Self Medication, Drugs, and the War on (Some) Drugs
Blogger and DP commenter M. Simon has done a great deal of research on the issue of self-medication as it relates to addiction, and as it relates to governmental approaches to addiction. He thinks this is an important issue, and so do I.
What I have done is come up with a hypothesis that fits the facts. Why some people and not others are susceptible to addiction (as opposed to habituation which we know how to treat: Detox). Surprisingly this is a Well Known Secret in some segments of the medical community.
Self medication appears to be a very large part of our "addiction" problem. In fact we may not even have an addiction problem. What we may have is seriously undertreated population with various mental problems caused by imbalances in the brain. What is needed is more research. The only way we will get that any time soon is to pressure the government. Obviously the drug companies have no interest in finding out what addiction is because it will impact their bottom line if people take drugs for Problem Solving. In fact there are a lot of actors in this farce who would stand to lose big if such a study showed what I expect it might. The only folks to be benefited would be "addicts". And they don't have much of a lobby in Washington.
(c) M. Simon - All rights reserved.
M. Simon is an industrial controls engineer for Space-Time Productions and a Free Market Green. http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com