what the movie The Reluctant Astronaut tells us about drug prohibition
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
October 12, 2025
Whenever anyone tells me not to glorify drug use 1 , I think of the 1967 movie "The Reluctant Astronaut" starring Don Knotts. Knotts plays Roy Fleming, the acrophobic title character who gets a job at the NASA Space Center thanks to an application submitted by his doting but unrealistic father, an Army vet with a penchant for exaggerating about his own achievements in World War I. Unfortunately, the job in question turns out to be that of a janitor apprentice, but Roy conceals that fact for fear of disappointing his father and becoming a laughing stock back home. The ruse is eventually exposed, however, after Dad makes an unannounced visit to the Center with his two war buddies.
Roy buys some time by donning a borrowed space suit and giving his fellow townsfolk a tour of the facilities, but the truth comes out after he inadvertently ignites a rocket sled that he is pompously demonstrating, resulting in the activation of the ejection seat and his subsequent parachute landing in the nearby desert. Rescue personnel soon arrive, along with Mr. Donelli, Roy's phlegmatic boss. Roy's clueless visitors are there as well, already eager to praise the flustered showoff for his bravery in accomplishing this seemingly pointless impromptu mission -- until a firefighter asks Donelli who Roy is. "I'm ashamed to say," quoth he, "that he is one of my janitor apprentices!"
The penny finally drops for the improbably naive trio from back home. They finally realize that Roy is... well, a nobody.
FADE TO BLACK
In the next scene, the thoroughly humiliated Roy does what any American movie character would do in such a case: he drowns his sorrows at the nearest watering hole, which in this case turns out to be The Blast-Off Bar.
Before he has even entered the joint, he hears a noisy male chorus reciting the following countdown, in a raucous imitation of ground control on launch day:
Roy sees, upon entering, that this incantation has a purpose: it is intended to stiffen the resolve of a tippler in the proper performance of a drinking ritual. As his drinking buddies surround him and bellow out the countdown, the designated toper is expected to drop a brimful shot glass into the equally full glass of beer that he is holding and then swallow the entire contents in one long gulp as the onlookers drawl out the word "BLAST-OFF!!!!"
Yes, this macho chorus line is actually encouraging this guy to get dead drunk! To get plastered! To get wasted! And everybody's laughing! Everybody's smiling! Everybody's having a great time!
And this in a world in which it is considered wrong to glorify drugs???!!!
Please!
One immediately thinks of Carl Hart's complaint in "Drug Use for Grown-Ups,2" that there is endless tolerance for drinkers -- to the point that we actually celebrate drunkenness and celebrate the use of peer pressure to bring it about! And yet zero tolerance is extended toward those who would use other drugs -- other drugs, I might add, which are almost always far less inherently dangerous than liquor.
And so Roy Fleming gets absolutely wasted! And starts slurring and mispronouncing words! Ha ha ha! How funny, right?
Say rather, how monstrously hypocritical!
Now, I have nothing against drinking. I have raised my OWN elbow on more than one occasion. But it really bothers me to see these self-satisfied, white, macho men, ostensive Christians at that, whole-heartedly and, as it were, "full-throatedly" exploiting their right to booze -- while my right to substances that would actually improve my cognitive abilities without causing a hangover is ruthlessly suppressed!
This is how your D.A.s celebrate their victories in court. After a busy day of throwing minorities in jail for selling and using less dangerous drugs than alcohol, they head to the local bar to get plastered.
And yet the irony is that by their own logic, they themselves should be in jail for partaking of the most dangerous drug of all! By their own logic, their property should be confiscated after so much as one beer bottle is found on-site. By their own logic, they should be denied a job if a test of any kind could establish that they have drunk alcohol at ANY TIME in the past. ANY TIME. And finally, by their own logic, all patriotic movie critics should slam "The Reluctant Astronaut" -- and any other movie that depicts such blatant glorification of a drug that kills 178,000 Americans a year3.
This is not to say that I hate the movie. Don Knotts is not necessarily hilarious at any given moment, but there is a sort of low-key humor generated by his trademark frazzled demeanor which keeps the whole picture enjoyable throughout. It's a sort of "slow burn," if you will, as favorably contrasted with the unpredictable fireworks of the Lou Costellos of the world, those comedians who may elicit a belly laugh in one scene, only to irritate in the next by running a supposedly comic scenario into the ground with over-the-top antics. But I see such movies 45 in a new light after having spent the last eight years reflecting on drug prohibition from a philosophical point of view. I can no longer watch the rights of drinkers being thus normalized and promoted without reflecting on the monstrous hypocrisy of the War on Drugs.
Nor do I grudge the beer drinkers their little rituals. If you wish to play beer pong, by all means, play.
And yet, forgive me for asking:
What does it say about America that our most popular social games are those that bring about mental impairment -- while the use of drugs that improve the mind is considered to be a felony?!
Getting off antidepressants can make things worse for only one reason: because we have outlawed all the drugs that could help with the transition. Right now, getting off any drug basically means becoming a drug-free Christian Scientist. No wonder withdrawal is hard.
"Arrest made in Matthew Perry death." Oh, yeah? Did they arrest the drug warriors who prioritized propaganda over education?
Just saw a People's magazine article with the headline: "JUSTICE FOR MATTHEW PERRY."
If there was true justice, their editorial staff would be in jail for promoting user ignorance and a contaminated drug supply.
It's the prohibition, stupid!!!
The FDA uses reductive materialism to justify and normalize the views of Cortes and Pizarro with respect to entheogenic medicine.
"My faith votes and strives to outlaw religions that use substances of which politicians disapprove."
We should hold the DEA criminally responsible for withholding spirit-lifting drugs from the depressed. Responsible for what, you ask? For suicides and lobotomies, for starters.
I'm interested in CBD myself, because I want to gain benefits at times without experiencing intoxication. So I think it's great. But I like it as part of an overall strategy toward mental health. I do not think of CBD, as some do, as a way to avoid using naughty drugs.
In fact, that's what we need when we finally return to legalization: educational documentaries showing how folks manage to safely incorporate today's hated substances into their life and lifestyle.
Only a pathological puritan would say that there's no place in the world for substances that lift your mood, give you endurance, and make you get along with your fellow human being. Drugs may not be everything, but it's masochistic madness to claim that they are nothing at all.
If psychoactive drugs had never been criminalized, science would never have had any reason or excuse for creating SSRIs that muck about unpredictably with brain chemistry. Chewing the coca leaf daily would be one of many readily available "miracle treatments" for depression.
Getting off antidepressants can make things worse for only one reason: because we have outlawed all the drugs that could help with the transition. Right now, getting off any drug basically means becoming a drug-free Christian Scientist. No wonder withdrawal is hard.