Because you never asked for sources lol. My reference is Dr. Christian Rätsch's book "Enzyklopädie der psychoaktiven Substanzen", but I don't know if that book was ever translated into english.
Well, my point is that you present outlandish claims as fact without listing any sources why should I be convinced? I googled Dr. Christian Ratsch and couldn't find anything that would substantiate your claims which run contradictory to all historical accounts I am familiar with. If you want to post obscure theories, I am fine with it but just don't present them as established fact.
It is ludicrous for the reasons I have mentioned.
The first-line treatment option for ethylene glycol poisoning is actually Fomepizole and only if that isn't available will doctors use ethanol, because the use of ethanol itself carries risks for the reasons I have mentioned. Just because something is used as a treatment option doesn't mean it's actually a "healing agent". The chemicals used in chemotherapy kill off the cancer, not because it acts as a healing agent, but rather because the patient gets acutely poisoned. Now, what the leaflet doesn't tell you is that it also kills off a whole bunch of healthy cells with it. Cancer patients who have undergone chemotherapy therefore haven't been healed, they have survived. That same principle is true with using ethanol. One poison is replaced by another poison. This is actually the reason why chemotherapy is HUGELY controversial in medicine and doctors have lost their licenses because they have spoken out against it and have shown how in most cases it is actually the chemo that kills the patient and not the cancer. That is why I will never do chemo in case I ever get cancer. I'll just use full-spectrum cannabinoid oil and that's it.
Alcohol IS objectively bad. I'm not saying this lightly btw. Few things in life are objective.
That doesn't make alcohol a "good" treatment option though. That's a bad choice of comparison. Why not compare alcohol with fomepizole, which is actually what is used in such a case and not freaking opium. Fomepizole is used as a first-line treatment for a good reason. Back when it didn't exist, alcohol was used, but not because everyone was convinced of how much of a powerful healing tool it is. It was because there was no other option around, so the doctor always takes the treatment that causes the LEAST HARM. That's the reason fomepizole was invented in the first place, because doctors wanted to get rid of the toxic effect ethanol has on the patients.
Also, as a quick side note: antifreeze poisoning is literally the ONLY area where ethanol has some kind of a marginal therapeutic "merit" and even then only as a secondary option. Now, what you are doing is taking this incredibly rare medical occurence (45K reported cases in the US in 2015, which is like what, 0.013% of the populace?), which only happens in isolated cases (suicide, homicide, lab accidents) and then take this ridiculously miniscule area of medicine where alcohol MAY be used as a treatment option and blow its role out of proportion to make it look like alcohol is this potentially great medicine that we couldn't live without because, uuuuh, look at all these numerous.....uuuuh....antifreeze poisoning...
Yeah that's where the argument starts to collapse. Alcohol isn't medically important because it can potentially save the lives of 0.013% of the US population and even then we already have a much better treatment option. Alcohol is simply redundant. Period.
I never said alcohol is a great medicine we couldn't live without. Like I stated earlier your worldview consists of opiates good and alcohol bad and no that is not an objective fact. Good and bad are value judgements and what is good for one person can be bad for another or what is good at one time in someone's life can be bad in another.
...and depression, and schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder, and and and...
I suggest you read a little bit about opioids in older medical literature (like opioids in mental illness which I have referenced earlier in the thread) to see the incredibly wide array of use in medicine that opioids can be successfully used for, with minimal side effects compared to the incredibly side effect prone ADs and NLs being used today. Opioids have been reduced to only physical pain, but that doesn't mean they cannot be used in other areas of medicine too.
This substance has incredibly useful psychoactive properties that are being completely ignored by modern medicine.
I suggest you look what is actually within a human cell and what those cells do in the human body, and perhaps then you will realize how a substance being cytotoxic actually affects the whole organism upon harming those cells. Also, as I have already mentioned, alcohol is not just cytotoxic, it is also neurotoxic and hepatotoxic. The long-term implications of that are severe.
You're wrongfully assuming chronic usage. Obviously significant quantities of alcohol every day for many years has severe consequences, I am not denying that. Alcohol is not a drug like opiates where you can keep it in your blood constantly for years on end without damaging your organs. I understand that. However, some people find having a beer or two on the weekend invigorating to their mind and body and socially beneficial and throughout history millions upon millions of people have done this with no negative impact to their health. Who are you to tell these people what's good for them? Isn't that exactly what you're against when someone tells you that opiates aren't good for you?
What more do you want? Isn't that toxic enough for you? That is in my opinion enough to judge alcohol. It is only useful for certain chemical reactions in the lab and as a preservative (and perhaps some other uses I'm unaware of), but neither body nor the mind needs alcohol. It is therapeutical for neither of those two. Sure, it is unfortunately recreational for the majority of people, but I think that is only the case because most people in our society are unaware that we have other substances that have a better recreational value and also a much better safety profile. Admittedly, the former is subjective (some like alcohol, others prefer weed, then again some people like low dose acid, etc.), but the latter cannot be argued about.
How does alcohol have "an overall positive effect on the whole human being"?
Alcohol use has a long and ubiquitous history. Despite considerable research on the misuse of alcohol, no one has ever asked why it might have become universally adopted, although the conventional view assumes that its only benefit is hedonic. In contrast, we suggest that alcohol consumption was...
link.springer.com
And this is not the only study to associate moderate alcohol consumption with improved heart health. According to the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, MA, more than 100 prospective studies have suggested moderate alcohol use may protect against stroke, heart attack, heart disease, sudden cardiovascular death and other cardiovascular conditions, as well as improve overall mortality.
Many studies have linked moderate alcohol consumption to certain health benefits. We look at what they are and whether there is enough evidence to warrant the odd glass of wine.
www.medicalnewstoday.com
How is not having a heart attack one might otherwise have had not an overall positive for some people? How is improved well being and social engagement not an overall benefit for some people?
You state opiates helped you avoid quitting suicide as evidence for the therapeutic benefit. Don't you see the same could be true for alcohol? For example, some lonely depressed guy drinks a couple beers he feels a bit better it helps him come out of his shell and he starts chatting with other patrons at the pub and ends up making some friends who change the trajectory he's on and his life improves a great deal as a result.
I agree with you that in general alcohol tends to be quite harmful and if more people knew about other substances they would use less alcohol. For example, I believe that kava offers a lot of the same benefits of alcohol with much less of the negatives. However, not everyone will like kava and so for some people alcohol is actually a good option even though in general it does a lot of harm.
You see I agree with so much of your position but for some reason you seem dead set against acknowledging I have any sort of validity in my point of view at all and every time my opinion differs even slightly from yours I have to be 100% wrong.
That's not the point though. We aren't talking about what causes the greatest harm, but about harm itself. Even if you don't consciously notice it, alcohol is even in its smallest amounts toxic. The fact that it bypasses the BBB makes it even worse.
Correlation ≠ causation. The study doesn't take that into account, on top of it not being randomized, placebo controlled and double-blind or even peer-reviewed.
Furthermore, the study estimates the alcohol exposure across the patients' lifetimes via a self-created tool they call LACU (Lifetime Alcohol Consuming Unit). Let's ignore for a second the fact that the tool has neither been replicated in its use nor peer-reviewed to test its scientific validity. How is this obscure "Unit" even defined and measured??? This is where the study completely falls flat on its face. Is 1 Unit considered to be 2.09 x 10^3 mL/week, or is it only 0.0016 x 10^5 mL/week? How much percent alcohol per litre had been drunk on average? Questions upon questions. These are just a few reasons this study is qualitatively low.
I am aware correlation does not equal correlation but there are literally hundreds of studies showing potential health benefits from alcohol. In order to prove alcohol has no benefits as you claim, you would need to debunk every single one of those studies and even then it wouldn't prove alcohol had no benefits, it would only prove it had no proven benefits. It could still have as of yet undiscovered or unproven benefits.
SOME people always end up overdoing things. That doesn't negate the meritorious value of the substance. See, I was always addicted to opioids because I immediately noticed the beneficial and therapeutic effect it had on me. I had periods where I overdid it with the heroin and the positive effects started to diminish (it was around 1g a day), so I started to gradually reduce the dose to a level where the positive antidepressant effects would again shine through (around 0.5 to 0.7g/day). Yeah, some people can't do that but that's not the fault of the opioid. That was ofc all before I discovered ULDN. That stuff is such a game changer.
If you admit that some can't do it, then you've essentially admitted that some people do in fact struggle with opioid addiction which is the whole thing I was disagreeing with you about this whole time.
Furthermore, you can claim it's not the "fault" of the opioid but the fact remains that abuse potential/difficulty in moderating use is a risk factor with opioids. That's not the case for every substance and some substances tend to be harder to moderate than others.
Ofc they have, but those downsides are only a) temporary in nature and b) can be solved either through modification of dosage or by use of modern substances like NMDA antagonists or ULDN. Also, I'm comparing these temporary downsides to the permanent health hazards of alcohol.
I am admittedly no expert in chinese history. I do not have the full picture of what exactly happened during that period and who all the big players were and what their (ulterior) motives had been. All I know is that rational reasons could not have been the cause of prohibition because China had hundreds if not thousands of years time to prohibit opium consumption, but somehow only got the idea to ban it pretty late in history. It just doesn't add up...
Also, again, I'm not saying opioids have absolutely no negative sides. I'm just saying they are not toxic substances and whatever "harm" they cause, it is completely reversible, so don't start to twist my words in such a dishonest way.
Twist your words? These are direct quotes
They only struggle because society keeps drilling into their head that being dependent on the most effective antidepressant is somehow an issue,
Ugh.....no...no I'm not saying that...
No they are not because everybody would immediately know who the king is and where his castle resides and the rulers would very quickly end up in a torch and pitchfork scenario. The art of successfully ruling the masses consists not of brute force (I mean it does work, but only for a short time), but of division, deception, confusion and indoctrination. If people don't know who the true ruler is, they won't know whom it is that is causing all the trouble. That is a very complex topic though and I have been accused of being a conspiracy theorist (not that I care) for implying that powerful people seeking to increase their power do exist, and since that is kind of off-topic, I don't wanna go into that direction here.
Who would have thought in the 19th century that it would be realistic to eventually end up where we are now? Never underestimate the system's inbuilt entropic tendency. History has shown us more than one time that things can turn around VERY quickly and VERY radically in relatively short periods of time.
I'm actually done with this topic btw. I have said everything that needs to be said and at this point we're coming full circle back to the initial argument. I'm glad I have convinced one person here, but I don't have the nerves and time anymore for another semi-infinite back and forth argument. I think I'm more the time of person to write a book about something like this rather than argue with people. DI88 is better at this than me. I'm sorry about that. You were probably looking forward to my answer, but I really have more productive things to do with my time than argue with people on BL all day long. I'm serious btw. I actually got stuff to do and can't keep debating with anyone here who picks up an argument with me. Everything I have said can be researched and if that doesn't convince you...well, nothing I can do I guess.
Actually I wasn't really looking forward to your response. I don't know if you read my post but I said that if what you're saying is that opiates are quite non toxic and most of the negative effects they cause are entirely reversible and they possess a lot of therapeutic potential then I agree with you and we have no need to debate this. I am quite happy to leave it at that and I also don't have the time or energy rather (I'm lower on energy than time these days) to debate for pages and pages.
I don't really understand why you felt such a need to debate me in the first place as I tried to explain multiple times I am basically on your side here and simply took issue with a few of what I see as your more extreme statements.
Careful, not LDN but ULDN. LDN would very likely send you into precipitated wd. Well, if you ever go back using opioids (one never knows lol) you'll know what to do from day one to prevent tolerance + reduce side effects + potentiate AND prolong your opioid high AND analgesia. Pretty cool benefits, huh? Long live science.
I wish I would have known this from day one. I wonder if someone who is totally opioid naive and takes his ULDN from the very first day he does opis, will forever be able to maintain his honeymoon phase or not. I mean ULDN does bring back a good portion of the euphoria (at least for me), but ofc not like in the beginning.
Gotta go and get some boring adult stuff done now. Have a nice day...
I don't see myself ever going back because of the side effects they had begun having on me like excessive sedation and respiratory depression but if I ever end up in severe physical pain that would be the one scenario that could cause me to take them again. I'd probably start with low dose kratom. Have you used kratom and does ULDN work for that?
