8/9/00

Have you heard or read the latest criticisms of NIDA's (The National Institute for Drug Abuse¹ - our government's research institute on addiction headed by Alan Leshner, Ph.D. Psychology) addiction paradigm and its policies from medical addictionology, academic addiction researchers or medical journalists?

No? Why not?

Aren't you paying attention to this vociferous and heated debate about these issues that affect millions of people in the US and abroad?

You say you are not aware of any such paradigm debate?

You mean to say that the issues of addiction concepts, definition, etiology, treatment, and prevention are settled, solved, and unanimously agreed upon?

You're not aware of this either?

Then what, exactly, is happening in terms of this important paradigmatic material that is the actual basis for our country's addiction policies costing us at least a hundred billion dollars a year and have put 500,000 addicts in jail, disregarding the millions of dead addicts, abused kids, broken families, homeless, unemployed, and broken people?

You don't know that there is such a paradigm, what it is, or how it's been arrived at, proven, and agreed upon?

You didn't know that such a paradigm is important? That it is responsible for this mess? Isn't there a paradigm behind every human ailment that directs our country's and the medical establishment's policies? Isn't there open debate on these paradigms until the proven one prevails? Why isn't this occurring in the field of addictions and why don't you know about it?

Because the debate is not happening. It is being silently but powerfully suppressed and stifled by the exact people we have entrusted to solve the problems of addictions in our country, doctors, researchers, administrators, and politicians through the expected and usually open process of public debate and honest research based on scientific and intellectual integrity. We have been misled and lied to by these people who have their own personal motives at stake instead of ours. This is a national and global disgrace that needs to be disclosed to the public.

I've already defined and discussed the P.I.M.M.P.A.L complex (see below) in my book, Hypoic's Handbook, as a symbiotic relationship between all areas of addictions where each area is dependent upon the others for its existence, survival, and growth. The P/R paradigm and its major recent definer, NIDA and Alan Leshner, are at the peak of the Complex's pyramid. The entire kit 'n caboodle is being supported by the unproven but undiscussed and unopposed P/R paradigm of addiction etiology whose derived policies are oriented toward control, change, stigmatization, and ostracism/demonization of addicts rather than on their understanding, recovery, and acceptance (as should be and is the case for every other human disease).

I naively believed for years that these peculiar connections in the P.I.M.M.P.A.L. Complex were based on certain ideological similarities: similar ignorance, similar beliefs, and similar superstitions. I was aware of some of the ideological ties between, let's say, funding organizations such as the NIH and academia, but have only recently realized that these ties are much more extensive, deeper, scarier, more fundamental, and financial in addition to being ideological, and fear and ignorance based. "Follow the money," the watchword of Nixon's investigation, is still good advise today to see why there is no paradigmatic debate or progress in the field of addictions, but rather, for the most part, harm, fear, injustice, and perpetuation and exacerbation of all problems associated with addictions.

NIDA, which uses science to support its ideology rather than to form it, reminiscent of the science behind the 3^rd Reich², runs and controls addiction research and its outcomes via its grant and other financial incentive policies. NIDA's origin is at the behest of congress (the people) and is meant to be independent intellectually and politically for the sake of the people. It isn't. It is part of both P's and M's of the P.I.M.M.P.A.L. Complex. In fact, it sits at the top of the entire complex with powerful influence in all its areas. You might say it is the, "god in the machine." Likewise, it must take responsibility and be accountable for its results, but this isn't happening either. NIDA is immune because no one knows what it does, and those who know, keep it a secret because their jobs and futures depend upon it. I'm exposing the conspiracy and demanding accountability.

Let me simply put it this way: The US government is dictating, through its funding policies and political power, to the following "independent" groups, the development of a predetermined and primary addiction paradigm in our country, the hijacked brain hypothesis or its many variants, along with its accompanying policy implications, while the below listed groups are cooperatively following this paradigm, and simultaneously suppressing other addiction theories more scientifically and realistically based. Rather than being based on open and free science, NIDA's paradigm is, instead, based on bias and ideology aimed at a particular and political goal: Control of Addictions and addicts, one way or another.

( The arguments against the Hijacked Brain Hypothesis are in my book and on my web site at: http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/articlesbyandforhypoicspage58/ )

The following groups have been entrusted by our society to be independent critics but nonetheless follow suit with NIDA and are motivated by fear, self interest, and lack of intellectual and/or journalistic integrity.

• Academia - researching, following, supporting, and teaching the NIH paradigm of addiction. (for example, The American Psychological Association has Leshner running a miniconference on drug abuse at their 2000 convention)
• The medical addictionology field - one example being ASAM and its members that uses Leshner's paradigm as there own. What a coincidence?
• Medical science publishing such as JAMA and Science (publish articles by Alan Leshner, chief of NIDA, absent peer review and conflict of interest standards, an issue recently raised by the NEJM). See my letters to the editor of the New York Times p.11 dated 11/8/00 for a recent example of this.
• Advertising (voluntary {self-serving}, and coerced drug war ads and propaganda) - for example, Partnership for a Drug-Free America.
• Entertainment and News sources such as TV (altering TV shows and movies to include NIH's drug war propaganda), for example: The Prism Awards 2000 is co-produced by NIDA, Robert Woods Johnson Foundation, and the Entertainment Industries Council, Inc. Quite a combo.
• The primary addiction "advocacy" groups such as the National Council on Alcohol and Drug Dependence and its affiliates (call this council and one of its extensions goes right to ASAM), and the National Association of Alcoholism and Drug Abuse Counselors, who should be, as they were initially intended, but aren't, independent of ideology, government or anything else. They both have self serving mission statements as do all other addiction (but not addict) advocates.
• Public Television that is heavily funded by the US government (as well as the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation), e.g. Bill Moyers series on addictions solely used NIH's paradigm as the scientific basis for the series.

These groups are blindly, uncritically, and wholeheartedly following the dictates of the US government in an area where they should be, but are not, intellectually free, all to the disservice of the American public who is not only paying for it but is being injured as well through intellectual dishonesty. This kind of unrecognized conspiracy is only found in fascist forms of government combined with passive acquiescence and forced ignorance of the public (hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil).

The hijacked brain paradigm is the premise behind the government's coercive and addict-controlling treatment and public policies responsible for the continuing epidemic in addiction, addiction related violence, and spread of disease, and diametrically opposed to other paradigms such as Hypoism that aim toward freedom and safety of addicts in active addiction or recovery as well as ensuring their harmlessness to society.

YES - responsible for the epidemic's continuation. A valid addiction paradigm, prevented from being developed by NIDA, would have ended the addiction epidemic long ago. In fact, rather than NIDA being organized to end the epidemic, it is apparent that it is much better organized to perpetuate it so as to ensure both a long life for its own existence, importance, power, and ideology as well as the consequent economic and political success of other areas of the Complex. Ideologically, the inherently failed and thus never ending drug war can also be used to facilitate other local and personal discriminatory behaviors by law enforcement such as various forms of racism and hypoic genocide. This, though, is a topic for a different article, but must be mentioned in this one to demonstrate the disgusting and unconstitutional effects obtained by the far reaching tentacles of the wrong addiction paradigm.

The NIH through NIDA funds 85% of the drug research in this country by its own admission and braggadocio. An example of this controlling quantity of research funding is the NIH's policy to farm out much of the scientific and social research in drug addiction. It proposes specific research it wants accomplished and advertises for research groups to do the actual studies. Independent research is thus starved for funds because its ideas can't compete with the ideas of the NIH that simultaneously controls the purse strings. Additionally, it only funds studies backing its paradigm. The consequences of this is that scientists who want to do valuable drug and addiction neurobiology and clinical research must comply with the funder's research goals and desires, not their own imaginations nor the intellectual motivation of valid science. Moreover, to get repeat grants these outside research groups are biased to produced the right results. All this leads to prejudiced and inadequate research.

I've spoken to researchers in the field who deny being influenced by this financial reward system in the designing of their experiments and hypotheses. I don't believe them as evidenced by the focused paradigmatic qualities of the research being done by them, such as basic research into drugs to control rather than experiments to understand the peculiarities and confusing nonintuitive aspects of human drug use and addiction. An example of this kind of absent research concerns the issue of whether or not a future addict's first drug use is actually voluntary, a key component of Leshner's paradigm leading to a definitively punitive policy for users and addicts.

One researcher I interviewed, however, and a major investigator in a current multicenter study on the genetics and other clinical aspects of alcoholism (COGA), a potentially valuable but limited and, thus, useless, study, admitted to me he initially wanted to do a similar but more expansive study which had the potential to produce a major breakthrough in the global nature of addiction and connection of all addictions, but settled on his present study because of the dictates of the NIH (this time the NIAAA-the NIAAA has no addiction paradigm I could find in their latest report to congress, so I guess they use Leshner's too), the funder, who insisted it remain oriented around just alcohol and limited to the aspects they were willing to support. A great opportunity to understand addictions is thereby being missed for irrational reasons.

Another research group that I approached to do a study for me told me they only do studies already designed and funded by the NIH - no independent research. They are one of many NIH robots doing research supposedly to clarify addictions but actually to just make a buck.

In fact, independent research in addictionology, unless it conforms in some way to the etiological paradigm pushed by the NIH, is not conducted in this country because of lack of funds. This is clear. This is also why there have been no breakthroughs in addiction research. An incorrect paradigm is dictating the research. The US government is supporting research that favors its paradigm and ignores or suppresses research that might disprove its paradigm, thereby invalidating the government's horrendous and stifling policies on addictions. No where else in the field of medicine is there such blatant and damaging control of research. The American people have no idea this is happening to their extreme detriment. Are you aware?

I'm certain that this article could go on for many more pages with countless more examples supporting my basic claim, but I am writing it to begin and stimulate the process of exploration of this issue, not to be the definitive work on it. I would hope an investigative reporter would finish this process.

The fact is that the people of this country and its addicts are being exploited, injured, and kept ignorant for the primary ideological position taken by the government to control addictions at all cost (thus the misplaced but real parallel to a war) rather than understand them. Controlling addictions would be a tenable goal it were possible, but because it isn't, due to the very nature of the brain processes that cause drug use and addiction, it is a quixotic and stupid goal. Rather than continue with a demagogue and dictator whose goals are counterproductive and damaging our people through his personal biases and prejudices about addictions and addicts, and his megalomaniacal vision and putative purpose to rid our country of them, we must, therefore, replace Leshner. A NIDA director whose goals are consistent with the underlying realities of addictions is absolutely mandatory. This is our only chance to turn addictions around in this country.

Dan F. Umanoff, M.D.

Review closely the figure below, the Current Organization of the P.I.M.M.P.A.L. Complex. This comprehensive system is the current societal approach to addictions. Observe how this is a self-perpetuating system based on the incorrect P/R premise and, hence, produces and promotes the wrong policies and causes exactly the opposite results for which we are looking. Each participant in the P.I.M.M.P.A.L. complex depends on and supports each of the other participants in the complex. As you can easily observe, right next to the drug war is the drug cartels. As with other parts of the system outlined here, they only survive if each of the other parts survive-that's why I call them symbiotic. Compare this to the policies I suggest based on the Hypoism paradigm. When the Hypoism paradigm's policies go into effect, the entire P.I.M.M.P.A.L. complex shrinks to only essential elements in skeletal form, and some parts, such as the drug war, drug cartels and the drug addict/dealer jails, disappear altogether.

Assuming there is no definitive scientific method of evaluating the efficacy or validity of a paradigm or comparing it to another paradigm, there is another way to evaluate existing paradigms using the P.I.M.M.P.A.L. complex concept. Ask yourself two questions about the paradigms in question and answer them:

1. "What are the surviving parts of the Complex used by the particular paradigm in question?" Under the P/R paradigm, the parts are the full 13 members of the massive P.I.M.M.P.A.L. Complex, all quite plump. Under the Hypoism paradigm, there is a tremendous reduction in components. Drug cartels, drug war, religious organizations, national council on alcoholism, and the self-help industry disappear altogether from the realm of Hypoism.. Addiction related criminal justice and jails, legal, legislative, treatment industry, pharmaceutical industry, addictor supplying industry (gambling, alcohol, prostitution, etc.), social service training, and state run agencies are skeletonized because they are barely necessary or used, and only NIDA and NIAAA which would become the National Institutes of Hypoism (NIH) would remain but exist for pure science and administration of grants only; no policy determinations. The center of the Hypoism paradigm is the HYPOIC for which all parts would now be purely supportive of nonprofessional and drug free recovery and rarely for punishment except for any remaining, and now practically extinct, addiction related interpersonal crime.

2. "How are each of these parts faring under the influence of the paradigm?" Under the P/R paradigm, the P.I.M.M.P.A.L. Complex and all its component parts are faring very well and growing under the influence of the P/R paradigm. The addict, however, not only is MIA but is doing very poorly (as well as the rest of society under this paradigm), and is an actual commodity providing the sustenance for all the parts of the Complex rather than being the primary beneficiary of the now wholly different Complex. Under the Hypoism paradigm most of the parts of the Complex vanish, the addict is in the center of it where he/she belongs, does very well, as does the rest of the society.

In the absence of a purely scientific paradigmatic proof, which paradigm suits your needs, is correct, and which one should we be using?

Footnotes:

1. NIDA's Mission Statement taken from their web site: "NIDA's mission is to lead the Nation in bringing the power of science to bear on drug abuse and addiction. This charge has two critical components: The first is the strategic support and conduct of research across a broad range of disciplines. The second is to ensure the rapid and effective dissemination and use of the results of that research to significantly improve drug abuse and addiction prevention, treatment, and policy." Nowhere in their mission statement is any direction by the congress to be aligned with the DEA or the drug czar, yet they are, a clear conflict of interest and potentially antisocial as well. Use of the word "science" in the first sentence implies the words "unbiased" and "absent ideology," two concepts NIDA has misused.