It isn't my fault if this post is false

This article is a review of a new book on addiction. The book sounds quite interesting. Not having read it, I can only comment on the book author's perspective from the second-hand view of the author of the book review. Still, just a couple comments about the book author's perspective. He claims that most families of addicts:

"erroneously believe that willpower is their loved one’s main problem” and that this belief indicates “cultural confusion and apathy..."

So, to believe that an addict's problems are, at least in part, the result of a lack of willpower is erroneous and indicative of confusion. For it to be true that this belief is erroneous, that would require objective evidence that the problems are not a function of will power. But the issue of will power is simply the issue of free will. And the question of free will in nowhere near answered. To believe that people have free will and to consequently believe, then, that peoples' behaviors are, at least in part, the result of free will is neither accurate nor erroneous.

I understand that many in the therapeutic, psychiatric, political, etc. communities want us to believe that addiction is a medical condition like cancer, such that once we acquire it we can only be cured by paying someone with extensive skills to fix us. But it is not "true" to say that, nor is erroneous to say otherwise. It is an unanswered, and potentially unanswerable, question.

Gotta Have My Weedies

A friend/colleague of mine sent two article links this morning to a group of us. The first deals with an area of interest to my friend - increased organized crime violence in Mexico. The second, from the WSJ, which might seem completely unrelated, is summarized as follows:

The nation is in a fury over the missteps of public figures like Alex Rodriguez and Tom Daschle (and Michael Phelps). Joe Queenan on why focusing on human foibles is more therapeutic than getting mad at Wall Street -- and why everyone should lighten up.

As someone who frequently seems to see patterns where none exist (could it be schizophrenia…or the DaColbert Code ?), I see a connection between the articles: Michael Phelps. Here’s where I’m seeing a connection. I quite agree with, for the most part, the author of the WSJ article. But I can’t get beyond his culturally-standard moral judgments, understood by Kohlberg for decades, based on the sadly simplistic “If it is illegal, it is wrong!” thinking. The author writes of Michael Phelps:

(He) violated an old-fashioned code of morality that we can all understand…(and) what (he) did is certainly wrong…

No doubt, what Phelps did was illegal. But on what grounds is it a “violation of a code or morality” and/or “certainly wrong”? Sure, I suppose what he did was immoral with the childlike decision that doing what is illegal is immoral and certainly wrong. Wouldn’t that mean, though, that what Rosa Parks did “violated a code of morality” and was thus “certainly wrong”? Anyone really want to defend that argument? So how does this relate to the article on violence in Mexico? Well, just last week, the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy released a report that begins:

Violence and the organized crime associated with the narcotics trade are critical problems in Latin America today. Confronted with a situation that is growing worse by the day, it is imperative to rectify the “war on drugs” strategy pursued in the region over the past 30 years.

Wow, an increase in organized crime and violence associated with drug prohibition. As an American, I find that really hard to believe! It would never happen here Seriously, when eight college students get arrested because an Olympic athlete gets photographed smoking a bong, is it hard to imagine that pot smoking might become an underground activity with an organized crime system designed to help people get away with it? Disclaimer: I’ve said many times that I’ve no interest in pot because I found my drug of choice at a very young age, and that drug is, thankfully, legal.

25 Things About Me

1. I'm not a contagious disease-ridden parasite.
This article, The Evolutionary Roots of Facebook's "25 Things" Craze, looks at the social networking phenomenon from an evolutionary perspective (I suppose it is because it is Charles Darwin's Birthday?). It "explains that '25 Things' authors can be seen as 'contagious' under what's known as a 'susceptible-infected-recovered' model for the spread of disease." It says we can "(t)hink of '25 Things' authors as being contagious for one day—the day they tag a bunch of their friends." It is because of this contagion that the meme spread through Facebook.
I completed the 25 things list. But my #2 was:

2) I’m not going to tag anyone with this little game. I’m sure some “Six Degrees of Separation” rule will bring this to everyone on Facebook without a tag from me.

I may have slightly overestimated how easily these things spread through Facebook. According to the article, this was the first big Facebook meme to spread like this:

The fact that it took two-and-a-half years for a Notes-based meme to hit it big suggests long odds.

Still, it appears several of my online friends owe me one of those little "You Better Get Checked" notes, and I don't owe anyone anything. Good for me.

Hello. My name is Dennis. I buy things.

I've been following this one for years. Even better than having people pay you money so you can counsel them how to not waste their money, psychiatrists are considering whether shopping addiction should be a diagnosable condition.

As spenders spend while the economy plummets, the psychiatric world is trying to decide whether compulsive buying should actually be considered a disease.

They've been testing whether anti-depressants (SSRIs) can treat shopping addiction since at least 2000.

The New York-based pharmaceutical company Forest Laboratories and Stanford University are testing a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, or S.S.R.I., on the women-who-shop-too-much population. In the study, 24 compulsive buyers are taking Celexa, already approved by the Food and Drug Administration as an antidepressant, over a 12-week period. Though the trial won't be complete until later this year, the early results look ''very promising''...

Step 1: Medicalize the behavior; Step 2: Convince people you can cure the "medical condition" with drugs; Step 3: Sell the people the drugs. Sure, this is standard. But how cool is it when you're selling the drugs to people who will buy anything ? A truly brilliant marketing campaign.

You're paid to think, Mr. Scientist.

I like this article: Elevating Science, Elevating Democracy:

Science is not a monument of received Truth but something that people do to look for truth. That endeavor, which has transformed the world in the last few centuries, does indeed teach values. Those values, among others, are honesty, doubt, respect for evidence, openness, accountability and tolerance and indeed hunger for opposing points of view...It is no coincidence that these are the same qualities that make for democracy...If there is anything democracy requires and thrives on, it is the willingness to embrace debate and respect one another and the freedom to shun received wisdom. Science and democracy have always been twins.

I like it. That's all I have to say. Title reference here.

Just look at them and sigh

People tell me I’d make a good dad even though I don’t really like kids. They don't know me that well. Anyway, sometimes, I admit, I get confused about how to treat a kid. Especially since you never know when other people, especially the government (“we the people”) will get involved. I’ve been thinking about the ideas brought up in these three articles for a week or so:

Article 1: Test Subjects Who Call the Scientist Mom or Dad: This article addresses parents who use their own children as research subjects. Psychologists, for example Jean Piaget, have a history of doing research on their own kids. But I’m skeptical John Watson would do this to his own kid. It really is an interesting ethical question: “'The role of the parent is to protect the child,' said Robert M. Nelson, director of the Center for Research Integrity at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. 'Once that parent becomes an investigator, it sets up an immediate potential conflict of interest. And it potentially takes the parent-child relationship and distorts it in ways that are unpredictable.'” Article 2: Trials for Parents Who Chose Faith Over Medicine: This one looks at a case of parents who let their kid die of diabetes while they prayed for her recovery rather than bringing her to a God Damn (pun intended) doctor: “Kara Neumann, 11, had grown so weak that she could not walk or speak. Her parents, who believe that God alone has the ability to heal the sick, prayed for her recovery but did not take her to a doctor…About 300 children have died in the United States in the last 25 years after medical care was withheld on religious grounds…” Article 3: Young “Adolf Hitler” and Two Sisters Removed From Home: There are few idiots I find more adorable than white supremacists. But is naming a kid "Adolf Hitler" child abuse worthy of government intervention? “A 3-year-old boy named Adolf Hitler and his two Nazi-named younger sisters were removed from their New Jersey home last week and placed in state custody, police said…(Division of Youth and Family Services) has their reasons and they normally don’t release any information, so we kind of have to go on faith with them.”

Seriously, I’ve no clue how to treat the little ones. Good thing I’ve got none.

We don't f*ck anymore, but we can really snuggle down

Here's an interesting article that highlights some pretty common current psychology thinking. It relates several case studies of young adults who get depressed after sex. The author, a psychiatrist (I'm quite sure), explains that he was unable to find any deep "psychological" problems for the depression:

But search as I could for a good explanation, I could find none. Though his symptoms and distress were quite real, I told him he did not have a major psychiatric problem that required treatment.

The author also notes that he is completely unaware of any evidence-based biological explanation for the depression:

Little is known about what happens in the brain during sex...The research literature is virtually silent on sex-induced depression

So the author admits he has no psychological or biological explanation for the condition. What does he do? He assumes the explanation is biological and prescribes drugs:

When physicians run through the usual treatments to no avail or find themselves, as I did, in uncharted territory with little evidence as to what to do, they can consider so-called novel treatments. Often, you design such a treatment based on your speculation about the underlying biology of the syndrome at hand. This can involve using approved drugs in situations for which they are hardly ever prescribed.

When the drugs work (he used SSRIs), at least he admits he doesn't know why:

(T)here are at least three possible reasons my patients felt better: The drug worked; it had a placebo effect; or there was a random fluctuation in symptoms — they would have improved if I had done nothing.

He does (what I'd consider) the ethical thing and suggests his patients stop the drug. They did, and in both cases...

...the symptoms came back and then abated with the drug — suggesting, based on this admittedly small sample, that the drug effect was real.

But he's wrong on that. There's no reason to rule out the placebo effect based on his observations. If it was the placebo effect when they were taking the drug the first time, it would make absolute sense that the symptoms would come back when not on the drug and be abated with the drug.
Anyway, I have to admit I like this line:

After just two weeks on an S.S.R.I., both said that while sex was less intensely pleasurable, no emotional crash followed.

Reminds me of an old song, Happy Town, by Jill Sobule (from which this title is pilfered).

My boyfriend Bob he said I made him miserable But we stayed together 'cause the sex was really good And then he packed his bags with me to happy town We don't fuck anymore but we can really snuggle down