Mind-altering drugs, brain damage, meditation and therapy

I came across the video I posted on Tuesday while I actually planned to post the one below. The short excerpt from a talk by Eckhart Tolle (the full talk is here - or well, it was; unfortunately it isn't anymore) seems to me both a good introduction to clarify some unfortunately very common misunderstandings in regard to psychiatric drugs and meditation and its potential to lead to enlightenment - as well as in regard to therapy and its potential to lead to full recovery - and at the same time it sums up the answer to the question whether or not it is possible to recover from emotional distress using drugs, psychiatric prescription drugs, or any other mind-altering drugs.

The concise answer, given in the Eckhart Tolle talk, is no, it is not possible to recover from emotional distress while under the influence of mind-altering drugs. Simply because these drugs prevent the individual, who is under their influence, from getting in touch with his/her true self, from becoming aware and conscious. All mind-altering drugs "work" by enhancing unconsciousness. They stand like an impenetrable wall between the individual and his/her true self.

Although any spiritual teacher knows this just as well as Loren Mosher, for instance, knew it, most mental health professionals, psychiatrists, psychologists or other, seem never to have heard about it. How else would it be possible, that, no matter what kind of emotional distress, the combination of psychotropic drugs and therapy, the combination of two treatment measures, whose aims are diametrically opposed to each other, is promoted as the best treatment option by the system? But, well, in contrast to spiritual teachings, that not only acknowledge the possibility of full recovery, or enlightenment, with a spiritual term, but aim at exactly this full recovery or enlightenment with everything they teach, the mental health system often still denies full recovery to be possible at all.

The consequence of this denial of the possibility to achieve a higher level of awareness, consciousness, which in its turn is a consequence of psychiatry's concept of chronic, biological brain diseases, is that the mental health system aims at the very opposite of what a spiritual teacher would aim at, thus trying to reduce the individual in crisis' increased and increasing (or awakening) awareness, consciousness by all means. Not only "back to normal", but, even more sadly, most often to a level far below "normal", and just as often permanently, through "maintenance medication" with highly toxic chemicals, that not only reduce the brain's capacity while the individual is taking the drugs, but that also cause brain damage, thus reducing the brain's capacity permanently and to an increasing extent the longer the drugs are taken.

So, if you are awakening, if you are going through a crisis that is, beware of mind-altering substances, especially of dirty drugs such as all psychiatric drugs, whose brain damaging potential is somewhat greater than that of pure, natural substances (such as the "leaf").

Here is the video by Jane, who gives an answer more detailed and outspokenly related to emotional distress (so-called "mental illness") than Eckhart Tolle does:

"Meditation, spirituality and drug effects"



Related posts at Jane's blog:

"Drugs and meditation"

"Meditation videos, you asked, I delivered"

"Geodon lies"

Related video by Jane:

"Antipsychotics cause brain damage"

"There is another way of becoming free"

Unfortunately, the video, I'd posted here, is no longer available at YouTube. It was a short excerpt from a workshop with Eckhart Tolle, where he talks about the potential of psychoactive substances, like alcohol, to "calm down the noise machine in the head" for some time, and thereby to provide some temporary relief from the suffering it is to be an ego-identified individual in our modern, western society. "But there is a price", som han siger, "The price is, you're moving towards unconsciousness. But on your way towards unconsciousness, you feel a little better. So, drugs, whatever they may be, smokes... - Take a smoke! - Of course, pot isn't a drug. It's a leaf. So, the leaf can give you some relief. But the price you pay is that you move towards unconsciousness. There is another way of becoming free..." (my italics)

Out of the frying pan into the fire - or: Out of one abuse into another

They are in ecstasies on Funen (an island, one of the three major geographic parts of Denmark): 7 out of 10 alcoholics stop drinking when treated by the Alkoholbehandlingscenter Fyn. For, among other things, this advanced treatment center sends alcoholics to a psychiatrist. As we all know, many addicts are "mentally ill", so their addiction can and has to be viewed as self-medication.

So, the alcoholics are sent to a psychiatrist who then, of course, will find one or another diagnosis to label the person with. Preferably "anxiety" or "depression". Well, and after the person is diagnosed, "treatment" in the shape of psych drugs needs to get started. The sooner the better. The consumption of these pills, of course, is not termed "abuse" but "treatment", even if their effect by and large is just the same as the effect of alcohol: They influence an individuals state of mind by creating an imbalance in brain chemistry, and thus they see to that the individual is no longer capable of sensing himself and his emotional reactions as he'd be in an uninfluenced condition.

The pills are called "medicine" even though most psych drugs, especially benzodiazepines, are far more addictive than recreational drugs like cannabis, heroin, cocaine and, well, alcohol, and often cause severe withdrawal symptoms, as soon as you, against psychiatry's urgent request to stay on them for the rest of your life, try to quit them. Heroin, yah. Indeed, it is easier to quit heroin than to quit most psych drugs.

The pills are called "medicine" even though all psych drugs, just like synthetic processed recreational drugs like Ecstasy, cause brain shrinkage and cell death on a long-term basis, and to, at least, the same if not a greater extent than alcohol e.g. But this is of course the intended effect, as it is with all psychiatric "treatment".

The advantage of psychiatrically prescribed pill-abuse to self-determined, private alcohol-abuse is that the psychiatrically prescribed version of abuse through the public institution psychiatry provides total control of the individual's abuse, and thereby of the individual himself, to society. Something which can't be said of a private alcohol or drug abuse.

The advantage for the abusing individual is that the coveted, self-anaesthetizing effect doesn't cost the individual half of the money an alcohol- or drug-abuse would cost him, if achieved with the help of prescribed pills. Health insurance pays, up to nearly the whole price, depending on the individual's private economy.

Out of private into state sponsored (and controlled) abuse. Truly a great success! As they call it on Funen.