Power, Poison, and the Price of Not Believing Ourselves

Troy Lowndes
Jul 13
3 min read

Updated: Aug 11

Let me put it plainly.

For over thirty years, I was addicted to a legalised, government-sanctioned drug: alcohol.

I drank. I paid taxes. No one blinked.

The government was happy to take its cut.

Never once did they ask if it was helping me.

Never once did they wonder if I needed something different ... something healing, something grounded, something natural.

But try to grow a cannabis plant?

Try to brew a tea with a mushroom that opens the heart instead of clouding the mind?

Suddenly, you’re a criminal. A risk to society. A threat to the system.

Why?

Because you can’t be taxed for a plant you grow in your backyard.

Because if you’re healing on your own terms, you're no longer dependent on them.

Where Was the Choice?

When I was a kid, I didn’t get a say in what was put in my body.

No one explained that the silver fillings shoved into my teeth were 50% mercury, or that we’d later find links between those metals and neurological conditions.

No one looked at my behaviour, my sensitivities, my restlessness and said, “This kid might be neurodivergent. Let’s listen.”

Instead, I was told to behave.

To try harder.

To fit in.

I wasn’t given tools.

I was given toxins. And told it was care.

So when I say this now ... that we deserve to choose how we heal, how we manage our minds, and how we live ... I’m not being rebellious. I’m demanding what should’ve been mine all along.

Neurodivergence and Control

People like me ... those of us with ADHD, autism, or other forms of neurodivergence .... have lived under a silent dictatorship of conformity. We’ve been medicated into compliance or left to fend for ourselves in a world not built for our minds.

But the options that could’ve helped us ... sensory therapies, plant-based tools, non-linear education, embodied healing ... have been under-researched, underfunded, and often outright illegal.

Not because they’re dangerous.

But because they challenge the status quo.

They empower individuals.

They disrupt the business model.

Power to the People, Not the Patent

This is the real crisis ... not just in health, but in trust.

We’re told over and over again:

“Don’t trust yourself. You can’t be trusted. You don’t know what’s best for you.”

And yet, governments have been getting it wrong for decades. They poisoned us with mercury. They taxed our addictions. They pathologised our differences. They criminalised our healing.

It’s time to stop handing over our autonomy in exchange for hollow promises.