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Radical New Insights Into Likely Basis of Drug Addiction, Its Causes and Cures


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A friend sent me this, and my mind's been reeling ever since. In a wonderfully shocked and waking up at last sort of way. Though I've never myself been an addict, I've seen way too much of addiction at close-medium range: relationships destroyed, lives and careers torpedoed, even death. The link utterly and completely reframes the entire addiction issue, places it in a wholly new context, one from which not only are solutions to a seemingly intractable problem destroying nations possible, but have been proven to work in an entire country!

 

Regards,

 

John Kettler

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Causes? It's pretty simple, John.

 

Scientists estimate that 40 to 60% a person’s risk for addiction is based on genetics. In families where there is addiction present, children are far more likely to have addiction problems as adults. And drugs tend to be fungible: alcohol= nicotine=heroin.

 

The implications are cruelly Darwinian.

 

Those historical groups that had no experience of alcohol lacked genetic resistance. The populations of the various native American cultures were devastated by the introduction of that drug by colonizing Europeans*. The latter had reduced the numbers of those bearing the defective gene through natural selection over the centuries. Wine, already common in the Middle East, followed the northern expansion of the Roman Empire. Thus Southern Europeans (or Jews) are less likely to become alcoholics than their Northern or Eastern neighbors. The Irish and Russians, for example.

 

*- The natives got their revenge with tobacco. :)

Edited by Childress
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LukeFF,

 

This is exactly where it belongs and is in full conformity with the Forum Rules for the GDF. If you don't wish to participate, that's your business. Besides, how do you know, considering you have me blocked? 

 

Childress,

 

I'm familiar with alcoholism as a genetic issue, see the famous Barrymore family for generations, but was unaware it applied as well to other substances. The settlers landed at Plymouth, Massachusetts because they ran out of beer, not because it was their planned destination. Of course, their beer was an important source of nutrition and was utterly unlike what most Americans think of as beer. In fact, there used to be a saying that some worker wasn't worth his beer, an expression going back to ancient Egypt where a bucket of beer was a worker's wage and dinner for the family. Regarding  tobacco, as I recall, the natives treated it as sacred, hence, the medicine pipe. The Wiki has some material on it I'd not encountered before. Healing! Wiki excerpt below.

 

"Apart from smoking, tobacco had a number of uses as medicine. As a pain killer it was used for earache and toothache and occasionally as a poultice. Smoking was said by the desert Indians to be a cure for colds, especially if the tobacco was mixed with the leaves of the small desert sage, Salvia dorrii, or the root of Indian balsam or cough rootLeptotaenia multifida, the addition of which was thought to be particularly good for asthma and tuberculosis.[5] Uncured tobacco was often eaten, used in enemas, or drunk as extracted juice.[citation needed] Early missionaries often reported on the ecstatic state caused by tobacco. As its use spread into Western cultures, however, it was no longer used primarily for entheogenic or religious purposes, although religious use of tobacco is still common among many indigenous peoples, particularly in the Americas. Among the Cree and Ojibway of Canada and the north-central United States, it is offered to the Creator, with prayers, and is used in sweat lodgespipe ceremoniessmudging, and is presented as a gift. A gift of tobacco is tradition when asking an Ojibway elder a question of a spiritual nature. Because of its sacred nature, tobacco abuse (thoughtlessly and addictively chain smoking) is seriously frowned upon by the Algonquian tribes of Canada, as it is believed that if one so abuses the plant, it will abuse that person in return, causing sickness. The proper and traditional native way of offering the smoke is said to involve directing it toward the four cardinal points (north, south, east, and west), rather than holding it deeply within the lungs for prolonged periods.[6]"

Leave it to the Europeans to snort it and take it out of context!  I was going to go with peyote as natives' revenge--before my planned argument collapsed in the face of zero use by Europeans other than the Spanish, who absolutely railed against it after first crossing paths with this potent hallucinogen while conquering Mexico and trying out the cactus derivative. Never heard of a peyote addict, though.

 

Regards,

 

John Kettler

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