🚀 go-pugleaf

Claude de Contrecoeur wrote:

> > Dr. Alan Wheatley wrote:
> > >
> The article suggests that
> > > addiction results from an increase in dopamine activity: "It is thought
> > > that all habit-forming drugs affect the dopamine (DA) system in the brain
> > > either directly as DA agonists, or by enhancing DA release, or by acting
> > > on other neurons responding to different neurotransmitters, which synapse
> > > upon this DA system to activate it." The benzodiazepines are explicitly
> > > included in this explanation:
>
> The generality that dopamine is "the" "culprit" of "drug addiction" is
> not a
> scientific problem but a socio-religious problem which arose in the
> extreme
> form of Protestantism cultivated in North-America.
>
> I doubt that bouddhist scientists,for example,would ever have invented
> this
> typically protestant notion of "drug" and "drug addiction".
>
> Our judeo-christian societies have been very keen at Inquisition and
> trying
> to,authoritarily,control the mind and the behaviour of others.
>
> As Dr Thomas Szasz nicely pointed in his book "The Manufacture of
> Madness" and
> Philosopher Michel Foucault in his many books on how human beings
> enjoy
> controlling other human beings,inquisitional behaviours are not
> extinct.
>
> Just think of an obvious example,in your type of society:President
> Clinton.
>
> The Spanish Inquisition tracked the devilry(diablerie)in a concept
> called
> "witch".
>
> The Nazi Inquisition tracked devilry in a concept called "Jew".
>
> The new "Drug Gestapo" is tracking devilry within the very fabric of
> our own
> synapses through a concept called the "drug addict" and a molecule
> called
> "dopamine".
>
> All these behaviours are Inquisitions.The concept under scrutiny
> changes,but
> the behaviour stays the same through the centuries.
>
> All Inquisitions have tried to "eradicate" a devilry from the body or
> the
> mind of human beings.Past devilries have been the "witch",the
> "Jew",the "Gay"
> and the last one is the "drug addict + dopamine".
>
> Dopamine is one of the MOST IMPORTANT molecule in our brain because it
> serves
> the purpose to stimulate:
>
> Action
> Motivations
> Our desire of Freedom
>
> Without dopamine,never we could maintain our structure because we
> would lose
> motivation.We would stop acting in exoreality and become zombies.
>
> Attacking dopamine is like trying to lobotomise people because
> dopamine is the
> ESSENCE of an animal WILL to fight for SURVIVAL.
>
> Dopamine IS the molecule of survival.
>
> So the new Gestapo against dopamine is a highly politically sensitive
> subject
> because controlling,by law,dopamine is just,simply stated,CONTROLLING
> THE
> SURVIVAL INSTINCT of we,human beings.
>
> The Dopamine Inquisitors are the most dangerous Inquisitors ever
> because,if
> they succeeded in their monstruous quest,it would mean that mankind
> would be
> dispossed of this very molecule which induces Resistance to Tyranny.
>
> No external self-proclaimed "authority" has the right to manipulate
> our
> dopamine activity.
>
> This is a basic freedom which ought to be put in the Declaration of
> the Rights
> of Man.
>
> Cordially,
>
> Claude

I found your post very interesting and stimulating...  I have long considered
that
the whole issue of the dopamine system in the brain and its relationship to
addiction
is widely misunderstood and misdirected when the "authorities" consider those
people that they regard as drug "addicts". If it were properly addressed, those
people
when regarding this issue and concept would have to acknowledge that all people
are in fact dopamine addicts.
Dopamine is obviously deeply involved in the reward system our brain uses to
motivate and direct us into positive activities. Those of us who have learned to

"artificially" enhance or augment the release of this reward chemical  are
merely
using the motivating reward as a driving force to guide our activities. Just
because
those activities produce dopamine release without some primary "positive"
biological reason, we are regarded as acting in a negative fashion or as being
"evil".
In fact, we are merely following the motivating drives of our biology as
directly
as we possibly can. The value judgement placed on this response is incorrect in
my
humble opinion.

--
Salutations from Michael "newmz" Newman.

"The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom"
         -William Blake.

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