Modern Opiate Blocker for White Politicians
Amoral Integrity Keeps Congress from Curing the “general Welfare”
You can blame Congress. You can blame the President or executive branch. You can even blame the Supreme Court. But it is NOT their fault. It is yours. You are addicted. You are the addict. Addiction, like racism, is not their fault. You must figure the cure out on your own.
To put it more broadly: The “general Welfare” described in preamble to the Constitution is not the responsibility of the government of the people.
OK, that’s a complete lie. But hear me out. A brief review of alcoholism and a dampening effect is not exactly unrelated to racism.
The U.S. Courts, the Judicial Branch, seem to agree that they and the other branches of our government aren’t responsible for the “general Welfare”: the preamble is not the constitution, though it “clearly communicates the intentions of the framers and the purpose of the document. The preamble is an introduction to the highest law of the land; it is not the law. It does not define government powers or individual rights.”
The Sinclair method uses a drug invented 55 years ago, naltrexone. It’s been known for decades. It was bought by DuPont, perhaps the biggest of the evil chemicals around for making Teflon, at least if you believe the documentary and victims in it. The drug was approved by the FDA in 1984 against addiction to drugs like heroin. A previous drug was discovered in 1945, disulfiram, and was used to the end of the 20th century. It has issues, as does naltrexone, as do all drugs. They don’t cure completely. They don’t guarantee a person will never touch another drop. But they can substantially dampen the addiction, allowing the addict to function and not worry about relapse.
So why do doctors backed by the powerful AMA still talk about the 12-step program instead of prescribing this life altering treatment that is generic, cheap and out of patent?
One reason: The world health organization has no power against the global booze industry. There are a few global alcohol companies like InBev and Seagram's that dominate lobbies and laws. Lots and lots of money and profit incentivizing them to keep on fighting against medical treatments being “legislated.” Or even being mentioned in America. It’s as though all the politicians in our government can’t legislate have never heard of this treatment. Or do they simply live in willful ignorance?
Second reason: Doctors without patients? The long-term addiction destroys the body. Relapse after relapse means only repeat customers needing doctors and pharmaceuticals to treat the diseases made by a broken liver (can you type 2 diabetes, the new disease and pill treatment plan!). And completely broken bodies at the end of diseasehood from the end addiction only mean a very expensive hospital death, where being hooked up to machines and drugs mean massive bills they can send to the insurance companies and the government (and yes insurance companies have made money and raised rates faster than inflation for decades).
So, some of the most massively profitable industries make profit from an individual’s loss. The individual is fed a bunch of lies that the addiction is all their fault, not the body's fault on a chemical molecular level, and not the fault of the medical-pill-booze industry that is withholding a potential aiding device. The guilt of the lonely individual is compounded, and they relapse for not making it again through step 2, 6, or 10 — steps not made by a doctor or a scientist but a Baptist preacher in the 1940 who had no training in science, medicine, or anything.
Bill Wilson, who was one of the creators of AA, spent well over $20,000 in rehab due to his addiction. Even Christianity hadn’t saved him, though the 12 steps were inspired by Christian movements and do mention God. The key is to blame the individual. Despite self-help circles starting in the 1750s, the mid 1800s shifted to medical and psychological rehab techniques. Freud believed cocaine would cure alcoholism (yes, true story, did hits himself). But AA came “full circle,” back to group help. The patient became their own psychiatrist, medical doctor, and healer. The group listened and comforted the junkie as he or she healed herself. The individual was to blame and the healing expert.
But it’s not Bill’s fault for creating self-blame and self-doctoring for a powerfully negative problem. To self-heal, you have to self-blame first. We have decades of truth from science that seems deliberately buried after he founded AA. The system is more powerful than the individual and no scientist or doctor will step forward to do what is morally right. They will not risk their careers, their livelihood, the board certifications, their hospital bonuses to talk about a potential medical regime, with faults, but far more beneficial than the 7 percent success rate estimated by the AA program.
Maybe it’s the science versus religion debate. The AA blue book says, “Our real purpose is to fit ourselves to be of maximum service to God.” “In 1970, Congress passed a landmark bill called the “Comprehensive Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism Prevention Treatment and Rehabilitation Act,” as noted in the Atlantic. Congress put belief over science, self-blame over medicine. Why, what would ever motivate them?
That’s why only Finland has passed this treatment previously: a tiny country of addicts that won’t have functioning citizens if it doesn’t issue this medicine. A country that can fight the industries a bit. A country apparently with a smidge of moral integrity. Or at least powerful special interests and industries.
So, what does all this have to democracy, racism, the “general Welfare” of the constitution, and pervasive amoral undertone of the federal government? “Racism is not my fault. Why are you blaming me?” Heard this one from any whites right after George Floyd’s murder? I might have even felt it at times. But is this a form of modern AA alcoholism self-doctoring, letting the government put the blame on the individual when they have a cure? Maybe not a “perfect” one, a cure-all pill, but a dampening effect could be made by reversing decades of bad law and worse practices.
The federal government did after all let letting lynching and segregation go one for decades and decades and decades without intervening in it. Is that in a way pretending it would just work itself out? Don’t blame the government for standing by and watching; instead, blame the supremacists and their hate. Is it something like that? Yes, of course. Because knowing what’s right and moral and doing what’s right are not the same thing.
When it comes to the constitution and the enforcement of it, doing nothing has always been the dominant force.
The modern line of “I’m not responsible” that Trump famously uttered was anathema to “The buck stops here” slogan of Eisenhower. But Ike was the anomaly, not the norm. How many times did the federal government step in from right after the Civil War in 1865 to the first lynching trial of Michael Donald in 1981 to stop, arrest, and fairly prosecute the white perpetrators in order to cease the horror of extrajudicial murder of black Americans that repressed their vote and constitutional rights?
Presidents, Congress, the Supreme Court all know what’s right. They have a complete national archive to consult, as do we, at the flip of the internet. They have truthful scientists to consult about health at the NIH where peer-reviewed papers are published by over-educated doctors and researchers at the top of their field an alcoholism and various help medical science-based programs. Instead, they wrongly let a faith-based program continue.
But the massive incentive to do nothing is overwhelming. The anti-alcohol drug, so easy to administer and recommend, is typically absent from doctors' advice and medical treatment. Powerful lobbyists from the major industries mentioned above easily overwhelm the moral integrity of the most moral congressperson or Senator. Talk about Trump, talk the war, but not about the “general Welfare” or “public good.”
And hell, they have the oldest part of the Bible to consult that many like to quote, the Old Testament. It’s in the “Good Book,” right there, the one most of them put their hand on and swear in, God’s Law: “Thou shall not kill.” Very clear, very easy to consult, and what some conservatives want to be the basis of government.
But even that did stop whiters from lynching blacks in extrajudicial killings from 1865 to 1981, the year of the Last Lynching in Alabama of Michael Donald. Yes, I’ve written about him before, but it’s important to repeat and say his name.
Because that is when the federal government started to care about black murders. Murders that killed the 14th amendment and fundamental right to vote for black Americans. Yet it still took over two hundred tries and one hundred years to pass an anti-lynching bill. Thou shall not kill. Now, can you see the white complicity that belongs to the system and inaction of government more than the individual?
Now if there is just an opiate blocker against amorality and willful apathy for our white politicians to take.
Reparations anyone?
