Regarding My Practical Opinions of Society.

POLITICS means dealings with people. I do not mean that when I make practical opinions about a nation at large, and especially England or Britain. I form my opinions on such subjects with as much right and conviction as any man. They are very dear to me, for I consider my country to be as important to my identity as my family. No more should I wish to see my country injured or derided than I should wish to see my family injured or derided. All the same, intellectually I must consider these views as subordinate to my philosophical and religious beliefs, although in many respects they are more immediately important to me and more directly affecting. This does not mean I want to see my social views, or social views with which I earnestly agree, expressed in the pulpit, no more than I want to see another's with which I fervently disagree (and therefore I go not to church). Priests or preachers are given perhaps twenty minutes, at most once a week, to give a godly and devout sermon in church; they choose instead to give a speech in the House of Commons, at least in the imagination of their hearts. Rather than be wise and worthy they are bigoted and contentious. Everyone has the right to his views, that does not mean they are demanded upon to express them, and especially not so during services given in honour of God. Now I am conscious that some of my carefully considered and sincerely held opinions render me unwelcome in many places, and I never was one to linger where unwanted nor to be oblivious to a hint, but I detest peer pressure in all its forms. I would rather be friendless than thoughtless.

   Some may wonder how I reconcile the idealism of my religious and philosophical convictions with the pragmatism of my social opinions; but it is very easy. In the context of the One True and Supreme God the idealism can only be realised in the totality which He makes up. Everything below that, all which is particulate, such as human affairs, is a matter of compromise. The best we can endeavour towards is to estimate in our imperfect and compromised states the greatness of God, and to that end a healthful and well-ordered society is indispensable. We represent God's likeness as mirrors to our own weal, not to His which requires it not, that is the meaning of symbolism. Some, in mistaking the particles for the totality, attempt to impose this heavenly order in a temporal space such as a nation, to disastrous effect. To impose Utopia is always to necessitate absolute domination, and power corrupts. That is why the Marxist ideal has proved so terrible and damaging in its effects on the world, and that is why secular idealism is so utterly flawed, for attempting to make God out of man. I focus mainly on my own society, for not presuming to know what is best for others, but I think the principles should apply in general to all humanity.

Vegetarianism.

VEGETARIANISM as a cause is fraught with dilemmas and problems. I do not mean as a diet, for I have no objection to those who decide for themselves what it is they wish and wish not to eat, or who of necessity must avoid certain foodstuffs. I find veganism however extremely objectionable both as a cause and as a diet; as a diet because I am certain that it makes people ill, and as a cause because it harms the natural world far more in its agricultural demands than pastures and livestock ever could.

   Of course I trust that most people who are vegetarians by choice feel a moral repugnance at the slaughter and eating of animals, and this I understand, for I would myself be incensed if anyone killed and eat my dog. My grandmother told once a story of keeping geese for the purpose of eating them, but grew so attached to them that she was sure she never could unless starving be persuaded to do so. All the same, we would eat a goose at Michaelmas time and enjoy it more than almost any other meat in the year, for thinking not of the animal we may savour the food.  One of my brothers feels that the less he sees the meat on his plate as an animal the better, and this is not unusual. It is the anonymity of the animal which reduces our moral repugnance. I love pigs as an animal, they are noble creatures, most loveable, and highly intelligent, but I also enjoy bacon, sausages, gammon, black pudding, and cured ham. If I kept a pig for a pet, something I hope to do one day, I am sure I would feel as my grandmother about her geese, and yet while keeping that selfsame pet I am also convinced that I would buy many a pack of bacon for breakfast. Am I then an hypocrite for both loving a creature and loving its meat? I am sure many zealous vegetarians would say I am but I do not think so. I no more wish to cause suffering to animals than they do, but I have no objection to rearing them, keeping them, and painlessly slaughtering them, in the circle of life.

   Certainly I am aware that farming practices are not all they could be, and therefore continue an advocate for purchasing meat from farms I know would give the animals adequate space and time to live; and such practices are better for the taste of the meat as well as for the comfort of the animals. I disapprove greatly of those who 'shop for a bargain', thinking more of the pennies they save than the practices they endorse in their purchase. A certain distant relative of mine on the other side of my family used to buy the cheapest ingredients, and when my grandmother reprimanded this individual he replied, 'that is how I can spend a week in the best hôtels in Europe'. I would rather know that pigs are not packed together indoors all their lives than that I can spend a week yearly at the Ritz, also I would rather eat good meat.

   To really very strident vegetarians however, the whole process of farming livestock is blameworthy, but I cannot agree. Consider this, that if human beings did not engage in animal husbandry, billions of animals whose lives the vegetarians claim to value would never have existed in the first place. Indeed, if nature had been left to her own devices and man never had blessed (or cursed if you prefer) the face of the earth, doubtless the sheep and the chicken would be extinct while wolves and other predators would dominate the planet. What is better to the animal activist, the lives of pacific animals or the lives of predators? Are they all equal? If not, should not man be an interventionist? If they are, what matter if the mosquito renders all mammals extinct by disease? Dishonest intelligence is not intelligence, there is a balance in the scale of things, and the short-sighted is the very inverse of idealism. Variety itself demands management.

   Yet here the question is often confused with the confluences of other doctrines. Carbon dioxide, a most necessary gas without which life on earth could not be supported, is by the monochrome spectacles of the age villified. Because flatulent livestock are in such large numbers they contribute significant amounts of carbon dioxide and methane to the atmosphere, and so this irrelevant argument is often made against the eating of meat. I say it is irrelevant because it has nothing to do of itself with the eating of meat or the welfare of animals as moral questions. This is a far more nebulous question to consider (literally nebulous, because it concerns gases) but I will consider it all the same because it is so frequently made relevant to these matters.

   Should we fell trees in the autumn because the leaves they shed turn black on the ground? They turn black on the ground because they release the carbon they have absorbed from the atmosphere back into it. This is not commonly known. Many celebrated and professedly conscientious persons are obliged, for reasons perhaps only fully known to themselves, to fly great distances in admittedly tremendous style, sometimes to cut a ribbon, sometimes to have extremely important drinks with powerful people. This smarts the conscience, and it is very piteous for them, but they often make good their hopelessly necessary combustions by sending money to companies who will, on their philanthropic behalf, plant trees for them. These trees will, they rest assured, absorb more carbon dioxide than their voyages ever released. Mayhap they will but, as I have observed, they will only do so until the autumn. Anyway, algæ performs the majority of such work in silence and obscurity on the surface of the oceans. So should we fell these trees for releasing carbon dioxide? I dare say no. No more should we stop breeding animals for doing so, or stop breeding ourselves. There are some considerations which supersede others.

   A friend of mine is a pescetarian because he does not relate so much to sealife as to cows and lambs, which surely says more about him than it does about the debate. Dolphins are supposed to be very intelligent, I think whales are too, and I saw once a blind shrimp in a David Attenborough documentary dig a tunnel to dwell in with a fish who was the bread winner. Surely thoughts and feelings may exist under as above the water. Indeed I have read, though this is doubtless a variable matter, that the farming practices of fish and crustaceans are worse in some respects to that of livestock. Nevertheless, it is probably true that fish and crustaceans think and feel to only a very limited extent. There has been a hot debate in recent years as to whether lobsters have the perception of pain. Some mistake the sounds they make when put alive into boiling water as screams, when it is in fact the release of air like a whistling kettle. I myself very much doubt that they have the perception of pain as they are invertebrates. My brother thinks they do, but even he agrees that such pain as they might feel cannot be compared to that of an injured mammal. I do not however doubt the pain which many empathetic animal lovers feel themselves psychologically when any animal suffers or dies. In this however we must consider one other animal: the homo sapien.

   I hope no one in their right mind will doubt that of all the animals it is man who has the highest capacity for suffering. Not only can we suffer the most excruciating physical pain but we can suffer such a degree of psychological pain, which may even be induced or worsened by physical pain, that sometimes suicide is sought as the last resort against its intolerable perception. We are quite unique in this, despite some views to the contrary, no other animals intentionally seek out their own deaths. Surely then human empathy must extend most completely to human suffering. It may be extended further to animal suffering, but we never can know to what extent an animal suffers. If we judge of animal suffering by our own suffering we are mistaken. We can only approximate a likely overestimated approximation, whereas we are certainly correct when we judge of the suffering of other people by our own. I take this so seriously that I say, with very little doubt, that I do not think the accumulated suffering of all the insects, crustaceans, fish, and other simple organisms, in the world, is equivalent to the torture of a single person. In this I for once disagree with an old saying, that the death of a fly is as complete as the death of a man. No other creature has such a complex and sensitive nervous system or brain as man, we must be kind to one another when we consider this. I am afraid that many people such as Chris Packham forget it. Patrick Moore, the co-founder of Greenpeace, calls this way of thinking anti-human. Certainly I can feel that many human beings are irritating to me. So can many animals be, such as buzzing flies and howling dogs, but the old Renaissance reverence for man is surely the better way of thinking. He is the measure of all things; how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! how like an angel in apprehension! how like a God! The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals! (Let us forget the quintessence of dust.)

   This must be a helpful consideration when we think of many people who cannot well digest vegetable matter. Meat breaks down more readily in the stomach whereas some vegetables can be passed almost intact through the human digestive system, and the vegetable eating precusor of man Paranthropus went extinct while the more varied eating Australopithecus prospered. Furthermore, I see the countenances of people who have tried not to eat meat. Simon Cowell when he attempted veganism looked a shell of his former self, pallid and weak. There is not enough protein in a diet without meat, and people who think protein supplements will provide the want should beware of the heavy metals in those such as mercury and lead.

   Lastly, I should like to mention the terrible effects which agriculture can have on a country and its populace compared to livestock. Livestock encourages pastures and hedgerows, whereas the industry of growing some of the more popular vegan or vegetable products encourages destruction of villages and deforestation. The amount of chemicals used in the farming of the soybean is so extreme that it has been known to cause mutations in the people who live near them. I saw once a documentary showing some African people who suffered these mutations. One boy was literally born with his brain outside his skull. These are horrors greater to me than those claimed of traditional, time-honoured, and ethical, livestock farms. Animals only require water, food, space, light, and good treatment, they should not require much else if they are properly cared for and loved. When we begin to deal in things like chemicals and '3D printing' I think we should take stock, and stop writing the book of our lives like a Robert Heinlein novel and think to compose it more like an H.E. Bates story.

Experiences and Thoughts of Psychoactive Medications.

I DO NOT have experience of illegal drugs thank God. My only experience with that terrible underworld is having been approached twice by suspicious individuals on bicycles with bags under their crossbars. I have been on various different prescribed drugs however, regularly and at high doses, so that I can write of my experience with those. Specifically the psychoactive drugs I have taken are Risperidone, Quetiapine, Citalopram, Amitriptyline, Sertraline, Propranolol, Diazepam, Zopiclone, and Promethazine. I have also, in common with most people, indulged recreationally in alcohol and tobacco. Few people recognise that caffeine is also a drug, and I once thought I would experiment in a binge of coffee to see if it would sharpen my mind — it did not; in fact, I have never felt so ill in all my life. People die yearly of caffeine overdoses, it is not an insignificant substance, so I am bemused to notice that it is given very comfortable treatment in general. Of course it is a staple of the 'tapped in' yuppie who, like the idiot he is, wanders about with his hand around a brown cup talking into the æther, certainly convinced of the awe which all around him must experience at his proximity. Most commonly it is said of coffee and tea that they are purely health-giving — they are not, although in moderation they are almost harmless. Yet insomnia, irritability, anxiety, tremulousness, headaches, and gastritis, are not possible side-effects but certain side-effects for anyone who drinks large and regular amounts of them. Naturally energy drinks are even worse, but at least one of them runs a first rate Formula Un team with the proceeds.

   It is well said that all drugs are poisons with desirable side-effects. I shall write firstly of my experience of the so-termed antidepressants. I was first instilled with one of these when I was sixteen and I cannot remember the name of it, I think it must have been Fluoxetine, but it does not signify, anyone who reads the literature on these drugs must realise that they all have the same mechanism of action. There are only very minor differences in their pharmacokinetics, so that I can at once refute a common misconception that one S.S.R.I. may work better than another for someone with depression, it will not. A person may think it works better and that is the only difference. The antidepressants are wonderful placebo drugs, they do just enough to deceive the mind into thinking they work, and this hope may be enough to support a person through the worst. However, they have bad side-effects. Excessive sweating, dry mouth, blandness, trembling, and diarrhoea, are common and in my experience do not go away in time. The only way for these side-effects to end is to stop taking the drugs, which is much easier than the prominent literature would have people believe.

   Amitriptyline I was put on for a month or so for migraine headaches and it did nothing for them, probably because they were caused in the first place by excessive alcohol and tobacco consumption. Not that I would have anyone believe that I was a chain smoker, I am too asthmatic to smoke, all I did was to take nasal snuff more or less regularly for a year or so. I very much liked the scents and the feeling of neural stimulation they gave me, but of course they must have contributed to my headaches, fool that I was. I am of the opinion that migraines are no mystery but are caused by increased vascular pressure in the cranium, both nicotine and alcohol cause this to an eminent degree. Therefore Propranolol probably is the best curative for migraine, but in my experience it is better to remove the cause of the hypertension than to attempt to resolve it by medication; stress, alcohol, nicotine, and any other adrenaline-working substance, excessive salt, or excessive eating generally. I used to take quite large amounts of painkillers for these headaches, I am of the 'in for a penny' class of thinkers, so I would take three Paracetamol with four Ibuprofen tablets and wash them down with a clarifying quantity of port to fix my headaches. It worked for the moment, but I do hate the dusty taste and smell of Paracetamol in the stomach, and I can speak with certainty from experience that these painkillers cause rebound headaches ten times worse if taken excessively.

   Citalopram I was put on for the worst bout of depression in my life, when I could barely eat and truly longed for death. It worked as a placebo up to a point, though causing unpleasant side-effects all the while, but this culminated in a terrible episode of psychosis. I have read that S.S.R.I. drugs can cause or contribute to psychosis, as excessive serotonin is thought to be the main cause of the delusions and hallucinations of pyschedelic drugs. S.S.R.I. drugs do not release serotonin however but only inhibit its absorption; still, it is a fact that most antipsychotic drugs block serotonin as well as dopamine. Why then are they often used adjunctively with an S.S.R.I. to treat major depression? The answer is simply that most doctors have no notion whatsoever how the drugs they prescribe work, their knowledge is largely anecdotal. So in their literature, the B.N.F. or some other formulary, it is said that an antipsychotic can be used adjunctively for treatment-resistant depression. But as observed, antipsychotics do the exact opposite of antidepressants! I brought this up with several doctors who put me on an antipsychotic drug after my bout with psychotic depression, and none of them could answer it. That is because there is no answer. Serotonin levels have no correlation with depression or anxiety at all. If they did S.S.R.I. drugs could be used pro re nata for the alleviation of occasional melancholy. A drug could be taken, serotonin levels would increase (for they do increase within half an hour), and sadness would be alleviated. This however does not happen because sadness is not caused by serotonin deficiency. Often it is asked, why do S.S.R.I. drugs take so long to be effective? Six weeks is the minimum term to wait and some people claim six months is the really effective period. Can anyone think of any other drug which takes six months to begin to be effective? This is the surest indication that these drugs are duds, they are grenades without explosives in them. They claim the credit for the work of Time. The only attempt at an explanation of this phenomenon is, and this is not well known, that they downregulate the secretion of serotonin! How extraordinary! This then is the real explanation for the effectiveness of an S.S.R.I., that they reduce the natural production of serotonin as such serotonin is supposed to cause negative feedback! This is also a ventured explanation for the effectiveness of atypical antipsychotics in treatment-resistant depression, that they reduce the negative feedback of serotonin. Was there ever a more confused explanation for a mechanism in all of biology?

   That S.S.R.I. drugs reduce depression by promoting neuroplasticity is an explanation about as believable as it is vague, it may be true or it may indeed be exposed in the future for purest balderdash. Neuroplasticity is one of those plausible terms of the century which may, like the old notion of phlogiston, be entirely superseded one day. Frankly I fail to see what the term describes better than the words learning or adpatability, but perhaps I am simply ignorant. Anyway, I moved on to Sertaline because it is anecdotally considered to be better for people with autism (once again there can be no pharmacological basis for this, it binds to the SERT in common with every other medication in its class). Autism itself has no decided explanation or mechanism for its prevalence. Indeed, psychosis used to be a term given for all kinds of mental disorders such as autism, O.C.D., P.T.S.D., A.D.D., and A.D.H.D., nor will I consent to be told that I have a condition instead of a disorder. I should not cry at being called a retard but rather should I nod my head, if indeed I have a mental disorder at all. In the past I would have been called more simply, and perhaps more accurately, a lazy good-for-nothing.

   The Sertraline did little except inspire hope, and that is enough to justify its existence and prescription. I do not think these drugs are useless, nor do I think the many people who have made millions of pounds out of them are undeserving of their pay. Hope springs eternal in the human breast; Man never is but always to be blessed. If a drug's entire purpose is to provide hope that is as good a purpose as any other, only the actual mechanism by which it is claimed to work against depression bears no scrutiny at all. This is truer still for anxiety, an even more nebulous term than depression. I cannot speak for other disorders, but I very much doubt whether O.C.D. is actually helped by these drugs either, except perhaps by altering the object of the obsessions.

   Now I shall mention two drugs which actually do have an effect, Propranolol and Promethazine. These sound like extraordinary substances, but Promethazine is merely a common travel sickness pill and Propranolol simply reduces blood pressure. Of the two Promethazine is the more powerful, but I am anxious at the lack of knowledge about Propranolol. There are several sad cases of death due to Propranolol overdose, it seems to be one of the more difficult overdoses to diagnose. It is treatable if recognised — but only if recognised. Anyway it is a very mild anxiolytic or sympatholytic and I still employ it sometimes, although it causes weakness and breathlessness. Promethazine, the less understood ingredient of the preposterous mixture called Lean, is simply a first generation antihistamine. It gives me a numb feeling, sometimes quite an aversive feeling of tiredness, but it is probably the most effective anxiolytic I have tried. To some extent it is more calming than Diazepam, which I was also prescribed once at the lowest dosage. It is excellent for insomnia and altogether the most effective drug for mental distress I have taken; but that is not saying much. It is still not a cure by any stretch of the imagination, only a means of swamping angst with tiredness, and it also loses effectiveness over time; though not nearly as much as Benzodiazepines or Z drugs I gather. It does not cause addiction, but I am sure that in the long-term it can cause sleeping problems by not having taken one. Doxepin is even more effective as an antihistamine I understand, and indeed all the really desirable sedative effects of antidepressants such as Mirtazapine, and antipsychotics like Quetiapine, are due to their anthistamine properties. That is how far we have come in eighty years of chemical research, that a drug synthesized in the 1940s and used for travel sickness is our most effective and least damaging anxiolytic!

   Lastly, I will mention antipsychotic drugs. They are terrible miracles. Certainly they will alleviate delusions and hallucinations but it is at the expense of one's metabolism, one's creativity, and one's happiness. Risperidone was for me abject torture, and its litany of side effects is not to be underestimated. Akathisia or restless leg syndrome is one of the most unpleasant things anyone can experience, and I would like to have it forbidden as a form of torture in the Geneva Conventions. Quetiapine is a much less aversive antipsychotic and, as I have observed, contains some useful antihistamine properties. These drugs work for their purpose, but I am very sympathetic to those with schizophrenia who must take them indefinitely. I hope that future advances will find better solutions to this worst disease affecting humanity as it is sometimes called. As for depression or anxiety (perhaps two sides of the same coin), they are commonly the work of adverse events and hopeless thoughts so that, as Spinoza wisely would say, they are to be cured by their opposites: propitious events and hopeful thoughts. 

(The experience of music chiefly among them.)

    And dope fiends should read poetry and rock themselves in time to the metre till they have shaken themselves out of the funk and juju they call pleasure (in particular heroic couplet poems, i.e. Pope's poems, Goldsmith's The Traveller and The Deserted Village, Johnson's London and The Vanity of Human Wishes, Byron's The Island, Shelley's Julian and Maddalo, Keats' Endymion, as well as Crabbe's poems. The Rubaiyat translated by FitzGerald is also very effective).