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Anke Snoek, Macquarie University

Why do we like our artist on drugs, but not our sportspeople?

inspiration-is-for-amateursThe internet and print media are happy to herald that movie director Lars Von Trier can’t work without alcohol. He reports that he tried to be sober and went to AA meetings for half a year, but has now started drinking again in order to be able to work. This is a victory for those who believe that artists are more creative on drugs. As Von Trier himself ranted late last year, before going in rehab, he thinks that going clean will probably mean the end of his career. He probably won’t be able to make movies at all, and what he will produce, will be ‘shitty’. ‘There is no creative expression of artistic value that has ever been produced by ex-drunkards and ex-drug-addicts. Who the hell would bother with a Rolling Stones without booze or with a Jimi Hendrix without heroin?’ He states that he wrote the screenplay for Dogville during a 12-day drug binge, but working on the screenplay for Nymphomaniac, while sober, took him 18 months.Read More »Why do we like our artist on drugs, but not our sportspeople?

Apparently most people don’t see homeless people as human beings

HumanA little video is circling the internet which shows the reactions of homeless people on nasty tweets about them. Apparently this is necessary to show the world that homeless people have feelings too. Research of Harris and Fiske (2010) showed that many people don’t see homeless people as real human beings. Harris and Fiske made brain scans of regular people looking at objects and human beings. When looking at human beings, the medial prefrontal cortex was activated, which is involved in social cognition. When looking at objects, the medial prefrontal cortex didn’t lit up, and the same happened when they saw pictures of heavy marginalized groups like substance dependent or homeless people. Read More »Apparently most people don’t see homeless people as human beings

Is there a middle ground in being pro-choice?

For a long time, Ann Furedi (chief executive of bpas) has been advocating women’s right to choose regarding their pregnancies. She is quite radical with regard to this pro-choice principle. For example, she questioned the 24-week limit of abortion, saying that every limit is arbitrary, and women have good reasons when they request an abortion after the 24-week limit. She defends gender selection. She argues that abortion is justified when the continuation of the pregnancy is likely to cause injury to the mental or physical health of the woman and having a child with an undesired gender could cause such suffering. According to her, you are either pro-choice or you are not. You can’t reject women’s right to choose when you don’t like her choice and still be pro-choice. There is no middle ground. What is at stake is the principle of moral autonomy with respect to reproductive decisions. If we set limits to this principle, then we violate the principle all-together. We should trust women to make their own decisions, as only they best know their own circumstances.

Left to make their own moral judgements, some women will inevitably make decisions that we would not; perhaps even those we think are ‘wrong’. And we must live with that: tolerance is the price we pay for our freedom of conscience in a world where women can exercise their human capacity through their moral expression. We either support women’s moral agency or we do not. (…) We can make the judgement that their choice is wrong – but we must tolerate their right to decide. There is no middle ground to straddle.

Read More »Is there a middle ground in being pro-choice?

A Dutch university prohibits a PhD student from thanking God in his acknowledgments

A Dutch university (Wageningen University) prohibited a PhD student from thanking God in his thesis acknowledgments. The student, Jerke de Vries, wrote, “My Father God, thank You, it’s the most wonderful thing to be loved and honoured by You.” The university refused to grant him his thesis unless he deleted this reference to God. The university argues that science should be independent from politics or religion (political statements are also banned). The student refused to delete God from his acknowledgments and instead tore the whole page of acknowledgments out altogether.
Is the university right to state that science should be independent from politics and religion, or is this a case of discrimination against religious persons? The university has refused to clarify their decision.Read More »A Dutch university prohibits a PhD student from thanking God in his acknowledgments

A German MP on meth: Enhancement or not?

German MP Michael Hartmann was recently in the news because of his crystal meth use. The media was quick to compare Hartmann to other politicians who use other substances: the past marijuana use of Clinton and Obama, and the recent scandal around the crack addiction of Canadian mayor Rob Ford. The media also stresses that it is hypocritical that Michael Hartmann previously publicly opposed the use of cannabis. The media enforces the image most people have: all substance use is the same and equals addiction, low self-control and bad morals.Read More »A German MP on meth: Enhancement or not?

Drinking alcohol or using drugs during pregnancy could become a crime

Recently a neuroscientist discovered he was a psychopath. He was studying the brain scans of psychopaths, and intended to use some brain scans of family members and one of himself for the control group. Now one of the brain scans from the control group show clear signs of psychopathy, so he thought he must have misplaced it. He checked the reference number, and found out it was his own brain! This came as a total surprise to him, he never showed any signs of psychopathy, yet, he was very convinced that if his brain scan showed similarities with that of psychopaths, he must be a psychopath himself. Retrospectively his wife admitted that she thought he had some of the signs like lacking in empathy, and he found some famous murderers in his family. Instead of hiding this intimate fact about himself, he wrote a book about it, showing how amazing brain scans are. His book argued that brain scans can detect a psychopath like him, who never had any compelling symptoms of psychopathy.Read More »Drinking alcohol or using drugs during pregnancy could become a crime

The advantages and disadvantages of stigmatizing smoking

A new study among students, found that those who smoked cannabis performed better academically than their tobacco smoking, stigmatized peers. The study has been collecting data among students (8,331 in total) in grade 7,9 and 11 for 30 years, and noticed the following trends. While the use of tobacco around the 90ties decreased, the use of cannabis increased. While the use of tobacco became increasingly associated with a slow and painful death due to cancer, the cry for legalization of cannabis for medicinal purposes (for example to treats side effects of cancer treatment) gave cannabis a more positive image. The study emphasizes that performing worse academically has nothing to do with the substance tobacco itself. Although it is well known that cannabis can effect one’s memory, no such effect is known about tobacco. The fact that tobacco users perform worse than cannabis users has all to do with changing social norms and the marginalizing of tobacco smokers. The study seems to suggest that it is a double effect: marginalized students will choose to smoke tobacco rather than cannabis, but this will marginalize them further. Students who use marijuana are more like the general population, so perform better academically than the marginalized group. Instead of zooming in on the effects of marginalization of tobacco smokers, the study chooses to warn again the normalization of cannabis use, which, according to the study, is a very dangerous substance, in many aspects as dangerous as tobacco. Non-users of tobacco or cannabis still perform better than cannabis users. The study wants to make a case against the legalization of cannabis.
Zinberg famously distinguished three aspects that determined the effect of a substance: the properties of the substance itself, the characteristics of the person taking them, and the social setting wherein the substance is taken. This study nicely illustrates the importance of setting, or social norms around substance use. It shows that setting determines more of the negative effects of the substance than the properties of the substance itself, and how hard it is to determine the negative effects of a substance separated from the social context. It shows that the attractiveness of certain substances is more determined by their social status than by their properties. Many studies have also shown that the effect of a substance in a vulnerable population is different than in a general population. The famous veteran study of Robins showed that Vietnam veterans who became dependent on heroin in Vietnam, had no problems giving up their habits once returned to the United States. The general population mostly succeeds better in the recreational or temporarily use of a substance, because they have more incentives to control their use, and less other problems to self-medicate for.Read More »The advantages and disadvantages of stigmatizing smoking

Giving alcohol to alcoholics: not as controversial as it seems

A Dutch program pays chronic alcoholics in beer for cleaning the streets and parks. A Canadian homeless shelter provides their alcohol clients with six ounces of white wine every 90 minutes. Giving alcohol to alcoholics, it seems counterproductive from a ‘just say no’ perspective, but I would like to argue that it makes sense on many levels.
The strongest case for giving alcohol to people with chronic alcohol dependence is based on the principle of ‘harm reduction’. Canadian ‘wet-shelter’ programs have emerged for two main reasons. The first is that many homeless shelters are abstinence based which means inveterate drinks would continue to sleep rough, even in freezing winter months, resulting in tragic deaths. The second reason is that chronic inebriates often consume non-beverage alcohol like hand sanitizer, mouth wash and aftershave thereby exacerbating already severe health problems. A recent study by the Centre for Addictions Research found that a “managed alcohol program” approach reduced emergency hospital visits and arrests among participants at the Kwae Kii Win Centre Managed Alcohol Centre by 40-80%. Significant changes among program participants included an improvement in accommodation renewed contact with their families, and better diet. Whilst participants still receive their alcohol throughout the day the alcohol is given by staff in controlled doses at fixed intervals. The dose is enough to prevent withdrawal symptoms, but not high enough to cause intoxication. Although there are many formal harm reduction programs for heroin users, it is less common for people who are alcohol dependent, despite the fact that withdrawing from alcohol can be lethal.Read More »Giving alcohol to alcoholics: not as controversial as it seems

The death of celebrities due to addiction: on helpful and unhelpful distinctions in destigmatising addiction

Philip Seymour Hoffman is dead. Probably due to an overdose of heroin. Hoffman didn’t have to die if he wasn’t so ashamed of his substance use that he did it in secrecy. Because he overdosed alone, no one could call an ambulance on him that would have probably saved his life. http://truth-out.org/news/item/21645-philip-seymour-hoffman-didnt-have-to-die#.UvAI48u3dcc.facebook Some are using the media attention surrounding his death to push for better drug laws. Some want to treat heroin addicts with heroin while some simply want to draw attention to a secret demographic: high educated, rich, white, middle age heroin users. Both attempts try to destigmatise heroin use. Read More »The death of celebrities due to addiction: on helpful and unhelpful distinctions in destigmatising addiction

Do we have a right to drink? On Australian thugs and French hedonists

It has been an interesting week awaiting the announced reforms on the alcohol laws in New South Wales, Australia. After another incident with alcohol fuelled violence where a young boy died due to an unprovoked single punch, the family of this young man, Thomas Kelly, submitted a petition asking for intoxication to be taken into account in sentencing as a mandatory aggravating factor, rather than a mitigating factor, which is now sometimes the case. While the government reflected on what to do about alcohol induced violence, the discussion in the media sparked up high.

1. Should intoxication be an aggravating or mitigating factor?

Read More »Do we have a right to drink? On Australian thugs and French hedonists