> Dr. Alan Wheatley wrote: > > The article suggests that > > addiction results from an increase in dopamine activity: "It is thought > > that all habit-forming drugs affect the dopamine (DA) system in the brain > > either directly as DA agonists, or by enhancing DA release, or by acting > > on other neurons responding to different neurotransmitters, which synapse > > upon this DA system to activate it." The benzodiazepines are explicitly > > included in this explanation: The generality that dopamine is "the" "culprit" of "drug addiction" is not a scientific problem but a socio-religious problem which arose in the extreme form of Protestantism cultivated in North America. I doubt that Buddhist scientists, for example, would ever have invented this typically Protestant notion of "drug" and "drug addiction". Our Judeo-Christian societies have been very keen on inquisition and trying to authoritatively control the mind and the behaviour of others. As Dr Thomas Szasz nicely pointed in his book "The Manufacture of Madness" and Philosopher Michel Foucault in his many books on how human beings enjoy controlling other human beings, inquisitional behaviours are not extinct. Just think of an obvious example, in your type of society: President Clinton. The Spanish Inquisition embodied devilry (diablerie) in a concept called "witch". The Nazi Inquisition embodied devilry in a concept called "Jew". The new "Drug Gestapo" is embodying devilry within the very fabric of our own synapses through a concept called the "drug addict" and a molecule called "dopamine". All these behaviours are inquisitions. The concept under scrutiny changes, but the behaviour stays the same through the centuries. All inquisitions have tried to "eradicate" a devilry from the body or the mind of human beings. Past devilries have been the "witch", the "Jew", the "Gay" and the last one is the "drug addict + dopamine". Dopamine is one of the MOST IMPORTANT molecule in our brain because it serves the purpose to stimulate: Action Motivations Our desire of Freedom Without dopamine, we could never maintain our structure because we would lose motivation. We would stop acting in exoreality and become zombies. Attacking dopamine is like trying to lobotomise people because dopamine is the ESSENCE of an animal WILL to fight for SURVIVAL. Dopamine IS the molecule of survival. So the new Gestapo against dopamine is a highly politically sensitive subject because controlling dopamine by law is just, simply stated, CONTROLLING THE SURVIVAL INSTINCT of us human beings. The Dopamine Inquisitors are the most dangerous Inquisitors ever because, if they succeeded in their monstrous quest, it would mean that mankind would be dispossessed of this very molecule which induces Resistance to Tyranny. No external self-proclaimed "authority" has the right to manipulate our dopamine activity. This is a basic freedom which ought to be put in the Declaration of the Rights of Man. Cordially, Claude