Another non-fiction author reckons without the drug war
open letter to Greg Epstein, author of Tech Agnostic
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
July 9, 2025
Hi, Greg.
You're obviously a great writer and researcher. I recognize that after listening to the first six tracks of your book1 on Downpour.com.
With respect, however, you are like almost every other non-fiction author today in that you reckon without the Drug War.
The fact that AI seeks to give us "transcendence" takes on a very different meaning when we recognize that we live in a world in which all drugs that can facilitate human transcendence have been outlawed by government, everything from the godsend phenethylamines synthesized by Alexander Shulgin234 to the erstwhile panacea called opium5, to the deified coca plant of the Peruvians67, not to mention, of course, the Soma juice of the Vedic people8 or the psychedelic kykeon at Eleusis9, which some drug pundits believe inspired Plato's views of the afterlife10.
This is the reason why I am so bothered by AI triumphalists. Before we rewire our brains to become one with AI, we should have the right to use the plants and fungi that grow at our very feet -- and the elating and insight-bringing medicines inspired thereby. I don't want an implant for depression from Elon Musk11 -- not until I have been allowed to first see what the myriad of potential psychoactive therapies hold in store for those who use them wisely and for good purposes (notwithstanding our government's superstitious and racist-motivated attempts to portray safe drug use as a contradiction in terms). And yet America even is now outlawing laughing gas, a substance which elates and inspires and which William James himself told us to study in order to learn about the nature of reality1213.
You are in good company, however, in ignoring this tyrannical context. Even today's science magazines ignore the implications of drug prohibition. That's why Science News and Scientific American still pretend that depression is a hard nut to crack, never acknowledging the fact that we have outlawed all drugs that could end depression in a trice (albeit not in a way that passion-scorning behaviorists and materialists would understand)14.
The result? We literally prefer that people commit suicide than to use "drugs"15 -- and we prefer that they undergo shock therapy rather than to use "drugs."16 My depressed uncle was a victim of this sick mindset, by the way. His materialist shock "treatment" was a blessing only for his care staff, for whom he was henceforth less obstreperous.
You mentioned a guy who said that Science was his God. That sounds like a rash conclusion in a world in which his government has purposefully outlawed all substances that provide human transcendence. That is about the only thing that Schedule I drugs have in common, after all: their ability to inspire and elate -- with the "worst" of them having the potential to inspire entire new religions. Does this guy really think that he has enough data to rule out other kinds of spirituality? or is he not rather brainwashed like almost every other westerner into assuming that drug prohibition is a natural baseline for human societies?
I can understand why you ignore this drug angle, however; because Americans are brainwashed about drugs -- having been shielded for a lifetime from positive reports of drug use -- and so writing openly on the subject no doubt runs the risk of losing your audience.
Best Wishes,
Brian Quass
abolishthedea.com
PS Wise drug use has the potential to make people comfortable in their own skins, appreciative of Mother Nature, etc.17 This fact alone suggests why a tech-centered world is in no hurry to re-legalize psychoactive substances. Big Tech wants a world in which we continually want to "keep up with the Joneses," not one in which we're happy with the simple things in life.
PPS For more on the relevance of drugs to the subject of Big Tech triumphalism, I invite you to see my articles describing the link between drug prohibition and materialism.1819202122 I hold that it was always a category error to place materialists23 in charge of creating and approving mind and mood medicine in the first place -- and that the proof of that conclusion is that it leads to absurd and inhumane outcomes, a few of which I have hinted at above.
Trump is the prototypical drug warrior. He knows that he can destroy American freedoms by fearmongering. He has seen it work with the Drug War, which got rid of the 4th Amendment, religious freedom and is now going after free speech.
The whole drug war is based on the anti-American idea that the way to avoid problems is to lie and prevaricate and persuade people not to ask questions.
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."
After over a hundred years of prohibition, America has developed a kind of faux science in which despised substances are completely ignored. This is why Sci Am is making a new argument for shock therapy in 2023, because they ignore all the stuff that OBVIOUSLY cheers one up.
Orchestras will eventually use psychedelics to train conductors. When the successful candidate directs mood-fests like Mahler's 2nd, THEY will be the stars, channeling every known -- and some unknown -- human emotions. Think Simon Rattle on... well, on psychedelics.
This is the "Oprah fallacy," which has led to so much suffering. She told women they were fools if they accepted a drink from a man. That's crazy. If we are terrified by such a statistically improbable event, we should be absolutely horrified by horses and skateboards.
Health is not a quality, it's a balance. To decide drug legality based on 'health' grounds thus opens a Pandora's box of different points of view.
The DEA conceives of "drugs" as only justifiable in some time-honored ritual format, but since when are bureaucrats experts on religion? I believe, with the Vedic people and William James, in the importance of altered states. To outlaw such states is to outlaw my religion.
Mad in America solicits personal stories about people trying to get off of antidepressants, but they will not publish your story if you want to use entheogenic medicines to help you. They're afraid their readers can't handle the truth.
Americans are far more fearful of psychoactive drugs than is warranted by either anecdote or history. We require 100% safety before we will re-legalize any "drug" -- which is a safety standard that we do not enforce for any other risky activity on earth.
Trump is the prototypical drug warrior. He knows that he can destroy American freedoms by fearmongering. He has seen it work with the Drug War, which got rid of the 4th Amendment, religious freedom and is now going after free speech.