Can chemistry make us happy one day or is it a matter of faith?

The shepherd who applied mold to the wound is no different from Alexander Fleming in his practice. What is different is that Fleming followed the scientific method to prove that applying mold to the wound worked. In this way, the scientific method serves as a differentiating attribute between two solutions that, at first glance, seem to be one and the same.

Antonio Escohotado tells us something similar in one of his pieces that have just been compiled by Guillermo Herranz for Página Indómita with a Jungerian and significant title: Facing fear (Volume II). For some reason the book opens with a quote from Jünger that is a declaration of intent. Because, following the German philosopher’s example, health for Escohotado resides in those who do not know fear. In accordance with this, we find a tendency to treat illness as a psychosomatic disorder in each of his scientific approaches, that is, for Escohotado, ailments and illnesses have an emotional origin.

Without going any further, when Antonio Escohotado addresses the subject of tranquilizers and antidepressants, he does so from a critical point of view, stating that, with chemical treatment, patients are held in an invisible straitjacket, making his own the qualification of Dr. Henri Laborit (1914-1995) when he said that tranquilizers were a “pharmacological lobotomy.” For those who do not know, H. Laborit was the first to use GHB for therapeutic purposes in the 1960s. Much earlier, during World War II, Laborit used an antipsychotic —chlorpromazine— for surgical purposes, since this sedative reduces inflammation and calms the patient before surgery. Chlorpromazine is an antihistamine that, when it takes effect on the patient, he does not lose consciousness; observing the detail, experiments with this substance began in psychiatry, causing what is known as the “Fourth revolution in Psychiatry.”

We must not forget that Antonio Escohotado was, above all, a philosopher, a person experienced in the art of interpreting concepts. That is why he left us a legacy of information about the different substances that cause alterations in consciousness and he did so from the pharmakon, a concept from classical Greece that is a poison and a remedy at the same time, the dose being what makes the concept swing to one side or the other. However, Escohotado dissects chemical therapies in his article, since the chemical remedy attenuates the effects of depression or nervous agitation, but does not get to the root of the matter, that is, to the cause.

Continuing with his critical background, Escohotado offers us another article entitled Epidemic factorieswhere he gives his point of view on HIV as a social stigma for those who contract the virus. Its presence “is equivalent to a death sentence that steals the future and, for that reason, the present,” says Escohotado, going on to point out that the diagnosis of this disease is complex, due to its long incubation period.

We may find his scientific articles controversial, we may agree with some and disagree with many others, but there is no doubt that Escohotado, when expressing his knowledge and opinions, does not ignore the rational procedures used by the scientific method. That is what makes him the black sheep of the flock.

The stone axe It is a section where Montero Glezwith a will to prose, exercises its particular siege on scientific reality to demonstrate that science and art are complementary forms of knowledge.

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