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.
When Rick Strassman and Michael Pollan call for continued prohibition to protect young people, they ignore the ENORMOUS fact that prohibition has destroyed inner cities around the world. Wake up, guys! Prohibition is evil, not drugs! Ignorance is evil, not education!
In a sane world, we'd package laughing gas for safe use and give it to the suicidal -- saying, "Use before attempting to kill yourself." But drug warriors would rather have suicide than drug use.
If I want to use the kind of drugs that have inspired entire religions, fight depression, or follow up on the research of William James into altered states, I should not have to live in fear of the DEA crashing down my door and shouting: "GO! GO! GO!"
Besides, why should I listen to the views of a microbe?
Scientists are responsible for endless incarcerations in America. Why? Because they fail to denounce the DEA lie that psychoactive substances have no positive medical uses. This is so obviously wrong that only an academic in an Ivory Tower could believe it.
The Drug War is a religion. The "addict" is a sinner who has to come home to the true faith of Christian Science. In reality, neither physical nor psychological addiction need be a problem if all drugs were legal and we used them creatively to counter problematic use.
Cocaine is not evil. Opium is not evil. Drug prohibition is evil.
Here's the first step in the FDA process for evaluating a psychoactive drug:
Ignore all glaringly obvious benefits
Jim Hogshire described sleep cures that make physical withdrawal from opium close to pain-free. As for "psychological addiction," there are hundreds of elating drugs that could be used to keep the ex-user's mind from morbidly focusing on a drug whose use has become problematic for them.
Healthline posted an article in 2021 about the benefits of getting off of antidepressants. They did not even mention the biggest benefit: NO LONGER BEING AN ETERNAL PATIENT -- no longer being a child in the eyes of an all-knowing healthcare system.
When Rick Strassman and Michael Pollan call for continued prohibition to protect young people, they ignore the ENORMOUS fact that prohibition has destroyed inner cities around the world. Wake up, guys! Prohibition is evil, not drugs! Ignorance is evil, not education!