bird icon for twitter bird icon for twitter


Another Cry in the Wilderness

open letter to US Senators Mark Warner and Tim Kaine

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

May 24, 2023



2025 update




May 24, 2023

The following screed was rapped out in double-time by a dude who by rights should be working on his freelance assignment right now (the nature of which work, however, shall remain a secret here in deference to the time sensitivities of the no-doubt harried reader). Brian couldn't stop himself, so pissed was he with the ongoing attempt by the US government to blame every imaginable earthly ill on the politically created boogieman called "drugs." These comments, by the way, were sent directly to the esteemed representatives via their websites, despite the nagging suspicion by the author that the duo in question have been hopelessly brainwashed by the Christian Science ideology of the war on Americans, AKA the War on Drugs.

By the way, the efficient causes of this harangue (if one might wax philosophical for just a moment) were the superstitious tweets of one Alex Berenson which Brian, alas, read this morning, in which the prohibitionist author tweaked reformers for the problems that he blamed on marijuana legalization 1 . As usual, all the problems that he cited (to the extent that they were not just the figments of a nature-fearing imagination) were actually the result of the ongoing prohibition of all of marijuana's competitors. With this niggling impetus then -- and with the anxious knowledge of tomorrow's US Senate vote on the troglodytic HALT Act -- Brian could do nought else but expostulate, even if it meant that the poor guy would be up past midnight tonight catching up on that undefined freelancing work of his that I alluded to above.


Dear Senators


Prohibition has been the biggest mistake in American history. It is wrong root and branch. Our attitude towards "drugs" is prehistoric and anti-scientific. We come at the issue from the wrong direction. We should be awestruck at Nature's healing power (which God said was good) and be seeking all sorts of ways to use it safely and wisely. Instead, we believe that all psychoactive substances are bad -- without even asking for proof.

It is a self-fulfilling prophecy, which leads to folks seeking transcendence from a corrupted drug supply furnished by dealers interested in the bottom line.

Please end this folly. We need an amendment that prohibits prohibition -- which causes death and sorrow and denies godsend medicines to the distressed. Even now, in America's hysterical attempt to blame opioids for every evil under the sun, we are denying godsend pain medicine to kids in hospice --based on our superstitious belief in the evil of opiates. Opium was considered a godsend by Avicenna, Galen and Paracelsus. It is not evil. Bad social policies are evil.

FREE SCIENCE. Stop the NIDA campaign to make us think that drugs can only be used for evil. It is propaganda, not science, because they completely ignore the reason people use "drugs": in order to transcend self and improve their lives. That is the truth. NIDA 2 is all about ignoring that fact.

The Drug War has led to the election of Drug Warriors like Trump by jailing hundreds of thousands of blacks. If unchecked, the Drug War will completely destroy America. It is not wrong in parts -- it is wrong ROOT AND BRANCH. It is a WRONG WAY OF LOOKING AT THE WORLD!!!!!!!!!!!!

No wonder it leads to chaos, inner-city deaths, and the end of the rule of law in Latin America!!!!

Please vote NO ON HALT


May 24, 2023
"The biggest mistake in American history." Well, slavery was worse. (Remember, the old boy wrote this in a hurry.) That said, however, the Drug War can be seen as the extension of slavery by other means, as the book Whiteout makes abundantly clear.



Author's Follow-up: January 9, 2025

picture of clock metaphorically suggesting a follow-up




Protesting the Drug War is frustrating for anyone who has seen through the racist and anti-democratic project. It is as if one lives in a world wherein logic applies except in the case of cats, a world in which everyone is convinced that cats are demons. Where does one begin in changing minds? You can't just say that, "No, cats are NOT demons." That's not going to convince any true believer in the reigning superstition. So you're forced to backtrack to Philosophy 101 and broach topics like, what makes a cat a cat and what makes a demon a demon and start creating logically undeniable syllogisms to distinguish the two.

Also, here's another "biggest mistake" in American history: our decision to go ahead with the development of thermonuclear weapons in the 1950s, rather than seeking to outlaw them entirely and launching a multi-billion-dollar campaign to increase compassion worldwide with the strategic use of entheogens. But that solution, unfortunately, is just common sense, and common sense is at a premium in the superstitious age of the Drug War. Just ask the materialists who cannot figure out if laughing gas could help the depressed3.

For anyone who doubts the enormity of this mistake regarding nukes, I suggest a little bedtime reading in the form of "nuclear war 4 5 6 : A Scenario" by Annie Jacobsen7.

What we've really got to outlaw, of course, are horses! When Christopher Reeves was disabled by one of those dangerous equines, we should have been asking: who was peddling that junk? From whom had Christopher bought that horse?! He should have been given 20 years at minimum for dealing in death!

See? I can become just as indignant as any Drug Warrior. Humph! Of course, I am a moderate. I do not believe with our Horse Czar that horse dealers should be beheaded -- that is going a bit too far, perhaps -- but they should certainly do some serious time! Humph!

Oh, it feels so good to be morally indignant. But we should not let Drug Warriors have all the fun. Let's get indignant about all people who deal in death: those who sell alcohol, for instance, and skateboards! Humph! Oh, the ecstasies of a just indignation!

You too can ride the prohibitionist's indignation bandwagon. Find out how here: .

Support the goal of the Partnership for a Death Free America. We are aiming for a Death-Free country by the year 2030! We need YOUR indignation to reach our goal! Tell Congress that you're not going to tolerate this anymore! End the madness! Outlaw all the many unregulated threats that could kill any one of our innocent little white children even as we speak! I say again, humph!




Author's Follow-up:

picture of clock metaphorically suggesting a follow-up




I need scarcely add that the HALT act was passed. The troglodytes in Congress still believe that health issues in America should be handled by the police. What a fascist idea! Until I studied the Drug War, I had my own reservations about national healthcare. Then I found that the harshest opponents of that measure were all in favor of spending trillions on health -- it's just that they wanted the money to go to the military and police forces. We could spend a fraction of that money on establishing a system of psychologically savvy empaths around the country who could advise on the safest and wisest uses for psychoactive medicine -- in a world in which all substances were legal once again and in which we frowned only on uneducated drug use -- not on drug use in general. After all, drug use created the Hindu religion. It was created thanks to the inspiration and elation provided by the psychoactive drug (or drugs) known as Soma. It follows from this statement that it is the violation of religious liberty to outlaw substances that inspire and elate.



Notes:

1: National Coalition for Drug Legalization (up)
2: How The NIDA Blocks Marijuana Research Over and Over (up)
3: Forbes Magazine's Laughable Article about Nitrous Oxide (up)
4: 8 Nuclear Close Calls that Nearly Spelled Disaster (up)
5: Global Nuclear Warhead Stockpiles (1945-2024) (up)
6: Nuclear Near-Misses: The Close Calls That Almost Changed the World (up)
7: An interview with Annie Jacobsen, author of ‘Nuclear War: A Scenario’ (up)


Pharmacologically Savvy Empaths




In an ideal world, we would replace psychiatrists with what I call pharmacologically savvy empaths, compassionate healers with a vast knowledge of psychoactive substances from around the world and the creativity to suggest a wide variety of protocols for their safe use as based on psychological common sense. By so doing, we would get rid of the whole concept of 'patients' and 'treat' everybody for the same thing: namely, a desire to improve one's mind and mood. But the first step toward this change will be to renounce the idea that materialist scientists are the experts when it comes to mind and mood medicine in the first place. This is a category error. The experts on mind and mood are real people with real emotion, not physical doctors whose materialist bona fides dogmatically require them to ignore all the benefits of drugs under the belief that efficacy is to be determined by looking under a microscope.

This materialism blinds such doctors to common sense, so much so that it leads them to prefer the suicide of their patient to the use of feel-good medicines that could cheer that patient up in a trice. For the fact that a patient is happy means nothing to the materialist doctor: they want the patient to 'really' be happy -- which is just their way of saying that they want a "cure" that will work according to the behaviorist principles to which they are dedicated as modern-day materialists. Anybody could prescribe a drug that works, after all: only a big important doctor can prescribe something that works according to theory. Sure, the prescription has a worse track record then the real thing, but the doctor's primary job is to vindicate materialism, not to worry about the welfare of their patient. And so they place their hands to their ears as the voice of common sense cries out loudly and clearly: "You could cheer that patient up in a jiffy with a wide variety of medicines that you have chosen to demonize rather than to use in creative and safe ways for the benefit of humankind!" I am not saying that doctors are consciously aware of this evil --merely that they are complicit in it thanks to their blind allegiance to the inhumane doctrine of behaviorism.

This is the sick reality of our current approach. And yet everybody holds this mad belief, this idea that medical doctors should treat mind and mood conditions.

How do I know this?

Consider the many organizations that are out to prevent suicide. If they understood the evil consequences of having medical doctors handle our mind and mood problems, they would immediately call for the re-legalization of drugs and for psychiatrists to morph into empathizing, drug-savvy shamans. Why? Because the existing paradigm causes totally unnecessary suicides: it makes doctors evil by dogmatically requiring them to withhold substances that would obviously cheer one up and even inspire one (see the uplifting and non-addictive meds created by Alexander Shulgin, for instance). The anti-suicide movement should be all about the sane use of drugs that elate. The fact that it is not speaks volumes about America's addiction to the hateful materialist mindset of behaviorism.

More proof? What about the many groups that protest brain-damaging shock therapy? Good for them, right? but... why is shock therapy even necessary? Because we have outlawed all godsend medicines that could cheer up almost anybody "in a trice." And why do we do so? Because we actually prefer to damage the brain of the depressed rather than to have them use drugs. We prefer it! Is this not the most hateful of all possible fanaticisms: a belief about drugs that causes us to prefer suicide and brain damage to drug use? Is it really only myself who sees the madness here? Is there not one other philosopher on the planet who sees through the fog of drug war propaganda to the true evil that it causes?

This is totally unrecognized madness -- and it cries out for a complete change in America's attitude, not just toward drugs but toward our whole approach to mind and mood. We need to start learning from the compassionate holism of the shamanic world as manifested today in the cosmovision of the Andes. We need to start considering the human being as an unique individual and not as an interchangeable widget amenable to the one-size-fits-all cures of reductionism. The best way to fast-track such change is to implement the life-saving protocol of placing the above-mentioned pharmacologically savvy empaths in charge of mind and mood and putting the materialist scientists back where they belong: in jobs related to rocket chemistry and hadron colliders. We need to tell the Dr. Spocks of psychology that: "Thanks, but no thanks. We don't need your help when it comes to subjective matters, thank you very much indeed. Take your all-too-logical mind back to the physics lab where it belongs."

  • Addicted to Addiction
  • Addicted to Ignorance
  • Addiction
  • After the Drug War
  • After the Drug War part 2
  • Another Cry in the Wilderness
  • Assisted Suicide and the War on Drugs
  • Beta Blockers and the Materialist Tyranny of the War on Drugs
  • Brahms is NOT the best antidepressant
  • Case Studies in Wise Drug Use
  • Common Sense Drug Withdrawal
  • Declaration of Independence from the War on Drugs
  • Drug Use as Self-Medication
  • Drugs are not the enemy, hatred is the enemy
  • Ego Transcendence Made Easy
  • Elderly Victims of Drug War Ideology
  • Four reasons why Addiction is a political term
  • Getting off antidepressants in the age of the drug war
  • Goodbye Patient, Hello Client
  • Harold & Kumar Support the Drug War
  • Heroin versus Alcohol
  • How Cocaine could have helped me
  • How drug prohibition destroys the lives of the depressed
  • How Drug Prohibition Leads to Excessive Drinking and Smoking
  • How Psychiatry and the Drug War turned me into an eternal patient
  • How the Drug War Blinds us to Godsend Medicine
  • How the Drug War is a War on Creativity
  • How the Drug War Killed Amy Winehouse
  • How The Drug War Killed Andy Gibb
  • How the Drug War Punishes the Elderly
  • How the Myth of Mental Illness supports the war on drugs
  • How to Unite Drug War Opponents of all Ethnicities
  • Hypocritical America Embraces Drug War Fascism
  • In Praise of Doctor Feelgood
  • In Praise of Drug Dealers
  • In Praise of Thomas Szasz
  • Let's Hear It For Psychoactive Therapy
  • Medications for so-called 'opioid-use disorder' are legion
  • Notes about the Madness of Drug Prohibition
  • Open Letter to Dr. Carl L. Hart
  • Open Letter to Erowid
  • Open Letter to Gabrielle Glaser
  • Open Letter to Lisa Ling
  • Pihkal 2.0
  • Replacing 12-Step Programs with Shamanic Healing
  • Replacing Psychiatry with Pharmacologically Savvy Shamanism
  • Science is not free in the age of the drug war
  • Shannon Information and Magic Mushrooms
  • Someone you love is suffering unnecessarily because of the war on drugs
  • Thank God for Erowid
  • Thank God for Soul Quest
  • THE ANTI DRUG WAR BLOG
  • The Drug War and Armageddon
  • The Great Philosophical Problem of Our Time
  • The Mother of all Western Biases
  • The Muddled Metaphysics of the Drug War
  • The Myth of the Addictive Personality
  • The New Age of Pharmacological Serfdom
  • The Origins of Modern Psychiatry
  • The Philosophical Idiocy of the Drug War
  • The real reason for depression in America
  • Using Opium to Fight Depression
  • What Jim Hogshire Got Wrong about Drugs
  • Why America's Mental Healthcare System is Insane
  • Why Americans Prefer Suicide to Drug Use
  • Why Louis Theroux is Clueless about Addiction and Alcoholism
  • Why Scientists Should Not Judge Drugs





  • Ten Tweets

    against the hateful war on US




    And so, by ignoring all "up" sides to drugs, the DEA points to potential addiction as a knock-down argument for their prohibition. This is the logic of children (and uneducated children at that). It is a cost-benefit analysis that ignores all benefits.

    We're living in a sci-fi dystopia called "Fahrenheit 452", in which the police burn thought-expanding plants instead of thought-expanding books.

    The Holy Trinity of the Drug War religion is Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and John Belushi. "They died so that you might fear psychoactive substances with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength."

    The drug war is a big scare campaign to teach us to distrust mother nature and to rely on pharmaceuticals instead.

    Suicidal people should be given drugs that cheer them up immediately and whose use they can look forward to. The truth is, we would rather such people die than to give them such drugs, that's just how bamboozled we are by the war against drugs.

    We throw people out of jobs for using "drugs," we praise them for using "meds." The categories are imaginary, made up by politicians who want to demonize certain substances, but not cigs or beer.

    "Dope Sick"? "Prohibition Sick" is more like it. The very term "dope" connotes imperialism, racism and xenophobia, given that all tribal cultures have used "drugs" for various purposes. "Dope? Junk?" It's hard to imagine a more intolerant, dismissive and judgmental terminology.

    Alcohol is a drug in liquid form. If drug warriors want to punish people who use drugs, they should start punishing themselves.

    Just saw a prosecutor gloating about the drug dealers she has taken down. What a joke. How much is she getting paid to play whack-a-mole? RE-LEGALIZE MIND AND MOOD MEDICINE!

    Besides, why should I listen to the views of a microbe?


    Click here to see All Tweets against the hateful War on Us






    How the Jefferson Foundation Betrayed Thomas Jefferson
    What Carl Hart Missed


    Copyright 2025 abolishthedea.com, Brian Quass

    (up)