DO NO HARM - a photo on Flickriver

DO NO HARM

IF I CAN REDUCE HARM, I AM MORALLY OBLIGATED TO DO SO, WHETHER I AM PAID OR NOT.

("Circumspecte" has been translated as "with caution" or "with meticulous care". It was the personal motto of the very beautifully long-haired male Dutch pharmacist depicted in the 1667 painting "Portrait of the Pharmacist Dr Ysbrand Ysbrandsz", by Cornelis de Man.)

("'I hate to say this, but we're really probably one big tragedy away from people realizing how serious this is.'

---Marty Lee Hendrick, the executive director of Oklahoma's pharmacy board, on the exposure to scorching heat for many mail-order prescription medications."

---The New York Times, 8.20. 2024.

[For many years I have noticed that very large quantities of LSD, usually made into tablets or soaked into sheets of paper, are being distributed via mailed letters and packages. The LSD in tablets and blotters can turn brown and even black when it is altered by heat. NOT A GOOD THING!])

While doing nonprofit quality control, I stored LSD in completely sealed bags in the freezer compartment of refrigerators. Eventually I bought a commercial freezer and put it in the air-conditioned garage at the house I rented. For quite a while I was the driver of my young daughter's carpool, taking her and her friends to school in the mornings. I got up very early each schoolday morning , put a dose of LSD in my mouth, and put sealed bags containing large quantities of LSD, surrounded by blue ice packs, in ice chests that I thoroughly sealed with tape. I then placed the ice chests in the trunk of the car and covered the ice chests with MANY layers of blankets and rugs. Because I was a federal fugitive and had no driver license, I placed the key to the car trunk in my shoe in case I was pulled over by the police.

(Commercial marketers pushing drugs these days have been claiming that their products are "microdoses" or are meant to be used for "microdosing". They tell such potentially harmful lies in an effort to make their product appear to be SAFE, because there are no credible reports of anyone being harmed by a single use of what I originally and very specifically defined as a "microdose": FIVE MICROGRAMS OF LSD.)

(For years I thought the "hip" in the word "hippie" was a reference to the Hippocratic oath. Apparently there are many theories concerning the origin of the word "hippie". I do not know which is correct. At the moment I like the theory that it comes from "on your hip", said to describe the characteristic position of a person smoking opium.)

("...this is where the baby boomer hippie crowd has landed. Many of the younger 1960s crowd lived what they considered a humanist, moral existence that respected the environment. Without training as doctors, it seemed they respected the Hippocratic oath to 'do no harm'."

---from a 2018 reader review, on Amazon dot com, of the 2017 Jessica Bruder book NOMADLAND: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century. The book is about old people who live in vans and RVs and work hard for low wages at temporary jobs.)

“It has always seemed strange to me...The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest, are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.”

---John Steinbeck, in his novel CANNERY ROW, published in 1945.

(On my first "trip", the intensely realistic LSD hallucinations of bloody violence I saw showed me that I should NEVER, whether under the influence of drugs or not, consciously take ANY violent action against anyone, because I might be wrongfully basing such action on some extremely vivid hallucination. [Some LSD researchers say that hallucinations of bloody violence such as I saw may be related to recalling elements of the birth experience, which can be bloody and involve a powerful struggle...])

"Imagine the people who believe such things and who are not ashamed to ignore, totally, all the patient findings of thinking minds through all the centuries since the Bible was written. And it is these ignorant people, the most uneducated, the most unimaginative, the most unthinking among us, who would make themselves the guides and leaders of us all; who would force their feeble and childish beliefs on us; who would invade our schools and libraries and homes. I personally resent it bitterly."

---Isaac Asimov, writing about Christians, in THE ROVING MIND.

("If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a bloody and violent measure, as it would be to pay them and enable the state to commit violence and shed innocent blood."

---Henry David Thoreau, in his pamphlet CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE. Two postage stamps honoring Thoreau have been issued by the United States Postal Service, one in 1967, and one in 2017.)

(Thoreau's pamphlet was one of 16 books selected by Robert B. Downs, former president of the American Library Association, for his 1956 book BOOKS THAT CHANGED THE WORLD.
["The number one criterion: the book must have had a great and continuing impact on human thought and action, not for a single nation, but for a major segment of the world."

---from the introduction]

The ideas expressed in CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE, which I was required to study in public school when I was young, definitely changed my life.

("...there is already developing a sort of 'LSD underground man', in the Dostoevskian sense of the term---a man who, in Dostoevsky's words, 'would rather that his hand wither off than that he carry a single brick to build the crystal palace'..."

---Frank Barron, in CREATIVITY AND PERSONAL FREEDOM, 1968. Barron, who formerly taught at Harvard University, was a research psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley.)

"He took a (probably LSD-inspired) vow of poverty long ago..."

"On principle, he refuses to pay taxes, which has landed him in prison twice."

---Jocelyn Silver, writing about famous San Francisco defense attorney J. Tony Serra, who was more than 80 years old when Silver wrote about him. VICE, 7.10. 2015. J. Tony Serra is the brother of prominent sculptor Richard Serra.

(After I was arrested in 1985, a minister I knew, the Rev. Paul Sawyer, visited me in jail while he was out on bail. A peace and social justice activist, Paul was arrested more than 60 times.)

"For How Much Longer Do We Tolerate Mass Murder?" is the title of a 1980 album by the English band The Pop Group.

(According to David Cortright in his 2008 book PEACE: A History of Movements and Ideas [Cambridge University Press], during the Vietnam War era approximately 570,000 people were classified as Selective Service [draft] offenders. Approximately 210,000 were formally accused. Approximately 8,750 were convicted. Approximately 3,250 were jailed. Martin Anderson [the head of Richard Nixon's task force on an all-volunteer army] reported in 1970 that the number of draft resisters was "expanding at an alarming rate" and that the government was "almost powerless to apprehend and prosecute them".)

In 1968, U.S. Army soldiers in My Lai, Vietnam killed more than 350 unarmed civilians, mostly women, children, and elderly people. Some of the people slaughtered were raped before being killed. Some of the bodies were mutilated after the people were raped and killed. A U.S. helicopter pilot, Hugh Thompson, saw what was happening and, by pointing a gun at the U.S. soldiers, was able to stop the slaughter. In the fall of 1969 news of the killings was published in the United States, and I, like almost every decent American, was sickened and deeply outraged. After U.S. Army officer William L. Calley, Jr. was convicted in the United States for the premeditated murder of 22 Vietnamese civilians in My Lai, he served 3 and a half years of house arrest. In 1974, Richard Nixon issued Calley a limited Presidential Pardon.

"I was ordered to go in there and destroy the enemy. That was my job that day. That was the mission I was given. I did not sit down and think in terms of men, women, and children. They were all classified as the same, and that's the classification we dealt with over there, just as the enemy. I felt then and I still do that I acted as I was directed, and that I carried out the order I was given and I do not feel wrong in doing so."

---Calley, in a courtroom statement.

"An atom bomb on Hiroshima isn't a massacre, but a hundred people is a massacre. I don't understand."

---Calley, in an interview with John Sack, Esquire, November 1970.

(According to The New York Times, 4.4. 1971, a Gallup poll commissioned by Newsweek magazine showed "The overwhelming majority of Americans--79 per cent--disapprove of the court-martial finding that Lt. William L. Calley was guilty of the prmeditated murder of at least 22 South Vietnamese at My Lai in 1968." 83 per cent approved of president Richard Nixon's action when he released Calley from the stockade where he was imprisoned. 20% said what Calley did was not a crime. A patriotic country song written in support of Calley and his actions, "Battle Hymn of Lt. Calley", was released in 1971 and sold more than one million copies in just 4 days. Eventually more than 2 million copies were sold.)

(25% of Americans said they did not think former police officer Derek Chauvin should have been found guilty of the horrific and well-documented public murder of George Floyd. 46% of republicans said they do not think Chauvin should have been convicted.

---Jemima McEvoy, 4.25. 2022, Forbes, reporting the results of a CBS News poll.)

("I would like to talk on behalf of all those veterans and say that several months ago in Detroit we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged, and many very highly decorated, veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia. These were not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command. It is impossible to describe to you exactly what did happen in Detroit - the emotions in the room and the feelings of the men who were reliving their experiences in Vietnam. They relived the absolute horror of what this country, in a sense, made them do.

They told stories that at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Ghengis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country."

---John Kerry, 4.22. 1971, in part of his testimony before a U.S. Senate committee in Washington, D.C.)

(Former Nazi Kurt Waldheim was the Secretary-General of the United Nations from 1972 to 1981. There was an international controversy in 1985 when it came to light that he had lied about his military history.

["Yes, I knew. I was horrified. But what could I do? I had either to continue to serve or be executed."

---Kurt Waldheim, in answer to a question about Nazi massacres. TIME, 4.7. 1986.])

(December 12, 2023:

An innocent man, Brian Beals, was just released from prison in Illinois after serving 35 years for a murder he did not commit. Brian Beals was a college student and football player who was studying to become a police officer at the time of his arrest for the murder of a 6-year-old boy.

The exoneration effort was a collaborative undertaking with the Illinois Innocence Project and the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office, which has overturned over 250 wrongful convictions since 2016. Beals was the 521st individual to be exonerated in Illinois. Detective Thomas Ptak, the lead investigator 35 years ago, was linked to eight other proven wrongful convictions, with Beals becoming the ninth.

One of the lawyers who helped free Beals said “I went to law school because I knew the justice system was broken but the problems I saw in this case were orders of magnitude greater than what I had previously believed”.)

("Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble."

---civil rights leader John Lewis, in a message he posted to Twitter in June 2018 that was quoted in USA TODAY, 7.1. 2020.)

("Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth."

---Albert Einstein, in a 1901 letter to Josh Winteler, quoted in THE PRIVATE LIVES OF ALBERT EINSTEIN by Roger Drude and Paul Carter, 1993.)

("...it is because we disagree that science progresses."

---Xijun Ni, a professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Hebei GEO University in Shijiazhuang, China, quoted by Pallab Ghosh, BBC News, 6.25. 2021, in an article about an ancient skull.)

("John Lewis was arrested more than 40 times protesting segregation."

---Debbie Elliot, National Public Radio, 7.19. 2020.)

("I do not fight fascists because I will win. I fight fascists because they are fascists."

---Chris Hedges)

(I have been repeatedly told that I am "stupid" and "unrealistic" to think that Thoreau was right when he refused to "...enable the state to commit violence and shed innocent blood."

My reply:

"I do not disagree with those who enable the state to commit violence and shed innocent blood because I will win. I disagree with those who enable the state to commit violence and shed innocent blood because they enable the state to commit violence and shed innocent blood.")

("Under Alabama's accomplice liability law, Smith is considered just as culpable in Washington's death as if he had pulled the trigger himself."

---Jessica Lussenhop, BBC News, in an article "In the US, you don't have to kill to be a murderer". 4.9. 2018. Smith and Washington were caught burglarizing a house. Washington was shot to death by the police.)

("...a person can be an accomplice if he or she lends tools, weapons, money or other instruments necessary to commit the crime in question. An accomplice does not need to be present at the scene of the crime to be found guilty of the crime. An accomplice can be found to have provided aid before, during or after the crime."

---legal services website HG.org.)

("...if you want money for people with minds that hate
all I can tell you is brother you'll have to wait"

---John Lennon, 1968, in the Beatles song he wrote, "Revolution".)

("...precisely at the point when you begin to develop a conscience, you must find yourself at war with your society."

---James Baldwin)

("If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor."

---Desmond Tutu)

SILENCE IS CONSENT

(For more than 30 years I have been officially labeled a schizophrenic by doctors. I do not think I am schizophrenic. I do not think I have any other form of mental illness.)

(I have never been hospitalized or in any other way institutionalized for any mental illness. I have never received any psychiatric treatment. I have never been prescribed any psychiatric medication [antipsychotics, tranquilizers, antidepressants, etc.] and I do not use any psychiatric medication.

I am not a medical professional, however, thus I am definitely NOT qualified to make an accurate diagnosis or seriously disagree with a diagnosis made by a doctor. [I am told that so many people afflicted with schizophrenia believe that they are not schizophrenic that such a belief is considered by some doctors to be an actual symptom of the disorder.])

("In one case, it took a Stanford PhD student fighting a nine-year court battle to prove that she was wrongfully listed; the FBI finally admitted she was watchlisted by mistake because an agent had accidentally checked a wrong box."

---E.D. Cauchi and Imtiaz Tyab, CBS News, 12.14. 2023: "U.S. terrorist watchlist grows to 2 million people--nearly doubling in 6 years".)

I had an art studio in Berkeley in the basement of Redwood Center Psychology Associates, Inc., located at 2428 Dwight Way very near Telegraph Avenue. [When I was quietly making art, I could often very clearly hear every word of the therapy sessions being conducted above me.] The landlady, a psychologist named Karen Saeger, hired Western Exterminator Company to rid the building of rats. The person Western Exterminator Company sent was a cocaine addict who claimed to have been a narc in Peru. He told very lurid stories about torturing and killing people and then dumping the bodies into sewers. Without my knowledge or my permission, the landlady gave the exterminator a key so he could enter my studio. One evening I came back to the studio and when I went through one of the doorways at the back, powdered rat poison that the exterminator had placed in the area over the doorway rained down on me and I accidentally inhaled quite a bit of it. I went back into the room where I usually worked, and feeling strangely euphoric, I laid on the floor on my back, with my arms on the floor and my hands palms up. I saw bright rays of light shooting out of tips of each of my fingers. The rays wove together and converged mid-air in an area below my feet, forming a spiraling tunnel of light. I thought "Wow! This looks sort of like some of Alex Grey's paintings!" I began to have the sensation that I was floating through the tunnel toward something that was indescribable and yet extremely familiar. I really wanted to continue the journey but I realized that I apparently had "left my body" and that I might be dying. Several very specific things that I had promised friends that I would do later in the week came to mind and I realized that if I died I would not be able to fulfill my promises. I then seemed to float in reverse out of the tunnel back into my body...! I later complained, in writing, about possibly being poisoned, in a letter to the landlady, who was a well-credentialed psychologist. She was so stupid as to reply, in writing, with the lie that the cocaine-addicted exterminator had never been hired, that such a person had never been on the property, and that no rat poison had been used.

The landlady had hired a scruffy transient as a handyman and apparently manipulated him into hitting me on multiple occasions. A young acquaintance who had just become an attorney represented me pro bono, and a restraining order was issued that stated that it was illegal for the violent transient to come near me. [He hit me again, DIRECTLY IN FRONT OF A POLICE OFFICER, who laughed when I showed him the restraining order and would not tell the transient to stop hitting me.] I refused to leave until the landlady cleaned up all of the areas of the art studio that were contaminated by rat poison. She refused to clean up the studio and, in 1992, sued me for Unlawful Detainer. We went to court. The case was heard by Judge Julie Conger and the landlady lost. She made a futile attempt to bully me into agreeing that I would not ever disclose any of the facts of the case to anyone.

[Karen Saeger had her lawyer, Peter Kerman, send a warning letter to my lawyer, Hugo Torbet, in which her lawyer stated, among other things, that Karen Saeger told him she was concerned that I might harm her, that she thought I might be like "Rosebud Denovo". I did NOT know or associate with Rosebud Denovo or any of her friends. (Teenager Rosebud Denovo [1973-1992] had very recently been shot and killed by an Oakland police officer after she allegedly lunged at him while waving a machete after she broke into the residence of the chancellor on the nearby University of California campus.

["After Trump became the first U.S. president to be convicted of a crime, his supporters responded with dozens of violent online posts, according to a Reuters review of comments on three Trump-aligned websites: the former president's own Truth Social platform, Patriots.Win and the Gateway Pundit.

Some called for attacks on jurors, the execution of the judge, Justice Juan Merchan, or outright civil war and armed insurrection.

'Someone in NY with nothing to lose needs to take care of Merchan,' wrote one commentator on Patriots.Win. 'Hopefully he gets met with illegals with a machete,' the post said in reference to illegal immigrants.

On Gateway Pundit, one poster suggested shooting liberals after the verdict. 'Time to start capping some leftys,” said the post. “This cannot be fixed by voting.'"

---Joseph Tanfani, Ned Parker and Peter Eisler, Reuters, 5.31. 2024, in their report that was published online with the headline "Trump supporters call for riots and violent retribution after verdict".]

At the time of her death, Denovo was awaiting trial after being charged with possessing explosives.) My lawyer told me I could not sue Karen Saeger for defaming me because the law specifically states that nothing her lawyer wrote to my lawyer can be used as evidence in a defamation lawsuit. I immediately showed the letter to a Berkeley police officer and convinced him to go with me to her office, because I wanted her to repeat to the officer her false accusation that I had been stalking her. Karen Saeger's receptionist told us Karen Saeger was not there...])

(On September 7, 2022, Alameda County Sheriff's deputy Devin Williams, Jr., 24. murdered a woman from Vietnam who worked as a nurse at John George Psychiatric Hospital in San Leandro, California. He also murdered her husband.

[A psychiatrist named Dr. Cuyler Burns Goodwin at one point worked at John George Psychiatric Hospital. Goodwin's medical license was revoked in 2022. One of the reasons was that he was accused of raping a patient after giving the patient ketamine.]

After the murders, it was revealed that Williams had previously failed a sheriff's department psychological examination. The sheriff then told 47 other deputies who had also failed their psychological examinations that they would no longer be allowed to carry guns or arrest people.)

After many extremely painful years of suffering from kidney stones and other physical ailments I began receiving disability payments in the early 1990s. I thought my primary disability was chronic kidney stones. I also saw my lack of education as a serious disability made much worse by my very noticeable lifelong stupidity. Several years after I began receiving disability payments I noticed that doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals seemed to think I was crazy. Each time I asked why I was receiving disability payments, each healthcare provider smoothly and cleverly changed the subject without answering my question. After quite a few years of very politely asking the question, a social worker got a folder of my medical records and showed me that psychiatrists said I am schizophrenic. It turns out that under California laws, a patient has the legal right to see all of their medical records, UNLESS the records have to do with the patient's mental health. It is said to be thought by some that receiving a diagnosis of mental illness might seriously harm a patient by stigmatizing them.

("Driver with schizophrenia ruled not responsible for Times Square rampage"

---headline of a Courthouse News Service 6.23. 2022 article about the verdict in the trial of a young Navy veteran who purposely drove a car through crowds of pedestrians on sidewalks in New York, killing one and injuring 22 others. The jury found him to be “not responsible by reason of mental disease or defect". News stories such as this are one of the reasons that it can be VERY difficult for a person diagnosed as suffering from schizophrenia to do things like rent a room or find a job...)

("UCPD looking for an individual who was screaming without pants"

---Scanner Berkeley [a news website], on Twitter, 2.12. 2023. [UCPD are the University of California Police Department in Berkeley, California.])

(On March 1, 2023 a young man [who reportedly was mentally ill and yelled "Mormon Mafia!"] was seen in Sproul Plaza on the University of California campus in Berkeley after he apparently deliberately set himself on fire. He died. It is said that within 24 hours a video of the incident had been viewed online more than 350,000 times.)

Another reason often given for not allowing a patient to know their psychiatric diagnosis or what a mental health professional has said about them is that it is thought that mentally ill patients sometimes have a tendency to "become the label".

Evading the enquiries of a patient who has been diagnosed as schizophrenic is seen by some psychiatric professionals to be a humane practice. (The words "TREATING THE UNTREATABLE" are in the title of a 2009 book about "schizophrenic or delusional patients" written by psychiatrist Ira Steinman.)

("'If a diagnosis is not adequately explained by their provider, a client can have significant anxiety about it,'” said Evan Lieberman, a mental health and addiction therapist based in Minnesota, adding that the resulting stress could worsen one’s symptoms.

The same is true for when someone does not receive adequate therapy or other interventions—they could just be left more confused and overwhelmed by their diagnosis.

'Now they have this disorder, they do not fully understand [it] or how to manage it on their own. It would be like telling someone they have a spinal condition that explains their chronic pain, then proceeding not to educate or treat the condition,' said Lieberman."

"Teens watching TikToks like 'Things you didn’t know were ADHD' or 'Signs you’re depressed' may relate to one of the symptoms and be convinced they have ADHD or depression.

Lieberman said it’s kind of like when WebMD arrived and people started thinking every little stomachache was a symptom of an incurable illness. 'As they say, a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.'"

---from "Does Getting Diagnosed With a Mental Disorder Make Your Symptoms Worse? Mental health professionals explain why you shouldn’t fear diagnosis" by Romano Santos, VICE, 2.26. 2023.)

(Desperately seeking housing after years of being homeless, I spoke with a social worker, Ellen Starbird, at the West Berkeley LifeLong Medical Care location on Addison Street in Berkeley. She told me that she thought I might be helped by a local community program, but that I had to make an appointment to see a psychiatrist working at the West Berkeley location named Dr. Louise Forrest to make sure that I qualified. After my appointment with Dr. Forrest, she said I did not need to see her again. Not long after that I received a voicemail message from Yolanda, one of the LifeLong Medical Care appointment schedulers. I called Yolanda back and she said I needed to make an appointment to see Dr. Forrest again. I did so, and went for my second appointment with Dr. Forrest, which was pleasant. I did not understand the point of seeing her again, but I politely did raise any questions. Again Dr. Forrest said I did not need to see her any more. Not long after that I received another voicemail message from Yolanda, saying that I needed to make another appointment to see Dr. Forrest. I immediately called Dr. Forrest's telephone number and left a voicemail message saying that Yolanda had just left me a voicemail message saying that I needed to make yet another appointment to see Dr. Forrest, and that I did not understand why, since Dr. Forrest had twice told me I needed no further appointments with her. Dr. Forrest then left me a quite dramatic voicemail message saying that I was having a serious mental health crisis, that I had lost touch with reality and was hallucinating. Dr. Forrest said she asked Yolanda if Yolanda had left me a voicemail message earlier that day saying that I needed to make another appointment to see Dr. Forrest, and that Yolanda emphatically said she did NOT. Dr. Forrest went on to say that after Yolanda went home, she went to Yolanda's office and checked Yolanda's log of the phone calls Yolanda made that day. "Yolanda definitely did NOT call your telephone number." Dr. Forrest said she thought I might need immediate hospitalization. I called Dr. Forrest and left this voicemail message for her: "Dear Dr. Forrest--here is what a hallucination sounds like-" and I played a recording of the voicemail message that Yolanda had left for me earlier in the day saying that I needed to make another appointment to see Dr. Forrest. Dr. Forrest then left me a voicemail message saying "OH MY GOD! I AM SO SORRY!" I never spoke with Dr. Forrest again. The local community program did NOT try to help me find any housing.)

A randomly-edited selection of approximately 700 of my pictures
may be viewed by clicking on the link below:
www.flickr.com/groups/psychedelicart/pool/43237970@N00/

Please click here to read my "autobiography":
thewordsofjdyf333.blogspot.com/

And my Flicker "profile" page may be viewed by clicking on this link:
www.flickr.com/people/jdyf333/

My telephone number is: 510-260-9695

Taken on: December 9, 2023

Tags:

DO NO HARM

Hippocratic Oath

hip

hippie

hipster

hip hop

on your hip

opium

Henry David Thoreau

CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE « less

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