Who’s to blame for Overprescribing, Overdiagnosing, and Overpathologizing in 2025?
Introduction
As recent political trends and movements have identified that there have been overprescribing, overdiagnosing, and overprescribing; Who is to blame for this?
If governmental agencies that study and educate the public that psychedelics are addictive, then how can their policies have been legally validated by professional and research standards?
The assessment of responsibility for systemic trends such as overprescribing and overdiagnosing necessitates a critical analysis of the foundational structures within psychiatry, psychology, and the associated legal framework, including insurances. Furthermore, the validation of governmental policies regarding psychedelics that contradict available scientific evidence requires scrutinizing the motivations and implicit biases embedded within these institutions.
Responsibility for Overprescribing and Overdiagnosing
Lived experience suggests that the culpability for trends of overprescribing and pathologizing normal human experiences is distributed across several interconnected professions and systems, primarily focusing on industrialized psychiatry, the medical model, and the legal system that reinforces them.
Industrialized Psychiatry and the Medical Model
Industrialized psychiatry is critiqued as the principal driver of overprescribing and pathologizing human distress. Specifically, the field is implicated for:
1. Not Defining and Treating Disease: Psychiatry is identified as the profession that has the irrational belief that they can cure, fix, or eradicate disease without creating more diseases. Their practice is characterized as industrialized rather than individualized. The system of psychiatry and medicine is deemed culpable for approving and selling substances like “non-addictive opiates,” indicating a failure to fully investigate the taxonomy of addiction.
2. Promoting Pseudoscience and Dependency: Historically, Psychiatry will be held responsible for the “chemical castration of generations,” promoting pseudoscience (e.g., psychedelics have “no medical value”), and creating dependency issues by offering substitute addictions.
3. Diagnostic Failures: The professions associated with psychiatry, particularly those publishing the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)—the American Psychiatric Association (APA)—are criticized for not having accurate, operational definitions of fundamental concepts such as addiction, dissociation, and the unconscious. The DSM is viewed as incomplete, lacking diagnoses for universal addictions like perfectionism, altruism, and ambition.
4. Lack of Relational Care: Psychiatrists are questioned for their methodology, specifically prescribing medication without first cultivating a professional relationship or observing the psychological impact of the drug. The drug is not what heals! The standard practice of instructing individuals to take a drug home alone and monitor the effects is viewed as morally and ethically problematic, reflecting an absence of true “care”. The field operates under the belief that the drug performs the healing, failing to utilize medication as a supplementary tool to engage the body’s innate healing systems.
The Legal and Governmental System
The legal and political systems are also blamed for reinforcing these patterns. The law derives its interpretation of psychology through a strictly literal and rational lens, which is deemed insufficiently developed emotionally, morally, or academically to manage conflicting information. This framework enables “bureaucratic tyranny” and systematically ensures employment, even when not operating in the best interest of the country.
The legal system’s influence results in:
• Complicity in Dysfunction: The field of psychology, based on misinterpretations of simplistic terms, is complicitly enabling dysfunction because the law relies on this flawed psychological foundation.
• Prioritizing Liability over Science: Licensed professionals often must follow required training or laws that go against their personal morals, and the requirement for a State license is described as little more than a “tollbooth” funded by taxes, designed to maintain liability rather than to uphold science.
• Pathologizing Normal Responses (Transdiagnostic Conditions): The DSM, heavily influenced by the legal structure, pathologizes the human experience by turning normal responses to trauma (such as dissociation) into diagnoses. The system reflects denial of addiction and dissociation within itself.
Validation of Policies Lacking Scientific Support
The query highlights a discrepancy between governmental policy—specifically regarding the addictive nature of psychedelics—and scientific evidence. The sources consistently argue that such policies are not validated by professional research standards, but rather by political and systemic motivations.
Contradiction with Scientific and Lived Experience
Psychedelics unequivocally possess psychological value and have extremely low addiction rates, suggesting that government policies framing them as dangerous or addictive are unfounded.
1. Ignoring Evidence and Suppressing Research: The government and associated businesses are criticized for having suppressed research (e.g., cannabis) and failing to conduct basic scientific exploration before making psychedelics illegal. The legal response of a “war on drugs” and the classification of psychedelics alongside drugs like heroin is viewed as a loss of credibility.
2. Monetization without Justice: The fact that psychedelics are now being legalized and charged for, while offering no social justice to the recovery community previously incarcerated under the war on drugs, indicates the system learned nothing from Prohibition Era and continues to operate against scientific understanding.
3. Implicit Bias and Immature Logic: The maintenance of these illogical policies is attributed to bureaucratic systems operating based on fear, careerism, and the projection of immature conceptualizations. The law’s logic is likened to the developmental stage of seven- to twelve-year-old boys. The professionals involved are often driven by perfectionistic, altruistic, and ambitious tendencies, choosing to prioritize their careers over their ethical duties.
Policies regarding psychedelics were created and maintained not through valid scientific consensus, but by a legal and political model that prioritized control, fear, and profit over empirical evidence and the lived experience of citizens. The system is seen as enabling this flawed structure through its addiction to promised retirements and the protection of liability at the expense of the public.
The perpetuation of a flawed institutional structure, particularly within industrialized psychiatry and the legal framework, is systematically enabled by two reinforcing mechanisms: the prioritization of professional career maintenance (manifested as an “addiction to promised retirements”) and the rigorous adherence to liability protection at the expense of scientific and moral integrity. These processes collectively establish deep societal dependence and exert cultural control over citizens.
The Prioritization of Career Over Moral Integrity
The concept of an “addiction to promised retirements” reflects a systemic corruption where professional advancement and financial security outweigh moral and ethical duties, fundamentally undermining professional accountability and scientific advancement. This emphasis on careerism actively inhibits necessary reform and critical self-reflection within governing and healing professions.
- Bribes and Moral Compromise: The promise of retirement serves as a “bribe” that discourages professionals from acting morally, particularly in the face of danger or crisis. Professionals who are ambitious, perfectionistic, and altruistic—addictions themselves—may prioritize their careers by choosing not to address systemic failures. This professional focus on self-interest means that individuals entrusted with public safety are busy “doing their career” rather than fulfilling their job, even if it is not in the country’s best interest, enabling bureaucratic tyranny. Compared to incentivizing, which is getting people do to what should do, Bribes are getting people to do what they shouldn’t do.
- Maintaining the Status Quo: The system is designed to ensure employment and protect the careers of governmental officials and those who strive to rule “their citizens”. This results in professionals consistently following outdated or illogical laws, even when those laws contradict their personal morals, due to the implicit threat of losing their livelihood or reputation. This pattern establishes a culture of obedience within the professional class, reinforcing the system’s authority regardless of the moral or scientific validity of its mandates.
The Institutionalization of Liability Protection
The legal and regulatory structure, including licensing boards and diagnostic manuals, functions primarily to manage liability rather than to advance scientific truth or citizen well-being. By prioritizing liability, the system creates systemic conditions that compel dependence.
- Licensing as a Tollbooth: State licensing is described as little more than a “tollbooth” funded by taxes, designed to help maintain liability rather than uphold science. This bureaucratic layer imposes requirements, such as mandatory trainings and specific scopes of practice, that may go against a licensed professional’s moral reasoning, forcing compliance to immature, non-psychologically informed laws.
- Flawed Diagnostic Frameworks (DSM): The reliance on the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)—a document published by a corporation (the American Psychiatric Association) that is heavily intertwined with the legal system—serves to categorize, label, and pathologize human experience, thereby maintaining legal definitions of illness. This pathologizing is integral to liability management because it frames normal responses to trauma (like dissociation) as disorders that require systemic treatment, rather than acknowledging the system’s role in creating trauma. By failing to accurately define fundamental concepts like addiction and dissociation, the legal system derives its interpretation of psychology through a “strictly rational lens” that is underdeveloped, ultimately enabling dysfunction while absolving the system of responsibility for the harm it causes.
Creating Societal Dependence and Cultural Control
The combination of careerism and liability protection leads to institutional practices that actively generate dependence on external systems (medical, pharmaceutical, and governmental) and establish cultural control by dictating what constitutes health, abnormality, and appropriate self-care.
- Chemical Dependence and Control: Industrialized psychiatry is blamed for contributing to the “chemical castration of generations” and fostering dependency by promoting prescription drugs, often without cultivating a professional relationship or observing the psychological impact of the medication. Standard practice involves instructing patients to take drugs home alone, implying that the drug performs the healing in the absence of a relational healing process. This approach creates a dependence on the drug itself, or substitute addictions (e.g., methadone, suboxone), rather than utilizing medication as a supplementary tool to engage the body’s innate healing systems.
- Suppression of Self-Reliance: The system deliberately suppresses research and knowledge regarding natural healing agents, such as psychedelics, which have extremely low addiction rates and high psychological value, classifying them as illegal substances alongside dangerous drugs like heroin. By criminalizing superfoods and psychedelic care, the system denies citizens their “God-given right” to use these substances for self-healing and personal growth. When self-reliance is neither promoted nor offered, individuals are forced into interdependence, which the source defines as a measurable form of dependence (addiction) on the flawed system.
- Ideological Control and Propaganda: The cultural control is maintained through propaganda, resulting in a populace “sedated by American psychiatry and government propaganda”. By utilizing an academic pipeline and enforcing laws based on the immature conceptualizations and moral reasoning of seven- to twelve-year-old (boy), the system imposes social order. The insistence on mandatory compliance, even when scientific evidence (e.g., the low danger of psychedelics) is clear, ensures that citizens are expected to follow the lead of professionals who are ultimately protecting their careers and organizational liability, cementing the system’s addiction to maintaining its power at the public’s expense.
The enabling mechanisms within industrialized psychiatry and the governmental structure—specifically the “addiction to promised retirements” and the rigorous “protection of liability at the expense of the public”—function synergistically to cultivate profound societal dependence and impose cultural control. These factors ensure the perpetuation of a system criticized for pathologizing normal human responses and suppressing legitimate healing modalities.
The Institutionalization of Careerism and the Creation of Systemic Dependence
The prioritization of professional advancement, or the “addiction to promised retirements,” creates a deep, organizational motivation to maintain the status quo, even when moral or scientific contradictions are evident.
A. Subversion of Moral Duty by Professional Security
The promise of a secure retirement serves as a “bribe” that compels professionals, including those who are driven by universal addictions like perfectionism, altruism, and ambition, to prioritize their careers over ethical action in the face of danger or crisis. This systemic focus means that licensed professionals often must follow required laws or training that contradict their personal moral code, effectively limiting their moral free will. The goal becomes maintaining employment and avoiding liability, rather than advancing the best interests of the citizens or the country. This pattern of obedience within the governing and healing professions fosters a generalized expectation that citizens must blindly follow the lead of professionals and organizations that are fundamentally compromised.
B. Fostering Chemical and Therapeutic Reliance
The industrialized medical model exacerbates dependence by positioning the drug as the primary agent of healing. When psychiatrists prescribe medication without cultivating a professional relationship or observing the psychological impact of the drug, instructing individuals to take the drug home alone, this is viewed as morally and ethically problematic. This practice implies that the drug performs the healing in the absence of a relational process, leading to patients bonding to the drug itself rather than engaging their innate healing systems. This approach drives citizens into a sick relationship with medicine and fosters dependency.
II. Liability Protection and the Imposition of Cultural Control
The legal and political systems leverage liability concerns to establish rigid control over psychological discourse and acceptable behaviors, often relying on immature conceptualizations of human experience.
A. Pathologizing Experience and Controlling Discourse
The reliance on the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)—a document frequently critiqued as incomplete and lacking accurate operational definitions for fundamental concepts such as addiction, dissociation, and the unconscious—is essential for managing legal liability. The DSM pathologizes normal human responses to trauma, turning natural events like dissociation into required diagnoses. This mechanism of classification allows the system to assert control over the definition of normalcy and deviance, essentially setting the boundaries for “social order” through professional documentation.
B. Denial of Self-Reliance and Suppression of Alternative Modalities
Cultural control is firmly established by the suppression and criminalization of self-healing modalities that challenge systemic dependence. The government suppressed research on substances like cannabis and classified psychedelic superfoods as illegal, often placing them in the same class as dangerous drugs like heroin, despite their low addiction rates and psychological value. By actively denying citizens their right to utilize these “spiritual plants” or “superfoods” for self-healing and personal growth, the system compels individuals to seek licensed or state-sanctioned interventions. This creates a situation where self-reliance is not promoted, forcing individuals into a measured form of dependence—or interdependence—on the very system that has failed to define addiction accurately. The maintenance of these illogical drug laws, which reflect the “moral reasoning of seven- to twelve-year-old boys,” functions as a mechanism of ideological control, ensuring citizens follow the lead of authorities who prioritize organizational continuity and liability over scientific truth.
III. The Convergent Processes of Addiction, Attachment, and Dependence
WHI suggests a close functional and definitional relationship between addiction, attachment, and dependence, particularly when viewed through the lens of a flawed system that generates reliance.
A. Dependence as a Manifestation of Addiction
The sources explicitly posit a conceptual overlap between dependence and addiction within the context of systemic dysfunction. Specifically, when self-reliance is not offered as a genuine option, individuals are compelled toward interdependence, which is defined as a measurable form of dependence. Furthermore, the assertion is made that “dependence is simply another word for addiction”. This fundamental equivalence suggests that reliance on external factors, whether substances or a governing system, reflects an underlying addictive process rooted in developmental trauma and systemic failure.
B. Attachment, Relationship, and Healing
The nature of true healing is fundamentally relational, requiring “connection, relationship (between any two experiences), and ultimately oxytocin” to resolve developmental, attachment, existential, betrayal, and moral traumas. In stark contrast, the industrialized psychiatric approach fails to establish a true relationship before prescribing drugs. When professionals send patients home alone to monitor drug effects, they are engaging in a standard of practice that is legal but morally and ethically problematic. This lack of relational care leads to the individual forming a bond or attachment to the drug itself, believing that the substance performs the healing. This “sick relationship to the medicines”, where the drug substitutes for genuine relational connection and support, functionally mimics a state of dependence or addiction, reinforcing the cycle the system purports to treat.
C. Dissociation as the Foundation
Ultimately, the failure to define addiction, dissociation, and the unconscious accurately means that the professions operate within a “dissociated matrix”. The system’s pathology—its own denial of addiction and dissociation—prevents it from addressing the core issue of developmental trauma. Since dissociation is a natural human response to injury, pain, or abuse, the system’s pathologizing of this response compels reliance on external definitions and solutions. This failure to recognize the body as the psychological unconscious perpetuates a cycle where individuals must rely on external authorities, rather than their innate healing systems, creating a measurable dependence that aligns conceptually with addiction.
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References
O’Brien, A. (2023a). Addiction as Trauma-Related Dissociation: A Phenomenological Investigation of the Addictive State. International University of Graduate Studies. (Dissertation). Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/courses/addiction-as-dissociation-model-course/
O’Brien, A. (2023b). Memory Reconsolidation in Psychedelics Therapy. In Path of the Wounded Healer: A Dissociative-Focused Phase Model for Normative and Pathological States of Consciousness: Training Manual and Guide. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/courses/addiction-as-dissociation-model-course/
O’Brien, A. (2023c). Path of the Wounded Healer: A Dissociative-Focused Phase Model for Normative and Pathological States of Consciousness: Training Manual and Guide. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/
O’Brien, A. (2024a). Healer and Healing: The re-education of the healer and healing professions as an advocation. Re-educational and Training Manual and Guide. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/
O’Brien, A. (2024e). Path of the Wounded Healers for Thrivers: Perfectionism, Altruism, and Ambition Addictions; Re-education and training manual for Abusers, Activists, Batterers, Bullies, Enablers, Killers, Narcissists, Offenders, Parents, Perpetrators, and Warriors. Re-Education and Training Manual and Guide. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/
O’Brien, A. (2025). American Made Addiction Recovery: a healer’s journey through professional recovery. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/
*This is for informational and educational purposes only. For medical advice or diagnosis, consult a professional.
