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Is Your Life in America Like Pushing a Boulder Through Eternity? 5 Issues We Can Change

11/15/2015

 
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Is this your American family portrait? According to research, it is.
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Due to a culture that lacks means of resilience, financial inability to have children, and massive school loans that last an eternity, many Americans struggle to find meaning in life.
Economic reasons force many Americans to wait until they are 40 to afford having kids choose to not have them at all. 
More reasons Americans are suffering from an epidemic of addiction and death: ​Expensive health insurance driven by overpriced healthcare and prescription drugs, high cost of college that is laughed at 
LEGO art based on the Greek myth of Sisyphus, who was doomed to push a boulder up a hill for eternity, never to reach the top.
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by the rest of the world, religion that shoots itself in the foot, society that self-medicates with alcohol and psychoactive prescription drugs (benzos, opioids, etc) while stigma exists against research of non-addictive hallucinogens, few means of resilience, and scarce, expensive, and culturally incompetent mental health and substance abuse care. 
Below are 5 major issues that we need to change in America and how you can harass your favorite elected official.

Click to enlarge images.
Get provocative:
  • Appalachia, American Politicians Lack Courage to Go "All In" on Opioid Maintenance, Harm Reduction, Mental Health & Drug Policy Reform
  • America, Don't Fight Mental Illness and Addiction with One Arm Behind Your Back
1. Middle Class Priced out of Society, Healthcare, Education:
​
  • It's a Matter of Conscience: Bernie Calls Out Greed, Holds American Healthcare to a Higher Standard. ​Single-Payer system is the way to go unless politicians can get creative, and get creative fast.

"Workers will not have to be trapped in jobs they do not like simply because their employers are offering them decent health insurance plans." 
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  • Middle class is priced out of healthcare due to expensive insurance, overpriced healthcare and prescription drugs
    ​

  • High cost of college education that is laughed at by the rest of the world. Americans essentially become indentured servants for the rest of their life. Not everyone wants to attend free college in Germany and become an expat to live a free life (However, it is highly recommended, if you can afford to get there).

  • Recipe for Hopelessness: Greed, Addiction & No Mental Health

  • Treating the Uninsured Mentally Ill​
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2. Prison:
​
  • America: Land of the Free?
    ​
  • ​Illicit Drug Use Is Similar Between Black And White Americans. Can You Guess Which Race Is More Punished For It?

3. Religion:
​
  • Religious Culture that Lacks Openness & Compassion Destroys Dignity

  • Pew: Millennials increasingly are driving growth of ‘nones’​

  • ​Improve It: Religion's Simplest Form

​4. Self-medicating with alcohol and/or prescription drugs like opioids, benzos, Soma, etc (the list goes on), or trying a variety of marginally effective mental health medications out of desperation
​
  • Meditation & Hallucinogen Therapy for Preventative Mental Health​
​
  • Epidemic of Death: Appalachia, American Politicians Lack Courage in Times of Crisis, Afraid to Go "All In" on Opioid Maintenance, Harm Reduction, Mental Health & Drug Policy Reform

  • Overprescribing the Appalachians and Anatolians ft. Stephen Loyd, M.D.​​​​
Scroll down to discover the wonderful benefits of nature and the power of awe.
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Why Our Culture Is
​Making People Unhappy
​
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Don't Talk to Your Doctor About Drug
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Seek out what gives you goosebumps. All of us will be better for it. http://t.co/zsUTqaSTyE pic.twitter.com/JK8L2NuCI6

— NYT Opinion (@nytopinion) May 22, 2015
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5. Meditation • Chemical Connection to Nature • Awe

With proper set and setting, the mystical experience occasioned by classic hallucinogens may give patients insight into the self, create persisting increases in the personality domain of openness, and elicit feelings of interconnectedness
 with:
NATURE
EACH OTHER

​

​
Psychology Study Explains
Entheogen Ethics: Awe, the Small Self, Be Prosocial!!
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​​


​Warrior's small
self after contact
with nature.

Stanford researchers find mental health prescription in nature: 
​A Stanford study found that walking in nature yields measurable mental benefits and may reduce risk of depression. 

Nature is now available in prescription strength!
Researcher Paul Piff's study, Awe, the Small Self, and Prosocial Behavior, found that awe may promote altruistic behavior and that nature can inspire awe.

​From the study:​
  • Next to nothing is known about how awe, which is typically elicited by information-rich stimuli like panoramic nature views instead of social stimuli (Shiota et al., 2007), can likewise influence prosocial tendencies so vital to trust and commitment.
​
  • Van Cappellen and Saroglou (2012) found that eliciting awe via a nature video caused participants to feel more connected to people in general on the Inclusion of the Other in the Self Scale (Aron, Aron, & Smollan, 1992).​
    ​
  • Those individuals who report feeling part of a greater entity, such as humanity, nature, or a spiritual force tend to report increased gratitude and empathy—emotions tightly linked to prosociality (McCullough, Emmons, & Tsang, 2002).
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Moderation is key.
Trouble with Nature:
​
  • Does everyone in America have access to nature?
    ​
  • Is there adequate transportation that allows people to leave squalid festering slumholes, or the South during the middle of the summer?

  • No means of mental health or resilience
    ​
    built into our culture.
​
An awe-inspiring discovery

"Awe is such a powerful emotion because it signifies wonder and amazement in the world, and you don’t have to travel abroad or pursue a daring adventure to find it. “In fact, participants report feeling awe about twice a week on average, making it a more common emotion than we might expect,” she said, noting that everyday experiences— glancing up at the stars or watching athletes achieve a seemingly impossible physical feat—can inspire awe. 

​The survey measured seven key emotions: amusement, awe, contentment, compassion, pride, love and joy. Stellar found that four specific emotions—joy, pride, contentment and awe—predicted lower levels of pro-inflammatory cytokine IL-6.


Interestingly, awe had the strongest negative relationship to IL-6, even when researchers controlled for the other six positive emotions, personality measures and a third method of measuring emotions.


While researchers don’t entirely know why awe topped the list of emotions as a positive predictor of health, Stellar said she’s certain that her own studies have changed her way of thinking about awe in the world."


Make a Difference

​Find your congressman or woman's number here and tell them we need leadership in mental health, pain, and substance abuse care, not more of the same bureaucratic bickering.

#Nature inspires #prosocial behavior https://t.co/1hmmcZYWaA https://t.co/sfwG2xHuZS

— Our Amazing World (@OAWoww) November 9, 2015

We experience awe because it moves us to do things for the greater good. My NYTimes Op-Ed with Dacher Keltner: http://t.co/ry0W4S5hRJ #awe

— Paul Piff (@pkpiff) May 22, 2015
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Psilocybin, Not Mother's Little Helper, Prozac, or Xanax Helps with Anxiety Associated with Cancer
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​Psychology Study Explains Psychedelic Health: Awe, the Small Self, Prosocial Behavior​

Why positive emotions may be the next big predictor of health https://t.co/99FMZaRW5K #TEDMED pic.twitter.com/vOxfRbM5N5

— AMA (@AmerMedicalAssn) November 20, 2015
2015. Hendricks. Classic psychedelic use is associated with reduced psychological distress and suicidality in the United States adult population. J Psychopharmacology.

2014 Hendricks Hallucinogen use predicts reduced recidivism among substance-involved offenders under community corrections supervision

Mystical-type experiences occasioned by psilocybin mediate the attribution of personal meaning and spiritual significance 14 months later. Griffiths. Press. 2008.

2011. 
Mystical experiences occasioned by the hallucinogen psilocybin lead to increases in the personality domain of openness. MacLean. J Psychopharmacology.
​
Illegal Drugs Laws: Clearing a 50-Year-Old Obstacle to Research
​
We need smarter drug policy. The longstanding U.S. drug war and drug policy has little effect on substance use, yet kills hundreds of thousands and prevents valuable research of cannabis and hallucinogens.

​Decriminalize or create a special legal class for these minimally addictive substances so they can be properly researched. 
Current Schedule I DEA classification has prevented significant advances in mental health and substance abuse treatment for over 40 years. 


There needs to be a single government payer for everything related to mental health and pain. ​It would result in better research of all types of therapies and limit the patient stress that comes with not knowing if certain therapies will be covered or even work in the first place. This type of single payer system already exists for the VA System. What about the rest of the country?
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The Veterans Affairs Healthcare System is arguably the best we have in the United States, yet even it cannot provide adequate mental health care to patients. We must do better in the United States and it must start with large-scale, culturally competent, government-sponsored research of classic hallucinogens and mindfulness. Both are archaic means of resilience that will not bankrupt the nation. 

Stars & Stripes: Vets, report: VA care hard to get for mental health
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Recent pain and opioid management fighting among doctors/government agencies is equivalent to our embarrassingly poor history of helping those with mental illness in our country. There is lack of leadership from the practitioner level to the top tiers of government. It's bureaucratic failure at its finest.

Psychiatry vs. psychology vs. anti-psychiatry vs. FDA vs. severe mental illness vs. non-severe mental illness. Psychiatry and psychology are left to fight over the relatively paltry funding that is allotted to our mental well-being. Those with severe mental illness are put in prison or left homeless. There is a complete lack of leadership and vision for the future of mental health, substance abuse, and pain care in America. 
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Moreover, GOP presidential candidates treat drug policy reform as if were a pot joke while thousands of families have been ruined by draconian laws that are not based on science. Cannabis is effective in treating pain, but it's been illegal for the past 50 years. Instead, the FDA condoned the use of Oxycontin in the 1990s to mistreat centralized pain.

Read Carly Fiorina's story about her daughter’s struggles with alcohol, prescription pills and bulimia that led to her death at age 35: “Lori’s potential was never fulfilled but death is not the only thing that crushes potential… What I also know is that Americans are failing to achieve their potential today.” 

We will fail to reach our potential until Presidential candidates make drug policy, pain, mental health and substance abuse care topics of discussion in the 2016 election. 


​Link: 
Despite Surrounding Nature, Rocky Top Tennessee
​Is A Terrible Place to Experience Mental Illness, Addiction


Learn more about the slew of pharmacy robberies in Northeast Tennessee and the paltry mental health and opioid treatment options in the Tri-Cities region of Johnson City, Kingsport, and Bristol.
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FDA-Approved Drug Therapies and Classic Hallucinogens to
Treat Alcoholism: 
Barriers, Background, and the Latest Research
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Mental illness, suicide, and drug addiction do not spare trusted healthcare professionals like doctors and pharmacists. Soma isn't just a city in Turkey.
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​Mother's Little Helper Doesn't Help This
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Living and Dying (Jobs, McKenna)

Love and Human Evolution​​

MIT Angles: 
Magic or Medical Mushrooms?

Nature Loves Courage

​Addiction, Culture, Ayahuasca, Drug Policy​


Gabor Maté, M.D., discusses how ayahuasca offers insight into self-destructive behaviors 
​
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Link: Individual States & American Public Fraught with Addiction, Mental Illness, Jail Time Looking to Alternatives​
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Current Mental Health Medications–Antidepressants and Benzodiazepines–are Largely Ineffective in Treating Anxiety in Patients with Cancer and Our Older Loved Ones Who Are Homebound
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Appalachian Tradition or Amazon Myth?
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American Ethnobotanists Richard Evans Schultes,
​Dennis McKenna Discuss Plant Medicines, More
​
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​Meditation & Hallucinogen Therapy as Mental Health Preventative Medicine? 
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