The Crisis of Judgement

" but once you get locked into a serious drug collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can."
Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Part One , p. 4

It is simply amazing that no one has addressed this issue, until now. And that is, how substance use and abuse has affected history by its impairment of the judgement of top decision makers.  The earliest recorded case that comes immediately to mind is that of Alexander The Great. At the end of his life he was hitched to some Indian babe(s) and hitting the booze pretty hard. It eventually croaked him. It all looked pretty bad, and it changed the course of history, and affected the lives of millions of people, and come to think of it, is still reverberating through out the world to this very day!

Calicheamicin

Now lets jump to the 20th century to a case most all of use will be familiar with. Adolf Hitler of Nazi Germany. You could rightly say that he was the first and greatest example of a modern closet doper. We all know that Germany lead the way to modern "Big Pharma" with the likes of Bayer et al... And there are many references to Adolf's close relationship with his personal physician. And as he came to rely on this buddy more and more we see some bizarre decisions getting made - or not. It was like watching the Toronto Blue-jays blow a nine run lead at the bottom of the ninth inning. 

Prozac

Now as all you people out there, who have ever owned a stock in your own name know, Big Pharma is a huge multi g'zillion dollar operation. When I hear that I always think; out of all the people I run into or "interact" with in a day, how many of them are on some kind of drug that's known or unknown side effects is currently impairing their judgement? For a while I took a survey of all the people I thought would have a rational handle on the question and I was floored when the common consensus was between four to six people out of ten! And this could be higher(!) depending on where you were employed and how good the coverage was! No freaking wonder this world is such a mess!

LSD

Now lets roll it up to the opening of the 21st century. Around 2008 during the near melt down of the world financial system, reports started leaking out of "binge trading". And CEO's who were in a safe situation sewering their companies with totally irrational decisions that are still causing heads to be scratched in perplexity! I laugh inwardly of all the risk programs implemented since 9/11, and there is no procedure(s) to monitor neural / chemical safety of an organizations top decision makers! For example what is the percentage impairment of taking the Prozac family of drugs per standard dose? If the dose is exceeded, how much greater will be the impairment to judgement? If you are supervising my pension fund manager, I would appreciate it if you started looking out for us, starting anytime soon....

We are now in the Spring of 2011. Canada is in the fourth Federal Election in seven years. I don't need a CPS handbook  to see all the weird side effects form heavy psycho prescription drugs on the leader(s) of the major political parties. well okay the one presently clinging to power...most of all. It is really obvious. The train of decisions and what ever fragmented thought that is strung together makes absolutely no sense whatever! It blows the soberest mind! Could a Western Democracy ( or political party) collapse from prescription drug psychosis? 

Listen carefully to the good doctor....