A study reported in the New York Times sparked my interest.

Doctors gave 86 low-IQ adults antipsychotic drugs to reduce aggressive behavior. They wanted to see if these drugs — Risperdal and Haldol — were making a positive difference. What they found was that 65% of those taking the drugs responded positively. They were less aggressive. But 80% of those that took the placebo had improved behavior too. Wow!

The study is interesting for two reasons. First, it reinforces what we’ve been saying at Total Health Breakthroughs for a long time: that so many drugs prescribed by doctors today have little or no scientific basis. Most of them come to the market on the basis of studies funded by the drug companies that made them.

There is big money in promoting drugs. And good money in prescribing them. With that kind of a one-hand-washes-the-other arrangement, it’s no wonder that drugs are such a huge part of our economy. This one class of drugs alone is a $10 billion a year business.

Antipsychotic drugs are used today to treat younger children with ADD, college students with depression, older people with Alzheimer’s, and intellectually handicapped people that show signs of aggression.

That’s interesting. But what’s just as interesting is that 80% figure.

Placebos usually produce responsiveness of 25% to 35%. How do you explain 80%?

The article I read in the Times didn’t even try. I wonder though. Could it be that we have more control over our emotions than we think? Could it be that even intellectually challenged people can control their tempers?

Eighty percent is more than double what you would expect from a placebo. What accounts for this astonishingly high improvement rate?

I don’t know what the explanation is. But I know what the conclusion means. It means that most of us (80%?) can control — to some extent at least — our negative emotions and behaviors. And we can do that without drugs.

That seems like a heretical statement today. During my grandmother’s time it would seem like common sense.

Deep down inside — despite what the experts say — we know this. We know from experience that we are sometimes more easily upset than other times. And that there are times when we are able to stay calm in the face of trouble. Even the most neurotic person has had moments when he has been able to calm himself down or cheer himself up.

The psychology industry (which is heavily dependent on drug money these days) wants you to believe that sadness, rudeness, anger, and aggression are all diseases. Why? Because the moment they are classified as diseases, they (by virtue of the FDA, which is in business to support them) can control the drug trade.

The government-sponsored, multibillion dollar drug trafficking in FDA sponsored drugs is many times larger than the illegal drug trade. And it’s a good business from at least one point of view. Everybody on the government’s side (FDA employees and employees of drug companies and doctors) makes money by prescribing drugs and preventing competition from purveyors of natural medicine.

Depression is a multi-billion dollar business. So are ADD and other learning problems. So is aggressive behaviors. Add them all up and you have an industry the size of big oil. We fight wars over oil. What will we do to keep the drugs out there?

The strategy of the trilateral conspiracy (between the FDA, the pharmaceutical industry, and the AMA) is to expand the range of diseases as much as possible so that more drugs can be prescribed to “treat” these diseases. It doesn’t matter whether they actually work. What matters is that they produce a profit.

To expand the market, doctors and psychiatrists are coming up with new diseases every day. When I was a child there was no such thing as ADD. It was not a disease. It was a common behavioral problem that was treated with liberal doses of detention. This all-natural treatment worked perfectly well. Most of us who were afflicted with it (probably the same third that “have it” today) eventually learned to cope and even to succeed.

But that isn’t good for the drug business. What the trilateral conspiracy wants is to make this very normal behavior an official disease. Once a disease, then natural cures are not tolerated. Doctors will call them irresponsible witchcraft. And government thugs will go after anyone brave enough to advocate them.

ADD has been claimed by the trilateralists and they don’t want to give it back. That’s why studies like this will be disputed and ignored. There is a small possibility that we could have a grass roots revolution against big medicine. But it is, as I said, small.

More likely, normal, natural problems like sadness, rudeness, and short attention spans will be classified as diseases and taken over by the trilateralists. In every case, the FDA and the AMA will celebrate the new drug treatments as they come on the market. And government goons will go after those who object.

My theory is this: Depression should not be considered a disease. And it should not be automatically treated with drugs. Drugs can sometimes help with depression. And they certainly help with real psychological problems such as schizophrenia. But most depression is simply an extreme form of sadness. Many books and studies support this theory. These books and studies are generally pooh poohed by the establishment authorities.

I am not making light of depression. I know something about it on a personal level. It is bad. It is dangerous. It can be lethal. But the way to treat it is to treat it as an extreme form of sadness. By that I mean to battle it with good nutrition and mental exercises that keep the mind strong and focused on positive things.

We must battle sadness first. Each of us every day. If we can defeat sadness then depression won’t take hold of us.

It is like migraine headaches, which I’ve also suffered from. Anyone who has them knows that the way to treat them is early on…when they are still mild. If you get them then…by taking high doses of aspirin (which, by the way, is a natural substance), then you can beat them. But if you wait too long, it becomes a much bigger problem.

The same holds true for aggression. It is an extreme form of inconsideration. You can treat aggressive behavior by stomping out impoliteness. If you refuse to allow someone to be impolite to you then you won’t have to worry about being bullied or abused.

The same holds true for rage. Rage is an extreme form of anger. If you allow yourself to be angry all the time then you should expect your emotions to darken. Eventually it will feel like you have no control over your anger. You will do things you regret. If you let your behavior get to this level you may end up in jail or in a treatment facility.

When you get there a psychiatrist will examine you and recommend drugs. You will take those drugs because, they will say, your rage is a form of mental illness. As a form of mental illness it is covered by medical insurance. You are classifiable. The drugs flow.

The way to defeat depression, rage, and aggressive behavior is to nip it in the bud. You can do that on a personal basis by eating well, sleeping well, and using simple behavior modification practices to defeat those negative feelings.

You can defeat these bad behaviors socially by creating a culture where anger and bad manners are treated as offenses, and sadness as an undesirable personal quality.

You can’t control the culture of a nation or even a city, but you can control smaller, undemocratic organizations such as governmental institutions, businesses, and schools. And since so much aggression and abuse takes place in government institutions, schools, and businesses, one can imagine that improvements in these arenas can extend outward.

Most high schools tolerate a good deal of rudeness from students because their administrations labor under the philosophy that they are there to teach academic subjects — and not to teach children how to think or behave. They also generally ignore how meanly some children treat others. This type of behavior is viewed as normal and impossible to stop, and beyond their authority anyway.

But that is ridiculous. You can detect and punish meanness just as easily as you can detect and punish cheating. Easier still because it is usually obvious and not hidden. And if teachers took a zero tolerance policy toward meanness, then other, worse forms of uncivil behavior would be drastically reduced.

I have seen this done at a public high school in Florida where the administration punished students for minor forms of rude behavior. The initial reaction was negative. Both the students and their parents objected to these “petty prosecutions.” But as time passed, incidents of aggression and violence dropped steeply. Today that high school is an exception to the way high schools usually are: children are generally kind to one another and get along well without rudeness or aggression.

We must each take responsibility for our own behavior and for the behavior of those in our charge, including our employees, our students, and our children.

[Ed. Note: Marketing and business-building expert Michael Masterson is the founder of Early to Rise, a free, daily, e-newsletter full of useful ideas about marketing, business building, investing, natural health, and much more. He is also the bestselling author of Automatic Wealth, Automatic Wealth for Grads, Seven Years to Seven Figures, and Ready, Fire, Aim. To learn more, click here.]

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