Any faithful reader of my site will have noticed my penchant for denouncing drug prohibition as a stealth and subconscious move on the part of fearful conservative politicians to establish drug-hating Christian Science as the de facto state religion in America1. There are, of course, other more palpable motivations for the Drug War, above all the attempt to disempower minorities by creating laws specifically for that purpose2. But the fact that such laws appear reasonable to Americans across a wide political spectrum implies for me an implicit and widespread belief in the Christian Science metaphysic, the idea that drugs are both unnecessary and immoral, at least when it comes to improving the psychological condition of the human mind. So, while the Christian Science mentality may not have caused the Drug War, properly speaking, it yet gives the Drug War staying power by making its antiscientific tenets appear plausible to the American people, especially since, as westerners, we lack the universal indigenous habit of using psychoactive medicines for religious and divinatory purposes. (To the contrary, we look with suspicion on such drug use, as might be guessed from our persecution of the generally female witches of the past who begged to differ with the western mainstream on this subject.3)
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And yet it occurred to me last night that Mary Baker-Eddy was "on to something," as we say, even if she herself did not realize what that "something" was. This is clear when we extract the sectarian religious element from Eddy's belief and recast her apparent hatred for drugs as a hatred for materialist cures that are uninformed by the powers of the human mind - by what we might call the powers and insights that come from "higher consciousness." Seen in this light, Eddy and I are on the same page, for we both attack the presumption inherent in placing materialist scientists in charge of mind and mood conditions4. We both believe that the human mind has powers that have never been properly leveraged and which we can use to fight so-called emotional disorders. The difference is that Eddy believed that the powers of the religious mind (of "higher consciousness") were up to the task of combatting ALL illness, and not just those metaphorical illnesses that are of a mental and emotional nature.
I can even agree with this latter extreme statement to a point. For the fact is that we do not yet know of what the human mind is capable for the simple reason that we have outlawed the quest to find out: we have outlawed all the drugs that show obvious potential in leveraging human consciousness for beneficial purposes. We have therefore outlawed the research that would be necessary to prove Eddy's thesis, or at least to tell us to what extent it is true and in what circumstances. Eddy's problem is that she declares her belief to be true in advance of performing the necessary research to prove that it is so. The mind (or consciousness) clearly has great power when it comes to treating psychological conditions, for the proof is extant, assuming that we do not make Eddy's mistake of ruling out the use of all drugs a priori based on metaphysical prejudices. The Hindu religion exists today thanks to the use of a drug that inspired and elated5. The use of coca inspired the Inca of Peru6. And the drug-user reports from Pihkal demonstrate that psychoactive drugs can produce extraordinary psychological improvements when used wisely and with intention by motivated individuals7. But the precise extent to which mental powers (drug-aided or otherwise) can alter so-called physical conditions remains unclear because untested - again, thanks to anti-scientific drug law.
It seems to me that our discussion of Eddy's thesis as westerners is rendered unnecessarily complicated, however, thanks to our Cartesian tendency to consider mind and matter as separate categories in the first place8. The truth seems to be that matter and mind are hopelessly entangled when it comes to cause and effect and that our attempts to deal with them as two ontologically separate categories can only lead to confusion. This is one of the many reasons why we need to re-legalize godsend medicines, by the way, for there can be no better way to investigate the distinctions and interactions between mind and body than by using psychoactive substances to leverage the power of mind, mood and imagination - to see both what can be accomplished thereby and what are the hard limits to such an approach. Far from being a niche issue, then, drug prohibition is nothing less than the outlawing of the most important philosophical research project imaginable, that of probing the true nature of our presupposed mind-body dualism. This is precisely the sort of research that William James himself conjured us to undertake as philosophers in "The Varieties of Religious Experience,9" but unfortunately this is a challenge that his alma mater, Harvard University, has censored from their online biography of the man, as they have his use of laughing gas 10 and his ideas on what he called the "anesthetic revelation 1112 ," which, in modern terms, is basically the topic of what drug use can tell us about the nature of reality13.
These opening shots across the bowsprit of today's vulnerable materialism 14 could serve as the beginning of a lengthy essay, but my main goal today is merely to establish that Christian Science is not simply the bad guy when it comes to today's hateful drug prohibition, that the founder of that religion entertained some valid scruples with respect to the mind-body problem and that drug laws prevent us from following up on those leads. We come then to the ironic conclusion that the metaphysics of Christian Science would seem to philosophically support the War on Drugs on a superficial level while yet questioning it profoundly on a still deeper level. These issues are deeply fraught with philosophical considerations which can no doubt be hotly debated. But I hope we can all agree on at least one thing: that the Drug War has outlawed the research required to answer the mind-body questions at issue here and that drug prohibition is therefore an outrageous violation of academic freedom. Should a materialist say otherwise, they are clearly declaring premature victory for their own behaviorist mindset under the cover of a legal system that privileges their own beliefs.
There's more than set and setting: there's fundamental beliefs about the meaning of life and about why mother nature herself is full of psychoactive substances. Tribal peoples associate some drugs with actual sentient entities -- that is far beyond "set and setting."
NIDA is just a propaganda arm of the U.S. government -- and will remain so until it recognizes the glaringly obvious benefits of drugs -- as well as the glaringly obvious downsides of prohibition. We need a National Institute on Drug Use, not a National Institute on Drug Abuse.
Prohibitionists are responsible for the 200,000-plus killed in the US-inspired Mexican drug war in the 21st century.
The "scheduling" system is completely anti-scientific and anti-patient. It tells us we can make a one-size-fits-all decision about psychoactive substances without regard for dosage, context of use, reason for use, etc. That's superstitious tyranny.
America legalizes alcohol and then outlaws all the drugs that could help prevent and cure alcoholism.
According to Donald Trump's view of life, Jesus Christ was a chump. We should hate our enemies, not love them.
M. Pollan says "not so fast" when it comes to drug re-legalization. I say FAST? I've gone a whole lifetime w/o access to Mother Nature's plants. How can a botanist approve of that? Answer: By ignoring all legalization stakeholders except for the kids whom we refuse to educate.
The Drug War is a crime against humanity.
Folks like Sabet accuse folks like myself of ignoring the "facts." No, it is Sabet who is ignoring the facts -- facts about dangerous horses and free climbing. He's also ignoring all the downsides of prohibition, whose laws lead to the election of tyrants.
Scientists are not the experts on psychoactive medicines. The experts are painters and artists and spiritualists -- and anyone else who simply wants to be all they can be in life. Scientists understand nothing of such goals and aspirations.
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