Ask your doctor if healthcare freedom is right for YOU
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
August 27, 2025
On these mornings when I cannot seem to get my thoughts in order, I silently curse all the Drug Warriors who have denied me my right to every single medicine that could help me focus my mind and get things done. Could there be any greater injustice in the world than to outlaw all the substances that could help me in so basic a task as thinking straight and getting things done in life -- nay, in WISHING to get things done, for the drugs that they are denying me serve to motivate as well as focus? Why, I ask myself, am I not a stakeholder in all their demonizing chatter about drugs? Why are the only stakeholders considered to be the white American young people whom we refuse to educate about safe drug use?
If we are ever going to effectively push back against the prehistoric Drug War mentality of substance demonization, then folks like myself must speak up. Why am I, then, the only one to do so? Sure, folks will decry the existence of suicide and the psychiatric pill mill and the gunfire in inner-city streets -- but they will never make the obvious connection between those problems and drug prohibition, which caused those problems in the first place. No one will ever speak up on behalf of the right of the individual to take care of their own so-called mental health.
Of course, the critics of my common-sense approach to so-called "drugs" will try to "shut me down" by complaining that I am giving medical advice on this philosophical website -- which is the great sin these days, almost as bad as exercising one's time-honored right to take care of one's own health by "self-medicating"1 -- but that is the whole problem: these critics actually think that medical doctors are the experts when it comes to mind and mood medicine. That is the mother of all category errors! Do I need a medical doctor to tell me whether I should relax with a glass of alcohol after a long day at work?*
The folly of this category error is blazingly clear, in fact. These medical "experts" sign off on the imperialist lie of the Drug Warrior, namely, that drugs that have inspired entire religions have no positive uses for anybody, no, not at any dose when used for any reasons in any circumstance. These medical "experts" demand to see proof of efficacy under a microscope and they are completely blind to obvious drug benefits. This is why materialists like Dr. Robert Glatter claim to be uncertain whether laughing gas itself could help the depressed2. Laughing gas! A child knows that laughter is the best medicine. We should be giving laughing gas kits to the depressed just as we give EpiPens to those with severe allergies, to help them in their hour of need.
And yet the FDA is working to reclassify the gas as an evil "drug," this despite the fact that it is already, as a practical matter, shamefully unavailable to the suicidal and the depressed -- a fact which helps account for a large part of the 49,000 suicides a year in America alone3. This is the same FDA that actually champions the use of brain-damaging shock therapy4. This is the same FDA that signs off on the use of Big Pharma drugs whose advertised side effects include death itself5. This is the same FDA that looks on complacently as the Jim Beam company targets ads for 80-proof bourbon at young people on prime-time television6.
I would add that William James himself told philosophers to use the gas to study the nature of ultimate reality -- but then the cause of academic freedom is not even on the radar of our drug-demonizing government78. I am the only philosopher in the world who formally protested to the FDA on behalf of academic freedom during their recent attempts to classify laughing gas as a drug9.
As usual, my critics have gotten hold of a half-truth, however. We really do need experts on the subject of drug use, even if medical doctors do not fit that bill. As things stand now, it is impossible for a would-be conscientious drug user to perform "due diligence" when it comes to drug use. Sure, everybody and his brother will tell you what THEY think or what experience THEY had (or that their second cousin had) -- with some drug, at some dose, in some circumstance -- but we need experts who have parsed this ever-growing body of raw data from our anonymous hoi polloi and can highlight what we as would-be responsible users need to know given our own situation: our own goals, our own preferences, our own psycho-social history, our own biochemistry, our own genetics, our own risk tolerance, etc. etc. etc. But we can have no experts of this kind until we re-legalize all medicine. Only then can we anoint a set of real experts when it comes to psychoactive drug use, experts whom I would provisionally refer to with the hopefully self-explanatory title of "pharmacologically savvy empaths.10" Only then can our vulnerable populations begin receiving informed advice about drugs based on actual use in the real world and not based on the Drug Warrior's hypocritical, anti-scientific and Christian Science assumption that all drug use is necessarily wrong.
We need, moreover, to recognize that there is no one single expert on drug use.
Of course, all "experts" worthy of that name should have a few things in common: they should all have a thorough knowledge of drug use (including the use of alcohol and coffee and antidepressants) from the point of view of history, anecdote and psychological common sense (common sense, that is, before myopic and passion-scorning behaviorists got ahold of it). They should be familiar with the user reports on websites like Erowid11 and in the rare user-focused books like Pihkal by Alexander Shulgin12. They should be fluent in the field of ethnobotany and the use of psychoactive medicines in the societies that the West has conquered and exploited. They should be aware of the common-sense psychological potential of every naturally occurring psychoactive substance on the planet, when used alone or in combination, by a variety of demographics at a variety of doses. In other words, they should be aware of the details of drug use -- the details that Drug Warriors completely ignore when they rule by legislative fiat that such drugs have no benefits whatsoever.
But safety concerns are only one of many considerations when it comes to drug use. Nor are they even the MAIN concern, since few of us would consider an abstract "safety" to be our number-one goal in life. Only a cowardly Babbitt would think in that way, not a Sigmund Freud nor a Robin Williams nor a Jack Kerouac nor a Marcus Aurelius nor a Ben Franklin nor an HP Lovecraft nor an Edgar Allan Poe nor a Jules Verne nor an HG Wells -- all of whom put drug-aided self-actualization ahead of the attainment of a hypocritically defined "sobriety." And yet it is actually illegal to be a Ben Franklin in 21st-century America. To put this another way: we outlaw far more than drugs when we outlaw mind and mood medicine. Americans think that the Drug War is a niche issue merely because they are blind to all such enormous downsides. But then how can I expect them to grasp such tyrannical corollaries of their drug prohibition when they are blind to the many enormous downsides of that policy that are staring them in their face: like the gunfire in our streets, the repeal of time-honored American freedoms, and the mass incarceration of minorities, all in the name of fighting the politically created scapegoat called "drugs"?
The propriety of psychoactive drug use depends on far more than physical considerations: it depends on what the user values in life. Do we want to be a spiritual person? Do we want to quit smoking? Do we want to bulldoze ahead with economic success and "let the devil take the hindmost"? The kinds of drugs that we should be using for any given purpose depend on our goals in life and ultimately on our philosophy of life, on our idea of what life is (or should be) all about. We should therefore have a variety of drug-savvy counselors from which to choose, counselors who will honor and respect our values as a would-be drug user. This is why it is such tyranny to have bureaucrats second-guessing drug prescriptions: what such bureaucrats are really doing is second-guessing entire philosophies of life which are presupposed by the way we use psychoactive drugs.
As a conscientious writer on these topics, I strive to be constantly aware of the hackles that my common-sense views will naturally raise on the backs of a brainwashed readership, since almost all Americans (and Westerners in general) have been shielded since childhood from all positive reports of drug use. One particular knee-jerk objection immediately comes to mind: namely, the concern that, if my ideas were implemented, if time-honored medicines were re-legalized, then young people will end up using drugs problematically.
This complaint is laughable, however, assuming that the plaintiffs are really worried about health in general and not just the health of their own white progeny. While these clowns are telling me of the dangers of re-legalizing drugs, I think of the 67,000 minorities killed in America's inner cities over the last ten years13, of the 60,000 disappeared in the Mexican Drug War14, of the end of the rule of law in Latin America and the end of democracy in America -- all brought about by drug prohibition. When are these worrywarts going to worry about the downsides of NOT re-legalizing drugs?! Such childish and selfish Westerners need to grow up: they need to finally realize that risky activities always have victims -- whether we are talking about horseback riding, car driving, or liquor drinking. We have to jettison the childish idea that the so-called "drug-related" death of a single white American young person constitutes a kind of "knock-down" argument in favor of drug prohibition. Before we pass draconian laws based on that solitary death, we should remember the HALF A MILLION Americans who have been killed thanks to drug prohibition since Nixon launched his War on Drugs in 1971. Half a million15! The Chicken Littles among us need to start putting things in some kind of perspective! The moment they do so, they will start prioritizing education over arrest.
We have to learn the lesson from the Turn of the Screw by William James: that an obsessive desire to protect our young people will always backfire -- even if the victims of that approach happen to live on the other side of the tracks. The most we can do -- the most that we should TRY to do -- is to lower the overall risk of drug use by educating people, not by arresting them.
TIME TO SHUT UP ABOUT DRUGS
The Drug Warrior has put drug use front and center in America and so turned everybody into a self-appointed expert on drugs. And so everybody feels free to chat about drugs online, either to demonize them publicly -- or else to tell us the politically incorrect way that they REALLY think about drugs in an anonymous forum. This constant chatter serves to promote uninformed drug use among young people by keeping the subject constantly before their eyes. This is to be expected in a country that actually frowns on education on this topic. If we want to discourage abuse, we should be honest with kids at long last. We should stop proselytizing them in the faith of Christian Science by teaching them that drugs are somehow bad in and of themselves. We need to teach them that the propriety of any given drug use (from aspirin to alcohol to opium to dependence-causing antidepressants) is determined entirely by DETAILS -- details specific to the potential users, wherefore it is presumptuous madness to claim that some drugs are somehow bad in and of themselves. We need to seek out the kinds of experts that I have described above: but first we have to allow such experts to actually exist!
Free speech is not the problem here: the problem is the lack of any recognized experts on drugs -- other than the self-interested and purblind materialist doctors who would rather that we fry our brains with shock therapy than to use drugs that have inspired entire religions. Of course, Drug Warriors do not WANT us to have any real experts on drugs: for our government policy is to scare young people about drugs, not to educate them. That is why America has a National Institute on Drug Abuse and not a National Institute on Drug Use.
CAVEAT
When I call for this new set of experts, I am not suggesting that they be gatekeepers to drug use. My point is merely this: that if we want the average person to use drugs wisely, then there has to be a recognized source for unbiased information on doing just that. Currently, there are no such acknowledged sources. Sites like Erowid16 are a step in the right direction -- with their focus on actual user reports -- but they overwhelm the user with acontextual data. (You will be told there that Kratom was probably responsible for the death of one American -- but you will not be told there, as you should be, in the same breath that alcohol was responsible for the death of 178,000 of that victim's countrymen.) Potential wise drug users need the kinds of experts who can parse Erowid's raw data into meaningful advice for an individual person, given that person's unique wants, needs, desires, biochemistry, genetics, risk tolerance, goals in life, etc. Nor am I suggesting that everyone requires such advice. Benjamin Franklin was a big boy. He did not need outsiders to tell him that opium was right for him given his goals in life. This is because, truth be told, Ben was the expert on this topic-- because only he knew how he felt and experienced life -- and how he WISHED to feel and experience life.
CONCLUSION
When publishing my essays on the topic of drugs, I am always mindful of the following statement by philosopher Alfred North Whitehead in his introduction to "The Concept of Nature":
"In the presentation of a novel outlook with wide ramifications, a single line of communications from premises to conclusions is not sufficient for intelligibility. Your audience will construe whatever you say into conformity with their pre-existing outlook." 17
Tell me about it, Al!
Whitehead's warning is particularly relevant to a drug-related discussion in 21st-century America, given that one's potential audience has been brainwashed since grade-school by drug-war propaganda, above all in the form of censorship. My readers have been primed to disbelieve in the beneficial powers of drugs. Since my childhood in the 1970s, it has been considered worse than illegal to talk about drugs in a positive light, as Jim Morrison learned to his cost when he sang an uncensored version of "Light My Fire" on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1971. Indeed, the censorship of contrarian voices has been almost thorough on this topic, as one can tell by entering any library today, wherein books about drug abuse abound while books about safe and beneficial drug use are totally absent18. With this lifelong brainwashing in mind, I conclude this essay with a few first-person accounts of beneficial drug use from "Pihkal" by Alexander Shulgin19, if only to remind the reader that such beneficial drug use is actually possible.
"More than tranquil, I was completely at peace, in a beautiful, benign, and placid place."
"A glimpse of what true heaven is supposed to feel like."
"I was caught up with the imagery, and there was an overriding religious aspect to the day."
And yet we are told to ask our DOCTORS what drugs are right for us? Our doctors??? Our doctors are MADMEN and MADWOMEN in the age of drug prohibition.
They prefer that the chronically depressed, like yours truly, actually KILL themselves -- or at least undergo brain-damaging shock therapy -- than to use the kinds of drugs that inspired the above citations. The proof of that statement is extant. It is clear in the fact that the psychiatric field is silent in the face of the massive outlawing of blessed relief for a suffering humanity. But then psychiatrists know upon which side their bread is buttered -- as do all professionals, alas, hence the almost thorough censorship of honest drug-related discussions in academia. Even William James's use of laughing gas has been censored from his online biography at his alma mater, Harvard University20 -- for the same reason that Thomas Jefferson's poppy plants were confiscated by the DEA at Monticello212223 -- for the same reasons that most biographies of Benjamin Franklin ignore his love for opium. Why? Because America rewrites history itself to make it conform with modern drug-war prejudices.
Enough gaslighting! I urge the reader to join me in speaking up against America's hateful outlawing of godsend medicines.
Oh, but I almost forgot. I cannot end this drug-related essay without the obligatory disclaimer:
Be sure to check with your doctor to make sure that healthcare freedom is right for YOU!
*I should probably refrain from even asking that question lest I put ideas in the heads of our ambitious healthcare establishment, which profits so handsomely from controlling the minutest aspects of our psycho-social lives. I am sure they would be more than happy to turn alcohol into a prescription drug -- since, obviously, they themselves know best whether relaxing "with a cold one" is good for us as mere laypeople. You may THINK that alcohol relaxes you and that said relaxation has obvious knock-on benefits. But didn't you know? only our scientists can tell us if alcohol use is "really" beneficial for you! And, of course, it will take many expensive laboratory studies to make such a determination. And even those determinations will only apply to one demographic at a time. The scientific establishment will first have to see if alcohol use can benefit day laborers between 20 and 40 years old; then white-collar workers between 30 and 50; then aristocrats between 40 and 60.
I trust the reader grasps the take-home message from this argumentum ad absurdum that I have postulated here. It is merely this: that we say goodbye to common sense the moment that we put medical science in charge of pronouncing on the propriety of our personal use of psychoactive substances.
Author's Follow-up:
September 29, 2025
Sigmund Freud discovered that cocaine ENDED DEPRESSION for the majority of users -- ENDED DEPRESSION -- and like most people, he had no problem "getting off" this miracle drug -- and that was after he had used the substance beneficially on a regular basis for three years24! But the medical doctors were horrified at the idea of a drug that would render the medical industry UNNECESSARY for the depressed. They therefore focused all their attention (and mock outrage) on the rare misuse of cocaine. In particular, they focused on the inability of morphine abusers to use cocaine wisely. But why should they be surprised that a person lacking self-control with respect to one substance should demonstrate the same irresponsibility with respect to another substance? As Falstaff said to the clueless Pistol: "Reason, you rogue! Reason!"
Cocaine is used wisely by most people, even today25 -- and this despite the fact that the government is doing all it can to make drug use as dangerous as possible, by refusing to educate about safe use, refusing to regulate product as to quantity and quality, and refusing to offer cocaine alternatives -- and, of course, doing its best to incarcerate anyone who dares take care of their own health with the use of this naturally occurring alkaloid.
If we held aspirin to the same standards as cocaine, then our Drug Warriors would outlaw the analgesic, since it is connected with 3,000 deaths per year in the UK alone26. Of course, if we evaluated drugs in a rational way, then liquor itself would disappear from the shelves overnight, as alcohol is connected with 178,000 deaths a year in America alone27!
As for the rare cases of cocaine dependency, let's put this in context. My psychiatrist tells me that the Big Pharma antidepressant called Effexor (i.e., Venlafaxine) has a 95% recidivism rate for long-term users according to the NIH. 95%! And that is a figure that I can vouch for personally given my own failed attempts to get off the drug over the last two years. It seems that Effexor mucks about with brain chemistry, and that brain chemistry does NOT go back to normal for the user after renouncing the drug.
That's a 95% recidivism rate for this unanimously approved treatment for depression, a treatment that the Mayo Clinic itself promotes to this day, without warning their readership that the drug will turn them into patients for life. 95%! Compare this to the mere 5% of soldiers who had problems getting off heroin in the States after using it on a daily basis in Vietnam. 5%!28
The moral of this story is clear: all this drug-war blather about addiction and dependency is hypocritical and self-interested in the extreme!
And let us not forget the main reason why it is IMPOSSIBLE to get off of Effexor in the first place: it is because of drug prohibition itself, which has outlawed all the substances (like laughing gas, coca, and opium) whose wise, intermittent use could help one do just that! What is recidivism but the result of a few hours of psychological angst that could be transcended and obfuscated by the strategic and well-timed use of substances that inspire and elate?! That much is psychological common sense. And yet common sense is at a premium in the age of purblind materialism, an age in which our scientists cannot even figure out if laughing gas might help the depressed! When are Americans going to wake up to the fact that they are being gaslighted by the medical industry about the supposed non-existence of glaringly obvious drug benefits -- and that they are being gaslighted for very obvious financial reasons? The medical establishment knows that they would lose billions if drug prohibition were brought to an end, and the FDA is working on their behalf to see that this never happens. This explains why the FDA approves Big Pharma meds whose side effects as advertised on prime-time television include death itself, while they yet refuse to approve a drug like Ecstasy, a substance which, properly speaking, has never killed anyone -- and which, to the contrary, brought people together in unprecedented peace, love and understanding on the dance floors of Britain in the 1990s.
Doc to Franklin: "I'm sorry, Ben, but I see no benefits of opium use under my microscope. The idea that you are living a fulfilled life is clearly a mistake on your part. If you want to be scientific, stop using opium and be scientifically depressed like the rest of us."
The drug war is being used as a wrecking ball to destroy democratic freedoms. It has destroyed the 4th amendment and freedom of religion and given the police the right to confiscate the property of peaceful and productive citizens.
Many psychedelic fans are still drug warriors at heart. They just think that a nice big exception should be carved out for the drugs that they're suddenly finding useful. Wrong. Substance demonization is wrong, root and branch. It always causes more suffering than freedom.
America is an "arrestocracy" thanks to the war on drugs.
The Drug War is one big entrapment scheme for poor minorities. Prohibition creates an economy that hugely incentivizes drug dealing, and when the poor fall for the bait, the prohibitionists rush in to arrest them and remove them from the voting rolls.
I might as well say that no one can ever be taught to ride a horse safely. I would argue as follows: "Look at Christopher Reeves. He was a responsible and knowledgeable equestrian. But he couldn't handle horses. The fact is, NO ONE can handle horses!"
I never said that getting off SSRIs should be done without supervision. If you're on Twitter for medical advice, you're in the wrong place.
When folks banned opium, they did not just ban a drug: they banned the philosophical and artistic insights that the drug has been known to inspire in writers like Poe, Lovecraft and De Quincey.
We won't know how hard it is to get off drugs until we legalize all drugs that could help with the change. With knowledge and safety, there will be less unwanted use. And unwanted use can be combatted creatively with a wide variety of drugs.
Like when Laura Sanders tells us in Science News that depression is an intractable problem, she should rather tell us: "Depression is an intractable problem... that is, in a world wherein we refuse to consider the benefits of 'drugs,' let alone to fight for their beneficial use."
Indeed, the censorship of contrarian voices has been almost thorough on this topic, as one can tell by entering any library today, wherein books about drug abuse abound while books about safe and beneficial drug use are totally absent18. With this lifelong brainwashing in mind, I conclude this essay with a few first-person accounts of beneficial drug use from "Pihkal" by Alexander Shulgin19, if only to remind the reader that such beneficial drug use is actually possible. 
Doc to Franklin: "I'm sorry, Ben, but I see no benefits of opium use under my microscope. The idea that you are living a fulfilled life is clearly a mistake on your part. If you want to be scientific, stop using opium and be scientifically depressed like the rest of us."