THE TRAGIC PATH FROM BRAIN POWER TO BRAIN OPIATES

Name: Drugs, Oil and War
Author: Peter Dale Scott
Publishers: ROWMAN AND LITTLEFIED PUBLISHERS, INC, 2003, UK
Reviewed by: Restoring the Mind

The human mind has no comparison in this world, even perhaps in the universe. It is simply that powerful. I would argue that it is potentially bigger and vaster than the universe. We can be certain that a huge amount of energy powers the brain, which is of course poorly understood. The brain’s potential power is unknown. This valuable energy is, unfortunately, neither recognized nor appreciated. The fact is that we rarely consider this energy flowing through our brain. It has been claimed by some neuroscientists that we only use 5% of our potential brain power. My thesis in this article is that we will find ourselves in peril if we fail to understand and exploit this energy in the brain.

It is said that God created man in his own image. We dominate and rule over the planet Earth in a godly manner. We are God’s vicegerent. We are, in a sense, mini-Gods. God is the creator, thus our most powerful godly trait is creativity. What is rarely discussed is that the health of the brain and mind possibly depends on creativity. As I have already mentioned in RTM, “agony and pain is felt, intensely felt, when the phenomenon of creativity is weak and infrequently present.” We are creative creatures. Creativity is in our genes and in our blood. I would argue that we are biologically creative beings. Maybe it is true that our foundation, the foundation of human life, is built on creativity.

I cannot emphasise enough the importance of creativity, it is just as important for the human mind as oxygen is for the brain. Creativity is our opiate, and any deficiency of this opiate makes us feel frustrated, anxious, and even depressed. Our inability to be creative becomes our burden. The unused energy induces chaos in the brain. Restlessness combined with helplessness and desperation pushes us to seek some sort of quick relief. We seek a way to alleviate or calm down the “pain in the brain.” There exists an inverse relation between creativity and what I call “pain in the brain.”

When we cannot create, or express what is creative inside us, in our brains – because we do not have the necessary skills and knowledge – we turn to substitute opiates. We seek to find relief in narcotics and alcohol. We attempt to restore equilibrium in the brain by substituting narcotics for the natural opiates. It is remarkably ironic and sad that we replace creativity with drugs and alcohol. Instead of unleashing our creative powers and our brain energy, we run away from creativity and choose to destroy ourselves through a narcotic or alcohol addiction. It may be an unpopular argument, but I feel that the origin of drug addiction is not social problems per se but our inability to express our creativeness.  

The number of people who struggle and fail to express
their creativeness is in the hundreds of millions, which
means there is a big demand for narcotics and alcohol. The narcotics and booze business are two of the biggest and most lucrative businesses in the world. It is not surprising then to see many governments secretly involved in trafficking illegal and dangerous drugs. Many states, from Afghanistan and Pakistan to the U.K. and the United States, are deeply involved in the drug trade. “All empires since the Renaissance have been driven by the search for foreign resources, and nearly all – including the British, the French, and the Dutch – used drugs as a cheap way to pay for the overseas expansion, ” argues Peter Dale Scott, author of Drugs, Oil and War (ROWMAN AND LITTLEFIED PUBLISHERS, INC, 2003, UK).

Yes, it is sometimes difficult to separate the three opiates, drugs, oil and war. We are addicted to all three, and all three are controlled by the most powerful states and groups in the world. Peter Scott makes a good point that the United States does not directly get involved with the drug trade, but instead exerts influence indirectly. For example, the paramilitaries whom the United States supports in Afghanistan also happen to be the biggest drug barons. American interventions in Afghanistan and Columbia increased drug trafficking to the United States. Referring to Afghanistan, Scott argues that “almost no heroin from this area reached the United States before 1979, yet according to official U.S sources it supplied 60 percent of the U.S. heroin by 1980.” For decades the United States has made alliances with drug cartels in Columbia and Afghanistan. I publish a few paragraphs from Peter Dale Scott’s book: