7/30/08

Re: Smoke Job, http://www.newsweek.com/id/149403

Aside from the fact that the NYS law discussed in this article against smoking in rehabs is unconstitutional and malicious!, we have here a good example of how a board certified addictionologist, Michael Miller, president and board chairman of the American Society of Addiction Medicine, the organization that certifies addiction specialists no less, misrepresents the results of a 2004 study in order to support his dangerous opinion on imposing smoking cessation on drug and alcohol treatment patients. Although he doesn't give a complete reference to the study he cites, after much work I was able to find the study: PROCHASKA, J.L.; DELUCCHI, K.; AND HALL, S.M. A meta-analysis of smoking cessation interventions with individuals in substance abuse treatment or recovery. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 72:1144-1156, 2004. PMID: 15612860. Here's Miller's quote about this study: "People who have other drug addictions should be encouraged to stop smoking." Indeed, a 2004 study in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology found that smoking cessation during addiction treatment was associated with a 25 percent better chance of maintaining long term abstinence from alcohol and drugs.

Now, if you read the study he refers to, you will find a completely different result. First of all, long-term was defined as 6 months, not exactly long-term in my book. Secondly, they found that alcohol and drug rehab patients who participated in smoking cessation programs, whether they stopped smoking or not, and most didn't, had a 25% greater likelihood of primary drug abstinence at 6 months than those who didn't participate. In other words, it wasn't the cessation of smoking, as Miller states, that yielded the increased likelihood of abstinence, but the participation in smoking cessation programs. Miller deliberately misrepresented the results of the study to back his particular bias, and, at the same time, the journalist quoted him in this Newsweek article without checking the results of the actual study. Lastly, Newsweek published it. Moreover, Pinsky repeats the same "fact" - "Since those days some literature has come in [that has shown] generally if people stop smoking at the same time they stop their drug of choice, their outcome is a little better," without citing any references. In other words, the article is bogus and deliberately misinforms the public. This crap is a good example of the kind of misinformation the addiction community imposes on the public to maintain their biases and conflicts of interest. This is why addictions are still a mess. The addiction field is to blame. The media follows suit. The public has no chance to get it right.

You want another example of this kind of misrepresentation, even worse? Read: http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/theaddictiontreatmentfraudfinallyexposed/

Until the public is allowed to know the truth about the science of addictions, something I've been reporting on since 1992, we will continue to have the addiction epidemic run out of control, to the financial benefit of these addiction experts.

7/29/08

Re: Obesity predisposition traced to the brain's reward system, http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-07/tuhs-opt072908.php

"Researchers at Tufts University School of Medicine (TUSM) and colleagues have demonstrated a link between a predisposition to obesity and defective dopamine signaling in the mesolimbic system in rats."

"The mesolimbic system is a system of neurons in the brain that secretes dopamine, a neurotransmitter or chemical messenger, which mediates emotion and pleasure. The release of the neurotransmitter dopamine in the mesolimbic system is traditionally associated with euphoria and considered to be the major neurochemical signature of drug addiction."

"Previous research has demonstrated that food intake leads to an increase in the release of dopamine, in the circuits that mediate the pleasurable aspects of eating," Pothos explains. "Also, chronic food deprivation resulting in decreased body weight leads to decreased dopamine levels. Therefore, increased food intake may represent a compensatory attempt to restore baseline dopamine levels."

This is Hypoism. I've bee writing about this pathophysiology since 1992.

According to Gerald Weissmann, MD, editor-in-chief of The FASEB Journal, "Now we know why so many people stay addicted to food: it fuels the mid-brain pleasure machinery. We eat not only for nourishment, but also for pleasure. This study provides the molecular link between eating and mental health." ----- He's right about the first part of the sentence but wrong about the mechanism. Read my papers and book to better understand the mechanism for how all this works.

Pothos says, "These findings have important implications in our understanding of the obesity epidemic. The notion that decreased dopamine signaling leads to increased feeding is compatible with the finding from human studies that obese individuals have reduced central dopamine receptors." He speculates that an attenuated dopamine signal may interfere with satiation, leading to overeating.

This is not speculation. The science is there for all addictions as my papers [http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/thehypoismaddictionhypothesis/ http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/hypoismhypothesis/ ] and book, Hypoic's Handbook, discuss at length.

The Hypoism paradigm has existed since 1992 but it's been ignored and censored because of conflicts of interest. Only this paradigm has real prevention and recovery methods as well as a way for the public to understanding simply the biological cause of addictions which allows for destigmatization. It's time the public knows there's an alternative addiction theory based on valid science for all addictions including overeating.

7/29/08

7/26/08

7/25/08

Re: Illegal Painkiller Overdoses Kill More Than 1,000 Americans, http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/116129.php

I'm going to list some numbers, you tell me what they mean and what we need to do about it. Do your suggestions match those of the experts?

"The findings of a CDC and Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) investigation showed that between 4th April 2005 and 28th March 2007, a total of 1,013 deaths occurred in six US jurisdictions; the largest NPF epidemic to date. This is nearly 10 times higher than an epidemic in the 1980s when 110 people died of fatal overdoses of different fentanyl analogs, said the report."

7/21/08

Re: Me and My Girls , http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/20/magazine/20Carr-t.html?_r=1&ref=magazine&oref=slogin

I couldn't just ignore this stupid and pathetic article. People need to know this kind of gibberish has to stop and be replaced with reality, like it or not. Go ahead and ignore this letter, but you do so at the peril of all addicts, their families, and their future offspring.

Those of you who read my blog and understand the real science behind addictions know this article is possibly the most irresponsible and damaging piece about addictions ever published by the Times. This so-called memoir is the author's story of addiction and recovery as seen through the biased and warped lens of his 12-step program, exactly as he was taught by them to relay his story, attitudes and beliefs. It pushes on the readers a wrong and damaging addiction paradigm. The article describes addiction and its consequences according to the hijacked brain hypothesis (HBH), the current theory of addiction causation initiated in the bible over 2000 years ago, maintained by the 12-step movement (where the author received his education on addictions and obviously knows nothing about the real science of addictions), and pushed by NIDA and ASAM for conflicted and non-scientific reasons. The whole story is written according to a certain point of view - the first drug use causes the addiction, addiction is a moral issue, addicts are bad people and deserve bad things, and god oversees addictions and their recovery, etc. The only problem with this point of view is that it is categorically 100% scientifically wrong and is the cause of the maintenance of the current addiction epidemic, not its cure. Just look at the history of the addiction epidemic under this paradigm. It's just gotten worse and worse, not better. A correct paradigm would have shown major improvements rather than none over the last 70 years of its existence [12 step stories like this have been published for 70 years without changing anything for the better, statistically that is. I go through the scientific debate of the cause of addictions in my article: http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/hypoismhypothesis/ and in my ignored book, Hypoic's Handbook. I've written the Times a thousand letters discussing this issue. They have ignored and censored every one of them and what they say. So, instead of possibly helping addicts and their families, by doing an article on Hypoism, the Times has again produced a damaging old style religion 12-step addiction article, helping maintain the addiction epidemic and helping hurt and kill millions of addicts. The Times probably thinks its doing the opposite, but no dice. It's just more of the same old bullshit nonsense masquerading as something real. Of course, how would the Times know better? Their minds and brains are closed tight.

7/17/08

Re: The Meds Made Me Do It! Drug Side Effects Include Gambling, Risky Sex, http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/realitybase/2008/07/16/the-meds-made-me-do-it-drug-side-effects-include-gambling-risky-sex/

The dopamine agonist phenomena discussed in your article are very important.

The debate on whether addictions are caused by biological mechanisms and in particular genetic ones versus non-biological causes is long over though the other side of this issue hasn’t surrendered yet because they are making hundreds of billions of dollars off the psychobabble/moral/environmental paradigm. See my review paper on the science behind this theory war and the debate at: http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/hypoismhypothesis/  Another article discusses the evolutionary psychology and the brain mechanism given to us by evolution: http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/thehypoismaddictionhypothesis/  My 1996 book, Hypoic’s Handbook,  goes through the entire paradigm debate including the addiction prevention, recovery, and public policy implications.

The addictions seen in the small group of Mirapex and Requip users is 100% in favor of the biological causation of addictions. Discontinuation and reuse studies show under these conditions the addictions disappear and reappear in these people. There’s no question this is a biological mechanism and real, not to be ignored, poo-poo’d or disrespected. The science of this needs to be worked out, but my guess is that as in addictions in general, there are certain people with certain genetic alleles of the reward system regulatory mechanism that get addictions under the biological influence of these dopamine agonists. A better understanding of this phenomenon will add insight into the causation of addictions and more evidence of the purely biological mechanism of addiction causation.

The main implications of all this is that the entire paradigm of addiction causation and understanding needs to be changed, dumping the current environmental/psychobabble paradigm (the hijacked brain hypothesis), so we can then move forward in ending the current addiction epidemic maintained by this paradigm and their damaging public policies, such as the drug war and addict discrimination.

My web site http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/door/ has much important information on all aspects of this mess.

7/15/08

Re: Feeling hungry can make you happy, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25680029/

Quoting the article: "But once you are getting regular boosts from ghrelin, it could become addictive — which may explain why anorexics have such a difficult time recovering."

This article discusses one neurophysiological mechanism, the endogenous hormone ghrelin released by low calorie intake, for how dieting can be mood altering. It's been known for some time that eating regulatory hormones interact with the reward system with attendant dopamine release (or inhibition depending on the hormone). This alone doesn't explain addiction, however. For if it did, then everyone would be getting addicted to starvation, something that only happens in 2-3% of the population. There must be something different about those who do get addicted to starvation via this mechanism, just like there is something different about those who get addicted to all other addictors - 1. they must be hypoic (genetically critically deficient in reward system activity), and 2. they must have genetic alleles of the regulatory genes for ghrelin regulation that cause extra dopamine release (as compared to other addictors) under the conditions of starvation. I suggest that these conditions will eventually be shown to be the case in anorexia, thus proving that anorexia is caused by hypoism. It's the only mechanism that makes sense, as opposed to the "I want to look like a model" theory - nonsense.

7/14/08

Re: Insel: 'Different Kind of Science' Poised to Transform Psychiatry, http://pn.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/43/13/6

The article quotes Insel, "Understanding genomic variation and how it affects normal or abnormal development of brain circuits in different ways at different points in time will help push psychiatric diagnosis and treatment into the 21st century.

Psychiatry is still awaiting the "disruptive innovations" in scientific research that have helped to reconceptualize disease in other areas of medicine, said Thomas Insel, M.D., director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), at APA's 2008 annual meeting in Washington, D.C., in May.

The study of genomic variation and its role in leading to changes in complex brain circuitry, recognition of the longitudinal and developmental nature of disorders, and the discovery of biomarkers linked to a more precise understanding of the pathophysiology of disease are the tools of a 21st-century science promising to transform the treatment of mental illness.

Insel said those same tools have been applied in other areas of medicine to reconceptualize the nature of disease and to reduce mortality dramatically for people with such disorders as cardiovascular disease and cancer.

In contrast, the diagnosis and treatment of mental illness, he said, have been stuck in a 20th-century model. ^"

^{I guess I should have been more specific in my comments about yesterday's quote from the chief of NIMH, Dr. Insel. What he and I was referring to is the difference between the way ancient medicine defines disease, according to symptoms, and the way modern medicine defines disease, according to pathophysiology. This is called "the pathophysiological basis of modern medicine." Pathophysiology is the specific biological sequence of events leading to the appearance of the disease as manifest by the symptoms. I discuss the differences of these two approaches in my web paper: http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/diseaseconcept1aperspective/ and the implications of the differences.}

^{The entire field of medicine uses the pathophysiological basis to define disease while psychiatry still uses the method of listing symptoms as manifest by the DSM IV, the so-called bible of psychiatric diseases.}

^{The two approaches lead to two completely different models of how we see addictions, for example. Under the old method, psychiatry calls each different addiction an individual disease, e.g. alcoholism, heroin addiction, cocaine addiction, sex addiction, compulsive gambling, etc., whereas the pathophysiological method looks for and discovers the actual brain mechanism and specific genetics that cause all addictions and the genetic and environmental differences that cause each individual addiction under the rubric of the single disease. These two approaches lead to diametrically opposite disease models. The old approach leads to the hijacked brain hypothesis, a disproven and useless theory of addiction causation and the one we use today under the auspices of NIDA, the theory that is perpetuating the addiction epidemic and the mess we call the drug war. This disease model is analogous to the sun going around the earth model of the solar system. The pathophysiological approach leads to the Hypoism paradigm of addiction causation based on the reality of the science of addiction causation. This model is the solution to the addiction epidemic and the major public policy debacle, the drug war.}

^{These two models are compared and contrasted in my web papers: http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/thehypoismaddictionhypothesis/ and http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/hypoismhypothesis/ and book, Hypoic's Handbook.}

^{Kudos to Dr. Insel for confronting the psychiatric establishment on their out of date and unscientific approach to psychiatric diagnosis and their bias for remaining in the dark ages of unscientific diagnosis methodology, a methodology that is maiming and killing mentally ill people around the world and preventing advances in this large arena.}

7/13/08

Re: Insel: 'Different Kind of Science' Poised to Transform Psychiatry, http://pn.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/43/13/6

The article quotes Insel, "Understanding genomic variation and how it affects normal or abnormal development of brain circuits in different ways at different points in time will help push psychiatric diagnosis and treatment into the 21st century.

Psychiatry is still awaiting the "disruptive innovations" in scientific research that have helped to reconceptualize disease in other areas of medicine, said Thomas Insel, M.D., director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), at APA's 2008 annual meeting in Washington, D.C., in May.

The study of genomic variation and its role in leading to changes in complex brain circuitry, recognition of the longitudinal and developmental nature of disorders, and the discovery of biomarkers linked to a more precise understanding of the pathophysiology of disease are the tools of a 21st-century science promising to transform the treatment of mental illness.

Insel said those same tools have been applied in other areas of medicine to reconceptualize the nature of disease and to reduce mortality dramatically for people with such disorders as cardiovascular disease and cancer.

In contrast, the diagnosis and treatment of mental illness, he said, have been stuck in a 20th-century model. ^"

^{This is exactly what the Hypoism paradigm of addictions is based on and that I've been writing about since 1992. It's the basis of my book, Hypoic's Handbook, and my major papers, http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/thehypoismaddictionhypothesis/ and http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/hypoismhypothesis/ in regards to addictions and the overall human nature paradigm required by the Hypoism paradigm. This has been my major criticism of psychiatry since I began writing about Hypoism in 1992, the reason why psychiatry has never been able to make any headway in the field of addictions.}

7/10/08

Re: Protein On 'Speed' Linked To ADHD, http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/07/080708171545.htm

The article quotes the researcher: ""We believe that this is important evidence that ADHD can be caused by a functional deficit in the brain's dopamine signaling pathway," said Randy Blakely, Ph.D., director of the Center for Molecular Neuroscience."

Thus, ADHD is, by definition, part of Hypoism. ADHDer's are a subgroup of hypoics. This why they get addicted, plain and simple. This confirms in another important way that Hypoism is real and that the pathophysiology of addictions is pathological genetic hypofunctioning of the reward system.

http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/hypoismhypothesis/

7/6/08

Re: Addiction Largely Determined By Our Genes - Annual Meeting Of The Royal College Of Psychiatrists, http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/114044.php

This theory is called Hypoism. To bad that Professor Wim van den Brink failed to reference this.

The article states, "The mystery of why one person becomes hooked on alcohol, heroin, sex or gambling, and another remains free of addiction, lies deep in the brain and is largely determined by our genes. Professor Wim van den Brink, from the Academic Medical Centre at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands and a leading expert in the field of addiction, told the Annual Meeting of the Royal College of Psychiatrists today (Friday 4 July) that addicts have fewer dopamine or pleasure receptors in the brain and consequently seek out more and more stimulation."

In 1992 I wrote my first paper about the disease that causes all addictions, Hypoism. Hypoism is defined as the genetically determined low activity of the reward mechanism (which includes the dopamine system in the reward center, as well as other reward mechanisms. My book, Hypoic's Handbook, defines and details this entire clinical syndrome from causation to its implications on addiction preventon, recovery, and public policy, the whole paradigm. My major web paper on all this which evolved from the 1992 paper is at: http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/hypoismhypothesis/

Maybe it's time for my work to be acknowledged by the addiction world and the media.

7/3/08

Re: Internet Addiction: A Novel Disease Or A Bad Habit?, http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/113768.php

In my 1996 book on the definition, pathophysiology, prevention of, and recovery from addictions, Hypoic's Handbook, I listed dozens of "behavioral addictions" including internet addiction as "real" addictions according to the hypothesized and scientifically supported pathophysiology of the disease that causes all addictions, Hypoism. By real I mean they conformed to exactly the same pathophysiology as "drug" addiction and are physiologically and clinically identical to drug addictions. This theory and its clinical and sociological implications were so heretical at the time, cough cough, that ASAM, the american society of addiction medicine, the self-designated experts in addiction medicine, excommunicated me from their membership. As today's article shows, my contentions about what constitutes an addiction are accepted as part of the addiction lexicon. Behavioral addictions are today seen not only by people like Dr. Jerald Block but the ordinary man on the street as real addictions although not "officially" yet by the DSM IV. Of course, because the rest of my theory hasn't been accepted yet, or even acknowledged and understood, addiction experts like Block have no physiological model onto which they can connect these behavioral addictions. So, they just say they are identical absent explaining the brain mechanism for this identicality. Better than nothing, right? No. Well, ASAM hasn't called me to apologize and reinstate me, Ha Ha. Not that it matters. ASAM is still part of the problem, using its ignorance and bias to warp the field of addictions into something great for addictionologists and the government but lethal to addicts. But that's another topic altogether. Cough cough.

The issue at hand is instead whether internet addiction is a disease or just a bad habit, itself a weighty and important thing to clear up. Of course, all these issues are interdependent. Answering this question clears up all other addiction questions because its about the entire addiction paradigm itself. Today there are two competing paradigms of addiction causation, although you wouldn't know it, and they have diametrically opposite implications on all aspects of addiction understanding and practice. In fact, the reason addictions are still the mess they are in every aspect and getting worse every day is that the addiction establishment has put all its eggs on the side of the wrong paradigm, the hijacked brain hypothesis and ignores and censors the correct theory, the genetic theory of addiction causation. Hypoism, my theory of addiction causation, belongs to this paradigm.

The current reigning addiction causation paradigm, the hijacked brain hypothesis (HBH), backed by NIDA and ASAM, requires a "drug" to cause an addiction. There's no brain mechanism in this theory to even conceive of a behavioral addiction no less explain its causation. Read it yourself at: Leshner A.: Addiction is a Brain Disease, and it Matters, Science; 278, 45-70, 10/3/97. It certainly does matter. The reason it matters is that our country's entire addiction establishment, from theory to practice as well as all governmental policies, for example, the drug war, are dictated by this theory and the theory is categorically scientifically incorrect. My 1996 book, Hypoic's Handbook, goes through the disproof as does my web article, http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/hypoismhypothesis/ . A similar disproof of the HBH (the plasticity model), although many years after mine, has been published by Hiroi, "Genetic susceptibility to substance dependence," Molecular Psychiatry (2005) 10, 336–344, by N. Hiroi and S. Agatsuma, a paper of cosmic importance completely and fraudulently ignored by the addiction field and unknown to the public. How else could the HBH remain the ruling theory if Hiroi's paper were known by the public, no less mine? In fact, the mere existence of behavioral addictions is a major bulwark of the disproof of the HBH. Nonetheless, NIDA and ASAM continue to support the HBH, one of the biggest medical scandals of all time. Of course, that's why they excommunicated me from ASAM. Hypoism was too dangerous to the maintenance of their scam. And these are the people to which we have entrusted our entire addiction paradigm and our kids?

Well, if the HBH says there can't be behavioral addictions then I guess there can't be behavioral addictions, officially that is. This, of course, is "the emperor's new cloths" all over again. "Just believe what we tell you, not your eyes." Well, that's up to you. Maybe it's time for you to think about this. Your kid's lives are on the line, as if you didn't already know this. Blind belief in these experts is killing your kids. The public must take charge of this field. The addiction field is not self-correcting. It has too much to lose.

The HBH has no way to conceive of behavioral addictions like sex, gambling, and internet addiction, but Hypoism does. In fact, the answer to the original question, a disease or habit, is only available and understood by Hypoism, no other theory of addiction causation, because only Hypoism gives us the brain mechanism (the instinct regulating system, the decision-making apparatus detailed and defined in my writings) and the genetic underpinnings for not just drug addiction but behavioral addictions as well. Otherwise, there's no way to answer the "disease or habit" question or in fact any other question about addiction. That's why Block was unable to answer it and gave us the wrong answer. The correct answer is that addictions, each individual addiction, hundreds of them, are not diseases themselves but symptoms of an underlying disease, the disease I describe as Hypoism. My discussion on "disease" issues is at: http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/diseaseconcept1aperspective/

This means that to deal with addictions we must deal with the disease that causes them, Hypoism. That's what my entire book is about. It's the only book that does this. It's the only addiction paradigm that does this. That's why everyone needs to read my book. So, until we switch to the Hypoism paradigm from the HBH, addictions will remain the mess they are today, misunderstood and out of control. The addiction establishment will not change paradigms because their lives and incomes are at stake. The addiction industry is massive and powerful. It will never change itself. Change must come from the public. This can only happen by the public being allowed to know about this scandal and the science behind it.

7/2/08

Re: Not Winning the War on Drugs, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/02/opinion/02wed1.html

Re: Not Winning the War on Drugs - All Comments, http://community.nytimes.com/article/comments/2008/07/02/opinion/02wed1.html

The year is 2008 and The Times editorial says the solution to the addiction epidemic and all its consequences is reduction in demand. This is correct. The reader's comments for the most part say the solution is reduction in demand and that something new is required. This too is correct. Of course, no one writing on these pages has the answer to reducing demand, the Hypoism paradigm of addiction causation. If they had it, we would have ended the addiction epidemic (and drug war) long ago. Since my first censored article in 1992 (16 years ago!) about the cause of addictions and how to use this theory to reduce demand, Hypoism - A Real Disease, everything ever written about Hypoism and its healing implications has been ignored and censored by the Times, the rest of the media, the addictionology community, and the government, including NIDA, the governmental agency responsible for the continued addiction epidemic through its biased and politically (and morally) motivated promulgation of the incorrect theory of addiction causation, the hijacked brain hypothesis. You can read these letters on my web site, http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/door/ , for example ; http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/nytimesletterstotheeditor/ is the first page of old letters, and http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/letterstoeditorsforaweek/ for recent letters. The up to date scientific argument against the HBH and for Hypoism is made at: http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/hypoismhypothesis/ , the paper that evolved over the years from my first 1992 article. My 1996 book, Hypoic's Handbook, delineates the entire paradigm (through 1996) and its addiction prevention, recovery, and public policy implications. The scientific principle at work here is that wrong theory perpetuates the problem (the HBH of NIDA and ASAM) while only the correct theory can solve the problem (Hypoism). The correct theory and only the correct theory will always result in the correct policies. Hypoism will end the drug war (and cure the addiction epidemic). The public is unaware of this addiction theory necessary to end both the addiction epidemic and the ineffective and harmful policies wrongly devised to end this epidemic. This is evident from the editorial and the comments. The answer is the correct theory, nothing else will work. I said this in 1992.

All I can do is give you the answer. I can't make you read, learn, or use it. That's up to you. I've done all the brain work, leg work, and the writing. All you have to do is use it. I and the N4A are here to help you do this. An article about this quandary is called the drug war war at: http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/articlesbyandforhypoicspage2/

My life is dedicated to this paradigm change. A life is a terrible thing to waste. Don't waste it.

7/1/08

6/29/08

Re: Stress Test , http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/29/magazine/29wwlnlede-t.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

I spend a couple of hours each morning searching the web for evidence of intelligent life on earth, to see if there's anyone actually thinking out there. I really am interested in finding this evidence because it would be important for everyone if it exists. Lots of things could be improved as well as lots of unnecessary suffering eliminated. If you read my letters to editors in regards to what I happen to find you should conclude that for the most part I haven't found much. When I do I say so, a rare occurrence. Today's article is half and half. The writer recognizes (the good half) there's some kind of "stress" scam going on, one of a million concurrent and similar scams, but has no clue, is not thinking, about its origins and perpetrators (the troubling half). She says, "I suspect women today may be particularly vulnerable to placing the locus of illness in their heads rather than their bodies." Funny for a woman to say such a sexist thing. The fact is that everyone, men and women, is vulnerable to all scams. Why People Believe Weird Things by Michael Shermer gives us 25 relevant and correctable reasons for this. It's too bad she didn't read and report on that book. If she had, she could have been quite helpful to those reading her op-ed. The article ends with Maybe this and Maybe that, blah blah - not helpful.

My article on the origins of all this is: http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/10thesuperstitioninstinct3100/  Orenstein has no idea about and doesn't recognize that the current psychobabble/superstitious/religious paradigm, a massive racket and belief system that has goofed up the thinking of humans for the last two thousand plus years, is the perpetrator of the belief that it has secret knowledge unknowable to the rest of us that gives them the power to make us happy in this life and the afterlife if we merely turn over to them our willfulness, power, and money. Ask Oprah or the Pope about it. They'll tell you. And, they must be right. We do it everyday in every way. "Stress" is one of the code words for the cause of all unhappiness and they have the unlimited and secret power to eliminating our stress and our achieving happiness, the code word for what we need to buy from them. The net result is that we stay sick, stupid and manipulated and they get rich and powerful. How else could "W" get elected president? Hey, is everyone happy now? Was it fun? Want to do it again?

So, make sure you all keep believing and whatever you do, don't think. Thinking is stressful. They'll do the thinking for you.

6/28/08

Re: Baltimore Woman, Subject of ’05 Article, Is Found Dead, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/28/us/28baltimore.html?ref=us

Millions of addicts to illegal drugs daily traverse lethal neighborhoods to acquire their drugs. Moreover, ordinary people live in these neighborhoods as well and are subject to the same dangers as are the addicts. I've been there (twenty years ago). Luckily I only had minor mishaps. I've been clean and sober since then. The whole process of illegal drug acquisition is frightening and dangerous, not at all fun. It's also not a "life-style" or moral choice. As dangerous as it is to be addicted (to illegal and illegal drugs as well as to hundreds of behaviors -  also not "life-style" choices but the result of a real unconscious and involuntary genetic and purely neurobiological brain disease called Hypoism) there are numerous concurrent dangers, too numerous to list here, associated with all other aspects of addictions. The peculiar thing about all these dangers is that they are either made worse by governmental pseudoscientific theories about addiction causation such as the hijacked brain hypothesis the most prevalent though completely debunked theory pushed by NIDA and the addiction establishment, as well as by ineffective and murderous policies summed up as the drug war, a conscious governmental anti-drug strategy that is not only ineffective but the cause of all the dangers associated with the already dangerous issue of addiction; dangers to addicts as well as law enforcement officers and innocent bystanders. As we discussed in our last e-mail, re: Iran Fights Scourge of Addiction in Plain View, Stressing Treatment, 6/27/08, even Iran has rid itself of the drug war and uses humane and effective policies that could have been derived from the Hypoism paradigm of addiction causation had they known about it. You would think this condition would be reversed, but it is the way it is - America's addiction theory and drug policies are the moral equivalent of Iran's religious fanaticism and anti-people governmental dictatorship. Yet America loves and supports it with all the moral fervor of a religious fanatic while Iran is the rational and progressive country in this instance.

Today's article is about the death of a prominent citizen's hypoic step-daughter caused by our federal government's malfeasance and lies, not her addiction. Of course, there's nothing in the article about this deadly reality because the biased government, the conflicted addiction establishment, and the closed-minded and unjournalistic media have all instinctively conspired to censor Hypoism and all its important implications from the public in order to maintain the hijacked brain hypothesis and its murderous but beloved beliefs and policies. All this is discussed in detail and with peer-reviewed scientific references in my 1996 book, Hypoic's Handbook, and web articles such as http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/hypoismhypothesis/ which few have read because of its censorship.

In 1995, the year of my first letter to the Times http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/nytimesletterstotheeditor/ and 1996, the year my book was finished, the addiction epidemic and all its consequences had the chance to be ended, saving Ms. Sesker's life along with millions of others. However, thanks to the Times which has never published a single letter of mine, along with the rest of the media and the bought and paid for addiction establishment that has similarly censored Hypoism, thirteen years have had to pass under the tutelage of a worthless, useless, and murderous addiction paradigm culminating in this hypoic's hideous strangulation. When will this censorship and its consequent murder and genocide http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/entitledtoyouropinionnotanymore/ stop?

6/27/08

6/26/08

6/26/08

Re: Parkinson's Drugs Again Linked to Compulsive Disorders, http://www.healthday.com/Article.asp?AID=616848

It amazes me that this information, already quite old, is essentially ignored by the addiction community and everyone else interested in the cause of addictions. What this information, that a pill can cause a completely unrelated addiction in a fully functional, "conscious, and free-willed" person,  says is that addictions are purely biological, unconscious, and occur against the will of the addict-to-be, just what Hypoism says. This is massive confirmation of my theory of addiction causation, Hypoism, and against every other addiction theory, including the hijacked brain hypothesis, NIDA's current and otherwise thoroughly disproven theory. Instead of causing a change in addiction paradigms, this information is being seen as merely a weird quirk of certain dopamine agonist medications. Anyone with half a brain would see this as a paradigmatic phenomenon. "It is very similar to drug addiction, where drug dependence is reflected in dopamine dysfunction, Jakowec said." "What we learn in Parkinson's disease with respect to non-motor features of the disorders will also impact similar behaviors in other disorders including drug addiction and compulsive disorders."

Despite this, the addiction community remains mute, hoping someone with a brain doesn't notice this information and raise hell about their lying. Of course, I've been doing this for 15 years but the media has just ignored me while millions of addicts and their families are suffering and dying for lack of the correct addiction causation theory. Well, go ahead and ignore me. You're only helping kill your own kids.

6/16/08

6/14/08

6/10/08

Re: Exercise May Prevent Addiction, http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1812889,00.html

May? May? May? So what? How about standing on your head and spitting wooden nickels? That may work too. How does an article like this get published? And it's not just in Time.com. It's all over the place already.

This is the kind of article I've been complaining about. Whatever Volkow says gets published as if it were valid and true even if its just a dream. The same was true for Leshner when he was chief of NIDA. People read their stuff and believe it even though everything in it is unproven, disproven, and wrong. Tomorrow parents around the world will be pushing exercise on their kids, not a bad thing in itself, hoping it will prevent addictions. In twenty years, after all these kids have been studied it will be shown that it had no effect, but the real cause of addictions will have been ignored for those twenty years and a whole new generation of addicts will have become addicted and we will still be in the same lousy place we're in today under the auspices of NIDA. The same things were said about ADHD - early and intensive treatment will prevent addictions. Well, it doesn't. Addictions are not caused by hijacked brains as Volkow repeatedly says and they're not prevented by pleasurable activities or dopamine raising medications. It's just the opposite. Hypoic brains hijack the addictors, unconsciously and genetically whether or not the hypoics exercise or anything else. Read my article on this: http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/hypoismhypothesis/ Read Hiroi's article going through the same disproof--"Genetic susceptibility to substance dependence," Molecular Psychiatry (2005) 10, 336–344, by N Hiroi and S Agatsuma. Volkow's own experiences with addictive drugs also mean nothing. She doesn't get addicted only because she doesn't have the right genetics. She's said so herself in an interview on Fresh Air, 7/07. Look it up in their archives and listen to it. What does mean something is that the wrong theory of addictions, the hijacked brain hypothesis, is still being pushed down the throats of America long after it has been proven wrong and kids and adults continue to get addicted just as before. All the nonsensical prevention methods that were said to have so much promise never worked. Why? Because they were based on the wrong theory of addiction causation, just as this one is. No headway has been made in reducing addictions because the people who are going to get addicted, genetically, don't have access to the correct preventative methods, the Hypoism recovery methods, a method that is based on the genetic theory of addiction causation and is free of charge as well. Nothing that has been derived from the HBH has ever panned out, including the drug war based on the HBH, and addictions are just as bad as ever. But who cares about reality and evidence. We all want to believe in the experts. Well, Volkow has never prevented a single addiction and never got a single addict clean and sober. Ask her. So, how is it that she's an expert? It's all bull. And articles like this just kill addicts by the millions.

6/8/08

Re: albino killings in Tanzania - superstitious beliefs lead to murders

On the front page of the NY Time's web site today, www.nytimes.com, is a video telling the blood curdling story of how and why albinos are being killed; because it is believed their body parts are lucky charms, sort of like a rabbit's foot or rhinoceros' horn or a bear's gallbladder. Albinism is a very simple genetic disease of a single gene for the enzyme tyrosinase and its various low functioning alleles explained here as well as its various superstitious beliefs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albinism . Of course, there's no evidence for the weird and lethal beliefs about albinos. But people are funny that way. Beliefs trump evidence every time.

The Times loves to publish stories about other people's weird beliefs and behaviors. It doesn't like to publish stories about its own weird beliefs and behaviors though. One particular story the Times has ignored over the last 13 years is the story of how addicts are tortured, killed, and discriminated against by good old Americans in the belief that they are inherently bad and dangerous, sort of like the good old days of jim crow that must be deeply missed by the majority of Americans. In fact, the government (NIDA) pushes a superstitious [belief trumping evidence] theory of addiction, the hijacked brain hypothesis (HBH), the moral theory of addiction causation, that supports the torturing, killing, and discrimination of addicts. The funny thing is that the medical (ASAM), therapeutic (treatment industry), and recovery (AA) addiction communities go along with this theory (for reasons of conflict of interest) despite the fact that the HBH has been disproven long ago. Thus, addicts continue to be burned at the stake for superstitious reasons. Every one of my letters to the Times in dissent of this theory and its derived lethal policies has been ignored and censored. As we all know, AA was named based on the fear of addict discrimination. It retains that name today because the same discrimination exists today, mostly because of AA's persistence in remaining anonymous.

All my work to replace the superstitious and murderous paradigm of addictions, the HBH, with real science, real evidence, has been ignored and censored by the Times. Why can't the Times see they are doing the same thing the people in Tanzania are doing and for the same reasons? When will they realize this? When will they stop?

6/8/08

Re: Researchers Fail to Reveal Full Drug Pay , http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/08/us/08conflict.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

I've been writing about the lies to the public caused by conflicts interest in the psychiatric/addiction field for years. I knew they were lies because the data never supported the claims made. Here's the story behind one of them: http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/theaddictiontreatmentfraudfinallyexposed/ .

Recently, a paper was written by Wilens and Beiderman, two of the guys in today's NY Times article who lied about their financial connections to drug companies, and discussed in: Bipolar Teens at Greater Risk of Substance Abuse, http://www.healthday.com/Article.asp?AID=616134 . In this article it was stated, "If BPD usually precedes substance abuse, there may be intervention points where we could reduce its influence on drug and alcohol abuse. Aggressive treatment of BPD could cut the risk of substance abuse, just as we have shown it does in ADHD," Wilens said. This claim hasn't been confirmed by anyone else. In fact, the last study about this issue was discussed in http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23899451/ . It showed the same incidence of drug addiction in treated vs untreated kids with adhd and in that article Beiderman said, "Those treated with medications had neither an increased nor decreased risk for subsequent drug or alcohol abuse compared to those not given drugs for their ADHD," the same in both groups, not decreased in the treated group. So, which lie is the lie? They all are.

The implication of the "just as we have shown it does in adhd" lie is that adhd should be treated aggressively, with medications, because it reduces the incidence of future drug addiction. These guys are being paid by the drug companies to tell other psychiatrists to use more drugs to treat adhd'ers for this reason. They and the drug companies make out well while the kids continue to get addicted. Meanwhile, another method to reduce addictions in these kids, a method that is drug free and free of charge as well, the hypoism recovery method, is being ignored and censored by both the Times and the psychiatry/addiction field.

Conflicts of interest abound in the addiction field. Read: http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/15replacingalanleshneristheonlywaytoendthedrugwar/ . This article is 8 years old and is still valid. Today's article documents some of my allegations. Nonetheless, I have been ignored and censored while the experts and drug companies get rich and the hypoic kids get addicted and screwed. Good job NY Times. Despite all this good investigative reporting nothing will change because the Times (and the rest of the media) always goes with the experts even when they are wrong and even when they lie. Money rules, not the truth.

6/6/08

Re: Bipolar Teens at Greater Risk of Substance Abuse, http://www.healthday.com/Article.asp?AID=616134

If you read the original article this article is based on you see that it's been well known for some time that bipolar and adhd, highly genetic syndromes, and other genetic syndromes are highly associated with all addictions. Go to an AA meeting and you can see and hear this. Wilens states, "It also could be that some genetic switch activated in adolescence turns on both BPD and substance abuse in these youngsters. That's something that we are currently investigating in genetic and neuro-imaging studies of this group." There are other syndromes associated with addictions as well as many seemingly otherwise "normal" people. The common denominator is the genes of Hypoism, the disease that causes addictions, are either closely linked to the genes of these other syndromes or that these syndromes have some common genes that are also the primary hypoism genes. The authors of the original article, as well as the rest of the field of addictions, have missed this simple explanation, that there is a set of alleles of some unknown number of brain genes that causes addictions. This set of genes can be found in large numbers of the above syndromes as well as smaller numbers of otherwise "normal" people. It is the hypoism that is the major issue in addiction causation, not the associated syndromes. Thus, we need to learn to diagnose hypoism among the entire human population through its genetics rather than through its associated syndromes to specifically pinpoint the people who are susceptible to future addictions, as explained in my 1996 book, Hypoic's Handbook, and web article: http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/hypoismhypothesis/. These are the people who need to be intervened upon early to prevent future addictions. The problem is that the addiction field is purposefully ignoring hypoism as the etiology of addictions and thereby are perpetuating the addiction epidemic.

6/4/08

Re: The Science of Denial , http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/04/opinion/04wed2.html

This editorial complains about the Bush administration censoring from the public valid science that would lead to policy change if known by the public. "The Bush administration has worked overtime to manipulate or conceal scientific evidence — and muzzled at least one prominent scientist — to justify its failure to address climate change. Its motives were transparent: the less people understood about the causes and consequences of global warming, the less they were likely to demand action from their leaders. And its strategy has been far too successful."

This editorial is the pot calling the kettle black. With a change in just a few words I can make the same accusations about the NY Times: "The NY Times has worked overtime to manipulate or conceal scientific evidence — and muzzled at least one [prominent] scientist — to justify its failure to address the addiction epidemic. Its motives were transparent: the less people understood about the causes and consequences of the addiction epidemic." That scientist is me, not too prominent yet one that does follow the scientific method of gaining knowledge. Since 1995 the Times has censored every letter I've ever written to them about the current theory of addictions, the hijacked brain hypothesis (HBH), the government's hypothesis, being wrong as the cause of the continuation of the addiction epidemic. Many of these letters are on my web site. All of them are on my computer hard drive.

Science has nothing to do with "prominent" scientists. It has to do with a method at arriving at what we call knowledge. Science is the scientific method, not consensus or popularity. [From: http://phyun5.ucr.edu/~wudka/Physics7/Notes_www/node6.html#SECTION02121000000000000000

What is the ``scientific method''?

  The scientific method is the best way yet discovered for winnowing the truth from lies and delusion. The simple version looks something like this:

• 1. Observe some aspect of the universe.
• 2. Invent a tentative description, called a hypothesis, that is consistent with what you have observed.
• 3. Use the hypothesis to make predictions.
• 4. Test those predictions by experiments or further observations and modify the hypothesis in the light of your results.
• 5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 until there are no discrepancies between theory and experiment and/or observation.

When consistency is obtained the hypothesis becomes a theory and provides a coherent set of propositions which explain a class of phenomena. A theory is then a framework within which observations are explained and predictions are made. ]

The hijacked brain hypothesis is the current governmental theory of addiction causation first codified by Leshner in 1997, Leshner A.: Addiction is a Brain Disease, and it Matters, Science; 278, 45-70, 10/3/97 . It's basically the moral paradigm of addiction causation, the same theory that can be found in the bible, embellished with scientific terminology. It is also the hypothesis used by the government and the addiction establishment (bought and paid for by the government funding system) as the basis for all their prevention, treatment, and public policies, policies that haven't worked - the addiction epidemic is as bad or worse today than when I wrote my first letter. Whatever it is, it is a hypothesis. As a hypothesis it can be disproved. According to the rules of the scientific method, which the Times seems to be advocating, once disproved it must be dumped, along with all its policies, and replaced by another hypothesis and new policies. [This is exactly what today's NY Times editorial is getting at about global warming.]

My 1996 book on addictions, Hypoic's Handbook, goes through the disproof of the HBH and provides a replacement hypothesis. So does my web paper, http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/hypoismhypothesis/ . Included in that web paper is another paper by Hiroi, "Genetic susceptibility to substance dependence," Molecular Psychiatry (2005) 10, 336–344, by N Hiroi and S Agatsuma, a link to which is embedded in my paper so anyone can read it, that goes through the disproof of the HBH is great detail. It also provides scientific support for my replacement hypothesis, the genetic theory of addiction causation. This important paper has been ignored not only by the Times but by the addiction establishment and the government. I've written the Times about all this in one form or another since 1995, as evidenced by my letters to the editor. Every one of them has been censored. I sent David Corcoran, a NY Times science editor, a copy of my book which he didn't read but rejected nonetheless and didn't review it for the readers. In other words, the NY Times did the same thing they are accusing the Bush administration of, censorship of information that might cause a change in addiction theory and policy if known by the public. The lack of the replacement theory has maimed and killed millions of addicts, ruined their families, and allowed the continuation of the harmful, wasteful, and useless drug war that has injured the country to no end.

The NY Times has been massively hypocritical and damaging to the country.

6/2/08

Re: Students Most At Risk Of Alcohol-Use Disorders Have A Dense Family History Of Alcoholism, http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/109415.php

I won't belabor the point, but does this sound like it supports any particular theory of addiction causation over any other? The funny thing is that they don't mention any particular theory. They just say, "It's [alcoholism] a very complex disorder." Then they say the value of this revelation is that using this information on causation we can better predict who needs prevention and treatment interventions. Of course, they don't say how.

My 1996 book, Hypoic's Handbook, ignored by the journal that published today's study and the rest of the addiction field, said the same things although a lot more explicitly , in more detail, and with a real brain mechanism and a real prevention and treatment modality. My 1992 article on all this, submitted to 12 addiction journals but rejected for non-scientific reasons, has evolved into: http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/hypoismhypothesis/

Thus, 16 years have gone by with millions of people suffering needlessly because of the censorship of my articles and book, yet again validated by another addiction article. When does my work get any recognition and publicity so that addicts and future addicts can benefit from it?

5/28/08

5/26/08

Re: Social networks more powerful than thought?, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24825001/

In my 1996 book, Hypoic's Handbook, I discuss the role of the instincts in the addiction arena both in the causes of addictions as well as in their prevention, recovery, and public policy considerations. The reason instincts are important in the addiction arena is that all addictions have their neurobiological origins in the brain's instinct regulating mechanism, something I call the decision-making apparatus. The way the brain has been put together by evolution is that all instincts are hooked up to (funnel into) the reward system, like a large inverted pyramid, which determines (in a large part genetically) the salience of any particular instinctive behavior or of any chemical (drug) that mimics the neurobiology of an instinct because of the way it interacts with the neurotransmitter receptors of the reward system (addictive drugs = reward raising neurotransmitter substitutes). In other words, instincts raise (or lower) reward system activity. Addictive drugs all strongly raise reward system activity. The reward system is built to act like a thermostat in order to unconsciously regulate the organism's use of the instincts according to the dictates of evolution and natural selection. The settings of this thermostat are determined by alleles (different biological forms of the same gene) of a variety of genes, some more active and some less active. Now, here's the critical part. People do not all have the same alleles of these genes. There exists among the human population a mixture of distribution of all these alleles so that there is a bell curve distribution of reward activity both in general as well as specifically for each individual instinct (and by this mechanism, addictive drug). Thus, in different people some instincts (and drugs) are rewarded more (or less) than other instincts and drugs. This is what I call genetic diversity of the reward system. Some people like some instincts more than others and some people like some drugs more than others. Addictions (behavioral/instinct and drug) occur only in people who have critically low reward system activity because of the way the thermostat is set by these low activity genetic alleles. In these people the thermostat is always in the ON position for some instinct or drug or combination. I call this addiction causing genetic disease Hypoism, hypo for low (reward activity). Thus, Hypoism is the disease and addictions are its symptoms. People with this genetic disease are called hypoics.

With this understanding we can rationally discuss the effect of one particular instinct, the approval/ostracism (A/O) instinct, a "social" instinct, the one discussed in today's article, and its potential role in addictions like tobacco addiction, etc. The A/O instinct is critical to mammalian evolution. I won't belabor that point. Thus, it both strongly raises (approval) and lowers (ostracism) reward system activity depending on different social (parents, friends, authorities, etc) interactions and differently in different people. Let me tell you something, a lot more than non-addicts, addicts (hypoics) like things that raise reward activity and don't like things that lower the reward system activity. Thus. they like approval and hate ostracism. This fact is taken advantage of in all effective addiction recovery programs. Approval is used as motivator almost exclusively in effective programs, if at all possible. Ostracism as motivator is a killer of addicts. Another side of the A/O instinct is the "group membership" issue. Belonging to the group raises reward activity and getting kicked out lowers it. Maintaining group membership is important to effective addiction recovery. Today's article shows how this stuff can be used successfully to help hypoics with their addictions. It also shows how to kill addicts. Addict haters [like Sally Satel (and her ilk) who has written numerous NY Times articles about addictions] love to use ostracism and rationalize its use very well (to other addict haters). These people are addict killers in sheep's clothing. They work in many areas of the addiction field from NIDA and ASAM and all through the addiction treatment and control field. They push wrong (moral) theories of addiction causation, like the hijacked brain hypothesis, so they can use ostracism and punishment as addiction treatments and support the drug war either actively or through acquiescence. AA shamefully makes these same mistakes, my major objection to AA, an otherwise effective program.

We can learn a lot from today's article. However, before being able to use the A/O instinct effectively we need to also have in place the correct theory of addiction causation, Hypoism. Without Hypoism in place and ridding of the addiction field of the addict haters who push the hijacked brain hypothesis we will never get to use the A/O instinct appropriately for both prevention and treatment, and public policies.

5/9/08

Re: Report: Teen Pot Use More Dangerous, http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1738778,00.html

This article is a good example of the kind of absolute bullshit pseudoscience coming from the government published uncritically by the media. As if we already didn't know the government believes drugs are bad. The question is whether the "studies" show that marijuana causes the problems (addiction, suicidal thinking, and mental illnesses) the article attributes to it as the article implies. Or, is marijuana use just a symptom of what is going to happen to these kids anyway. There's no evidence in the article for any of this kind of analysis. All we have is the usual associations and anecdotes by so-called experts. Associations and anecdotes are zero proof of causation. All the valid studies on whether marijuana use causes addiction have shown that it doesn't but instead that the people who use marijuana and get addicted do so because there's an underlying genetic disease that causes both the marijuana use and the ultimate addictions. Thus, it's not the marijuana that's the problem but an underlying genetic disease. Whether this underlying genetic disease also causes some of these kids to have depression as well is also most likely. This explains the associations of depression, drug use, and ultimate addiction. It also fits all the other science behind addiction causation. It puts the emphasis on the real culprit, the genetic disease, instead of the phony strawman, the drug, something the government has been lying to the public about for the last 30 years to support their moral paradigm of addiction and their moral solution, the drug war (drugs are bad and people who use drugs are bad). These kinds of governmental lies are helping get our kids addicted and killing them by the millions. Until we switch our emphasis to the underlying genetic disease from the drugs we will continue to see the worsening of the addiction epidemic and all its dastardly consequences.

5/8/08

Re: Depression diversity: Brain studies reveal big differences among individuals, http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-05/uomh-ddb050708.php

This study shows what we have all suspected, that differences (deficiencies) in certain "feel good" neurotransmitter receptors is one cause of depression. It also showed that different depressed people have different receptor deficiencies. These peoples' symptoms are related to the degree of deficiencies as is the pharmaceutical treatment response. This is basic biology, neurophysiology. This is exactly how the rest of the body works. No psychobabble, supernatural forces, or mysterious spirits or powers. No blaming the patient. The body works via biology and, although it might be complicated, it's quantifiable. The cause of these deficiencies will be shown to be primarily genetic as well as influenced but not caused by environmental factors. The prevention and treatment of depression will depend upon the degree of knowledge we discover about this biological system. This is a disease model from beginning to end. The biological differences from the get-go is the disease.

All mental illnesses have taken and will take similar neurophysiological discovery paths and disease models.

What about addictions? As of today (May 2008) addictions are still viewed by the "experts" (NIDA, ASAM, AA), and therefore everyone else as well, as being outside this neurophysiological framework. The hijacked brain hypothesis (HBH) is the ruling theory of addiction causation. According to this theory, addicts are seen and treated by addiction experts and society as people who have consciously and willfully (and spiritually) caused their own addictions for no reason other than immorality, stupidity, character defects, or anti-social personality traits. Only after they get addicted by this immoral and willful use of the drug, according to the HBH, are they seen as having a disease, a disease caused by the drug changing the physiology of the brain from not addicted to addicted. Under this model of addiction there are two agents at fault, the drug and the addict. Thus, the prevention and treatment methods dictated by this theory are "education," drug laws, and intervention (drug war) and punishment of addicts (drug war) - there are a million addicts in jail today for merely being addicts and many many millions more whose lives and families have been ruined by the drug war.

Knowing what we know about depression and its neurophysiological causes it would make no sense to the public to deal with depression the way we are currently dealing with addictions. It would be seen as unconscionable and absolutely cruel, no different from putting people with breast cancer in jail. So, clearly, it is the theory of causation that makes the difference in how we treat people with different diseases.

What if the hijacked brain hypothesis were wrong and the real cause of addictions turned out to be exactly like the cause of depression as described in today's article? What if it turned out that addictions were, from the get-go and unconsciously, caused by genetic deficiencies of "feel good" neurotransmitters and their receptors against the will of the addict-to-be rather than how the HBH describes it? What if it turned out this way? What if this was all known for the last 15 years but hidden from the public by the addiction experts, government, and the media? Would this be a scandal of massive proportions?

Well, it turns out exactly this way. The HBH was known to be wrong long before it was invented by Alan Leshner and published in Science in 1997. Leshner A.: Addiction is a Brain Disease, and it Matters, Science; 278, 45-70, 10/3/97 . I wrote my scientific argument against it in my 1996 book, Hypoic's Handbook. My paper, Hypoism Hypothesis, goes step by step through the disproof of the HBH: http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/hypoismhypothesis/ . Moreover, Hiroi's paper delineated the same disproof: "Genetic susceptibility to substance dependence," Molecular Psychiatry (2005) 10, 336–344, by N Hiroi and S Agatsuma.

I've written a thousand letters to editors about this and all of them have been ignored and censored. My ignored book goes through the neurophysiological cause as well as the prevention and treatment implications of the neurophysiological (reward deficiencies) cause of addictions. This theory changes everything we know about addictions as well as its policies.

Genetic diversity is the cause of addictions exactly as it is the cause of depression. Why the addiction establishment has censored this known fact from the public and substituted a lie for it is beyond me, but I'd say it was due to conflict of interest (money and power) and pure philosophical bias. For whatever reason, it's still a massive scandal that needs to be corrected from the top down.

5/6/08

Re: Redefining Disease, Genes and All , http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/06/health/research/06dise.html?8dpc

In 1992, after reading the essential scientific literature on addictions, I wrote my first paper on redefining a disease. [This paper has evolved into: http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/hypoismhypothesis/ and my book, Hypoic's Handbook.] The old name for the disease was alcoholism or heroin addiction or cocaine addiction or compulsive sex or gambling, or anorexia, etc. A hundred "diseases." A disease for each addiction. Each addiction as a disease. The addiction as the disease. The old disease(s) was/were named after the "addictor," either the drug or the behavior that was addicted to [although at that time only drugs were considered (by the experts) true addictions, not behaviors]. Read my paper discussing the word disease: http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/diseaseconcept1aperspective/

This implied that the addictor caused the addiction (as in the prevailing addiction causation theory later (1997) called the hijacked brain hypothesis). But all the evidence showed this nosology had to be wrong mainly because people addicted to one addictor were almost always addicted to many other addictors (some drugs and some behaviors or a combination) at various times in their lives and people not addicted never got addicted to any addictor. There were two groups of people, people who got addicted to all sorts of stuff and people who didn't get addicted to anything. The epidemiology of addictions showed there was something underlying addictions and that was a trait I called addictability, the capability of addiction. Moreover, the data showed that addictability was not a random event but ran in families, in fact highly genetic, and not always to the same addiction. Thus, the nosology based on the addictor as the cause of the addiction and a separate disease for each of these addictors made no scientific sense. [Besides, most people used all these addictors and only a small percentage of users ever got addicted. Thus, it couldn't be the addictor that caused the addiction. The hijacked brain hypothesis was clearly wrong.] There seemed to be a genetic disease of addictability where each addiction was a symptom of this disease and not a disease in itself. There were other symptoms of this disease as well and each addict had a different combination of all these symptoms. Thus, it was clear that there were many genes involved (maybe as many as 200) in causing these problems - the disease was polygenetic and complex. Moreover, all addictors had one thing in common. They all raised the activity of the reward mechanism, the dopamine reinforcing mechanism. To make a long story short, the part of the brain that was effected by these genetic differences (genetic alleles) I named the "Instinct Regulating Apparatus" or the decision-making apparatus, and the common denominator was low activity of the reward mechanism, a major part of and the motivator for this brain mechanism. Thus, addictions are caused by a polygenetic disease of the instinct regulating apparatus by low activity of the reward mechanism. I named this disease Hypoism. This is an example of naming a disease after its pathophysiology not its symptoms. This is exactly what today's article talks about - the renaming of disease according to its genetic pathophysiology. I have been doing this since 1992 while the rest of the field is still using names like alcoholism etc. And we wonder why addictions are worse today than ever.

Despite all this the NY Times continues to censor my letters and back the old, outdated, and incorrect nosology pushed by the scientifically wrong addiction experts while addictions get worse and worse. Well, this is why addictions are worse today. Wrong name. Wrong theory. Wrong policy.

5/5/08

Re: Racial Disparities Persist as Drug Arrests Rise , http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/06/us/05cnd-disparities.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

This whole article is sickening. It discusses and acquiesces to criminalization of addiction (possession) as if it actually makes sense even while the article states there is no evidence that this policy has reduced either addiction and its consequences (crime, violence, injury) or illegal drug availability. What exactly makes this policy make sense? Nothing objective. Only hate. Our country hates drugs and addicts. It doesn't matter to us that this hate is just the same as shooting ourselves in the foot or cutting off our nose to spite our face. Hate is a stupid reason to criminalize a known medical disease. What other medical disease is currently criminalized? None. So, why this one, addiction? Addiction is criminalized for one reason, the disease is believed to be caused by the victim, the addict. The hijacked brain hypothesis says so. It says addiction is caused by the immoral and free-willed use of the drug. The problem with this logic, if you want to call it that, is that the hijacked brain hypothesis is wrong, a lie. It's been well proved that this theory is wrong. Drugs don't cause addiction, genetics does. And genetics is not a free-willed choice. Moreover, addiction is not the disease but a symptom of the real disease, the genetic disease that causes addiction. Thus, we are criminalizing unwitting people who get addicted against their will, no different from criminalizing breast cancer. The science of this causation logic has been clearly delineated in my paper, http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/hypoismhypothesis/ , and Hiroi's paper, Genetic susceptibility to substance dependence, Molecular Psychiatry (2005) 10, 336–344, by N Hiroi and S Agatsuma.

The public knows nothing about this science because the addiction experts who push the hijacked brain hypothesis have had a monopoly on the press and the press has intentionally ignored the genetic disease that causes addictions. Thus, it continues to make sense to criminalize drug use and incarcerate addicts even while it's obviously ineffective and even harmful, not just to addicts but to the entire country. This is all based on a lie perpetrated by the addiction community for its own conflicts of interest. The solution to the entire problem is the truth, letting the public know about the real cause of addiction, genetics and how using this theory makes criminalization look absolutely stupid and sinful besides disgusting and sickening. Moreover, the racial disparities would disappear as well as the problem of addiction and their consequences, including the black market for illegal drugs. The genetic theory solves the whole mess and saves the lives of all the addicts. Isn't that what we want? Well, why are you still censoring this letter?

4/22/08

4/20/08

Re: Behind Military Analysts, the Pentagon’s Hidden Hand , http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/washington/20generals.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Since when did any news outlet have any credibility? Everyone's on someone else's payroll or waiting to be. The public's bombarded with biased and prejudiced news and reports 24/7. Money and power run information and information runs public opinion. Even people we have learned to trust like Bill Moyers have been used as a propaganda tool. See: http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/28alettertobillmoyersclosetohomeandpbs/ I've been writing about the conflicts of interest and the disseminated lies of the addiction industry to maintain a bogus theory of addictions and its resultant public opinions and policies in this country for 15 years. One such paper is: http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/15replacingalanleshneristheonlywaytoendthedrugwar/ The same issues hold true today under Volkow, a political appointee specifically appointed by Bush to maintain the drug war with the warped pseudoscience of the hijacked brain hypothesis. I've written countless letters to editors to numerous news outlets about this conspiracy and conflicts of interest but not one has ever been published. The lies and nonsense about addictions and addiction policies coming from what I call the PIMMPAL complex (the addiction/industrial complex) discussed in the above article spread with impunity by the news outlets have been ensuring maximal addictions, minimal recovery, and maximum profits by the addiction treatment industry while killing and incarcerating maximal numbers of addicts and ruining their families. This mess is way bigger than the Iraq war mess. However, no one gives a shit and no one is listening, especially the NY Times. So, when your kid dies from an addiction related incident, blame yourself.

4/19/08

4/17/08

Re: ADHD drugs not linked to future drug abuse, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23899451/

The title of this article is massively and deliberately misleading. The correct title should be, "ADHD predicts future drug use and ADHD drugs don't decrease future drug addiction." Those are the real results of the actual study. What all the studies of the neurobiology and genetics of ADHD have shown us is that 1) ADHD is caused by genetic low brain reward system dopamine activity and that 2) the diagnosis of ADHD highly portends future addiction. This is well studied and reproduced. Thus, genetic low dopamine activity causes addiction. ADHD is a major group of the kids with genetic low dopamine. In a nutshell this is the Hypoism addiction hypothesis first delineated by me in 1992. This paper has been revised many times since then and appears on my web site as: http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/hypoismhypothesis/

The important question isn't whether drugs that are used to treat ADHD raise the already high probability of future addiction, that would be hard to do because it's already high, but whether they lower it. That's what effective treatment would do. This study shows they don't lower it. Thus, drugs like Ritalin that raise brain dopamine don't prevent addiction in kids with genetic low dopamine, ADHD. Instead of making people believe Ritalin is safe for their kids with ADHD (the current title) the correct title would say that the treatment is not safe and is actually ineffective (the correct title). This conclusion is important because it shows that the current treatment model of ADHD is ineffective in reducing the major detrimental symptom of ADHD, addictions. People need to know this so they will demand we find the treatment that does work and not continue to expect ineffective treatment to work. My book about the disease of Hypoism has such a treatment model based on the stated pathophysiology of the disease and how it works in the brain to cause its symptoms. It's too bad that the current "experts" and the media continue to ignore and censor this work. Why would they deliberately paint the wrong picture and censor the right one?

4/14/08

Re: Unconscious decisions in the brain, http://www.mpg.de/english/illustrationsDocumentation/documentation/pressReleases/2008/pressRelease20080414/

"The researchers found that it was possible to predict from brain signals which option participants would take already seven seconds before they consciously made their decision."

This confirms what I've been talking about, the unconscious decision-making apparatus, in [hypoic] decision-making. This is a confirmation of one of the major tenets of the Hypoism paradigm of addictions and completely disagrees with the hijacked brain hypothesis, the current addiction paradigm.

"Many processes in the brain occur automatically and without involvement of our consciousness. This prevents our mind from being overloaded by simple routine tasks. But when it comes to decisions we tend to assume they are made by our conscious mind. This is questioned by our current findings." (Nature Neuroscience, April 13th 2008)

This helps explain why the genetics of the decision-making apparatus is so powerful and why addictions are unconsciously derived behaviors. This is one important reason why the hijacked brain hypothesis is wrong from the get-go. All this is discussed in my book.

4/13/08

Re: On Journalism, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-moyers/on-journalism_b_95444.html#comments

It would be nice if Moyers lived according to the journalistic ideals and principles he espouses in this interview and elsewhere, but he doesn't. I quote Mr. Moyers, "The job of trying to tell the truth about people whose job it is to hide the truth is almost as complicated and difficult as trying to hide it in the first place. We journalists are, of course, obliged to cover the news, but our deeper mission is to uncover the news that powerful people would prefer to keep hidden." "But I also tell them there is something more important than journalism, and that is the truth. They aren't necessarily one and the same because the truth is often obscured in the news."

Ten years ago Moyers did a PBS series on addiction, what he agreed is America's number one health problem. http://www.pbs.org/wnet/closetohome/home.html He went to the country's consensus addiction experts from NIDA and the addiction treatment industry and put together his impressive TV series. I watched the series in horror and disbelief. The series pushed the same theory (hijacked brain hypothesis - HBH), philosophy, and practices that were killing addicts in droves and ruining the lives of millions of addicts and their families. This series was not the truth. This was propaganda directly from the government (NIDA and NIAAA) and the monopolistic treatment industry that was currently completely unsuccessful in dealing with addictions. Their theory, the HBH, was provably wrong and damaging even then, and their treatments, prevention, and public policy methods were harmful, ineffective, and unsuccessful. None had ever been proven otherwise scientifically. Despite this, Moyers uncritically believed the experts lock, stock, and barrel and put on his series. As angry as I was, I wrote him a very respectful letter to give him an opportunity to revise his journalism: http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/28alettertobillmoyersclosetohomeandpbs/ I never heard from him or PBS despite resending the letter several times. So, I put the letter on my web page and left it at that.

Since then, Moyers and his son have written a book still pushing the HBH and NIDA continues to push this wrong theory as well. Nothing has changed in the field of addictions since then. It is still ineffective in all aspects and unsuccessful in turning anything around. Today addictions are as bad as or worse than ever.

So, how did Moyers break his journalism principles on this issue? 1) He went to one source for all his information despite their being completely ineffective and scientifically incorrect in dealing with the issue at hand. He blindly believed these experts despite existing scientific contradictions. 2) He used his son as an expert and advisor, a son who was an employee of one of the expert sources, Hazelden. 3) He ignored conflicting scientific information. 4) He continues to do these same things even ten years later despite no change in the outcome of every issue raised by his PBS series and that the HBH (the plasticity theory) has been definitively proven wrong: http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/hypoismhypothesis/ and Genetic susceptibility to substance dependence, Molecular Psychiatry (2005) 10, 336–344, by N Hiroi and S Agatsuma.

The effects on addicts and their families by this series and the perpetuation of the HBH have been astronomically damaging. This is what bad journalism does and he knows it well. It's too bad his biases and closed mind prevented him from living up to his journalistic standards. If he had lived up to his own standards things would be a lot different today in the area of addictions which happens to be still stuck in the HBH and all its damaging implications.

4/4/08

Re: Airline Whistle-Blowers Were Ignored, http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1727958,00.html

The airplane inspection issue ignored by the FAA supervisors is quite frightening, but as far as I'm aware there hasn't been an airline death caused by delayed inspections, at least since increased inspections were deemed necessary by a few planes decompressing in mid air years ago and put into law. Nonetheless, these supervisors should be indicted, convicted, and sent right to jail for a long time and the whistleblowers should be rewarded excessively and put on a pedestal.

What about the people who blew the whistle on the addiction field which has significantly contributed to the current addiction epidemic and the deaths of millions of addicts and many tens of thousands of innocent bystanders (DUI mortalities alone) and the ruination of many more families caused by the fraudulent perpetuation of a wrong theory of addiction causation, the hijacked brain hypothesis, HBH? When were they listened to? When have they been asked to testify to congress? Where are the newspaper articles about them? They haven't been and there aren't any because there is only one of them and I have been ignored.  Now, if there ever were a need for some of these whistleblowers to tell the country about this lethal and damaging fraud in some forum or another it certainly would be now. The need for this is infinitely greater than the airline inspection issue, as important as that is. You say you're not aware of any addiction whistleblowers? What the hell do you call me? I've been writing you, and that's all of you who get this email, for years. I've written the NY Times about this fraud since 1995, a thousand letters. I have been not only ignored but censored by the Times and the rest of the media for all this time while the above mentioned damage has been blamed on addicts themselves, not on the addiction experts or their bogus theories on addiction causation and the policy disasters promulgated by these wrong theories. I've written congresspeople too, but no hearings for me. Why? No one listened. Who would listen to a defrocked doctor drug addict (defrocked by people like Elliot Spitzer and the hand picked and addict hating biased NYS panels who judged me dangerous and sure to relapse and kill someone though it was stipulated that I had never injured anyone, ever), clean and sober for 18 years now, over the entire field of addictionology and the handpicked (by Bush) chief of NIDA and consensus addiction expert, Nora Volkow who had never personally gotten a single addict sober? What kind of expert is that? Well, I ask you, is it about the belief in the people or is it about the science? Is it about the truth or is it about the power? Is it about what's right or is it about what's believed? Is this issue any different from the airline inspection issue? It's about the truth, not people, not personalities, not money, not power, not consensus, not belief. I've given you the truth over these 13 years but you have chosen to ignore it. You have chosen to believe the experts, the powerful and haven't even examined the scientific argument proving them wrong. I doubt my book or papers have been read by a single person to whom I've written about any of this. There has been no inquiry, no debate. There has only been monopoly of power and belief, as bad as any cult or any religion. And all this despite the horrendous track record of the addiction field up and down the line. No other field of medicine or science has been so utterly devoid of clinical success than addictionology. Have you ever wondered why, other than to blame addicts for this? Of course not. Because everyone automatically believes the experts and blames the lack of clinical success on the unruly addicts who just won't cooperate. It' must all be the addict's fault! No one questions that this failure might just be due to the expert's wrong theories and wrong prevention and treatment methods based on wrong theories. This is weird because every time a treatment method is tested scientifically, it fails. Of course, the addiction field lies about this and no one checks on it. I write about it but no one reads my letters. I blow the whistle but no one listens to it. There's not a single addiction treatment shown scientifically to produce abstinence, no less real recovery, better than chance. You name it, nothing. None. Yet the addiction field makes bogus claims about their treatment successes daily. "Treatment Works" is the mantra. Repeat after me a hundred times. People believe it. All lies. Nothing works better than chance. Not any treatment, and that includes the 12 step movement, and not prevention, nothing. You say it does? Well, prove it. Show me the paper where it is proven that some kind of treatment causes long term (five years, the same standard as for cancer) abstinence using valid scientific methods better than chance. All this continues despite my advising you about this for 13 years. And the mess continues. Millions dead. Millions in jail. This is what happens when the whistleblower is ignored. The debacle continues, no debate, no hearings, and that means dead kids on a daily basis, many times a day, and I'm not even referring to dead addicts here. I'm talking about over 17,000 dead kids a year just by DUIs alone. Of course, there's also the many thousands of dead addicts, close to a million if you count alcohol and cigarettes. They're in the paper everyday in various places. All because you want to believe the experts and your other wrong beliefs about addictions. It's too too sad. Too sad. Too Too stupid.

4/4/08

Re: There Were Orders to Follow , http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/04/opinion/04fri1.html

It's interesting, to say the least, that the Times takes a moral, constitutional, and philosophical stand against Yoo's memo and the governmental behavior it justifies while simultaneously it has actively supported a quite similar US government policy. In fact, I've been writing the Times letters which they have censored a thousand times confronting this behavior since 1995. Many of them are available on my web site. The governmental policy I'm referring to is the criminalization of obtaining and possession of illegal addictive drugs by addicts. Literally tens of millions of people have been tortured and had their lives and lives of their families and their kids ruined over the last umpteen years by these laws and the thoughtless acquiescence of these laws by the public. [I'm not an advocate for legalization of addictive drugs. I'm talking about criminalization of addiction here, a completely different issue.] Genocide (or war crimes in general) has always been "in the minds of the beholder, the perpetrators." What I mean here is that depending on the theory behind to problem, "the ends justify the means." Or, at least, people do believe and act this way, Americans included. Thus, it is pretty easy to justify torture and murder of intentional "bad behavior" if that behavior, whatever it happens to be at the time, is agreed, according the believed theory behind that behavior, to be a public menace. When one believes the theory, cognitive dissonance sets in. Wikipedia defines this as, "In simple terms, it can be the filtering of information that conflicts with what one already believes, in an effort to ignore that information and reinforce one's beliefs." There's no question that Yoo's memo and the behavior of the Bush administration is an example of this. Any genocide can be justified this same way. This is why we continue to experience genocide, and all its variations, throughout the world in a world where everyone agrees (believes) that murder, and all its variations, is categorically wrong. Thus, Bush can justify his behavior, the purpose of the Yoo memo, despite believing his behavior is wrong. "Public safety trumps beliefs against murder and torture." A no brainer, right? What's all the fuss?

As irrational and unconscious as is cognitive dissonance, it's still no excuse for genocide or torture or incarceration of addicts, all the same thing. Why? Because we have the ability to question the theory behind the genocide and ensure this theory is correct before committing the murder. We all know how this process was warped and distorted in the Iraq war. To some of us it was obvious before the fact, including the role of the press, but there's no question that it was wrong after the fact. What about the drug war, especially the part about criminalization of addicts drug behavior, obtaining and possession of illegal drugs? What is the theory behind convicting drug addicts of felonies, incarcerating them, and ruining their lives and the lives of their families, genocide, even if they never did anything harmful to anyone else, the usual standard for criminalization of behavior? At this point you might read, if you can break through your cognitive dissonance, my article on this, hypoic genocide: http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/entitledtoyouropinionnotanymore/

We have Alan Leshner and Nora Volkow to thank for the [memo] theory that supports the hypoic (addict) genocide. In the old days we only had the [superstitious belief] bible to justify the genocide but today we have the [science?] hijacked brain hypothesis (HBH), the so-called plasticity theory of addiction, the theory that runs everything about addictions today. This theory states that drug use is both willful, a conscious voluntary decision, and causative of addiction (drugs cause addiction by their inherent brain changing power). Thus, addiction is a willful (and immoral) choice. [Leshner A.: Addiction is a Brain Disease, and it Matters, Science; 278, 45-70, 10/3/97 ] This article in Science, a "respected" science journal, questionably peer-reviewed, codified the biblical theory that addictive drugs are inherently (neurobiologically) bad and addiction is willful and immoral anti-social misbehavior. Volkow has since upheld this theory in her writings and speeches. Thus, the drug war has been scientifically validated (by the "memo" writers who just happen to be government employees) and all governmental behavior required by the drug war laws is thus justified. Thus, the drug war really isn't genocide. It's for public safety. Addicts need to be jailed and ruined for scientifically justified public safety reasons. Their motto? "They did it all to themselves." The drug warriors are morally off the hook.

Well, it turns out the same kind of theory mistakes (governmental lies) made in the Iraq war have been made in the drug war. The HBH turns out to be 100% wrong. Not 50% wrong. 100% wrong. There never was an excuse for this wrong theory. It has always been wrong. The HBH was provably wrong when it was first written and more so today. I wrote about this in my ignored 1996 book on addiction causation, Hypoic's Handbook, and in letters to the Times a thousand times since 1995 but I have been ignored and censored, 100%. You can read my disproof in: http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/hypoismhypothesis/ and in Hiroi's article (Genetic susceptibility to substance dependence, Molecular Psychiatry (2005) 10, 336–344, by N Hiroi and S Agatsuma) embedded in this article reviewing the evidence against the plasticity theory of addictions. The theory justifying the drug war and the hypoic (addict) genocide is scientifically wrong. It turns out the Bible was wrong about addictions and the HBH is likewise wrong, just like Yoo's memo is wrong, as the Times noticed a few years late.

It turns out that there is a genetic disease that causes drug use by future addicts from the get-go and all addictions, drugs and behaviors. I call this disease Hypoism and people with this disease hypoics (thus, hypoic genocide), but the details of all this remain to be completely worked out. The real science behind this causation issue, however, is clear and easily distinguishes between the HBH and the genetic theory of addiction causation. Addict drug use and ultimate addiction is caused by a genetic mechanism. Though this mechanism has not been worked out yet in detail, the science behind this theory is overwhelming, no different from creationism being overwhelmingly scientifically distinguishable from evolution. Thus, drug use in addicts-to-be and their subsequent addiction (and all drug related behaviors such as obtaining, possession, and use of these drugs) is caused by a powerful unconscious genetic mechanism just like breast cancer is caused by unconscious genetic mechanisms and felonizing these addicts and their drug related behaviors is unconscionable from a scientific and moral point of view. The genocide against addicts can no longer be justified. Of course it never was except for the cognitive dissonance of the believers of the old theory. Unconscionable legal memos and invalid articles in scientific journals can no longer be allowed to run public policy. Only the correct theory will lead to effective and humane addiction policies and end the genocide as well as end the addiction epidemic. It's time to end the hypoic genocide. This can only happen by letting the public know about the real science of addiction causation. Stop the censorship. Let the public know.

4/2/08

3/30/08

3/11/08

Re: The Claim: Identical Twins Have Identical DNA , http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/11/health/11real.html?ref=health

You mention some diseases whose extent of genetic etiology must be revised. Well there are countless diseases whose understanding must be revised according to this new information, addictions being traits of one of them. The science of epidemiology studies something called heritability of various diseases and traits by comparing the concordance of traits and diseases in identical twins, fraternal twins, and these twins split at birth. In the past they have assumed that identical twins are 100% identical and fraternal twins 50% identical. A formula determines what is called the heritability, how much of the variation of a particular trait or disease within a population is due to genetics and how much due to non-genetics, environment. Many addictions have been studied this way and according to the most reliable scientists, Kenneth Kendler at VCU being one of these, they range from 60-83% heritable, 60-83% genetic and 17-40% environmental, calculated by subtracting 60-83 from 100. Well, now we know that the 100/50% assumption is wrong. Because of this new information we no longer can subtract the 60-83 from 100, but a lesser number, thus increasing the genetic percentage and lowering the environmental percentage. The result needs to be a complete overhaul of all these heritabilities. But whatever they turn out to be, the real heritabilities of various addictions will be higher than 60-83, possibly 100% ,and the environmental percentages lower than 17-40%, possibly zero%. This new information is not really that new. It's been known for several years that epigenetics has made identical twins non-identical. Nonetheless, no one in the field of addictions, except for me, has mentioned this phenomenon, and even Nora Volkow, chief of NIDA, still repeatedly, whenever given the opportunity, says addictions are 50% genetic and 50% environmental. This misstatement is made by her, in my opinion, because she is biased against the genetic etiology of addictions, deeply hurting addicts and their families. Whatever her reason, she has been intentionally (because she knows better) misleading the public about this for years and continues to do so daily on her web site and the public needs to know about this. The implications of the predominant genetic cause of addictions rather than the psychobabble (environmental) cause are enormous both in terms of prevention and recovery but also in terms of public attitudes about addictions and their public policies. I discuss all this in my book Hypoic's Handbook, on the genetic theory of addictions. If it were finally acknowledged that addictions are genetically caused addicts would no longer be seen as psychopaths, anti-social misfits, and criminals needing punishment but sick people needing some kind of medical intervention. Addictions would no longer be seen as moral and character issues but as medical issues just like any other medical issue not caused by the bad intentions of the person.

As you can see, this new information about the non-identity of "identical twins" is more than just an academic issue, it changes everything, especially in the field of addictions, a field that has been warped by bad science and intentional bias for as long as people have been studying addictions.

3/6/08

Re: The Wire's War on the Drug War, http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1719872,00.html

The reason the war on drugs doesn't work or help anyone or anything is that it's based on a wrong theory of addictions, the hijacked brain hypothesis (HBH), NIDA's (Leshner and Volkow's) pet theory maintained by the most recent NIDA political appointee and stoolie, Nora Volkow. This theory is based on deliberately misinterpreted science, deliberately to maintain the moralistic basis of addictions and the drug war and its discrimination against addicts and their families. The same science, correctly interpreted, produces a completely different theory of addictions called Hypoism (the genetic theory of addictions) which leads to the end of the drug war and the amelioration of the addiction epidemic and its consequences. I've been writing about this scandalous fraud since 1992 but have been censored by the addiction establishment and thus the media as well. My 1996 book, Hypoic's Handbook, reviews this entire issue and its implications. A few of my relevant web articles about this are: http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/15replacingalanleshneristheonlywaytoendthedrugwar/ , the drug war war at: http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/articlesbyandforhypoicspage2/ , the theory (science) article that proved the HBH wrong: http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/hypoismhypothesis/

Publish this letter and let the public know about this scandal. The mess will never end as long as the fraudulent HBH is allowed to remain in effect. Ignore this letter and you are merely helping to perpetuate the mess.

1/28/08

12/26/07

Re: Brain imaging and genetic studies link thinking patterns to addiction, http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-12/uoc--bia122107.php

In 1992 I wrote my first "hypothesis" paper on the disease that causes all addictions, Hypoism. Hypoism is the disease. Addictions are symptoms of that disease, not individual diseases. Hypoism is characterized by genetic low activity of the reward system working within the decision-making apparatus (also called the Instinct regulating system). Since then, that paper has evolved into the following paper: http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/hypoismhypothesis/ . A companion paper is: http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/thehypoismaddictionhypothesis/ . I also wrote a book about Hypoism called Hypoic's Handbook published in 1996 that goes through the entire hypothesis including its implications on addiction prevention, treatment, and public policies. I gave a lecture on Hypoism at Brookhaven Labs while Volkow was still working there in 2000. None of this work has ever been acknowledged by the addiction field or the media despite it being validated and confirmed repeatedly. Now, once again, Hypoism has been confirmed by your work recently published in the Journal of Neuroscience, December 26, 2007, as of today not yet available online. As you know, this hypothesis is diametrically opposed to the prevailing addiction theory, the hijacked brain hypothesis, still advocated by Volkow and the rest of the addiction community and which continues to rule all aspects of addictionology in this country despite it being disproved in many ways as well as being damaging to addicts. For the sake of all addicts and their families, Hypoism needs to replace the hijacked brain hypothesis as the ruling addiction paradigm.

I thank you for your confirmatory work and hope you will acknowledge and use my work to advance the theoretical basis of addictions and to help all addicts and their families, my goal.

12/18/07

Re: Big Table Fantasies , http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/17/opinion/17krugman.html?ref=opinion

To make his argument about the way to improve health care in this country, Krugman quotes Edwards, “Some people argue that we’re going to sit at a table with these people and they’re going to voluntarily give their power away. I think it is a complete fantasy; it will never happen.” Then Krugman states, "O.K., more seriously, it’s actually Mr. Obama who’s being unrealistic here, believing that the insurance and drug industries — which are, in large part, the cause of our health care problems — will be willing to play a constructive role in health reform. The fact is that there’s no way to reduce the gross wastefulness of our health system without also reducing the profits of the industries that generate the waste." That's why "it will never happen." Profit rules the health care system, not good medicine, altruism, compassion, or honesty.

In the field of addictions we have the same quandary. I've been told too many times that its my fault that Hypoism and its policies haven't replaced the hijacked brain hypothesis (HBH) and its policies, the current P/R (psychological/religious) paradigm of addictions; it's my fault that I haven't convinced the field of addictions in the scientific correctness of Hypoism, because if I did that they would automatically change paradigms. Therefore, Hypoism must be wrong and I should just shut up already. I assert that we need to use the same logic Krugman uses in his op-ed. It's the addiction field that's the problem and the reason they are the problem is because of profit, not that Hypoism is wrong. The addiction field will never willingly change paradigms because of their financial and other powerful conflicts of interest such as religious beliefs. The fact is that I have already convinced the chief of NIDA, Nora Volkow, M.D., of the correctness of Hypoism and she still refuses to acknowledge it. Where's my proof of this? She gave a telephone interview about a research study she did on adults with ADHD shown to have decreased dopamine activity. The article states: "A team led by Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the NIH's National Institute on Drug Abuse, documented decreased dopamine activity in the brains of a group of adults with ADHD. Volkow said the decreased dopamine activity related to systems involved with attention and cognition, but also with reward. Researchers have known that people with ADHD are more likely than others to smoke cigarettes and abuse alcohol, marijuana, cocaine and other drugs. The decreased dopamine activity in the brains of people with ADHD pointed to an explanation, Volkow said. Then they quoted her: "If you take a drug of abuse, whether it's alcohol, nicotine or cocaine or methamphetamine -- it doesn't matter -- what you're going to be doing is temporarily increasing the concentration of dopamine in the brain," Volkow said in a telephone interview. "So a person then has a greater risk (of substance abuse) because it's not just that they are taking the drug because they want to get high, but by taking the drug, they may actually feel better and temporarily perform better." See: http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSN0333066120070807

So, here's Volkow saying low dopamine activity causes addictions. ADHDer's and other addicts-to-be are born with genetically low dopamine activity. Because of this low dopamine activity they get addicted. That's what she said in the above paragraph. This is exactly the Hypoism theory of addiction causation, not the hijacked brain hypothesis. This explanation is not the hijacked brain hypothesis, the theory NIDA just expounded in their new book on addictions available on NIDA's web site at: http://www.nida.nih.gov/scienceofaddiction/ In fact, no mention of genetic low dopamine activity as the cause of addictions is mentioned in this book, a book totally about the hijacked brain hypothesis, a theory that has been proven wrong many times and in many ways.

So, Volkow knows the hijacked brain hypothesis is wrong and Hypoism is right. She said so above. She didn't say ADHDer's get addicted because they stupidly or immorally took drugs to "get high," (as the hijacked brain hypothesis says) but rather because of dopamine deficiency. Thus, it's not my fault that Hypoism isn't the current addiction paradigm. It's Volkow's fault and the fault of the rest of the addiction community for lying to the public. They know hypoism is correct but continue lying to the public and the press about the hijacked brain hypothesis. Why is this? Because they want the hijacked brain hypothesis to rule the addiction world, not because it's right. There's a massive industry in this country supported by the HBH. I call it the PIMMPAL complex. It's about money, power, governmental bias, and pseudomorality, not science and not good medicine. I have a graphic (figure 1. at the bottom of the page) in the following paper portraying the PIMMPAL complex: http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/15replacingalanleshneristheonlywaytoendthedrugwar/

Thus, as Edwards is right about the insurance companies and the drug companies being the problem in health care so am I right about the PIMMPAL complex being the problem in addictions, Volkow included. The PIMMPAL complex is not voluntarily going to give up their power. There's nothing I can do about it and it's not my fault. I've been censored. We need the press to take up this scandal. If they don't, then the addiction mess will continue. The press is at fault for censoring the truth. This is a massive medical and journalistic scandal, the biggest and most damaging of all time.

11/16/07

Re: Another Insight into Addiction, http://time-blog.com/eye_on_science/2007/11/another_insight_into_addiction.html#comments

At the end of your blog you say: Here's a link to a really useful book on addiction. This little book, Drugs, Brains, and Behavior - The Science of Addiction, written by NIDA (and I assume OK'd by Volkow) is 90% wrong factually and 100% wrong conceptually. I'd be happy to go through this book with you sentence by sentence to demonstrate this to you. It's the same old hijacked brain hypothesis (HBH), the plasticity theory, a theory of addiction causation that has been proven wrong. Read: Genetic susceptibility to substance dependence, Molecular Psychiatry (2005) 10, 336–344, by N Hiroi and S Agatsuma. You could also read my article on this at: http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/hypoismhypothesis/ Of course, plasticity does occur in those who become addicted but it isn't the cause of addiction. The drug doesn't cause the addiction as this book and its theory states, an underlying genetic disease does, an issue not even discussed in this book. The addiction is not the disease. The underlying genetic difference between those who get addicted and those who don't is the disease. Again, this disease is not even mentioned in this book. I've written about this to you in the past but you weren't interested. It may be that others will be.

The implications of all this NIDA misinformation about addictions spread by this book and now by your blog is the maintenance of the addiction epidemic, which is evident since Leshner invented the HBH theory in 1997, and the suffering and deaths of millions of addicts and their families. Until the country is allowed to know about the reality of addiction causation and where addictions come from and stop NIDA's monopoly on addiction information this will continue inexorably. Remember, Volkow as chief of NIDA is a political appointment, not one earned by success in preventing and treating addictions with a proven theory. She has none. I've been writing about this kind of misinformation in the field of addictions since 1992.

11/14/07

Re: Brain chemical may have key role in ADHD

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20162421/

People ask me all the time, "Well, if you're right [Hypoism] and they're [Volkow and her pet theory, the Hijacked Brain Hypothesis] wrong [about the cause of addictions and the vitally important implications of this difference] then why doesn't some independent observer come out in public and support your theory?" My usual answer to this is: "Read my web article [ http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/hypoismhypothesis/ ] on addiction causation and its references and decide for yourself. I've been writing about dopamine deficiency, reward deficiency, and low FOKS activity in the brain's decision-making apparatus since 1992. I can't make anyone support my theory. I can't make them tell the truth. I can't make them publish my work. The science stands for itself. Moreover, I don't think any independent observer has ever heard of or read my work because of its censorship." I can say this. Eliot Gardner, M.D., a world class addiction researcher at NIDA, has read my work and supported it. I have his e-mails from many years ago saying just that. The problem is that the media and science journals go with personalities like Volkow and other so-called "experts" rather than science that I write them about practically daily.

However, a recent article in Reuters about dopamine deficiency in ADHD'ers shows that even Volkow supports my hypothesis. I've written about this article in the past when it first came out and have been waiting for my censorers to acknowledge their mistakes and connect the dots. They haven't. So, I'm going to write about this article again, making the points one by one; connecting the dots for them. The article is from Reuters: http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSN0333066120070807

I've written the author of this article, Will Dunham, but haven't heard from him. If you know how to contact him please let me know. He doesn't know enough about the theories or science of addiction causation to know how controversial this article turned out to be. Neither does the public.

The article states: A team led by Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the NIH’s National Institute on Drug Abuse, documented decreased dopamine activity in the brains of a group of adults with ADHD. Volkow said the decreased dopamine activity related to systems involved with attention and cognition, but also with reward.

Researchers have known that people with ADHD are more likely than others to smoke cigarettes and abuse alcohol, marijuana, cocaine and other drugs. The decreased dopamine activity in the brains of people with ADHD pointed to an explanation, Volkow said.

“If you take a drug of abuse, whether it’s alcohol, nicotine or cocaine or methamphetamine — it doesn’t matter — what you’re going to be doing is temporarily increasing the concentration of dopamine in the brain,” Volkow said in a telephone interview.

“So a person then has a greater risk (of substance abuse) because it’s not just that they are taking the drug because they want to get high, but by taking the drug, they may actually feel better and temporarily perform better.”

Now, as I've said many times in the past, ADHD'ers have Hypoism [genetic dopamine deficiency and other causes of low activity of the FOKS]; are a large subgroup of hypoics. They get addicted because of their Hypoism, exactly what Volkow says in this article. She doesn't say they got addicted because of the hijacked brain hypothesis ["not because they want to get high"] but because of dopamine deficiency, exactly what Hypoism says. And their dopamine deficiency is genetic and works unconsciously, not voluntarily, exactly what Hypoism says; exactly the opposite of what the hijacked brain hypothesis states. Yet, NIDA, ASAM, and the rest of the country, including its drug laws and the drug war, run on the false principles of the hijacked brain hypothesis. I see no change in this despite Volkow's admissions in this article. This two-faced behavior by her is the biggest medical scandal in the history of medicine and is killing a million addicts a year besides ruing their families and putting hundreds of thousands of addicts in jail each year.

My motivation for writing this e-mail is to allow the truth about addiction causation to get to the public so that hypoics, addicts, those who will become addicts, and their families, can use this information to prevent and treat addictions more effectively, as well as to decrease societal damage, stigma and discrimination, to all hypoics.