I am one of those heretics who says that it is a category error to put materialists and doctors (and especially materialist doctors!) in charge of mind and mood medicine1. The benefits of illegal drugs come about through holistic processes, whereas materialist science is all about judging drugs outside of all context. This is why our "betters" in the medical industry are so laughably out of touch with reality on these subjects, as for instance when Dr. Robert Glatter 23 has to ask the question whether laughing gas could REALLY help the depressed! Laughing gas, for god's sake! (Gee, I wonder if it would help for a depressed person to feel wonderful?? What a poser??!) While they're studying that proposition in the laboratory, our materialists might also want to study whether having a "cold one" after work REALLY helps people relax! Or whether parents are REALLY helping their kids by giving them a hug now and then! What tough questions!!! These are the kinds of questions that only a DOCTOR could answer -- but then they are also the kinds of questions that only a doctor would even THINK of asking!!!
And so we are told that drugs like cocaine and laughing gas and opium 4 have no positive uses! What absurdity! What gaslighting 5 ! What they really mean to say is that those drugs cannot be shown to "work" in the reductive fashion that scientists demand of a drug. But so what? They work in an holistic fashion that doctors refuse to understand -- not just because these doctors are typically materialists, but also because they insist on toeing the line when it comes to Drug War orthodoxy, according to which drugs must be supposed to have no beneficial uses whatsoever. And so they practice their pharmacological colonialism. And so they gaslight the depressed. By demanding proof under a microscope, they elevate themselves to the role of experts on human emotions -- and tell the actual users of the drugs that "Hey, WE know more about how you feel and how you SHOULD feel than you do! Don't tell us what works for YOU -- WE'LL tell YOU what works for YOU!"
In case doctors are someday interested, though, here is what I mean by the holistic benefits of drugs. Drugs like cocaine help one get work done -- in the same way that coffee does, without jangling one's nerves. This means that one feels a sense of accomplishment in life and so feels better about themselves. Get it, doc? From this fact alone, a whole raft of knock-on benefits begin to accrue. The cocaine user stops procrastinating, they become more outgoing, they remember that family member's birthday that they might have forgotten -- or else have been too depressed to worry about. In other words, doc, the drug use establishes a virtuous circle. Any drug that inspires and elates can establish such a virtuous circle -- not because it moves chemicals about in a way that flatters materialist expectations, but because the positive feelings (and mood-improving anticipation) that the user feels creates a virtuous circle full of knock-on benefits! Freud understood this: he understood that cocaine was a godsend for the depressed67. But the doctors of his time saw nothing but evil in the drug -- and no wonder: They knew that their jobs were in jeopardy if depression ceased to be an epidemic. Better that hundreds of millions of the depressed should go without a cure than doctors should lose their jobs!
I feel silly pointing out such basic psychological truths to adults, that inspiration helps, that feeling good helps -- but these are truths that our behaviorist doctors ignore in their effort to medicalize and pathologize human behavior and thus set themselves up as experts in "curing" our psychological diseases. Such doctors help demonize cocaine by focusing only on misuse by a vast MINORITY of users, exactly as if we were to study alcohol use by focusing on drunkards. They completely ignored the needs of the depressed. We were not stakeholders, it seems. They never asked the depressed how THEY felt about using cocaine. Instead, they trashed the drug by associating it with only downsides -- and thereby utterly destroyed its reputation for healing. In so doing, they ensured their own careers. They ensured that depression would be "a thing" for years to come. They could now set themselves up as the well-paid experts for treating such "illnesses," the illnesses that they themselves had helped to bring about.
This reminds me of the Three Stooges episode in which the trio secretly releases mice into a mansion and then knocks on the front door to ask the lady of the house if she requires exterminating services.
A lot of drug use represents an understandable attempt to fend off performance anxiety. Performers can lose their livelihood if they become too self-conscious. We only call such use "recreational" because we are oblivious to the common-sense psychology.
Problem 2,643 of the war on drugs:
It puts the government in charge of deciding what counts as a true religion.
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!!!
Here is a typical user report about a drug that the DEA tells us has no positive uses whatsoever:
"There is a profoundness of meaning inherent in anything that moves." (reported in "Pikhal" by Alexander Shulgin)
I'm told that science is completely unbiased today. I guess I'll have to go back and reassess my doubts about Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy.
Oregon's drug policy is incoherent and cruel. The rich and healthy spend $4,000 a week on psilocybin. The poor and chemically dependent are thrown in jail, unless they're on SSRIs, in which case they're congratulated for "taking their meds."
Even fans of sacred medicine have been brainwashed to believe that we do not know if such drugs "really" work: they want microscopic proof. But that's a western bias, used strategically by drug warriors to make the psychotropic drug approval process as glacial as possible.
Drugs like opium and psychedelics should come with the following warning: "Outlawing of this product may result in inner-city gunfire, civil wars overseas, and rigged elections in which drug warriors win office by throwing minorities in jail."
For those who want to understand what's going on with the drug war from a philosophical point of view, I recommend chapter six of "Eugenics and Other Evils" by GK Chesterton.
Harm Reduction is not enough. We need Benefit Production as well. The autistic should be able to use compassion-enhancing drugs; dementia patients should be able to use the many drugs that improve and speed up mental processes.
A lot of drug use represents an understandable attempt to fend off performance anxiety. Performers can lose their livelihood if they become too self-conscious. We only call such use "recreational" because we are oblivious to the common-sense psychology.
