The following article
appeared in the May
1969 FREEDOM, an Independent Journal Published by the Church of
Scientology. We hope this article answers part of the above question.
The editor's own views are then further expressed below as a
Scientologist. Below that are some statistics.
DRUG
ADDICTION
By
L. Ron Hubbard
In the absence of workable
psychotherapy wide drug
addiction is inevitable.
When a person is depressed or in pain
and where he
finds no physical relief from treatment, he will eventually discover
for himself that drugs remove the symptoms.
In most cased of psychosomatic pain,
malaise or
discomfort the person has sought some cure for the upset.
When he at last finds that only drugs
give him
relief he will surrender to them and become dependent upon them often
to the point of addiction.
Years before had there been any other
way out most
people would have taken it. But when they are told there is no cure,
that their pains are "imaginary," life tends to become insupportable.
They then can become chronic drug takers and are in danger of addiction.
The time required to make an addict
varies, of
course. The complaint itself may only be "sadness" or "weirdness." The
ability to confront life, in any case, is reduced.
Any substance that brings relief or
makes life
less a burden physically or mentally will then be welcome.
In an unsettled and insecure
environment,
psychosomatic illness is very widespread.
So before any government strikes too
heavily at
spreading drug use, it should recognize that it is a symptom of failed
psychotherapy. The social scientist, the psychologist and psychiatrist
and health ministers have failed to handle spreading psychosomatic
illness.
It is too easy to blame it all on
"social unrest"
or the "pace of modern society."
The hard, solid fact is that there has
been no
effective psychotherapy in broad practice. The result is a
drug-addicted population.
Dianetics was designed as broadly
applicable
low-cost mental health. It is the only mental health fully validated by
actual test. It is fast. It is effective.
Health services assist it into wide,
general use.
It can handle the problem.
L.
Ron Hubbard
Editorial
Note
My own pastoral
experience with psychiatry
has been very mixed. I have visited several psychiatric hospitals.
Four years
ago I found a patient chained to his bed - similar to how you would
chain a cow to a fence. The patient I spoke to had tears streaming down
his face. He explained that he was on a drug, forced on him, and it
made him extraordinarily itchy, and to stop him scratching himself, the
psychiatrists had chained his wrists to the bed. His father sat next to
him, sharing his tears. The young man seemed normal in other ways.
A case in
2003 was that of a young woman who was in a drug stupor. She said to me
that she had heard voices after a car accident, and that her back had
also hurt thereafter the accident. She had not been to a chiropractor
for a spinal adjustment and had suggested this treatment to the
psychiatrist. His response apparently was to threaten her with electro
convulsive therapy if she raised the topic of chiropractic treatment
again. So she accepted her fate, to be drugged and numb to the world
and walk the wards like a semi conscious zombie.
In 2004 in
Melbourne I met a psychiatrist working in Collins Street. He told me
that electro convulsive therapy was extremely harmful
to patients.
He told me he would never administer it to himself, under any
circumstance. I presumed then that he was against its use. But he
laughed and said of course not, and that he administered it whenever he
could. I asked why, and he laughed again, saying that it paid very well.
In 2005 I
was in Banda Aceh (Sumatra of Indonesia) for many months after
the
tsunami. I was told by a visiting western psychiatrist that a good
thing the tsunami did was ruin one of the two ECT machines in the
city's psychiatric hospital, as the local psychiatrist had been using
them without anesthetic, which to this psychiatrist was a
human
rights abuse.
Not
withstanding the above, I do know a psychiatrist who is a
Scientologists. I also know of others who are good people, who would
not want to hurt their patients, and want to reform their profession.
Six years ago I met a girl who had
been on
psychiatric medication for almost 6 years for lethargy. I and other
Scientologists pushed her to get a full physical medical checkup, which
she never had before. It turned out that she was suffering a form of
fever introduced by mosquitoes, contracted in northern Australia. Once
isolated a true medical handling was introduced and her lethargy
disappeared, and so did her mind altering drugs.
But the
bottom line for a Scientologists is the Creed of the Church of
Scientology. It states that we believe, "That the study of the mind and
the healing of mentally caused ills should not be alienated from
religion or condoned in nonreligious fields."
Rev
Nick
Broadhurst
Recent
Statistics:
. 203
children in Australia
were given ECT last finacial year, 55 under 4 years old. That
is
up to 400 hundred volts of electric current being sent through
a
child's brain.
. 6,197
involuntary ECT
treatments were given last year in Victoria alone.
. ECT
figures have tripled in
Victoria over 6 years.
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