Subject: Letter from A.Markon
Alexander S. MARKON
Psychologist
President of IAPS (International Association for Psyche Survival)
Corresponding member of RANS and IAISB (Russia Academy for Natural Sciences and International Academy for Integration of Science and Busyness)
E-mail: markon@raen.ru
1998.03.01, Su
To Mr. Olivier Dupuis
Dear Sir,
there is the text of my address to participants of the debate on the antiprohibitional problem gathered by the Russian office of the RP, 28.02.98, Sat.
Efforts of RP in antiprohibitional politics, law-creation are directed in fact not to help for the society as a whole but to defend of the rights of rather little part of the society, which nevertheless is as important as a fly in the ointment. This part is that persons who have already become drug addicts.
Only to them the problem of accessibility of a drug is vitally important. Only they are ready to refuse a piece of bread or a swallow of water for the sake of a dose of the drug. Only they are faced by the prohibiting law the hard and severe choice: either to suffer or to break such a law.
But even to them the legislative solving of their problem, abrogation of the ban, is the less than half-and-half solving. Drug dependence is just dependence, is non-liberty. A drug addict has not ability to choose either to use the drug or to refuse it. His necessity is imperative like physical one. The difference between a healthy person who intentionally abuse a drug and an ill drug-dependent person is analyzed in my scientific and popular publications. A real addict is linked to the drug like to a pillory which is simultaneously a trap - to come into it is possible, to go out is impossible - and is a rack-instrument of torture. There isn't the drug - it means torture. There is the drug - it means delay. If drugs would be legalized it means an addict receives the right not to pay too expensive for such delays but he is not dismissed from the trap.
The state has a moral right to prohibit anything what its citizen really need only if the state may guaranty a worthy substitution to that.
If the law prohibits production and spreading of drugs so an official state system of supply for real addicts must be such a substitution.
If the law prohibits using of drugs so the guaranty of dismissed from drug dependence, guaranty that ex-addict will not suffer without the drug must be such a substitution.
The law ought only to confirm that which is already achieved, which is possibility of the state.
Nowadays prohibitions of using must be not merely abolished but more than that, they must be changed with guaranty that a drug will not be necessary to a ex-addict.
Liberation of patients from drug dependence is one of working directions of International Association for Psyche Survival (IAPS), which I have the honour to represent here. We dispose of methods which are absolutely safe and practically faultless. Details may be found in IAPS Manifesto.
Our real abilities permit us to offer to RP - and to CORA, LIA, to everyone interested - the programme, or the initiation, which we name DAS (Drug Addict Shelters), or in Russian , which can be the base for the perspective politics concerning to narcotics, politics both regional and international.
We are ready to ensure the key link of realization the suggested initiation so that declared guaranties will not mere remain idle promises on the paper.
I apply the general programme document of IAPS, its Manifesto. If our offer is interesting to you in principle we are read to acquaint you with more details.
Sincerely yours
A. Markon
Internacia Asocio por Psika Vivsavo - IAPV
International Association for Psyche Survival - IAPS
MANIFESTO
Psychotherapists have a lot of evidence that humans who would be free from psychic problems (obsessions) are far from being an expected majority and actually represent rather a rare exception than a norm. Regardless of their own reasoning some people are afraid to enter an elevator cabin or a subway station or to board a plane. Somebody cannot devote oneself to one's beloved doings just because of the fear of an exam or a contest blocking the way. Somebody cannot accept the fact of being born a male (or vice versa, a female). Somebody lives from hand to mouth and at the same time buys a regular pack of cigarettes which may cost more than a loaf of bread.
There is an opinion that the higher a person stands socially, the more complicated psychic problems will he, or she, have.
Humans are NOT born free. Let common ethics declare the opposite but our experience tells us that since early babyhood we immediately depend upon our parents and upon other family members; later we depend upon close social environment, say, upon school; finally we come to dependency upon humanity in general. At each of these life stages there inevitably appear more or less critical conflicts with environs registered in human psyche with scars of respectively more or less expressed depth or painfulness.
Time is a great healer. This is true but not universally. Occasionally, human emotions aroused by life experience grow stronger with time and come to conflicts with the person's own common sense to end up as psychic obsessions. A person may even get used to an obsession to such an extent as to stop realizing it. Also, a person may realize it but be unwilling to get rid of it: "...and I wish I did not ever hear that Time is a great healer and that everything is smoothed away with its flow...".
Obsessions may be realized through double standards approach manifested by person's evaluations of events or situations with regard to whether this person is involved or not. SOMEONE ELSE abstains from smoking - well, that's all right. But if it's ME who abstains from smoking - then it's a horrible situation and I would climb up the wall.
Self-help against obsessions belongs both to science and fine arts as well as it demands for a lot of sweat and implies certain dangers.
At the same time the very idea of efficient help from outside - interpersonal - is continuously discredited by the flood of aggressive advertising promoting low-efficiency methods.
However, certain psycho-technical methods which are an intellectual property of IAPV and a know-how not out of the author's secrecy (they are described in publications) but just because manned teaching is an obligatory condition for its proliferation while written instructions are less than enough - permit us to PAINLESSLY, QUICKLY, and RELIABLY relieve a patient of obsessions - like painful memories related to catastrophes, disasters, war actions and other tragedies;
- like conflictomania (conflict-o-mania, a drive to strained situations);
- like riskomania (risk-o-mania, a drive to danger);
- like mental disorders that appear after a trauma or an injury, after serving a hostage, after other violent acts, after loss of one's nearest, or pets, or keepsakes, after loss of high social status or job;
- like drug or inhalant addiction;
- like neuroses inspired by interpersonal conflicts - either in business or at home, or between the couple (e.g. jealousy);
like panicky fears of height
- of space (open space, tiny space)
- of the stage (lots of people, mike fever)
- of exams, contests, competitions
- of a dentist or some other fear
- like unbearable disgust to smb or smth
- like an irresistibly strong passion for gambling, races, numbers, virtual games etc.
Pacient is relieved of his mental sufferings and gains indifference to its source as if obtaining or restoring his mental immunity.
IAPV target is to soften the moral environment in our society by eliminating subjectively psychological reasons for social conflicts.
IAPV goals are:
- to apply its psycho-technical methods on a global scale;
- to widely disseminate information among those who suffer obsessions and might be wishful to get rid of those;
- to assist personnel departments of enterprises (any enterprise can save $500-15,000 per year with every staff member who gives up smoking, the sum depending upon his or her ranking);
- to assist companies, especially insurance ones and charities, in achieving their goals by relieving their pacients of at least part of their inner problems;
- to assist medical clinics, especially cardiologic, pulmonologic, and oncologic ones by means of relieving their patients of autointoxications;
Unlike many other associations IAPV suggests uniting in the first turn not professionals but those needy of assistance. Such a union is a most actual way-out for today's Russia where social tension is pumped by objective circumstances and sometimes intentionally.
IAPV emblem - a flower of tobacco plant which is nicotine-free unlike tobacco leaves - symbolizes obsession-free state.
Language dissociation may be a possible reason for interpersonal conflicts which is of most actual importance to Russia with its dozens of actively spoken languages. With consideration to linguistic advantages of Esperanto language and also high purity of ethic principles and targets of international Esperanto movement this language is adopted to be one of the IAPV working languages.
