Dependence Abuse

Prompted by: Pot Matters: Marijuana Use Disorder (High Times)

Marijuana use disorder is a new term introduced by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) used by psychiatrists and mental health professionals for diagnostic criteria. Marijuana use disorder is a combination of two prior terms—marijuana abuse and marijuana dependence.

That last sentence (emphasis mine) exemplifies the root of doom for humanity (insert crickets chirping here).

Perhaps an exaggeration, but let’s look at this crazy thing that nobody wants to maturely discuss (but always has a powerfully serious impact upon society) — language.

Relevantly from dictionary.com…

Abuse: the use wrongly or improperly; misuse

Dependence: the state of being psychologically or physiologically dependent on a drug after a prolonged period of use.

A manual of mental disorders apparently concludes cannabis dependence is automatically bad, even though (in fact) there’s no experimental science concluding any harm in moderate cannabis use (moderate meaning any use without objectively proven harm — e.g. death) — even daily use.

For a moment here, let’s assume that dependence is indeed bad, so cannabis use disorder is abuse and dependence, but dependence is obviously abuse.

Got that?

Speaking of mental disorders, too many people tasked to protect society from mental disorders ironically hypocritically suffer from their own — language abuse (no doubt powerfully sculpted from political/financial conflicts of interest against public safety).

Use and abuse are unnecessarily muddy (confusing) terms, and that confusion is a critical part towards immorally sustaining Certain Drug Prohibition.

Remove that part alone, and that prohibition thankfully falls like the Berlin Wall, because abuse occurs within the overwhelmingly small percentage (well-below 1% by any published measure) of the citizenry — so at least not worth the billions of precious taxpayer dollars annually spent.

Roughly millions of lives have been (and are on track to become) ruined to varying degrees from that confusion, because Certain Drug Prohibition unhealthily depends (hypocritically coincidentally) upon merely swapping the words use and abuse to prohibitionists’ convenience.

Even the Controlled Substances Act itself distinguishes between use and abuse by stating that Schedule I drugs (i.e. what prohibitionists declare are the most dangerous drugs) have a “high potential for abuse”.

Returning with my emphasis added to the prompting piece (and yes, the DSM is clearly influenced by prohibitionists)…

Here are the criteria used for diagnosing substance use disorders:

Taking the substance in larger amounts or for longer than the you meant to

Wanting to cut down or stop using the substance but not managing to

Spending a lot of time getting, using or recovering from use of the substance

Cravings and urges to use the substance

Not managing to do what you should at work, home or school, because of substance use

Continuing to use, even when it causes problems in relationships

Giving up important social, occupational or recreational activities because of substance use

Using substances again and again, even when it puts you in danger

Continuing to use, even when you know you have a physical or psychological problem that could have been caused or made worse by the substance

Needing more of the substance to get the effect you want (tolerance)

Development of withdrawal symptoms, which can be relieved by taking more of the substance.

You can find many examples of unethically swapping use and abuse at prohibitionist websites (DEA, etc.), but you get the point here.

Critically note (btw) that list towards “diagnosing substance use disorders” shows nothing about the underlying stressors logically forming that “use” (actually obviously abuse), but instead focuses upon the problem being the drug itself (coincidentally to prohibitionists’ benefit). Healing from drug abuse is logically all about healthily adapting to those stressors, so has nothing to do with the tool of abuse (drugs, food, sex, money, violence, etc.)

We obviously instead need a “war” on unhealthy stress, but that would produce a very strong “war” against status quo comforts (e.g. from constantly terribly overworking people, abusively stressful laws against the innocent, etc.) It would also mean a righteous press against the absurdity from allowing a too-often abusive oligarchy to judicially define liberty to use something by unfairly determining which forms of (basically equally destructive) personal abuses are lawfully acceptable.

The term “use disorder” is intentional, if malicious “intelligence” (i.e. self-believing clever antagonism) is involved.

That allows use (to at least appear) to be automatically problematic (as demonstrated in the aforementioned list), which means a lot more money for prohibitionists (including their “treatment experts” supposedly opposing “alcohol and drug” problems — noting alcohol is a drug, scientifically speaking, so the distinction is ironically abusive and ridiculous against credibility).

In a righteous world, use disorder is obviously a pathetically useless redundancy of abuse, so use disorder must be deprecated for better communication (for consequently better socialness for better health).

There’s no ethical reason to avoid a hard-line distinction between use and abuse.

Use is harmless.

Abuse is harmful.

In a humanity that actually cares about humanity (as opposed to the form of humanity hideously dominating these days by too often pretending to care about humanity to cover selfishly destructive agendas), harm is scientifically conclusively (not suggestively) defined to maximal possible extent for accurate (non-abusive) law to actually serve and protect the public.

Murder, assault, theft, and fraud are solid examples of actual harm — all examples leveraged ironically hypocritically by relevant prohibitionists incidentally, based upon the whole truth (and nothing but).

Moreover, dependence is not necessarily bad.

I believe that we can safely assume that many millions of people are dependent upon a drug called caffeine, while the “sky has not fallen” as a result.

Drugs are a form of technology, so let’s look at other forms of technology forming widespread dependence.

Most people are dependent upon wearing clothes — a dependency so “bad” that it’s required by law within the public spotlight.

There are many more examples, but let’s move on for brevity.

Cannabis (upon proper use) is a highly flexible and powerful stress management tool (yes, irony rises again upon considering drug abuse is all about unhealthy stress), partially because that plant provides humanity with the first known and often used (by millions of people for thousands of years) symphonic drug.

Like a leaf covering the crotch introducing humanity to clothing, cannabis is similar, but introducing humanity to clothing for the mind (and other internal bodily areas) — an area that will explode into technological innovation towards at least mental protection as computers inevitably disappear into the brain for some upcoming generation.

Cannabis (actually, in general, psychedelic) use improves the user’s stress signature (health).

However, psychedelic abuse (like wearing the wrong clothes — e.g. a bathing suit at the North Pole) is destructive against that signature, so is indeed worth publicly addressing (like any form of abuse — especially law abuse — insert crickets chirping, thanks pitifully to undeterred mainstream reasoning abuse dominating our lives without apology).

When (no longer if, at least based upon reasonably strong momentum) the destructive obstacle of cannabis illegality is removed, and as the Information Age logically precedes the Education/Entertainment Age, our Respect Cannabis campaign will focus upon educating responsible entertainers of all kinds to consequently educate their audience about proper use to avoid abuse.

To define risk is to unavoidably define liberty.

While effectively nobody truly cares about liberty as fundamentally defined in our nation (as the nationally obligatory self-evident and unalienable right rationally without possible ‘slippery slope’ exception — even that “to protect the children”), that discriminatory absence of care for over two centuries (and strongly counting) is the obnoxious seed for severe law abuse — logically the worst form of abuse due to its mainly broad scope of destruction, and the form of abuse igniting the violent national revolution establishing that logically critical right (and other constitutional protections worn away by vague language and consequently politicized judicial opinions entrenched in legal precedence).

The problem is so seriously bad, way too many people (even self-proclaimed constitutional experts) believe our Constitution is a “living document” (reinforcing that highly politicized restructuring of law on the oceanic, so basically chaotic, fly) — when (in fact) the constitutional amendment process crushes that “living document” belief purely into the realm of baseless.

In other words, if our Constitution is a “living document”, why bother having a constitutional amendment process (especially one that makes amending our Constitution seriously challenging)?

If our obligatory fundamental right to liberty ever counts (again for emphasis, it hasn’t for over two centuries and strongly discriminatingly counting), then logically unavoidably…

Harm (not risk) is the sole focus of law.

Risk is the focus of effective education (requiring entertainment for learning interest).

The only exception requires constitutional acknowledgement of judicial contexts (likely requiring a constitutional amendment), so the public context solely remains within judicial reach of legitimate risk-based laws (traffic laws, etc.) — which I prefer to distinguish from harm-based laws by calling them “plaws” (based upon public context laws).

Until then, we all have to terribly suffer (and remain at any degree of risk) from the excessively many mental disorders dependent upon selfishly abusing the public (i.e. oligarchical abuse against public safety), while too many people continue to sadly believe in the voting lever that demonstrates nowhere near enough defensive public leverage.

Where’s the war on greed? How about the war on egotism? Dare I say the war on treason against our fundamental rights and logical (so fair, so just) constitutionality?

All hail the supreme leader greatly depended upon to establish and enforce inevitably discriminatory (unfair, so unjust) law within human history — i.e. supreme leader Great Hypocrisy?

If you believe reality requires balance for stability (and you scientifically should, though believing in karma works as well), so reality is a naturally governing force (making complex and largely-selfish-agenda-driven law highly questionable, if not obviously needless), then “beneficiaries” of the great outrage ruining millions of non-violent (actually innocent) lives are to be pitied, because they basically have an unavoidable wave of compensatory suffering (perhaps even agonizing) by reality’s demonstrably indestructible need — mercy literally impossible until balance achieved.

Justice is inevitable (defeat is ultimately mutual) — what I prefer to call the Rule of Reality (link goes inclusively to the scientific basis of that Rule). Remember that, if you believe you can get away with screwing someone (or many someones) over to “get ahead”, and adapt fittingly for public (obviously including your own) safety.

About Spirit Wave

I am an honest freak (or reasonably responsibly balanced "misfit", if you prefer) of an artist working and resting to best carefully contribute towards helping society. Too many people abuse reasoning (e.g. 'partial truth = whole truth' scam), while I exercise reason to explore and express whole truth without any conflict-of-interest -- all within a sometimes offbeat style of psychedelic artistry.