Dr. Phil and the American Society

[Ksa]

Hello,

I wish to comment on Dr. Phil's way to handle people like Alexandra and others who are into substance use. I just saw a show where a girl came out of jail in order to be on the show where she could receive therapy and reunite with her family. I find that there is an incompatibility between the addict's substance of choice and Dr. Phil's therapy methods towards the addict.

Alexandra was known to use methamphetamine. The girl who came out of jail was known to use Heroin and Xanax. The two girls could not be more different, yet, Dr. Phil bashes the girl who is in Xanax withdrawal, who faces severe panic attacks, despair and depression, and is surprisingly kind to Alexandra who's methamphetamine withdrawal causes to be manipulative, calculative and mean.

Methamphetamine causes an increase in extracellular dopamine that is identical to the euphoria a girl experiences when being loved by her ideal male partner or the love a mother feels for her babies. Telling Alexandra to get off the drugs awakens all sort of negative reactions, similar to the protective reaction a mother has when defending her babies. Simply asking her to get off the drugs and adopt a healthy way of life is severely counter productive because all her dopamine cycle is working against her.

I am not sure if Dr. Phil's behavior is a result of a deep understanding of brain chemistry, or a will to please the American audience who is totally ignorant with respect to such issues and who feel an urge to crucify anyone who does things differently. All I know is that the girl who came out of jail to attend the show was nearly suicidal and she did not get proper therapy during the show.

It is also notable that methamphetamine is known to induce paranoia even in doses as low as 20mg/day. The substance user feels insecure and is under the impression that she is being watched. Showing Alexandra videos of her truck being in front of someone's home and such can only worsen things and it's why she completely closed up and denied everything, because all her fears and paranoia proved to be true. From that point she is lost, there's nothing anyone can do to get into her head.

I believe that Harm Reduction when it comes to drug use is based on truth. Telling someone he will grow hair in his palm from masturbating never stopped anyone from doing so. The fact that her mom's sister died from liver failure due to alcohol does not imply in any way that Alexandra will too die from methamphetamine. The worst mistake a therapist can make is to take the addict for an idiot. Some addicts are idiots, like the girl who came out of jail, and others are not. Alexandra knows methamphetamine will not harm her liver because she knows that it is actually medication for ADHD labeled as Desoxyn, that was tested for close to 100 years to patients and no such liver failures were observed.

Substance addiction is very complicated and it's not something out of which one can make a circus on TV for people to comment, judge and laugh. It cannot be treated with general statements like "drugs will kill you" or "you are hurting your family". The psychological addict knows she is hurting her family.

Ultimately, drug problems are the direct outcome of society's refusal to provide an outlet to the general population and to understand the means for delivering such outlet. During WW2, tobacco was mass produced to supply the army, but it was done so in the most harmful nicotine delivery mode possible: the cigarette. I can only suspect that the reason behind it was to withdraw it from the market after the war due to health side effects, when it was no longer needed.

People need an outlet to forget about what their wife is doing to them, what their kids are doing to them, what their boss is doing to them, what their friends are doing to them. Those poor people need a moment of peace and joy. If society does not provide means for Yoga and meditation, then at least it should do research to come up with a 100% safe drug that is more euphoric than the unsafe drugs that can give these poor, stressed and overworked souls a moment of peace in their life.

Why have no compassion for those poor people who are just victims of society's own mismanagement?

Here's the answer: Because the dopamine cycle of every American must be wired into buying things they don't need and forcefully, working countless hours in order to afford them. It's what drives the economy. If someone meditates in his basement and acquires such skill that he can feel pure bliss and relaxation through that alone, he doesn't need a fancier car, a larger house or a bigger garden. And that is bad for economy. It's bad for progress.

What drug addicts try to do is to obtain the pure bliss that indian gurus achieve isolated in their temples, and society created the perfect setup to ensure that they fail miserably, so that in the end, progress wins.

Cheers,

Dan

 

[Foreigner]

I'm moving this to DiTM for now... but it may be better suited to blogs.

 

[scureto1]

Very well written, shame that it isn't the sort of letter that would ever be answered on the show or in any public forum

 

[T. Calderone]

I havn't seen Dr Phil's show in a while, so I'm not familiar with the benzo withdrawal girl. But I remember Alexandra and her sister both had problems. I think the grandparents are raising Alex's kids now right? They were featured so many times on Dr Phil family and I often wondered why they keep coming back, like aren't they embarrassed? I really don't like watching his program because he seems to have his own self-righteous agenda and sensationalizes tragic situations in order to get higher ratings. Makes me sad and kind of sickening.

 

[HCL]

I believe that Harm Reduction when it comes to drug use is based on truth. Telling someone he will grow hair in his palm from masturbating never stopped anyone from doing so. The fact that her mom's sister died from liver failure due to alcohol does not imply in any way that Alexandra will too die from methamphetamine. The worst mistake a therapist can make is to take the addict for an idiot. Some addicts are idiots, like the girl who came out of jail, and others are not. Alexandra knows methamphetamine will not harm her liver because she knows that it is actually medication for ADHD labeled as Desoxyn, that was tested for close to 100 years to patients and no such liver failures were observed.

Substance addiction is very complicated and it's not something out of which one can make a circus on TV for people to comment, judge and laugh. It cannot be treated with general statements like "drugs will kill you" or "you are hurting your family". The psychological addict knows she is hurting her family.

People want to feel superior to others. A variety of governmental and corporate institutions have reason to support prohibition, and it is not at all difficult to get the rest of society to go along with them. We are constantly exposed to one message: drug users are criminal scum who consume evil, toxic substances that will inevitably destroy anybody. We lock them up with worst of felons because we think we have to right to tell them what to put in their own bodies.

Nevermind that the vast majority of Americans are drug users themselves; their drugs are culturally accepted and thus by definition permissible. Alcohol, a substance similar to amphetamine in addictive potential that produces far greater impairment and potentially fatal withdrawals, is considered less harmful than marijuana.

Many of us would rather sit back and judge people with a different lifestyle than examine the pot of coffee we make every morning, the three beers we drink every night after work, and the tobacco we smoke all throughout the day.

 

[blue1995]

My thoughts, FWIW.

Methamphetamine causes an increase in extracellular dopamine that is identical to the euphoria a girl experiences when being loved by her ideal male partner or the love a mother feels for her babies. Telling Alexandra to get off the drugs awakens all sort of negative reactions, similar to the protective reaction a mother has when defending her babies.

How do you know this? I used to IV Meth. I suppose I can only speak for myself, but as much as I LOVED the feeling I got from a good shot, I would in no way say it is "identical" to being loved by my "ideal male partner" (although being loved in various ways while using meth was all sorts of fun). Also, as a mother I can definitely say that the feelings I have/had surrounding the meth experience are nothing at all like the experience of protecting one's young, or the sacred bond a mother has with her child, not in any conceivable way. Are you talking about the release of oxytocin, which happens when a woman experiences both orgasm and childbirth (to bond a mother to her partner and to her infant, respectively)? Even still, this has more to do with a biological imperative - survival - than any feeling of real, actual, responsible love between a woman and her mate or a woman and her offspring. Neither a rush of dope nor any orgasm has ever made me feel anything like the kind of feelings I have for my child.

The fact that her mom's sister died from liver failure due to alcohol does not imply in any way that Alexandra will too die from methamphetamine.

In actuality, it implies this in a very real way. Addiction is well known to run in families. Liver failure might not deal the fatal blow, but meth addiction, taken all the way to the hilt, rarely ends well for anyone.

People need an outlet to forget about what their wife is doing to them, what their kids are doing to them, what their boss is doing to them, what their friends are doing to them. Those poor people need a moment of peace and joy. If society does not provide means for Yoga and meditation, then at least it should do research to come up with a 100% safe drug that is more euphoric than the unsafe drugs that can give these poor, stressed and overworked souls a moment of peace in their life.

Why have no compassion for those poor people who are just victims of society's own mismanagement?

The American hierarchy is like a pyramid, much like all male-dominated power structures. Someone has to be on top. In order to achieve this, others must be neutralized. The more you can take entire segments of society and imprison, belittle, objectify, exploit, or otherwise marginalize them, the less competition there is for top-dog status. This is one of the inherent evils of capitalism. Not that capitalism is ALTOGETHER a bad thing, but this trend is one of its downsides.

Here's the answer: Because the dopamine cycle of every American must be wired into buying things they don't need and forcefully, working countless hours in order to afford them. It's what drives the economy. If someone meditates in his basement and acquires such skill that he can feel pure bliss and relaxation through that alone, he doesn't need a fancier car, a larger house or a bigger garden. And that is bad for economy. It's bad for progress.

I don't know about progress but it's definitely bad for those in power, because formal power and control has no sway over those who give no fuck about it. This is the real "problem" society has with drugs. It has nothing to do with the health and well-being of the individual or concerns for their family, that's all bullshit. On a large scale, it's better (better as in, in the interest of the survival of the system itself) to criminalize the drug user, making him less effective. Another one bites the dust, putting someone else ahead. Athough I'd like to point out here that this doesn't only happen in America; it's more the type of shit regular people do to each other all around the world all the time, every day.

 

[Ksa]

In actuality, it implies this in a very real way. Addiction is well known to run in families. Liver failure might not deal the fatal blow, but meth addiction, taken all the way to the hilt, rarely ends well for anyone.

That is correct, however, we do not know that she was addicted to methamphetamine or even that she had an addict's trait. All we know is that she might have used methamphetamine. So all of a sudden she is labeled as the "dope fiend"..."know your dope fiend"..."his pants will be stained with semen from jacking off whenever he cannot find a rape victim". It's ridiculous, pilots in the Air Force used Dexedrine by the kilogram in all American wars, that was distributed by the doctors. Pilots did not have permission to take off unless they've had the pill, it wasn't negotiable. So where's the fiend? If the substance is so bad why was it given to soldiers?

In another show, a sociopath lady comes and admits she likes to kill small animals. You know, Hard Crush style, she walks in a pet store, buys 3 cute white baby rabbits, brings them home and slowly crushes them on the floor under her feet/high heels, torture lasting for over an hour where she starts with the legs, then the hip bones and finishes with the skull until the whole thing becomes an unrecognizable red pulp. So Dr. Phil is ok with that, no issues, but when someone MIGHT have taken methamphetamine WAAAHHH!!! It is an abomination! How dared she!

 

[sekio]

Like most "celebrities" on TV, Dr. Phil is pretty much as far from being a therapist as you can get. He's just an icon. The whole show is a farce designed for the viewers at home to feel schadenfreude and a smug sense of superiority.

Alexandra knows methamphetamine will not harm her liver because she knows that it is actually medication for ADHD labeled as Desoxyn, that was tested for close to 100 years to patients and no such liver failures were observed.

It's a question of dose. If she's going on multi-day benders and not eating right, it's entirely possible her liver could get a roughing. It's the lifestyle that is a concern a lot of the time, not necessarily the drug's acute effects.

Why have no compassion for those poor people who are just victims of society's own mismanagement?

It's far easier and more rewarding to demonize people who can't support themselves, than to empathize with them. I don't think it has to do with a culture of consumerism, necessarily. Maybe a more general culture of "everyone's a precious snowflake" coupled with anti-intellectualism and the need to be "macho".

 

[scureto1]

The American hierarchy is like a pyramid, much like all male-dominated power structures. Someone has to be on top. In order to achieve this, others must be neutralized. The more you can take entire segments of society and imprison, belittle, objectify, exploit, or otherwise marginalize them, the less competition there is for top-dog status. This is one of the inherent evils of capitalism. Not that capitalism is ALTOGETHER a bad thing, but this trend is one of its downsides.

I'm curious about what makes you feel that this is a feature specifically of male-dominated power structures. Do you have any examples of female-dominated or gender-neutral power structures where this is different? I believe that this is a symptom of any type of hierarchical power structure wherein the people at the top maintain their position by force.

 

[phenethylo J]

That whole in your face attitude is counterproductive to some one with psychological issues/addiction. Talking down to them is not the way. Also like sekio said he's an entertainer not a therapist.

A while back I was watching this program were some guy was giving a lecture about addiction and talking about his book. One of the main points was about how when you demonize and/or punish some one for their addiction it's like you are punishing them for their psychological trauma they endured which led to their addiction.

 

[StartedHydro]

Phil, I can't bring myself to place Doc, in front his name. Is a quack. His mentality on handling addiction, substance abuse is truly horrifying by today's standards.

One day when we as a society finally understand that for the very most part substance abusers, addicts are not bad people, and why for the love of god do we arrest, convict ruining their life over a disease!!!! I don't know of to many other diseases that get you locked up, can't own a house, get loans, federal job. If you really look at the reasons behind banning substances by and large it was racially/ethnically untrues, lies, and not a lick of science to back any of it up.

Drugs are bad they fry your brain, ONLY if you get them from the street, if the dudes in a white suit... No issues.

 

[RTrain]

Dr. Phil isn't entertainer first and a worthless idiot second. Listening to him talk gives me a desire to do copious amounts of drugs. Thankfully there are other channels on the TV.

 

[Ksa]

Normal members of society live shifted in the same gear their entire life. To me it's like a prison. The first time I took amphetamines for my ADHD, I felt like it completely shifted gears on me. First of all, I felt myself, like Tyler said, "rejecting the basic assumptions of civilization especially the importance of material possessions", which ended my video-game addiction that was based on gathering items and possessing a strong character in-game. My monthly expenses went down by half, where I stopped buying my favorite foods or objects that used to get my attention. My shopping impulsivity went down to zero. I realized I didn't need the crap I was buying. I was enlightened.

It seemed to fill the hole in me that made me sad, and made me want. It was a hole that could never be filled, because soon after I purchased an item I liked, I became sad again and I started wanting again. My dopamine cycle was based around spending money to look better, to eat better, to live better, to impress my friends, to feel complete. My point is that it was only an illusion, it was not the way to go. A drug that makes people stop wanting, is so harmful to capitalism that it could be ranked as a chemical weapon.

All the adds on TV, celebrity magazines, Kalvin Klein photos telling how a man and a woman should look like and what they should wear, the brainwashing, it all goes down the window the minute you swallow such a substance, and they invested billions in it and they don't want your mental conditioning to go away. They want you to be the spending machine that they have forged through decades.

 

[scureto1]

Amphetamine ramps up my shopping impulsivity. If I go clothes shopping all hopped up on Adderall I'm definitely coming out of there with 2x my intended budget spent.

 

[Ksa]

Amphetamine ramps up my shopping impulsivity. If I go clothes shopping all hopped up on Adderall I'm definitely coming out of there with 2x my intended budget spent.

Ya, it affects people differently xD

I was using dexedrine tho.

 

[Ksa]

Like most "celebrities" on TV, Dr. Phil is pretty much as far from being a therapist as you can get. He's just an icon. The whole show is a farce designed for the viewers at home to feel schadenfreude and a smug sense of superiority.

You know I am a straight up guy, I don't enjoy misleading people, even into schadenfreude. A decent amphetamine user has felt 1,000s of hours of pleasure of an intensity that defies description. Nothing regular humans can get in this world compares to it. So the approach based on "they use drugs, I don't use drugs, I am superior" is in my opinion very naive.

I know many people on this site who, if they were to take a lethal injection today, they would feel proud because they have felt sensations that 10 Americans twice their age reunited didn't manage to feel. The regular American is petrified at the thought of dying because he knows he hasn't lived anything so far, and he waits to retire to do so, and with the cancer in the 50s fashion nowadays, it's increasingly unlikely that he will ever get to live anything at all.

Thinking that every drug user ends up seriously regretting their usage and going down the tubes is unscientific, simply because they have no unit for joy. The way I see life is like an electric current. The current is measured in amperes and voltage. To me, amperes is the duration of life and voltage is the intensity of the pleasure felt during that life. The 2 multiplied give Watts. The more Watts you have, the better your life is. On TV we see examples of people who fry their life with high voltage, but those who manage to maintain a broad flow of current are unspoken of and unseen.

Rest assured, there are a few humans on this Earth who's life, if measured in Watts, is 10,000 times greater than the average. They are like a glowing orb of light...they are enlightened. People can laugh at them all they want, all they get from laughing is a tiny fraction of what the person being laughed at gets every second. Who laughs in the end?

Take this guy for example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsyVpN-fOUA

You can shoot all the Heroin in the world under medical supervision, you can never catch up with him. He is so far ahead of everyone else in terms of joy and bliss that you can only lower your arms and admit defeat. People can go ahead and be hard working Americans and feel sorry for the people they see on doctor Phil, while that guy lives in a perpetual orgasm.

The sad part is that people are so brainwashed that they really think if you're 60, retired, with a house, a car and 3 children, you have won. All you did was convert your vital energy into a questionable output.

 

[ro4eva]

Dr. Phil is... someone who I wouldn't get along with.

 

[Ksa]

Dr. Phil is... someone who I wouldn't get along with.

Fallout 3 avatar gg :D

 

[missmeyet?]

My opinion of Dr. Phil dropped even further (at the time I realized he was full of shit when it comes to anything to do with addiction and drugs..I think prior to this particular episode I had not seen any related to drug abuse as I only watch it occasionally while flipping through the channels) when I saw a girl on who was a heroin addict and he questioned her on the show along the lines of what drugs had she done that morning before she came onto the show (he already knew the answer before he asked as it had been reported to him by a family member or someone). She stated that she had taken suboxone. He wanted to know how she took it and she replied that she had IVd. Anyways, he continued to talk down to her (scolding her) and asked her why? Why if you were coming on my show to get help to get off of drugs had she shot up suboxone that morning? How dare she? You dont really want help. Of course she told him very matter of factly that she had to do something or she would have been too sick to appear on the show and accomplish anything.

As someone who surely knew that if she had not taken something that morning she would have been so sick as to not be capable to sit and tape a television show (or anything else)I thought he was a real asshole for riding her regarding this when he knew WHY she had done it but to go on in such a way to attempt to make her look so badly..i guess it made me realize even more that this show is NOT about helping anyone but totally about ratings.