Doug Thorburn, addiction expert, addiction contrarian and author of the recently released
Alcoholism: Myths and Realities: Removing the Stigma of Society's Most Destructive Disease, has released his January-February 2010 Thorburn Addiction Report with a Top Story of the Month that tackles a very controversial issue: The Addiction of Muslim Suicide Bombers to various types of opiates and other drugs. Long an assumption of Thorburn's, this issue has popped up again with the recent events at Fort Hood and the Underwear Bomber on the Detroit bound airplane.
Doug Thorburn's article and conclusions give one a whole new perspective into a scary aspect of our current world.
Here is Doug Thorburn's Top Story of the Month in January-February 2010 Thorburn Addiction Report. http://www.preventragedy.com
More Evidence that Terrorism is Fueled by Addiction to Psychotropic Substances: The Possible Role of Khat In an article written in 2001 I suggested that
Osama bin Laden might be addicted to opiates and hashish, and that many of the 9-11 attackers were likely alcoholics. In cases too numerous to mention, from
Drunks, Drugs & Debits: How to Recognize Addicts and Avoid Financial Abuse to this Report, a far greater percentage of despots, mass murderers and cultists have been identified as alcohol or other-drug addicts than would be expected by mere chance or if we ignore the role that addiction plays in fueling megalomania.
Evidence supports the idea that while not every terrorist is an addict, those who are not are likely either abstinent but not sober after having suffered obvious serious drug problems (the first female European Muslim convert to commit a suicide bombing in Iraq had "drug problems" in her youth) or have been heavily influenced by an addict (consider the effect that the amphetamine-addicted Hitler had on his henchmen, not all of whom were likely addicts). We might hypothesize that just as terrorism in the forms of street thuggery and in-home domestic abuse are almost always motivated by an addiction-driven need for domination and control, so is Islamic terrorism.
Evidence for this was uncovered by
The Economist magazine, which found that a common thread among Muslim terrorists is "an unIslamic taste for alcohol and women," and another is having been "rescued" from prisons filled with addicts, like would-be shoe bomber Richard Reid. While alcohol addiction or serious codependency doesn't explain every terrorist, adding a drug or two other than alcohol might get us a lot closer to explaining the rest of them.
One of these drugs might be khat (for
Scrabble ™ players, alternative spellings include Kat and Qat, which can work wonders when a "u" is unavailable). Khat (pronounced "cot"), abundant in Yemen, is a mild stimulant that is both chewed and smoked, which causes euphoria and, in some, abnormal behavior. The "abnormal behavior" is commonly described to include verbal outbursts, schizophrenic behavior and insomnia, which often results in the use of counteracting drugs like barbiturates (as Hitler used to counteract his amphetamines) and alcohol, even by Muslims.
Since psychotropic drugs of all stripes potentiate each other, creating an effect far greater than the sum of their parts, there may be innumerable addicts who, because they seemingly use only a "little" of two or more drugs, go unidentified for decades and, even, for entire lives and beyond. Consider the countless books written about Adolf Hitler, none of which even considered the possibility of addiction until Heston's 1978 book (The Medical Casebook of
Adolf Hitler), or all-too-many biographies of screen stars (
Bette Davis), politicians (Sen. Joseph McCarthy) and even musicians (the Supreme's Diana Ross, before she entered rehab), in which the subject's addiction isn't identified. There may be innumerable khat addicts, for which a useful definition (one that explains the root of the behavior and does not simply describe its symptoms) is those afflicted with a genetic predisposition to process the drug khat in such a way as to cause that person to engage in observably destructive behaviors, at least some of the time.
Yet khat is downplayed as a potential psychotropic, capable of causing distortions of perception and memory, along with concomitant egomania. Perhaps this is because it is not viewed as physically addictive (although withdrawal is marked by "mild depression" and irritability). This may also be due to the fact that it plays a dominant role in the celebrations, marriages and religious and political meetings of Yemen, Ethiopia and East Africa, much as alcohol does in the West, but even more so. Its use is so common in Yemen that Yemenite homes are built with a reception room for khat chewing and non-use can result in social ostracism.
The rooms include several large and hard pillows against which khat chewers lean, along with one or two communal pipes consisting of a tobacco bowl, a 3-4 foot high metal pipe, a water filter and a 20-foot long flexible tube, which is passed from person to person (it's as if Americans had a lounge with a fully-stocked bar with stools in every home). In terms of varieties, khat is similar to the non-psychotropic drug coffee in that the demand and price of the plant vary with the soil and climate in which it is grown. Some khat produces more insomnia than others, and even occasional hallucinations. Different varieties vary in the euphoria, depression and aphrodisiac effect they elicit, which is perhaps not dissimilar to varying alcohol contents and resulting blood alcohol levels.
A typical khat "session" begins soon after lunch. An "extended" session is typically marked by about two hours of euphoria accompanied by a "friendly" atmosphere, followed by approximately two hours of "zeal" during which time current events and problems are often discussed, and then a period of serious mood, which may be accompanied by irritability. In some areas of Yemen, the chewing begins after breakfast and continues throughout the day, even by children.
Like alcohol, khat decreases the need for food (though for different reasons; alcohol supplies empty carbohydrates and khat acts like amphetamine, the users of which often go for days without eating). Like alcohol, serious abnormal behavior develops in an apparently small minority of users and is in part dose-related. Like alcohol, amphetamines and perhaps a cocktail of other psychotropic drugs, khat use can result in rambling speech with impressive-sounding words that do not fit the context, along with aggressive verbal outbursts.
Like amphetamines, its chemistry includes a form of ephedrine and can result in behaviors that look like schizophrenia and paranoia. It clearly aggravates those in whom schizophrenia and paranoia have been diagnosed, but since its use so often begins in childhood, it may, like amphetamines, simply trigger these disorders. As is true of amphetamine addicts, counteracting drugs including tranquilizers and alcohol are often used. Like alcohol, withdrawal can result in agitated depression and abusive behaviors, but according to some authorities, not violent ones. However, as khat was enough of a problem to have been legally banned in Yemen for a year in 1957, the assertion that use of and withdrawal from khat provokes only verbal abuse is questionable at best and, at worst, may be designed to take our focus off the problem.
A World Health Organization report suggests the potential for violence. The WHO committee on drug dependence notes that khat chewing can induce grandiose delusions, fear, anxiety and amphetamine psychosis, the symptoms of which include euphoria, grandiosity, paranoid delusions, confusion, aggression and irritability. Hitler had these symptoms; so do some khat users, a few of whom are perhaps responsible for the fact that a very small percentage of Muslims become Jihadists.
The idea that khat acts on some adversely just like alcohol could explain reports of "outbursts of irrational violence" in some khat users, who we should therefore refer to as addicts. Garrison Courtney, a spokesman for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, bluntly states: "It is definitely not like coffee. It is the same drug used by young kids who go out and shoot people in Africa, Iraq and Afghanistan. It is something that gives you a heightened sense of invincibility, and when you look at those effects, you could take out the word 'khat' and put in 'heroin' or 'cocaine.'" I would subtract heroin and add, especially, alcohol and, perhaps, PCP and methamphetamine.
Many Yemenites spend a third and even one-half of their income on khat. These are not wealthy people. One might surmise this could cause familial problems and in fact, khat is cited as a factor in approximately half of divorces in Djibouti, Yemen's capital. Domestic violence may be vastly understated in a society in which women do not feel safe to speak freely.
Would-be suicide bomber
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab showed signs of trouble only after graduating from a prominent London university in June 2008. Umar, the son of a prominent Nigerian banker, defied his family's wishes only after a stopover in Dubai, going to Yemen with a vow to study Arabic and Shariah law. A year and a half later, he boarded a plane in Nigeria destined for Detroit planning to blow up the plane.
We don't know what Abdulmutallab was using, if anything. However, while passengers were screaming, he was not. Michigan native Melinda Dennis was sitting in the first row of first class when the suspect was placed in a seat across the aisle from her. "He didn't say anything," said Dennis. "He was burned very severely on his leg … He was very calm and didn't show any reaction to pain." This is extraordinary considering he suffered 2nd and 3rd degree burns.
Most khat users seem to use the drug "normally," just like most users of alcohol. However, in some, it causes euphoria, an increased need to use other drugs, schizophrenic behaviors, paranoia and confusion (which could be similar to the confabulated thinking of alcoholics). It also seems to cause, in this minority of users, egomania, the evidence for which includes the use of impressive-sounding words, verbal outbursts, grandiosity, delusions (of grandeur when combined with grandiosity), aggression, irritability, irrational violence, an increased sense of invincibility and the use of far more of the family resources than is affordable. Resulting misbehaviors in which addicts engage are a function of, among other things, circumstances and environment. Where the environment and circumstances, including the particular religion one adheres to, is "just" right, the form that addiction could take might be terrorism. Addiction to khat could be a key to understanding its roots.
For more on terrorists and despotism, see "Tantalizing Clues to Addiction in Suicide Bombers" in the
August 2005 TAR, the discussion of Cho and other mass murderers in "An Addict's Rage" in the
April-May 2007 TAR, "Terrorism and Addiction" (a particularly good read—note especially the discussion of Ivan the Terrible, one of history's most horrific terrorists) in the September 2006 TAR, "Kim Jong Il, North Korea and Nuclear Weapons" in the
October 2004 TAR and "Could Addiction Explain the Life of Yasir Arafat?" in the
November 2004 TAR.
For more on khat, see the
August 1976 edition of the Annals of Internal Medicine (available only by subscription or single article purchase), which includes many fascinating asides, including a number of physical aspects that somewhat mimic those of other drugs. Heavy khat use causes pupil dilation, as do amphetamines and, to a lesser degree, marijuana and alcohol. It acts deleteriously on diabetics, can aggravate hyperglycemia and may cause gastritis, all of which are common in alcoholics. It can act as an aphrodisiac, which mimics many of the (at least temporary and early-stage) other-drug addictions. For a non-subscription view of khat, visit Frontier Psychiatrist, which in turn includes a number of related links.
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