Employees are being offered the ‘party drug’ through company health schemes as psychedelic-assisted therapy grows in popularity. Just some good old capitalist innovation in action.
Employees are being offered the ‘party drug’ through company health schemes as psychedelic-assisted therapy grows in popularity. Just some good old capitalist innovation in action.
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people getting therapy included in their healthcare is good, its just that everyone should get it without having to rely on the caprice of employers
Also, drugging people up shouldn't be used to paper over brutally exploitative working conditions that cause psychological damage.
They're not taking ketamine to be high during the work day, it helps as an anti-depressant like medication
And depression, as well as other mental health problems can often be a direct outcome of being overworked, and having to deal with poor working conditions.
So we should hate healthcare insurance from companies?
We still live in a capitalist society
Just go organize irl if this bothers you so much
Yeah, you absolutely should hate the fact that you need to have insurance from companies. Organizing irl is not mutually exclusive with pointing obvious things out online either.
So we should hate healthcare insurance
Of course? Insurance is one of the biggest scams of all time right beside rent
I meant like over not having it from a company
idk this post just seems insanely circlejerky considering we're all commies here
Yes, but it helps as an anti-depressant through neuroplasticity in a seriously intense way, like, it's a form of reprogramming. So, people are responding to terrible mental health conditions in the workplace and now ketamine can be used on insurance to reprogram people's responses so they can cope better. This is essentially an echo of why indigenous people say that medicines will start to harm the colonizers if they abuse them.
Maybe it helps through neuroplasticity - also I feel like thats just the new pharma speak go to for when they don't really know if or why certain drugs work. But regardless of how they work, I think looking at this as brainwashing adjacent is not the right perspective. We have to live in the world as it exists and that means adapting to it, which doesn't mean 'reprogramming' as such, humans are not robots. At least it's no more reprogramming than if you started going for a run every day before work so you went in in a good mood. And ketamine is probably safer and more useful, and certainly more expansive and less numbing, than most of the traditional junk pharma meds (although pharma companies are already trying to fuck it up by modifying it for patents, eg esketamine)
I mean, have you researched it. Ketamine acts as a dissociative. The term "k-hole" exists for a reason. It's so numbing it's used as a general anesthesia or part of a general anesthesia regime.
It's therapeutic use for depression is incredibly tightly dosed, more so than any drug I know. A little too much and it has almost no therapeutic effect because it just drops the patient out. The reason it works for depression is because it literally creates neural conditions for creating new pathways, but that requires actual good behavior to occur daily after treatment and it requires multiple treatments with continued behavioral changes. Taking K and then going back to work means creating good coping mechanism at work while your brain is forming new neural connections.
It is entirely, fundamentally different than running every day before work.
The therapeutic effect of Ketamine (according to the psychiatric consensus anyway) works independently of the experience of being on Ketamine (in the sense that, it shouldn’t matter if you have some kind of incredible trip or were just knocked out completely - not that that would happen under normal circumstances - but the effect will occur regardless). But by ‘numbing’ I meant to contrast the effects of Ketamine (both in terms of the inner journey while taking it, but also the antidepressant effect afterwards) with more constrictive psychiatric drugs (anti-psychotics for example) which seem to exert beneficial effects precisely because they do numb people psychologically to the point there preoccupations don’t worry them so much anymore.
Neurogenisis happens all the time. If you run before work, start to feel happier at work, start doing your job better - that’s effectively ‘neurogenisis’ in the sense of creating new pathways. The reason I say it’s unclear how important this is to Ketamine is because pharma companies often claim their drugs work nowdays by neurogenesis, but it’s not necessarily accurate. My understanding is you could dose a patient with heroin and then do a brain scan showing neurogenesis, but that doesn’t necessarily give a good indication of its function or effects. It reminds me a bit of the old serotonin theory of depression/medication which they used to push and which is generally understood as a gross oversimplification nowdays
drugs help people beyond workplace productivity?
And there's absolutely no problem with that. The issue I'm highlighting is using drugs to paper over problems that are a direct result of shitty working conditions.
if i get injured on the worksite and i'm given drugs & care to recover it is 'papering over' the mistakes & conditions that led to my injury, and getting me back to work faster. but i rather prefer that to having a longer convalescence-->possible unemployment & future medical consequences. don't you? even state-run medical systems can be critiqued for prioritizing getting people back to work over the best interests of the patients, but i don't see how complaining about novel therapies being offered to some privileged workers is a good way to make that point
Again, I'm not arguing against legitimate use cases for drug therapy here. 🤷
What I'm saying is that working conditions need to be improved, and then any psychological problems people have that are not a result of exploitation should absolutely be treated using therapy. I'm not sure how much more clear I can make this.
I get what you're saying, but you keep wording it in a way that like, implies you think health issues caused by exploitation don't still need to be treated, regardless of their origin. This stuff should be covered for anyone that needs it full stop. AND working conditions need to improve. Unless there's evidence that the medical treatment is actually improper (using much higher than therapeutic doses for example), there's no issue here really (with the covering of novel therapies, specifically)
You can say the increased need for treatment is a sign of damaging exploitative conditions and I'd agree but that isn't what the article is about
No, I'm not implying anything of the sort. Nowhere am I arguing against treating health issues, and I've been as explicit as humanly possible regarding that point.
psychological problems people have that are not a result of exploitation should absolutely be treated using therapy
This sentence specifically excludes people whose conditions are a result of exploitation. A condition can be caused by exploitation and still be a health issue (and worth noting, it won't often just go away if the bad working conditions go away).
The issue [...] is using drugs to paper over problems that are a direct result of shitty working conditions.
Again, framing genuine medical treatment as "papering over" is harmful.
When you say in response to this article that "drugging people up shouldn't be used to paper over brutally exploitative working conditions that cause psychological damage." you're implying that what is being done here isn't legitimate treatment and is merely "drugging people up". Which from the article doesn't seem to be the case.
Of course I wouldn't put it past capitalists to push that sort of scheme, but you're framing it as "this is happening" not "this could be happening/would be bad if it did". What is described in the article is just bog standard, physician supervised ketamine therapy, nothing day to day, and nothing during the work day.
FWIW I don't think you necessarily intended for your comments to be taken this way, but several people have now pointed out that they took it that way to you so continuing to argue you didn't say it isn't especially helpful.
