Having problems with message search?
Feel free to copy and email widely the alphabetical MMM
2005 city list with cities, states, and nations. It also
has email addresses and webpage links. Basic city list:
http://www.corporatism.netfirms.com/mmm2005.htm
2005 city list with cities, states, and nations. It also
has email addresses and webpage links. Basic city list:
http://www.corporatism.netfirms.com/mmm2005.htm
----Forwarded email begins.----
Dana Beal <dana@...> wrote:
Dana Beal <dana@...> wrote:
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2005 10:01:24 -0500
From: Dana Beal
Subject: ``GMM 2005 #11: VOICE ibo article; Amsterdam, Cleveland, New
Orleans Make 140 Cities on the Global Marijuana March May 7, 2005!
Important: get your city on the list for the Global Marijuana March, May 7, 2005!So far we have confirmed 140 cities:AlbanyAlbuquerqueAmsterdamAntwerpAshevilleAthabascaAthensAtlantaAucklandBskersfieldBasel
BernBiel/BienneBergenBerlinBirminghamBooneBoulderBristolBudapestBuenos AiresBurlingtonCapetownCheltenhamChicagoChicoChristchurchCincinnatiClevelandColorado SpringsColumbiaColumbusDarwinDes MoinesDetroitDoverDublinDunedinEast LansingEau ClaireEugeneFayettevilleFlintFrankfurtFt. SmithGenevaGrass ValleyHachitaHalifaxHartfordHiloHoustonHullJerusalemKansas CityKristiansandLausanneLethbridgeLexingtonLondonLos AngelesLuganoLyonMadridMexico CityMinneapolisMissoulaMontrealMoscowNashvilleNewarkNew OrleansNew PaltzNew YorkNimbinOgdenOrlandoOsakaOsloOuluPaiaParisPeoriaPhiladelphiaPhoenixPortlandPortlandPotsdamPragueRaleighRapid CityRenoRichmondRineyvilleRoanokeRomeRosarioRostockSalemSan AntonioSan FranciscoSan MarcosSanta BarbaraSanta CruzSapporoSarasotaSavannahSionSpokaneStavangerStevens PointSt. GallenSt. LouisStockholmTallahasseeTampaTel AvivThunder BayToledoTokyoTorontoTraverse CityTromsoeTrondheimTucsonTupeloTurkuTwin OaksUpper LakeVancouverViennaVisaliaWaikikiWarsawWashington, D.C.Wilkes-BarreWilmingtonWinonaWinterthurZürichThere is also some international MMM networking going on at
this CannabisCulture.com message forum:-------------------------
Million Marijuana March. Banners, posters, handbills,
flyers. From 2004 MMM. Use for 2005 MMM ideas! Adapt foryour needs! Due to software upgrade problemsonly the full-size images and full-size image downloadscurrently are working-- go here:http://www.vienna2004.org/mmm/viewer.php?albid=510&stage=2
or if problems go to the home page URL:
http://www.vienna2004.org/mmm
and then click on "mmm2004"and then "Banners Posters Handbills"
Many of the MMM 2004 banners, posters, flyers, and
handbills were converted from PDF files to the gif and jpg
images found here. The freeware Adobe Acrobat Reader and the
freeware IrfanView were used.
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.htmlhttp://www.irfanview.com - IrfanView is a free image editor
that is useful for adapting these flyers and banners for
your needs. Download the full-size gif images since they usefar fewer kilobytes compared to the 640x480 and 800x600 jpg
versions of the same image. JPG image files are mainly for
photos and images with lots of color gradation. GIF image
files are much better for flyers and banners. IrfanView can
easily edit, reduce, or enlarge gif and jpg images.
These flyer and banner images were found elsewhere in the
photo gallery, and by following links on the MMM 2004 city
list pages, report pages, image pages, etc.. Flyers and
banners for other MMM years can be found through the first
link below: MMM images:
http://www.corporatism.netfirms.com/mmmimages.htm
2004 city list:
http://www.corporatism.netfirms.com/mmm2004.htm
2004 reports:
http://www.corporatism.netfirms.com/mmm2004rep.htm*****!!!Global Marijuana March--May 7, 2005: Updates, Reports!!!*****From: has@...AMSTERDAM!
may7 + june4
www.legalize.net------------From: fjhc@...Here is our updated contact info:
Fourth Of July Hemp Coalition
Attn: John Pylka P.O.B. 5513 Washington DC 20016
202-251-4492 fjhc@...Http://www.smoke-in.org--------------------From: tents444@...Hello Jenny,
I will add Cleveland and your email address shortybonz19@...
(listed as shortybonz19"at"yahoo.com on the webpage)
to the MMM 2005 city list and world map here:
http://www.corporatism.netfirms.com/mmm2005map.htm
That page linked above has lots of informative MMM links in the side
column that can help you out.
I will also forward this to Dana Beal.
If you have more contact info please send it to Dana, because he
and others sometimes mail out posters, CDs, flyers, etc..
If you have some more links and email address to post with
your Cleveland city listing please let me know. The more the better!
Regards,
eco man
tents444@...-------------From: czerin3@...Hi,
I just notified the local chapter of CANoLa/ SSDP in Baton Rouge. I am the former secretary for the org. We have worked with New Orleans in the past. Some former pres. of CANoLa live in New Orleans now. I don't think the march was held in New Orleans last year. I had tryed to contact the person that was in charge but all of their information was invalid. We are currently going to hold a march in New Orleans on May 7, 2005. If you have any valid contact info for anyone in New Orleans could you send it to us because we would like to work with them. If you have any questions or more info. just let me know.
Peace,Christy Zeringue--------------------------------
Please forward widely! Million Marijuana March. MMM.The MMM 2005 city links are always clickable at these mirrors below.
MMM world map with many more links. Frequently updated:
http://corporatism.tripod.com/mmm2005map.htm andhttp://www.corporatism.netfirms.com/mmm2005map.htm and
http://www.angelfire.com/rnb/y/mmm2005map.htm and
http://members.fortunecity.com/multi19/mmm2005map.htm
Click the region names in the left chart column to go to their city lists.
Click the "countries" link to go to the list of countries.Worldwide.
With less than 5% of the world's population
the USA has over 2.2 million of the world's9 million prisoners!:http://corporatism.netfirms.com/rates.htm and
http://corporatism.netfirms.com/world.htm
MMM (Million Marijuana March).
City list and world map:
http://corporatism.netfirms.com/mmm2005map.htmYahoo Group:http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cannabisaction*************************BUSHWHACKED!!****************************February 20, 2005
New Tapes Say Bush May Have Smoked Marijuana
By REUTERS
Filed at 3:40 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush indicated in interviews secretly taped by a friend before he became president that he had used marijuana but would not admit it for fear of setting a bad example for children.
Portions of the tapes, recorded from 1998 to 2000 by author Doug Wead without Bush's knowledge, were aired on ABC News on Sunday and published by The New York Times. Their authenticity was verified by the media outlets but has not been independently checked by Reuters.
``I wouldn't answer the marijuana question. You know why? Because I don't want some little kid doing what I tried,'' Bush purportedly says on the tape.
He added: ``But you got to understand, I want to be president. I want to lead. I want to set -- Do you want your little kid say, 'Hey, Daddy, President Bush tried marijuana, I think I will?'''
In the tape, Bush mocks former Vice President Al Gore -- who fought him for the presidency in 2000 -- for admitting he smoked marijuana.
White House officials did not dispute the tapes' veracity and indicated the president was disappointed by their release.
``These were casual conversations that then Gov. Bush was having with someone he thought was a friend, and that's what they are,'' White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters traveling with Bush to Europe aboard Air Force One.
NOT AWARE
McClellan said Bush, who was governor of Texas when the tapes were made, was not aware he was being recorded and the White House found out only when contacted by the New York Times for comment.
``Look, I think that, one, the comments in the tapes speak for themselves. And two, I think that what I just said pretty much speaks for itself,'' McClellan said when pressed about the details.
``Those were issues that were addressed ad nauseam four years ago and they were conversations that took place more than four years ago,'' he said, adding that Bush had not been in contact with Wead for several years.
Wead, a former aide to Bush's father President George H.W. Bush, released portions of the tapes to coincide with the publication of his new book and told ABC he made the tapes because he believed the president was a historic figure.``If I'd had a chance to tape record Gandhi or had conversations with Churchill, I probably would have recorded them too,'' he said.
He also insisted his goal was not to hurt the president's credibility and said if this were the case he would have released the tapes during the 2004 election campaign.
Asked about the tapes in an interview with CNN, the president's father said he was not aware of them and declined comment.
Sitting next to Bush was ex-President Bill Clinton, who admitted to smoking marijuana when he campaigned for the White House but said he never inhaled the illegal drug.The two former presidents are touring areas affected by the Dec. 26 Indian Ocean tsunami.Mr. Wead said he recorded the conversations because he viewed Mr. Bush as a historic figure, but he said he knew that the president might regard his actions as a betrayal. As the author of a new book about presidential childhoods, Mr. Wead could benefit from any publicity, but he said that was not a motive in disclosing the tapes.Super-AIDS Hits California:http://rense.com/general63/suep.htmWill Pitt FYI: Experts See Military Draft as Inevitable
http://forum.truthout.org/blog/story/2005/2/18/9166/09308Dilip Hiro | An Election That Sharpened Iraq's Fault Lineshttp://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/021605J.shtml
CIA: Iraq War Helps Recruit Terroristshttp://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/021705B.shtml
States Fall Behind on Voting-System Improvementshttp://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/021705F.shtml
Max J. Castro | In High Gear: The GOP Class Warhttp://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/021705K.shtml
Waxman Wants Rice-9/11 Hearingshttp://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/021705W.shtmlC.I.A. Torture Flights: Will Negroponte Keep Them Flying?http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/022005A.shtml
Homeland Security Leaves Major Ports Poorly Defendedhttp://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/022005C.shtml
Secret Tapes: Bush Weighed Religion, Behavior
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/022005F.shtml
Tony Norman: Why Isn't Bob Novak Going to Jail?
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/022005G.shtmlU.N.: Afghanistan Becoming Chaotic Terror Havenhttp://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/022105M.shtml
Panelists Decry Bush Science Policieshttp://www.truthout.org/environment.shtml****!!!IBOGAINE TREATMENT NOW $1500 IN HOLLAND--CALL SARA, 0113134-624-1770 !!!****The Drug to End All Drugs
Addicts may get new lives, as clinical studies of exotic, controversial ibogaine are set to resume
by Aina Hunter
February 18th, 2005 6:39 PM
write to us
e-mail story
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If all goes according to plan, a select group of cocaine addicts could be lining up in Miami this April for a chance to get quickly and painlessly clean.
Now that University of Miami neurologist Deborah Mash has the cash needed to resume clinical studies of ibogaine-the drug that could be the best anti-drug the CIA never told you about-there's new hope for hard-core drug addicts and alcoholics. She got the go-ahead from the Food and Drug Administration 10 years ago, but after negative reviews by other scientists, the National Institute on Drug Abuse refused to fund her.
For a decade it seemed that ibogaine trials would be relegated to offshore clinics, but a few weeks ago an anonymous, private donor stepped in to save the day. Mash won't say how much he or she gave, only that it's enough cash to get started again.
Ibogaine has a history made for Hollywood. Stories about its origins and powers abound, as do juicy rumors of a conspiracy that some believe has been keeping it out of U.S. treatment centers. The legend begins with powder made from the root of a flowering shrub. Iboga grows in the rain forests of West Africa, where traditional game hunters use it to maintain perfect stillness for hours on end as they wait for prey.
Fast-forward to '60s New York, where college student and self-described recreational heroin user Howard Lotsof gets freebie capsules of ibogaine from a chemist friend cleaning out his freezer. Lotsof takes one for the hell of it. To his amazement, when he comes down his brain is washed clean of desire for any drug whatsoever. He hands out capsules to friends and soon realizes he is sitting on a gold mine.
Twenty years later, Lotsof takes out a series of patents for potential future uses. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration bans the hallucinogen, so Lotsof hooks up with fellow enthusiasts in the Netherlands and introduces the drug to people who want to get clean. He reports many successes: Patients detox in a matter of days, without painful withdrawal symptoms. And then there's the bonus: one last high. The approximately 48 hours under iboga's spell are spent in a dream-like state (or nightmarish state, depending on the individual). Afterwards, many say they have greater insight into their problems.
The results are impressive enough to turn the head of respected neurologist Deborah Mash, and the University of Miami enters into an agreement with Lotsof: He supplies the ibogaine, she'll do the science. In the early '90s, Mash persuades the FDA to approve her proposal for studies on human subjects. Getting permission is one thing, but getting the cash is another. Trouble starts when a fellow researcher from Johns Hopkins says his studies show that ibogaine causes brain damage. A couple of years later an independent review committee from the National Institute on Drug Addiction concludes that the drug is too dangerous to try on people. In the end, Mash loses her chance for government funding.
At the same time, Lotsof and Mash's business relationship disintegrates. A female heroin addict dies at Lotsof's center in the Netherlands. Progress is further bogged down by disputes over patents. Yet these setbacks do nothing to inhibit the proliferation of makeshift ibogaine treatment centers-sometimes not much more than hotel rooms-in Europe and elsewhere. Mash gets scared when she realizes how many non-doctors are administering the drug in questionable settings. With private investors, she opens a clinic in St. Kitts where patients pay around $10,000 to get clean with ibogaine.
Back in the States, conspiracy theories multiply. Why did the National Institute on Drug Abuse really withdraw support? Was it just-say-no paranoia about an exotic cure that also brings visions and insight? Ibogaine true-believers go further, suggesting that the answer lies in the perpetuation of the prison-industrial complex. People like Dimitri Mugianis, a self-described "addict self-determinationist," contend that ibogaine works well enough to put prisons out of business.
But it isn't just independent "self-helpers" and the Bleecker Street Yippies who are willing to consider that something other than pure intentions are behind the withdrawal of public funding. Bill O'Reilly gave Lotsof a sympathetic ear on Fox when the addict-cum-advocate suggested that the National Institute on Drug Abuse is not very interested in a single-dose cure all. Primarily, Lotsof contends, the bloated government bureaucracy wants more of the same. More addicts, more allocations for studies of treatments that might work one day, more federal millions to divvy up.
"People can make any kind of assertion that they'd like, but we are constrained by the truth," says Frank Vocci of the NIDA's Medications Development Division. "We'd love to find a cure for drug abuse. Then we could move on to something else."
Yet the cynical take was bolstered by the work a decade ago of a television reporter in upstate New York. Rochester's Al White did a three-part investigative special on the CIA's relationship with ibogaine. He discovered documents in 1994 that show the CIA sponsored secret clinical studies on ibogaine's effect on drug addicts in the '50s. What the scientists at the Federal Narcotics Hospital in Kentucky concluded is anyone's guess, since the actual findings haven't resurfaced. But White, who now lives in North Carolina, tells the Voice that he has no doubt the CIA concluded that it works. "What makes me mad," he says, "is to think of all the crime and misery that could have been prevented but wasn't."
That there seems to have been a government attempt to suppress ibogaine is not of much interest to Mash. Actually, she'll have none of it. "That's a bunch of crap from the underground," she says. "They're a bunch of conspiracy yokels!"The real money for drug development doesn't come from the government anyway, notes Mash. It comes from the pharmaceutical industry. If the right corporate partner materializes, and if the clinical trials run smoothly, she says, a safe and effective drug derived from the drug-to-end-all-drugs could be FDA-approved in three years.
------From:dana@... Subject:[Ibogaine] Second omnibus reply to P. Cohen & the List
cherylca@... wrote:
That's not true Dana, now your fibbing. I was at the conference and you and Peter were screaming at each other in the hallway so loud it was louder than the back of the room which was the only place left to stand.
I don't think Mr. Clear cares what you all did as long as you weren't the ones who set the hotel on fire, since he gave Patrick the opening plenary to speak to 1200 people and talk about the ibogaine panel but you are not telling the truth.
Not to refute anything else in your message but you and Peter were yelling and you were making threats.
Heated words is not the same as yelling insults. And Peter, even though he says I was angry, absolves me of any threats. What would I threaten him with? Threaten to eviscerate his argument? Hold him up to ridicule on the list? Threaten that no one with any direct experience with ibogaine would take him seriously?
cherylca@... wrote:
Being a chronic pothead is no healthier then being a heroin addict and yes you can say pot has all kinds of health benefits and so too does heroin. Harm reduction objects to your belief that all of us need to be cured and get healthy like people smoking pot all day. Give it a rest.
The crowd represented by P. Cohen has argued the action of cannabis and opiates in the brain are really the same; but the dose-response curve is totally different: every morning you do pot, you don't have to keep escalating the dose. The cannabidiol in cannabis is a mild glutamate antagonist--much weaker than ibo but it stops build-up of tolerance.
I think ibogaine is a amazing thing but here's news for you, people using drugs are no sicker then
you Dana, who is another person who uses drugs all the time. What's the message in that?
It's stretching the point to equate vegetable matter with injectable white powders, but you missed the point of my post, which has to do with a system of regulation of legalized drugs. Putting in a coffee shop system (albeit one where people are discouraged from mixing tobacco and cannabis) is aimed mainly at replacing alcohol and tobacco, which kill 150,000 and 450,000 people a year in the U.S. from accidents and cancer respectively, with something that kills no one.
I've never heard Dr. Cohen attack the use of any drug or mandate that anyone has to take anything. Dana Beal spent the whole 90's doing exactly that and suggesting forced marijuana maintenance after ibogaine. Which are exact quotes of what you used to say, you've given that speech at Hash Bash dana.
Nothing forced about it. For some people it works.
BiscuitBoy714@... wrote:
Right now I'm addicted to coffee and one hits. I smoke, but I never have more than 2.755 grams of herb at any time so Uncle Salty won't give me the chair or nothin'. They might come over and drag me outta the house and jack boot me, but I'm willin' to take that risk.
and
I'm on the marijuana maintenance plan. I am jokin' ya know. I don't see herb as a problem tho. Can you say Harm Reduction? Randy
Obviously for a marijuana-friendly crowd I'm going to emphasize the pot-friendly aspect of ibogaine. BTW, 4 people long-connected with the management of the Hash Bash were just treated, successfully, for their various opiate, etc. addictions with Ibogaine. I don't think they're going to stop toking up.
stevenanker@... wrote:
Nah, I don't want to pay for any plane fares, Dana. It's just fun to give you shit. I just can't help myself. Those darn relapsing junkies... sorry that it always goes that way.
Wasn't asking you to pay for anything. It's just that I have to be relatively straight to put on this forum, i.e: some people expect me to reimburse them for their fares when they get here, for instance. Can't have people telling them: "He's off doing ibogaine today, you'll have to wait."
What, the man who knows iboga to be the holy Eucharist, the man who wrote the book, the man who spread the word of ibogaine (according to you) can't hustle some up? In all these years there has never been an opportunity? Strange. I really can't think of a better place than surrounded by the art of Alex Grey. Unless you have tidied up your house a bit, it's better there, no? Though your cats could be good company.
Of course I've had it at times. It's just that I've always taken the position that you need a legitimate medical reason to do it, which I now have. Same as medical marijuana: you can smoke all you want, but don't claim it's medical if it's not. #9 would be a fine place to do ibo, in the slow season. Which is the reason I wanted to do it in November. (At least Mark could have helped with that mortgage). Between now and May 7 I'm busy as can be.
Another question that's been burning a hole in my head: How did Jesus get his hands on iboga? How did he get it in the wine? The Romans had trade routes to Gabon? Iboga grew in the Holy land? Jesus could fly faster than a speeding bullet? It's just that you say it's "Implicit." Curious, that's all.
You know in my book I said it was peganum harmala, which is abundant in Palestine, and figured in the initiation rite for the Persian Emperor, the King of Kings. Since the book was published I've become aware of evidence that iboga may have played a similar role in Egypt, where friezes on walls of tombs, etc. show the Pharaoh consorting with pygmies--symbols of iboga due to their 20 thousand year association with it throughout Africa. They're about one per cent of the population in Rwanda and Burundi, and Iboga looks to be much more widespread than Gabon, occurring throughout the Congo basin and up into the Rift valley--just up the Nile from Egypt, so to speak.
And since it's a rootbark, it travels rather well. A natural tradegood. If the Pharaohs had cocaine and nicotine, why not Iboga? So I've come to the conclusion that ibo could have been substituted for ephedra in the particular soma mixture prepared for the Grail. It would certainly be more neuroprotective, since it's been patented by Olney for stroke and ischemia (ischemia is a kind of stroke that killed the victims of crucifixion). And it would have incorporated the legitimacy of the Pharaonic equivalent of harmala and of the Pharaohs themselves into the mantle of the King of Kings.
Since the alternative explanation is that Jesus wasn't just faster than a speeding bullet, but had half his genes direct from God, I'd go with the Passover Plot hypothesis. The Rabbis say that whatever the Pharaoh's magicians knew, Moses knew better, so if the iboga secret was in Egypt, the Jews took it with them back to Palestine.
The Romans? Well, if they knew about it, the trick wouldn't have worked, would it?
mafinman@... wrote:
I noticed that remark about ibogaine being the same as methadone or any other treatment and the "cult" comment. My first thought was that someone who did Ibogaine and CHOSE to remain sober from everything got his ear and turned him off, possibly. For someone trying to promote his stance on all drugs it probably sounded like blasphemy!
Blasphemous for anyone who insists that addiction isn't really neurochemical, but a matter of social construction-- that society constructs the user as addict. Since tolerance/withdrawal/craving don't really exist, and are not deemed to vary from one substance to another, Ibogaine can't really be doing anything special, so the effect must be from mind-control by ibogaine@mindvox. Not only that, since ibogaine is more dangerous than heroin (in proper medical doses) if you chose to exaggerate its dangerousness, this particular cult is offering poison koolaid.
If he is at the conference and would like to have a short chat with someone who was on methedone and heroin and cocaine for over 20 years and tried to stop hundereds of times and only had success with ibogaine, I would be willing. I also at this moment in time am choosing to remain sober of everything but quite possibly for different reasons than others.
It wouldn't do any good, because Peter is not particularly interested in talking to ibo-nauts. Far from making threats, I was trying to continue a conversation with him; but it was my impression that he had stated his argument, and was not particularly interested in any facts or people that contradict it. Facts, as I told him at the time, are stubborn things.
stevenanker@... wrote:
Sure, Dr. Cohen is a blathering fool for saying iboga is the same as methadone, but his comments on legalization are helpful. Why not have a combination of harm-reduction, de-criminalization and more and better treatment options?
Sounds like my position.
Help from non-addicts as well as addicts? Fine, if it is a disease, don't arrest me and make me pray to god to get better. Options and choice are lovely things. Sure, we like iboga better than methadone; I have friends who were really helped by methadone.
But in New Orleans there was Joyce Woods from NAMA, kind of smirking when Peter was giving his rap. She was the one back in '91 who got me in trouble with John Morgan by sending him the memo that Howard and Sisko wrote, which I was trying to get her to get them to change before it was released on the ACT UP floor, because it seemed to put their comment on methadone in his mouth. I'd just left the only copy with her aide, Tom Ward (one of the squatters then on a jihad to take over the annual pot parade, which WE had started 25 years earlier) who urged her to send it to Morgan before I had a chance to call her back. "Putting words in Morgan's mouth" got me blackballed in NORML and the DPF for a decade. And all it amounted to was careless writing Howard and Bob would have changed if she'd called them, instead of Morgan.
But the whole DPF crowd were just looking for an excuse, because they really didn't like ibo to begin with. Tom Ward went on to become a crackhead, and after 9/11, a Bush supporter.
ms_iboga@... wrote:
Being an 'addiction specialist', yet having no prior
firsthand experience with chemical dependency is kinda
like trying to write a paper about the sensation of
skydiving without ever having jumped- it's gonna be
dry, detached and only partially-informed, and
strongly influenced by personal convictions and biases
rather than first-hand knowledge and experience.
Not exactly an addiction specialist. That's Peele. More like a specialist in the sociology of addiction and prohibition.
Even some of Dr. Cohen's work/views have merit; I just
find some of his ideas a little angering, especially
seeing as though Ibogaine has helped so many people,
myself included. Almost 4 months of clean time behind
me- the longest in four years. Why did Cohen find it
necessary to compare Ibogaine with the 'Nazi's cure
for homosexuality'(god, that's f*cking horrible.)?
That just seems like an under-the-belt type of shot.
Well, because the comparison has been out there for a while, and it's the most alienating thing the ibo opponents (proponents of heroin trials who feel threatened by another live option) can tell the people who determine AIDS policy in this country. The object is to marginalize, to keep us out of the legalization program.
As an 'addictions specialist', he is pretty quick to
dismiss the neurochemical side of dependence. I'm not
saying it's the entire explanation for addiction, but
it certainly plays a role.
The point is to blur the distinction between use (all of us would like to be able to use) and the build-up of tolerance/withdrawal (not being really able to enjoy using any longer).
mafinman@... wrote:
A cult....To be or not to be
Are you a good cult or a bad cult?
Do we have to be a cult? How about a club with a secret handshake? No that won't work...to many rules. I know, how about a list where pretty much the only thing most people have in common is a curiosity(interest) in ibogaine or are pre or post and looking for info and a place where they can check out some issues they have or thoughts or get practical info. No one smacks your hand with a ruler when you go off topic. People come and go with no regular contact at all. No rules. It actually sounds like the anticult.
When something like Ibogaine can't be marginalized by cold-shouldering the original proponents as nut-jobs, when it puts down roots and starts growing on its own, "cult" is the next label you go to, I guess. But as I told David Guard from DRCnet, when he remarked that we both knew "leading personalities of the legalization movement" had all decided a psychedelic treatment for addiction had no chance of being approved, our time and resources are too valuable to waste on Lindesmith or the Drug Policy Alliance, since we're on a mission for ibogaine. Don't expect us to contribute money, come to your conferences, or pay any attention to you.
cohen.cedro@... wrote:
But, the ibogaine game puts us in the same league as these weird addiction doctors that need to cure us. Just today I bought a 1948 book about the cure of homosexuality. Imagine a group of people who said USE IBOGAINE TO GET RID OF YOUR (CURSED) HOMOSEXUALITY.
(Actually, a medically discussed 1948 method of cure was to inhale a mixture of some gasses-right after the war!!-,can you imagine how short ago maxi primitive ideas reigned about homosexuality!)
Actually, given the recent findings on Ibogaine and binge behavior, it wouldn't instill heterosexuality, but rather stop you from binging on speed and cialis and fucking 20 guys in one night without a condom. Ironically, that's what many of the same people who voted to discontinue Ibo development in ACT UP ten years ago are looking for now. In the meantime, however, the binge behavior in question created super-AIDS.
The Nazi's indeed had a cure for homosexuals; mostly they gassed them to death in extermination camps ( many tens of thousands of them) together with jews and gypsies. That is why I made my remark on the 1948 book, as I did
pc
So now I'm not just a DEA agent, I'm advocating the ovens!
Peter Cohen <cohen.cedro@... wrote:
I have never accpeted the old theory about addiction as disease, nor much else about the concept of addiction. I consider the concept of addiction as an outgrowth ( in the 18th century) of the then already used concepts of 'possession, and being'bewitched'. Concepts that refer to the snatching of the soul, or the will, by an evil alien force. These concepts reflect our incapacity to understand particular behaviour as very 'human' and therefore they are 'extra human', alien. Drugs are an alien force ( like the devil , or a witch), and in the alcohol litterature from the mid 18th century the model for alcohol as a soul snatcher is created. Later this model was generalised to other drugs. All these soul snatchers ( witches, drugs alcohol included), have been prohibited in the USA at some time or another since the mid 17th century.
In your New Orleans talk, you were much more explicit in linking this attitude set to Jesuitical exorcism of demonic or Satanic possession. I think that you omit the factors that differentiate the attitudes of secular Europeans from Protestant Americans. You know this history, but for people on the list, it is important to understand that after the reign of Charlemagne, the Low Countries and Burgundy were left under one kingdom. They became incorporated into what became known as the Holy Roman Empire, which included elector princes from there, Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and northern Italy. The Austrian Habsburg family provided the Holy Roman Emperor and Spain, although not technically part of the HRE, was Austria's partner through royal intermarriage in the Habsburg Empire. Emperor Charles V, although nominally Austrian, was a grandson of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain. He was responsible for the transfer of power over the Low Countries to Spanish Prince Philip in 1555.
This was terrible news to those Netherlanders who dared convert to Reformation faiths---which were especially catching on in the north. Spain had a policy of exporting its most terrible Inquisitions to lands that became subject to it. This meant genocide for many Dutch, and things became particularly bloody when in 1567 Spain sent Fernando Alvarez de Toledo, Duke of Alva, with an army of 10,000. He was know as the "Iron Duke" and his "Blood Council" was responsible for at least 20,000 executions, including Protestant leader Counts Egmont and Hoorn. Bodies would be hung in public squares, at gateways into cities, and even over public fountains as a form of gruesome intimidation (which no doubt helped fuel epidemics.)
Genocide was being carried out by Spanish, Belgian, and Dutch Catholics, but most Dutch Catholics stopped helping the Spanish when Toledo demanded a 10% sales tax for the Spanish crown. Protestant exiles and Catholic deserters formed a privateering fleet that defeated the Spanish in the north, with English, Hanseatic, and Danish financial support. Toledo retired in 1573 and was replaced by Luís de Zúñiga y Requesens, whose troops mutinied that year. Independence for the United Provinces of the Netherlands was won by the sword and cannon, but it would take 75 more years of struggle >for Spain to recognize it. This 18-year Holocaust of Protestants was a foretaste of what awaited Germany and the Czech regions 45 years later in the Thirty Years War.
Where you err is in failing to understand that America was largely settled by Protestants who were trying to get away from Popes and Emperors. It wasn't until the Irish potato famine that significant numbers of Catholics settled here--but under conditions of enforced tolerance, where they were just another religion. In fact, when Willie Nelson showed an early version of Jack Herer's book with this Dutch history (from Georg Behr's original hemp book) to Ann Richards, she asked why they were bashing Catholics, and they took it out of the next edition.
Therefore, Americans do not see religion, or salvation, as a bad thing, but as a basic human right, that belongs to every individual. And in fact, prohibition in the U.S. didn't get started until the 20th Century.
Modern neurological theory that says addiction is brain disease is a small permutation of the original dogma, that alien forces can deregulate (sicken) our inner self, our core self. Neurology tries to understand now where this happens, and it says: in the brain. And neurologists make theory about this and create images ( brain scans they call them) to illustrate their ideas. In a nutshell they say that drugs will incapacitate the brain's centers of 'good' decision making and then they locate the cells where this happens.( They, of course, define what 'good' decision making is, not I, the head of which they made the scan)
The power of half-lies is that they are half-truths. Brainscans only indicate where the activity is taking place. A better way to understand it is that every chemical we put into the body sets off its own particular cascade of effects. You don't get narcotic effects from stimulants, or psychedelic effects from narcotics. All drugs are not equivalent, nor are all drugs equally popular with druggies. Heroin will never have the mass following of cannabis, no matter how many experts on both side of the legalization debate say that their action in the brain is really the same.
If addiction is a way of learned adaptation, we should no longer use the word addiction, but ' a life style in which the intense and sometimes frequent use of drugs is an adaptive tool".
Aside from the question of build-up of tolerance, which no user really wants because they don't want to spend more money to get the same result, the longterm learning which results in cues in the environment triggering intense cravings simply may not be very "intelligent." Mice bio-engineered to knock out the mGLUR5 receptor could not be trained to self-inject cocaine. All other mice self-inject in preference to food and water until they die. But not these mice. Their dopamine was spiking, their serotonin was spiking--they were getting plenty of reward. But without the glutamate to hardwire in the self-injection, they soon lost interest and drifted back to their food and water.
For regular mice, their learned adaptation was fatal. What ibogaine seems to do is scrub this particular glutamate pathway, without interfering in interest in real rewards like food, water, shelter, etc.
Sometimes tools become obsolete, and the explanation of why so many people leave dysfunctional adaptations is exactly that: loss of usefulness.
But some tools may also carry heavy stigma .Religeons were forbidden, sexual behaviours chosen by some were forbidden, types( patterns) of drug use are forbidden because they all conflict with general ideals about human existence. This is a sort of legitimization of prohibiting these behaviours.
If a user takes ibogaine because of family pressures, etc., and doesn't really want to quit, let me assure you that they are perfectly capable of going back to drugs. It happens all the time. That's why we only claim a certain success rate in getting people clean with ibogaine. After ibogaine, you can really FEEL your drugs. But beware of overdosing on your regular dose following a session.
I agree fully with Dana that methadone is not only a chemical compound, but much more an instrument of discipline in a world that prohibits the self chosen use of opiates in spite of the fact that some people like them, and some even need them to survive. If I choose to use opiates it is not okay, but if my doctor makes that choice for me, it is. We prohibit not so much the opiate, but the intention and symbolical context of some types of use. The doctor can give me methadone to help me live with my type of adapatation, but not the type of opiate I like better.
Methadone can help people, but only ( or mostly) at the conditions of the doctor.
And here we reach the core of what I would like to clarify: the doctor stands for society's choice to prohibit me the self chosen use of opiates. He wants me to be either abstinent, or use his opaites in ways he prescribes.If I fail, hopla. to jail ,or at least no more assistence.
Overcoming use and reaching abstinence is society's goal with me if I use opiates. Overcoming 'addiction' by means of 'treatment' is what is supposed to happen. The ibo people say: use ibo to overcome addiction.The whitecoats say: use my compounds or life rules to overcome.
But Ibogaine's effect was discovered by a drug user, and promoted for addicts by drug users. AND the U.S. government apparently is trying to extend its prohibition of ibogaine worldwide. By shunning it and downplaying its significance because of your institutional commitment to schemes of opiate maintenance, the legalization camp is complicit in this prohibition. Which leads to this big split between the academics and policy wonks on the one hand, and the addict advocates of ibogaine.
My mistake is that I approach these things in a too theoretical fashion. I reason: the desire to become abstinent is a solid by product of our social ways of prohibiting opiates and other drugs, and the idea of an ideal human being that lurks behind these prohibitions.
But, as some of the ibo people told me, it may not be a by product of social force alone; it may be a genuine desire ,never mind the way this desire developed in me.
Okay. That is true.
If I approach the ibo people with this Okay, could they approach me with more understanding of my problems with the self chosen use of ibo? Ibo can not dissociate itself from the social context in which it has created its usefulness: prohibition. I see ibo as 'just one of these treatments' in a very symbolical sense.I am not talking about the pleasure of taking ibo, or its high level of interestingness, I am not refering to its subjective functionality, but to its social symbolism.
What if ibogaine is just a much more interesting experience than doing coke or dope for the umpteenth time? Why be stuck in a rut? We don't pay much attention to what the prohibitionists think anyway. What if it's simply time to move on?
I maintain that the illustration I used about homosexuality could clarify this. People of course have the right to not want to be gay. But if society jails gays, marginalises them, blackmails them and ultimately destroys their identity, it is not fair to ask people to remain gay, and true to their 'inner self'.Of course I understand their desire to ungay themselves, and if they use ibo to do that ,be my guest.But the social function of the ibo in that context is : society's soldier that chases the gayness out of gays. And I do not accept that because of my weird idea that gays have the right to be gays, and similar, intense drug users have the right to pursue that life style.
Like I said during my presentation in New Orleans, which you missed, ibogaine is not about elimination of all drugs, but self-determination for drug users. Part of any effort to reduce demand for the more addictive drugs, and force the market to supply more psychedelic "soft" drugs.
I once asked you to find the source of the following, apparently taken from Dutch government fact sheets:
"Out of the total population of 727,000, Amsterdam has around 5,100 hard-drug users. The primary thrust of policy is to discourage the use of drugs, and to combat the trade in drugs. The authorities also seek to minimize the risks incurred by drug users and to reduce as far as possible the nuisance factor for the general public. In the context of use, Amsterdam's drug policy differentiates between hard and soft drugs, i.e.: cannabis is available, but at locations where no other illicit substances may be sold, and this "market separation" is strictly enforced. Of some 5,100 hard-drug users, around 2000 are of Dutch origin, with some 1350 having roots in the former colony of Surinam, the Netherlands Antilles and Morocco. Around 1750 users come from other European countries, mainly Germany and Italy. The total number of hard-drug users is steadily decreasing, while their average age is rising, from 26.8 years in 1981 to 39 years in 1999. In the same period the total number of drug users under 22 years of age dropped from from 14.4 percent to 1.6 %."
At the time you informed me you were not really interested in helping find the source of this, because no matter how laudable the decline in heroin use involved, you do not support market separation because you do not believe in differentiating between pot and heroin. Subsequently, I came to understand that in Holland, cannabis was until recently consumed as hashish in tobacco cigarettes, while in America, everyone smokes pot, which is ubiquitous, including hard drug addicts. Junkies use pot to get over their jones. So people view going back to just smoking pot as returning to a more innocent, more easily manageable existence.
I have used the word ibo CLAN because of the special circle in which ibo is developing its mythical status. For me it is just another 'miracle' compound within prohibition, and within a theoretical NIDA governed dominance of pharmacological understanding of intense drug use, not a psychological understanding or a societal one. Its like ( not the same!) as these compounds the industry now works on to block ALL 'addictive' behavior or 'craving', to be injected from birth on.What a money maker ,this ulimate pharmacological zombyiser.
Come on now. Those vaccines are not going to be psycho-active like ibogaine. That zombie clan image is just more horror movie stuff, which will only impress folk already skeptical, or opposed to ibogaine. And how can NIDA do containment on a miracle?
To Sara, giving me ibo, and making me part of the interesting experience, would not change my ideas. My subjective reaction to ibo and my discussion of the social function of ibo are different levels of observation or analysis.
pc
Sara's right. You should take it. I may not have taken the big dose, but at least I've been immersed in the subject for 20 years.
Your take on its social function can have no insight until you better understand the drug itself.
PS Dana shouted at me at the top of his voice in the New Orleans hotel. I did not really mind. Angry people do that.
But heated words are not insults, nor threats. And I at least was trying to continue the conversation, while you were keen to break it off.
nick227@... wrote:
For me, you have to take into account the effect of the drug upon the body
and the brain. The democracy you are speaking of seems to claim that there
is an absolute independence of will regardless of intoxication, that someone
who has been using, say, heroin, for 5 years, has complete free will as to
whether he or she takes the next hit. Do you really believe that? "Uhm now,
well, what drug of choice shall I take today? How will I, with my free will,
choose to alter my consciousness today? Hey, how about heroin?! Ok, so I've
made the same choice for the last 5 years, but well that's my free will."
Heroin is an analgesic, an industrial strength painkiller. If you're
struggling in life and your body's repression system is fighting to holddown feelings then just one hit of heroin is going to give you such a
feeling of elation that you aren't easily going to stop using, maybe not
ever, and certainly not until another emotional process comes along with
sufficient strength to shake you out of it, a crisis of some sort, or a
progressive maturation. And, even then, it isn't going to be easy to stop.
You're going to need all the help you can get.
The hells we make for ourselves are much more confining than any government.
I submit that this whole thing you have of making ibogaine into the tool of
some regime to oppress those who seek freedom of choice is simply not
grounded in the reality of today's world. I mean, no one, possibly bar
myself, is even suggesting this happen. No government agencies seem remotely
interested in ibogaine, they don't give a shit about addicts and mostly, in
the case of the US government, basically finance all sorts of suspicious
covert operations disrupting foreign governments with the money they gain
from the drug trade anyway. They've got no interest in stopping anyone
taking heroin, beyond paying lip service at voting time.
Just look at Afghanistan. Ibogaine, by undermining the status quo, offers perhaps the best chance of overthrowing it.
So I urge you to look again at ibogaine and perhaps see the liberation it
profers, frequently to those who had given up all hope. And maybe even to
take a dose. To say it will not change your ideas, now that sounds pretty
closed. How can you know?
Actually, Nick, since Peter is articulating the doubts and objections of the "Heroin Solution" camp as a whole, it is rather unlikely the ideas will change that fast.
andria3a@... wrote:
Some comments about this 'resistance' from Prof Cohen:
***A) PC is a brilliant man though using his huge intellect to bad-rap a treatment for addiction, which clearly has validity, use and healing for our peers/community and family and therefore our communities generally, annoys me A LOT.
B) At the New Mexico Lindesmith Conference, Marsha Rosenbaum, a woman I happen to admire a lot otherwise, tried to stop Dana from speaking and had I not intervened, would prolly have succeeded. I called her weeks later, to ask why she did that and she said she had forgotten even doing it..
C)There clearly is something about Iboga that upsets those with money and power in the movement, but I am unclear as to what it is...whatever it is, they are not articulating with any convincing to me. I think it's personal, not theoretical, political or economic actually. BUT y'know when people have such fantastic brains, they can waste time with arguments that some will find interesting if unhelpful
D) PC is a star in some circles, so people like to connect to him: I love his mischievious childlike nature but I have had many one to ones with him and I often end up feeling unappreciated, so i keep a little distance from him nowadays.
E) I have written a longish e-mail to him, Nadelmann & Rosenbaum, saying in short, PLEASE stop being so arrogant..."if addicts are saying that Iboga improves their lives, nobody (including y'all) should be throwing theoretcial spanners in the works."
So I'm not paranoid. It is not personal, however. Anyone who kept pushing ibogaine in Peter's in-crowd would face the same ostracism eventually, because they're bucking the program. Their group is excluding us, but almost unconsciously, or automatically. Marsha Rosenbaum doesn't remember, you see....
GardenRestaurant@... wrote:
Peter Cohen second letter is effectively more coherent than the first one
but I still believe that is position is stiff and incoherent.
The The Declaration of Geneva was adopted by the General Assembly of the
World MedicalAssociation at Genevra in 1948 and amended bythe 22d World Medical
Assembly at Sydney in 1968 It is a declaration of physicians' dedication to
the humanitarian goals of medicine, a declaration that was especially
importantin view of the medical crimes which had just been committed in Nazi
germany.
The Declaration of Geneva reads "AT THE TIME OF BEING ADMITTED AS A MEMBEROF THE MEDICAL PROFESSION:
a.. I SOLEMNLY PLEDGE myself to consecrate my life to the service of
humanity;
b.. I WILL GIVE to my teachers the respect and gratitude which is their
due;
c.. I WILL PRACTICE my profession with conscience and dignity;
d.. THE HEALTH OF MY PATIENT will be my first consideration;
e.. I WILL RESPECT the secrets which are confided in me, even after the
patient has died;
f.. I WILL MAINTAIN by all the means in my power, the honor and the noble
traditions of the medical profession;
g.. MY COLLEAGUES will be my sisters and brothers;
h.. I WILL NOT PERMIT considerations of age, disease or disability, creed,
ethnic origin, gender, nationality, politicalaffiliation, race, sexual
orientation, or social standing to intervene between my duty and my patient;
i.. I WILL MAINTAIN the utmost respect for human life from its beginning
even under threat and I will not use my medical knowledge contrary to the
laws of humanity;
j.. I MAKE THESE PROMISES solemnly, freely and upon my honor."
Now if a dying addict is not sick, of course, you don't have to help him .
Did I understood it , ?/!
You don't have to help an alcoholic. What about a diabetic ? An obese ?
What if your country had 27 % of the men are addicted to opium, like after
the two Opium war in China ?
What if a superpower with the help of alcohol is destroying your people and
culture like in the "American Genocide" Europe versus Americas.? What if
goverments try to push addiction to their citizens?
To many questions for a busy specialist in addiction trying to reach his
quota of 10 % success rate.
God bless you
Francis
Sorry, nothing personal. Just few questions. Have you ever read " brave new
world " ?
With proper follow-up, our success rate is higher than 10%
ms_iboga@... wrote:
I guess I am trying to
understand why you made the reference to the 'cure for
homosexuality' in the first place, and how it so
easily segued into Ibogaine. It seemed to me to be a
non-sequitor.
Not in the context of the proponents of heroin trials trying to influence gay AIDS bureaucrats via the harm reduction movement. Their ace in the hole is that there is no alternative to heroin maintenance. It's inevitable, so just implement it. But the ibogaine makes that not true. So there IS an alternative. And THAT'S a big problem for Peter Cohen, Morgan, and Drucker.
I don't believe drug users should be persecuted
either. Heroin maintenance for opiate dependency
seems like a great idea to me, as opposed to
methadone. However, many opiate users would like to
either (1) take a break from using, or (2) cut down
their dosage. As you have never been dependent on
opiates, you have no idea how hard this can be, both
physically and psychologically.
His arguments do give that difficulty short shrift.
nick227@... wrote:
What I see is that Peter is taking a libertarian stance with drugs. That's fine, very Dutch, and I support it. The Dutch had bullshit Calvinism rammed down their throats for generations and it's great to see them get up and move in the opposite direction. One day they're even gonna stop being so stingy too! Anyway, I'm being childish.
What I don't see is any grounding, any connection to feelings. It's just a mindy argument that makes sense for libertarian academics and wins adoration from a generation of individuals that don't want to look at their drug-using behaviour. Yes, I'm just exercising my democratic right to use, struggling against the Oppression of the State that wants to control my behaviour. I'm OK! I'm justified. In fact, I'm actually a freedom fighter!
I actually have elicited this reaction. It's not as bad as it once was, because people have more respect for ibogaine the longer it's around. And if they're junkies, some day they might need it.
Adopting this Us and Them belief pattern mimics the action of an opiate. The drug will push down feelings, it represses the influence of the body, it creates a duality - mind vs body. The belief does the same, it's the mental version of an opiate.
Ibogaine is a drug that can show you Who You Are, and that person is not a junkie, that person is never a junkie. Really. Well, maybe one in one million but no more! It is not natural to reinforce the mind-body split. I don't care if people have been using opium or other drugs of repression for aeons, that doesn't make it natural. The movement towards holism is natural, the movement towards mind-body split is unnatural. That's my take. Heroin is a learning tool but ibogaine is the teacher. The one leads to the other.
Nick
sara119@... wrote:
All ways are ways, some ways will be looked at as better ways then other ways but each and everyone of us has to follow a way in this physical body,
So let's just except that for what it is. and if some of you have come across ibogaine that's cool, but don't become a "Yahweh witness " of ibogaine cause
I donno. I just saw Ben DeLoenen's film. It could make a believer out of you.
It isn't for everyone, just like every other way , if you are supposed to live a sober life that will happen to you no matter what, the awakening will happen when it is suppose to happen with or without ibogaine, it is all up to you what path or way you have to follow/or not follow , and not up to the ibogaine to light your path in a way that you can see that you have a path but up to your understanding/or not understanding of the self /mind body spirit which lifestyle you sink in or walk.
In short, who are we to be judgmental/or in control of any body's state of consciousness. Consciousness is a individual growing process and not a forced Process from society.
On the other hand those who were addicted and became free of it think that it is a way that everyone should follow as a magic way to freedom,
But really you are the lucky one's to feel that way, and for sure that you get your act together when you are not dope sick or broke and stressed out.
It is all about the true joy we have in our lives, if your life is better being clean then so be it and if not then so be it.
Both is human lifestyle and the key for any change is in the hand of the higher self, the connection we have with the universe.
The nice thing about Iboga experience is that you are reminded of that.
freedomroot@... wrote:
Peter said he thought even partaking of the Ibogaine Interesting
Experience wouldn't alter his subjective position that anchors his
thinking on the matter.
I'm not sure that assumption will/would hold up in practice. It is
perhaps, how did the sandbagger put it?, a "mindy" approach to the
mystical.
And, for a counter-example, all of the social scientists who went and
"looked" at the hippie or commune or psychedelic cultural revolution
or whatever you wanna call it, were changed by the experiential
dimension of the participant-observation.
It would, I cerebrally offer, be likely to change something.
love from ny, rachel, ibo-wife
cohen.cedro@... wrote:
Why I make a reference to the 'cure for homosexuality'? Because I see the philosophy driving such cures as the same as the philosophy driving the 'cures for intensive drug use'.
For me it is all very clear and I understand that for you is it is not clear at all.
But gay behavior stretches over a spectrum from committed monogamy to binge sex with 6 guys a night on levitra and crystal meth. No one on this list is against using drugs, or for the government prohibition. We just don't want to be ADDICTED, because it's time-consuming, inconvenient, and expensive.
I am trying to work with the theoretical problems that the concept of 'addiction' bring and that is also why I approach all this in a theoretical way.
Once you think you see how the history of the concept of addiction played, and to what types of social practice this has lead, it becomes necesary to 'deconstruct' the concept of addiction and find out how exactly it was constructed in the first place, by whom and on what evidence. What behaviors were created into 'addiction' and what theoretical notions, available at the time, inspired this? Thats what I do.
As a matter of fact, the standard dopamine model of 10 - 15 years ago has been rendered obsolete by new findings--partially by ibogaine research itself. Dopamine turns out not to be reward, but craving. The mice without the mGLUR5 pathway, remember?
Let me try another example. (Hoping I do not create even more confusion because no example is really good enough, or precise enough) The Bill of Rights was written in the America of the 18th century by people who owned hundreds of slaves. For them it was not clear as it is for us, that there is a contradiction in their thinking. How can you try to define a state system that would ensure freedom for its civil population while enslaving millions?
The answer is that there was never consensus on slavery, and that contradiction lead to a civil war.
These slave owners were of course part of their times in which black people from Africa were not seen as humans but as a sort of animal. One did not define human rights for these beings, they were not human to begin with.
So, if educated slaves from these days would support the version of human rights that excluded them, I would have told them that, in my view, they were seeing themselves thru the eyes of their masters. making any form of what I see as emancipation impossible.
To the contrary, each group that has since attained its freedom did so by insisting that those rights included them.
When I look at the notion of 'freedom' or 'human right' these people used I can understand why they did not include black Africans. And I could fight them better.
I could go on , and discuss the concept of democracy and its history in the USA, where a blind horse can see that the USA has never had even a remote diluted version of democracy and now is further away from it even.
But we have a plan for dealing with that, which I outlined at the end of my last post. I do not believe your plan to end prohibition is realistic. You would set up a kind of Weimar situation where the Nazis would simply take over again, really pissed, in about 10 years.
Now back to addiction. If one, like me, does not recognise this concept, one has a serious conflict with the psychiatric class and their notions that exist all around. If there is no such thing as a pathology called addiction, why would any one have any claim or desire to 'curing' it? Do you now see why I use the example of homosexuality?
This would be news to purveyors of the conventional wisdom that addicts are incurable, and will always be in the system, either as a social service client, or as a homeless junkie sustaining the police state via petty crime that converts middleclass surplus capital into liquidity to prop up the banking system.
The social existence of the concept of addiction legitimises a vast discriminatory system not unlike slavery.It forces the 'addict' to obtain 'cures', but the addict may resist -for good reasons-, but "we,psychiatrists acting in the name of a deep social prejudice, will force you to accept this cure".
William Burroughs said that if you wish to alter or annihilate a pyramid of numbers in a serial relation, you alter or remove the bottom number. Take away addiction, the system collapses.
I used to see the ibo clan as part of that philosophy, an identification with the system that severely discriminates against them, forces them into miles deep of social misery and marginalisation.Do not think I do not know about the behaviour of intense and frequent drug use.I do. I speak to the people that here in this country are on the receiving end of a gram of heroin each day, if they so wish. I know how the security of heroin each day slowly and profoundly changes their lives and their possibilities, altho the social prejudice against them is not changed much.But because they improve so much, both physicall and spiritually, they are able to move freely into social space they had not entered for a long time.
Some hate the psychiatric and medical supervision, rightly so, and some even decide to go back to blackmarket heroin or methadone. But try to understand where I want to go.
I do not understand how we could be identifying with the system, since the impulse to seek out ibogaine is much more akin to rejecting the supervision of methadone and going to the blackmarket.
Some one on this list wrote me that ibogaine was a kind of salvation for her, but the heroin in her heroin habit did not hurt her at all. The drug war destroyed her, forcing her to leave her ways and seek a 'cure' which she found with ibo.
I'm not going to apologize for the bunch of little Nazis running the system, and I don't have to. We did this to free our own people. You keep thinking that all drugs are equal, that there are no entheogens, nothing more salvific than good old smack.
This is exactly what I say all the time. The drug war is not a war on drugs but on its users. Heroin, or any other opiate can be used almost without limit in both quatity and time, if proper food habits etc are chosen.Opiates are so non toxic it is hard to find anything better. For those who like or need opiates, it is a fabulous substance with in general less problems than the average marriage.
This is where you become utopian. We have to wait for ibogaine until you get legal heroin. The tawdry reality is methadone, and methadone up-regulates HIV production and trashes the liver of anyone on AIDS meds. Ibogaine, on the other hand, seems dramatically to improve Hep-C status, and Glick's synthetic 18 MC is a potential treatment for HIV.
So once again, I do not have any personal problems with any of you. Or with your liking for ibo. It is the social context in which ibo has become what it is that I try to combat, in a rather radical way,thats true. But I consider the cruelty of prohibition and the medieval backwardness of the ideas behind 'addiction' as so terrible, that only a radical rethink can open some eyes.
When you say
many opiate users would like to
either (1) take a break from using, or (2) cut down
their dosage
I know that. For me this is a proof of my accusations towards the system that ruins lives of opiate users and forces them into this imaginary 'cure' or 'a break' that modern days Inquisition has concocted for the unfaithful(= users of wrong drugs )
There you go again. Ibogaine is imaginary; the effect is all mind control by mindvox.
The hatred that these 'wrong drug users' receive or develop for themselves is a brutal and terrible thing that has no other ground than prejudice.So, I do have a serious problem accepting the core validity of people's claims who 'want' to take a break. Most people will take a break or diminish or stop altogether when they are not forced, if time has come.Or they won't, which in my view is their right as well.
You want to do something about the Drug War? Organize or participate in some protest. Right now we have 140 cities on 6 continents marching on May 7th. I hope you will join us in Amsterdam. When we hit enough cities with big enough protests, the system will collapse, like in the Ukraine. Then we must be prepared to seize power ruthlessly and accord our enemies unlawful combatant status. Bush has renounced the protections of the Geneva Convention.as far as all drugwar bureaucrats and law enforcement personal are concerned.
I am not forcing any one of you you try to see what I see, but at least-for me- it is a worthwhile attempt. And, I have to say, I learn because the attack on me, e.g. that I am to 'mindy' reminds me that I can not approach these things from a purely theoretical position, as if no real and very serious subjects are involved, more than a 'social construction' that can be dealt with in an unemotional theoretical way.
You say we can't have ibogaine until we reach utopia. Okay--at least our utopia is more imaginative than your utopia.
ptpeet@... wrote:
Well, while I tend to agree with you in most ways Peter, I myself do know from experience that under today's system of prohibition, it is a very hard road to toe while strung out (call it what you will- addicted, habitual user, self-absorbed, whatever), dodging prohibition's enforcers while trying to scrape enough money together each and every day just to feel "not sick," and life really can be extremely difficult to live like that- and yet as difficult and outright hellish as it can get, many of us still have trouble stopping. Again, I fully agree with you that we should be allowed to live and take any drug we so desire, including opiates and everything else really, and shouldn't have to worry about stopping, but we do unfortunately. With this in mind, I am totally behind ibogaine, in that it sure was a nifty, amazing, beautiful way to completely cut my opiate use to miniscule levels (without my stupid pain issues, I would not have continued taking opiates actually).
This is why people might have a desire to have a way to "cure" the situation when people find themselves really prefering not to use drugs rather than go to jail, lose their home, etc, etc, and yet find themselves unable to find the "will power" (which I'm not entirely convinced is what's needed anyway, having gone through this stupid situation again and again my own damned self) or whatever it is to quit taking the drugs.
You know, you and Nick would do the whole list a service by concentrating of getting Peter to justify himself, instead of throwing brick-bats at each other. We are so marginal compared to the Ethan Nadelmans that letting go of this focus was a big mistake.
BiscuitBoy714@... wrote:
Sara, I think you mean free will coming from an addicts point of view when stopping the addiction. For me, I used opiates most of my life to make me feel better in some way or other. Pain, depression, anger, love....., etc., made me feel uncomfortable. All I knew was when I was opiated, I felt "better." For a while. I fell in love with the euphoria of ALL opiates. Well, after years of eating, snorting, smoking, shooting dope I became so tore down from conning DR's, being a middle man in dope deals, generally spending all my cash, and putting all my effort into keeping my jones at bay, that I just didn't want to be addicted anymore. My choice. I have things that I want to accomplish that I just couldn't seem to get done addicted. God knows that I gave it enough time to find out if opiates were fucking me up or not. I love the feeling of opiates, I just don't want to have to be a slave to the grind anymore. I have to admit that the reaction that I got from my family as I nodded out at the table in front of my nephews and my Mom had something to do with it. I never could find that fine line between being half sick or nodding out. I never had enough dope. If I'd have had 5 kilo's of heroin, I would have been wondering where to get more. I just couldn't take it any more. All I knew was I had to find a way that actually worked at keeping me from being so sick when I tried to stop. I tried everything that came down the road to no avail until I found Ibogaine. Somehow Ibogaine has interrupted my addiction enough to let me think for myself instead of thinking about my addiction all the time. I'm loving my state of mind now, besides I'm sure there will be plenty of dope out there if I change my mind about it. I really don't think I will this time. Thanx for asking Sara. Peace and love to you and your family. Randy
Well said. There has to be more to life than the rat-race. Heroin is just variant of rat race. Ibogaine is something else.
GardenRestaurant@... wrote:
This is a kind of marxist view of addiction as a creation of the "bougeois".
In my humble opinion as soon man discover the potential properties of
alcohol or drugs to create a state of euphorie or bliss: we found addiction
I don't see why we should make a distinction beetwen an addict to drugs or
alcohol.
1600 BC we have already Egyptian texts referring to the social problems of
drunkness .
Hinduism has the largest following in India, and in the Hindu scriptures
drinking is referred to as one of the five heinous crimes, which include
murder and adultery.The ancient Tamil poet, Thiruvalluvar, whose work
entitled offers some foundations for ethical values in society, also
condemns alcohol, calling it a social evil and equating a drunkard to a dead
body.
In China there is archeological evidence of alcohol production 7 000 years
ago. Early Chinese literature includes many references to alcohol. Dynasties
appear to have fallen as a result of alcohol. The historical record clearly
suggests that, at different times, governments have acknowledged
alcohol-related problems and have used policies to prevent these problems.
For example, the Emperor Yu (2205 - 2198 BC) imposed an alcohol tax to
reduce consumption.
A drunk is a drunk and an addict is an addict as far as we can go back in
history.
God bless
Francis ( ex drunk :-) )
Societies are going to make some kind of efforts to regulate substances. I think that we can justifiably require them to replace alcohol and cigarettes with cannabis.
Dana/cnwP.S: This digest was also prepared for the Global Marijuana March.To join the Mindvox ibogaine list just send an email to ibogaine-subscribe@... if you please.Nothing more to it. You don't have to write anything in the subject or text area.-------------------------------------------------------------From: tents444@...http://www.corporatism.netfirms.com/mmmall.htm This page just created! Please forward and distribute widely.348 MMM cities worldwide since 1999!
MMM. All cities 1999 to date. Million Marijuana March. Global Cannabis Liberation in May. Worldwide since 1999. Cannabis events on the first Saturday in May, or that weekend, or thereabouts. Marches, meetings, rallies, raves, concerts, festivals, etc..******************************************************************************To get on the poster for 2005--update your contact details & add your city to this New List:[---snip---]
----end of forwarded email----The detailed MMM 2005 city list at the end of the above
forwarded email has been deleted since it has some private
postal info, etc. in [brackets].Feel free to copy and email widely the alphabetical MMM
2005 city list with cities, states, and nations. It also
has email addresses and webpage links. Basic city list:
http://www.corporatism.netfirms.com/mmm2005.htm
Million Marijuana March. World Cannabis Day. Important:
To get on the MMM posters for May 7, 2005, update
your contact details and add your city to the list.
The frequently-updated, basic MMM 2005 city list with
city, state/province, state/nation, webpage links,
email addresses, and world map is here:
http://www.corporatism.netfirms.com/mmm2005map.htm
The simple and detailed 2005 city list posters are here:
http://gallery.marihemp.com/mmm2005flyers
Subscribe to get the detailed MMM 2005 city list.
To subscribe send a blank email to:
mmmnet-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
Or sign up here:
http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/mmmnet
Dana Beal's MMM email compilations are
publicly archived here:
http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/mmmworld
To subscribe to that email list send a blank email to:
mmmworld-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
Sometimes the Cures-not-wars.org (CNW) site is down for
awhile. So if you send MMM city info to Dana Beal or CNW,
and do not get a reply, and find that the info is not listed
in the city lists after a few days, then please resubmit the
email and city info as often as necessary to:
dana@..., cnw@...,
tents444@... ~
You can also use the MMM contact form:
http://corporatism.tripod.com/webform.htm
Photo gallery. Cannabis events worldwide:
http://gallery.marihemp.com/mmm
MMM (Million Marijuana March). First Saturday in May.
Hundreds of different cities worldwide since 1999.
2005 city list and world map:
http://www.corporatism.netfirms.com/mmm2005map.htm
Yahoo Group:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cannabisaction
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