Sorry Buors, but debating with you is like trying to dance with someone who’s on the other side of the room.

So far you have not presented any valid research supporting your claims. You only use quotes, no research. The quotes you do place are most often lengthy, irrelevant and at least 50 years old. Most of your “evidence” is anecdotal. Also, you have a knack for dropping random opinions without support or explanation. In response to the explanations I provided about the biology behind drugs, you simply shut it down by claiming you don’t believe in biology. Beliefs are just beliefs, Chris. And you use comparisons as a main point sometimes. Comparisons aren’t proofs-sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

And I often find myself wondering if you even read replies or just skim the intro and start shooting. This is a long reply, but I’m seriously annoyed with all this turning into circles.

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Well that's very commendable for you.

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Mock me if you will, but do not avoid the subject. Do you see the difference? Answer the question. And I assure you the best name-caller does not “win” the argument.

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The long term affects of alcohol use are well understood.

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And? I can’t guess why you placed this. Are you saying there is no biology to long-term alcohol abuse?

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It is my information that the Neatherlands has retirement homes for heroin users with 40+ years experiance.

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Again-and?

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It was my understanding that the Ledain Comission and other reported that the long term biological effects of long term opiate use were negliable. Pure opiates are relatively harmless is what I understand the science to be.

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So why are you calling opiate chronic users “immoral” if it is so harmless? Explain how this reinforces your point.

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The moral judgement change we can see happening before our very eyes to the smokers.

There was strong support for anti-smoking laws everywhere for a reason. People passed moral judgment on the tobacco habit and the image of the smoker went from suave to stinker.

There's no biological forces in any of that.

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Well, you said it, there are no biological forces in that. You are referring to the fact that it’s now fashionable to bash smokers? Yes, you are correct, that is social. That pendulum swings back and forth.

1612: In Japan, Shogun punished smokers by giving their property to the rat who ratted them out.
1633: In Constantinople, Sultan Murad IV, punished smoking with the death penalty.
1633: In Russia, the Csar ordered that smokers receive a savage beating and get their noses cut off. (Beyerstein, 2006)

And guess what? People STILL smoked. The only marked difference when a drug gets unfashionable in the media is that less rich people and more poor people use it, thus it becomes highly regulated, because poor people can’t regulate their own affairs in the eyes of the government. But that’s another story.

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What drugs do to people is not a very controversial subject. The textbooks are called pharmacology and there are specialist who are known as pharmacists who have specialized knowlege of which drugs do what.

Those persons understand the biology behind drugs mixtures and blood reactions etc.

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Actually you have said the exact opposite on page 13:

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I don't see the need for a degree in cellular biology when Dr. Szasz refutes the notion at the base level. Dr. Szasz understands all the pharmacopsychaitry nonsense too.

Dr. Szasz's arguements in favor of moral liberty are simply more pursuasive to me than bullshit you tried to baffle me with.

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Here, not only do you claim psychiatrists know cellular biology of the brain, which is absolutely incorrect; you claim cellular biology has been refuted at a base level.

And (p13) you contradict yourself again twice:

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Bottom line, drugs act on our bodies, not our morals.

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And (p14) you quote Szazs:

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Drugs act on the body, not our moral sense. (OPIATE OF THE MASSES)

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But still you claim he is taking a moral stance on drugs! Buors, you are all over the place. I do not know if it is poor writing or if you have simply since changed your mind acouple of times, but I can’t guess what you are trying to express unless you are thorough and consistent.

I will resume with my exercise…

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None of that changes how the drugs get into peoples systems or why they use them in the first reason. And none of it affects how the drugs get out of peoples systems, they get out when people decide to quit putting them in.

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That we could have talked about if you were not so busy about bashing/praising biology. My problem in terns of that premise is that I find it difficult to believe that people only use drugs for pleasure. That is an old stereotype, which cons the average Joe into thinking pharmaceuticals are for feeling better, but illegal drugs are for having fun. Not that simple. I’ve seen people use various drugs for various reasons. – to learn or gain wisdom, to make contact with a deeper reality, to escape from bleak, boring, or threatening everyday reality, for fun/pleasure, to enhance an experience, to alleviating pain or hunger, enhancing alertness or performance, to stay awake, to modulate pain, symptomatic relief, and the list goes on and on.

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I'll go you one better than Alexander drugs to cope argument…

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Huh?

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Szasz says people use these drugs for reasons that are important to them. The important point being that logical reasoning and not voodoo forces or any disease has the individual under it's ravages.

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Again, comparing a theory with something ridiculous is cheap and has no weight. Politicians for you.

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There are cultures where people are very poor and they don't steal as a rule.

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Which ones? What data backs that up? Where did you hear that?

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So the rats exercize some degree of judgement. Only one rat could pass moral judgement on whether they thought other rats were consuming just the right amount or too much of that magic elixer.

There must of been one rat who didn't like morophine at all. Some likely took more than others to determine a normal range. So what did the light or non using rats think of the heavier and heaviest users?

Lots of social forces would come into play. Are the pups going without because Mama an Papa are in the heavy catagory? What if Ma rat and Pa rat consume differing amounts, is there social conflict? Two rats of a feather are unlikely to conflict over heavy use if they are both.

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So not only are rats moralizers, they have concrete thoughts about each other?

hey mel, you forgot one

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Everybody knows the results of a lobotomy so physical brain damage has never been the issue.

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So here you have no problem accepting that change due to brain damage influences cognition and morals, right?

But you argue that physical processes are not a part of your "moral reasoning" when it comes to the changes in cognition influenced by substances. Drugs cause physical change inside the brain the same way brain damage does -- I can shoot you full of sodium amobarbital into left carotid and take out your entire ipsilateral hemisphere like a lightbulb, temporarily. You won't be able to speak and you'll have retro- and anterograde amnesia, contralateral hemiplegia, hemineglect. Your thoughts will be a mess for about 40 minutes. You will have those symptoms because of strictly physiological causes. Oh no, wait, you just don't have enough "moral fibre" to turn on your left hemisphere.

You think amphetamines are any different in the mesolimbic forebrain and nigrostriatal pathways? No! It's the same thing -- physical modulation of consciousness. By the way, ever had PCP? Maybe you should try it, and videotape yourself. You'll be surprised how your "morality" will change.

In the concrete jungle, judge and be prepared to be judged is the law. I get to make the judgement call of who I like and who I don't.

I just never liked a single needle user that ever crossed my path. Whenever the situation presented itself where people were using needles, I left.

I didn't want to join them, look at them, be thier friend, understand them, make love to them, nothing. I just wanted to leave and leave I did. Now if you want to hang with needle abusers that's your business, I got no use for them. I don't want to know them. I, in my personal opinion think it is immoral to throw you life away like that. As one human being that is my personal morality making that judgement on other human beings. But that is just me. I found needle users were heavy duty seriously fucked ip people. Not my cup of tea. You can hang out with them if you like but I got other people I prefer to hang with. Is that not a moral choice I'm entitled to?

I don't like the Biker type much either. Hang with them and you are likely to end up in a punch up. Avoid their company and the chances of trouble with them greatly diminish...right down to a chance encounter. But you can hang with Bikers all you want if that's your bag. I'm told if your a good fighter and like to hurt people, they are just the crowd for you, but I'll let you make your moral judgements and I'll make mine.

Addiction is a Choice is dated 2000.

http://www.schaler.net/addictionisachoice/index.html

The debatedebates referance is 1998.

The Ron Liefer piece was delievered in 2002.

None of that is 50 years. Ceremonial Chemistry 1974 is backed by Our Right to Drugs written in 1994.

So all of that is relatively new.

Szasz never writes a book unless he believes that those in possession of the field are wrong.

There are non biological reasons people drink. Schaler covers it in Addiction is a choice. Social setting and not biology is why people end as drunks.

I'm starting to think it is you with the comprehesion problem.

There is a world of difference between biology and psychopharmacology. And psychoneurology gets in there too.

Like studying holy water to see what draws people down to the church was the central point to it all.

I see my points as quite consitant throughout this debate and it is you who are trying to discredit my reading comprehension.

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What drugs do to people is not a very controversial subject. The textbooks are called pharmacology and there are specialist who are known as pharmacists who have specialized knowlege of which drugs do what.

Those persons understand the biology behind drugs mixtures and blood reactions etc.


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Actually you have said the exact opposite on page 13:


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I don't see the need for a degree in cellular biology when Dr. Szasz refutes the notion at the base level. Dr. Szasz understands all the pharmacopsychaitry nonsense too.

Dr. Szasz's arguements in favor of moral liberty are simply more pursuasive to me than bullshit you tried to baffle me with.


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Here, not only do you claim psychiatrists know cellular biology of the brain, which is absolutely incorrect; you claim cellular biology has been refuted at a base level.

And (p13) you contradict yourself again twice:


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Bottom line, drugs act on our bodies, not our morals.


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And (p14) you quote Szazs:


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Drugs act on the body, not our moral sense. (OPIATE OF THE MASSES)


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But still you claim he is taking a moral stance on drugs! Buors, you are all over the place. I do not know if it is poor writing or if you have simply since changed your mind acouple of times, but I can’t guess what you are trying to express unless you are thorough and consistent

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Wrong you are in what you attribute to Szasz. Szasz never has stated his personal opinion of drug users, though he has stated for the record that he has never smoked marijuana.

The arguements Szasz makes are that so-called addicts are moral agents. They have the ability to make decisions.

That is what the Moral model is and I have stated that at least 5 times now. Yet my detractors keep coming back to point to my personal opinion of what I call bums as the model itself. Why are you doing that when clearly I have made the case that the Moral model means even addicts have the ability to choose?

The Moral Model does not mean passing moral judgement, it means we accept that the so-called addict is a moral agent capable of making decsions.

They are not controlled by external forces, demons, drugs in or out of their systems. They are controlled by their own morals. They are moral agents.

Next, lets be clear that psychiatrists, including Szasz are medical doctors first, so they are not totally ignorant of cellular biology.

My claim is and always was that brain and body cells or any of their secretions as Schaler wrote in the You Robot piece have anything to do with why a person chooses to use drugs. The personal morality of the individual has a lot more to do with whether or not they will be shoving needles into their arms and all their other actions too.

Pleasure is not the only reason people use drugs. To avoid pain, to search for the truth, just to experiment etc. With the list you had it looks like we can conclude that Szasz was right, There are just as many reasons as there are people who use drugs or holy water for that matter.

The culture that don't steal were something I picked up on a show about the Inca coca leaf chewers.

So it was something on the South American Native Culture and the coca plant presented in the context of Evo Morales so it must have been one of the Indiginous Bolivians peoples who strongly frowned on theft and were very poor by our standards and had drugs everywhere in their midst that didn't cahnge any of it.



The Rat Park stuff is to project human qualities on rats.

But the parameters I used are universal.

no no no i already asked him about PCP and he went on about how hes a good little boy and never did drugs......i love how the people with opinions on this ie. him and his "quote buddies" szas or whatever the shit his name is, have never tried hard drugs, and have never dealt with addiction. its absurd that someone who has never done more than 5 lines of coke would even THINK they know what they hell is going on in the brain of a cokehead.
did you know that psychiatrists here in canada in the 40's and 50's were testing LSD on themselves so they could "see" what the schizophrenic was seeing. i just thought that was neat because i am paranoid schizophrenia and have taken what terrance mckenna would call a "heroic" amount of hits, and i do see the peak of a 10 hit acid trip being like an attack of paranoid delusion. fun stuff. lets make more threads where i can argue with people about how god doesnt exist and religion is bunch of bullshit!! we need more threads like that!

thats a very good point skitzo420, would you trust a car salesman who has never had a driver's license?

The reason i was talking about PCP is that this drug is now believed to be a much better model for symptoms (primarily negative) of disorganized subtypes of schizophrenia-spectrum disorders. And since Mr. C.B. admitted that true pathology can in fact influence moral cognition, I'd like him to experience the "next best thing" -- hearing voices and holding the delicate balance of good and evil on his lap, frozen in a peculiar pose on the edge of the chair, sweating. But wait, he'll argue that schizophrenia doesn't exist either.

I never noticed much difference past 10 hits of acid -- maybe the afterglow mindfuck lasts a bit longer, but then again, what does time matter, eh? Join us, Chris, get some experience in your field of study!

I'm up for it. Geez, we are what, only 3 science freaks? Bah I'm sure we can put up a good fight.

I also heard a lot of people in the field are starting to think that PCP models schizophrenia better than acid. Damn I'd beleive it.

And yes, goody goodies make poor drug theorists, but that Szazs guy actually doesn't say what Buors says at all, I actually put up a couple instances where Szazs claims there's no denying the biology of drugs. Strait from Buors' own citations too, heheh. To no avail of course, just got accused of twisting his words.

I'll try to dig them up for you its pretty funny actually.

Hilarious, these quotes are all from Buors’ own citations of Szazs, I'm not shit'n:

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Drugs act on the body, not our moral sense. (OPIATE OF THE MASSES)

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Regardless of how a chemical substance gets into a person’s body (…) that substance will have certain effects which we can understand better, and mitigate more successfully, if we rely on pharmacological knowledge and methods. All this is obvious.

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The toxilogical effects of drugs thus belongs properly to a discussion of other biological effects, as do the pharmacological and other measures useful for counteracting their toxicity; whereas the social and legal interventions imposed on persons called “drug abusers” or “drug addicts” have no legitimate place at all in textbooks of pharmacology.

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Contradiction?

Because Szasz points to the Pharmacopedia where we find all the biologicals studies?

Then Szasz critizes the Pharmacologists for including chapters on addicition saying it would be like oraginc chemistry studing holy water to determine why people hold religious beliefs?

The "biology" of what drugs do is relatively uncontroversial.

How drugs end up in peoples systems is where all the arguements are.

I have said that and pointed out in black and white too.

So there is plenty of reasoned arguement to make the case that addiction is junk science to say the least.

I challanged you to critique the Jennifer Tooley piece chapter by chapter and tell me where she was wrong.

Not a peep.

You have never answered a single challange and I have bested your arguements every time.

Rethoric is all you have for a weapon.

I quoted Schaler on the Lee Robins and Canadain Physchaitry studies done in 1973 and peer reviewed.

Bruce Alexander mentions of number of studies refuting the medical model.

You claim science as your guide, yet did not refute a single conclusion those studies reached.

Not one chemical forumla was forwarded as proof positive that drug a interacting with blood gives an animal attraction as seen by this formula.

None of that exists.

I challange anyone of my detractors to critique

Demon Drugs and Holy Wars.

http://www.cfdp.ca/thesis.htm

Chapter by chapter tell me where the errors are.

Tooley has done all the research. Quotes all her sources and makes a better arguement on what addiction is and is not than any psychopharmacologist ever did.

Make my day mel, shut my mouth for good. You heard that challange before but declined, why?

Afraid of the information Tooley presents?

Drugs can do enormus brain damage and damage to other vital organs too.

The moral issue is whether I let you shoot me full of whatever drugs. No one argues the effects. But you might have to fight me to get a syringe of the stuff into me but I will reject its use on moral grounds. I don't want to take the chance thanks. Saying no is a moral decision.

What is so tough to understand about that?

How does PCP get into people systems. I won't argue that it should be called dummy dust for a good reason.

Forcing it on me would be immoral and I don't have any use for the stuff so how will it end up in my system unless I choose to make a moral decision to use it?

How do amphetamines get into people's systems?

Sodium cynide will kill you, I have never argue about what drugs or alcohol do, alcohol lowers inhibitions, everybody knows that.

What I'm not seeing here is the scientific formula of how alcohol, heorin, cocaine, heroin, cannabis and methampthetamies or anything else you care to mention ends up in peoples systems?

There is either something supernatural in the substance that overpowers peoples will or they choose to use them.

I don't believe in supernatural forces like voodoo or addiction making people do things against their will so I say people choose to use drugs and the chemical formulas have nothing to do with any of that.

Not at all.

You take 3 different contexts and post them all together as if they were all on the same issue.

For instance you cherry pick one line from this letter. I challange you to critique it line by line telling us where Szasz is wrong in the context he speaks in.

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OPIATE OF THE MASSES


Erik Baard's "The Guilt-Free Soldier" [January 22-28] warns about the latest breakthrough in psychopharmacology, a pill that dissolves the moral sense: "Every value he learned as a boy tells him to back down, to return to base and find another way of routing the enemy. Or, he reasons, he could complete the task and rush back to start popping pills that can, over the course of two weeks, immunize him against a lifetime of crushing remorse."

This piece of pharmaco-mythology, characteristic of our age, is extraordinarily naive. Drugs act on the body, not our moral sense. Scientists will never develop a drug that will annul our moral sense. Nor need they do so. Such a drug was discovered thousands of years ago and has been successfully used by people everywhere: It is called "religion." Clergymen confidently assure combatants on all sides-Israelis and Palestinians, Americans and Iraqis-that God is on their side. This has successfully tranquilized billions throughout history and there is no evidence that the power of this "drug" is waning. To the contrary, it is becoming more powerful before our very eyes.


Thomas Szasz, M.D.
Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus
Upstate Medical University
State University of New York, Syracuse

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Name one drug in the Pharmacopedia that can remove remorse. Remorse can only be felt by moral agents.

So Szasz is right, they don't have a pill they can give a person that will dull his moral sense concerning the killing of others. Context there mel, context.

I await your critique.

The second quote is From the Reason Magazine article and is essentially common sense and backs up what I said Szasz said. Once the chemical is in a persons body what the drug does is relatively uncontroversial. Alcohol is great panty remover. Who would argue different? But how to get the booze into the babe? She's gotta wanna.

The third quote essentially says the same thing.

What drugs do to a person who takes them belongs to pharmacology once the drug is in a persons system. (I give you antabuse. Some chemical science came up with that makes heroin users sick or boozers or something) The second part of the statement is plain English too.

So it was the first sentence from a letter that Szasz wrote cherry picked to provide an out of context attack on what Szasz said in another interview and part of what he wrote in a book.

Those may be sophisticated argueing styles in the University debates I never attended but I think taking things out of context to try and make your opponet say things that he did not say is poor arguement style.

Like I said your pretty good at twisting up what was said by cherry picking lines and such. But you never did critique an entire piece. You never point out where Szasz and Schaler were wrong in the debates piece. You never say where Schaler is wrong in the Moral Hygiens piece.

Your arguement style seems to revolve around you trying to prove you are more clever than I in making debating points.

In short, you are trying to win the debate by yelling the loudest and attacking the person instead of the arguements not to bolster your arguement but to debase your opponet.


Like I said I await your retort to the Tooley piece.