Pubdate: Mon, 01 Mar 2004
Source: Pacific Daily News (Guam)
Copyright: 2004 Pacific Daily News
Contact: http://www.guampdn.com/customerservice/contactus.html
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Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1122
Author: Chris Dombrowski

INCARCERATION FOR SELF-MEDICATION IS NOT JUST

Opinion

In order to truly understand why drugs, drug experimentation and use will 
always be an aspect of the human condition, and why the "war on drugs" and 
prohibition are damaging and ineffective, one must comprehend some basic 
knowledge of the neuropsycho-physiology of pain and pleasure.

It was Sigmund Freud (the father of psychoanalysis) who presented the world 
with "the pleasure principle." Humans, in general, are motivated to seek 
pleasure and avoid pain. But it's not that simple, in that the neural 
pathways in the brain that mediate pain share neural pathways that activate 
the brain's pleasure/reward systems. This is why some people need to be 
"tied up" to feel "free."

The American Pain Society defines pain as an "unpleasant sensory and 
emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage." 
Pain is a sensation that makes an influence or repercussion on a person's 
psychosocial and physical functioning. In medicine, "pain is whatever the 
experiencing person says it is, existing whenever he/she says it does." It 
is considered the "fifth vital sign," after heart and respiratory rate, 
blood pressure and temperature.

Most people tend to think of pain as physical in nature, broken bones for 
instance. It is "real." Psychological/social pain is "just in their heads." 
But recent findings out of UCLA pushes us into the fact that "physical and 
psychological pain is more similar than we realized." The brain appears to 
respond to psychological pain ("heartache") in the same way as physical 
pain. This is why there is a growing consensus that there is no such thing 
as "recreational" drug use; it's ALL self-medication from the 
psychological/social pain of anxiety, stress, tension, depression, 
humiliation, shame, guilt, boredom, fatigue, etc.

The bikini-clad young babes dancing by the pool, surrounded by the pounding 
of loud rock 'n' roll, promoting the consumption of alcohol are not just 
acoustic and visual ornaments. They are, in effect, "pain killers" and 
"stress relievers" also. They act "synergistically" with the alcohol 
consumption.

Self-medication is a self-preservation instinct in the human species. When 
does the legal relief of pain and suffering become the illegal pursuit of 
pleasure? Isn't it the alienable right to medicate oneself contained in the 
rights to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?" Is it morally 
wrong to alter the mind/consciousness with some drugs and healthy to do so 
with others?

Society says that Prozac is good and cocaine is evil, but good and evil are 
not attributed to molecules. Drugs are neither good nor bad, in and of 
themselves. It is how they are used and the type of person using them in a 
certain set and setting that determines whether there will be a positive or 
negative outcome.

It is wrong to destroy a person's life through incarceration because their 
nervous system required different substances or medicines to achieve 
certain effects.
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