Karen, I read that “Propranolol (Inderal) crosses the blood-brain barrier particularly well. This may be why propranolol causes more central nervous system side effects, such as hallucinations, nightmares, and depression, than the beta blockers that do not cross into the brain as easily.” A 1982 study reported a reduction in rage with use of this drug. People use this drug to reduce the anxiety of public speaking or public performance.
With all that, it is not especially surprising that a drug that affects the brain in these ways might influence the expression of antagonisms toward or fears of people of other races than one’s own. Welcome to the Brave New World of drug-influenced human beings and human behavior. I’m not a member of it.
Government is hand over fist influencing drug prescriptions and drug use. This is obvious considering its huge presence in all phases of medicine and medical services. See, for one small example, these laws that create an incentive to diagnose children with ADHD and then prescribe Ritalin.
One expert on this wrote about the incentive and substitution effects of changes in regulations and laws:
“Now, the other big rise, and the other big factor, I think, that took place during that time, was health care reform. And health care reform hit mental health with a vengeance in many ways. Because what it said to mental health was, ‘We’re cutting way back on the kind of therapies that we’re going to offer, and we’re going to set a total number of sessions. And we’re going to say when you can get sessions and why you can get, say, therapy sessions.’
“So what we hear from many parents was that they could not longer go see a therapist for 50 or 60 sessions a year, every week or twice a week, or something. For ADHD they would be asked, ‘Is your child getting medicine?’ . . . More and more, doctors were being asked to say, ‘We can only approve therapy sessions if you’ve also given a trial of medicine.’ Or parents were being told, ‘We can only give therapy if the child is also getting medicine.’”
I always end up throwing my hands up in despair at EVER reforming these major areas of health, education, welfare, and foreign policy through ordinary politics and through marginal changes. I prefer to see the hard drive wiped clean and a reboot of American politics with a different operating system. This is one of the many reasons I prefer to see people en masse lose their faith in the U.S. government and abandon it to its fate.
