I seldom get responses to my unsolicited harangues2, so this is quite refreshing! It's good to know that these concerns are on the radar at MAPS34.
I believe that materialist science has a role to play when it comes to leveraging the power of psychoactive drugs for new treatments for cancers, etc. (if only scientists can resist the lucrative temptation to create only the kinds of drugs that require daily and lifetime usage!) But I feel it's a category error to believe that scientists as such should be in charge of approving psychoactive substances for use (which I would argue need no approval in the first place, especially when they are a gift from Mother Nature, and/or are inspired by her). Having scientists opine on the propriety of using MDMA in particular is like having Dr. Spock of Star Trek tell us whether hugging is worthwhile5. Should we really have to pretend that we do not know the answer to that question until such time as a reductive scientist catches up with common sense and simple human feeling? Spock's entire world view makes him incapable of rendering a fair judgment on that topic. Indeed, that's the fundamental problem in playing ball with the FDA: they really have a different world view, one that eschews holistic evidence in favor of the microscopic -- and in so doing helps normalize prohibition, by helping us believe that the glaringly obvious benefits of certain drugs are somehow not "real" benefits after all (which is really a metaphysical conclusion, not a scientific one).
But given that the approval process does exist, it should consider so much more than potential dangers of use: it should consider the many costs of disapproval (i.e., of prohibition), including the censorship of science6, the abnegation of the 4th amendment, and the promotion of unsafe use. Extracting DMT from tree bark, for example, is extremely hazardous, and yet no one seems to realize that prohibition of DMT incentivizes such dangerous activity. A fair approval process would also consider the millions of silent stakeholders (including the depressed7 and the suicidal) who go without potential godsends when we outlaw substances like MDMA . It would consider the non-stop deaths in inner cities due to gun violence 8 , for as Heather Ann Thompson wrote in The Atlantic in 2014: "Without the War on Drugs, the level of gun violence 9 that plagues so many poor inner-city neighborhoods today simply would not exist.10" It would consider the thousands of young people whose lives would be saved if their drug of choice was almost anything other than alcohol. It would consider the 60,000+ who have been "disappeared" in Mexico due to violence related to substance prohibition11. (A young female activist investigating such deaths was recently dismissed as a "necrophiliac" by Mexican President Obrador12, a fact that reminds us that the War on Drugs is really a war on people, not on drugs -- and not just on any people, either, but on the perceived enemies of the state: especially minorities, the poor, and activists.)
That said, I think Rick Doblin and MAPS have achieved something worthwhile by playing ball with the FDA, even if it is not yet the outcome they were after: they have awoken scientists to the potential benefits of drugs like MDMA , to which they had formerly been blinded by their unconscious acceptance of drug-war orthodoxy. However, I believe that the next step forward should be to question the FDA's expertise when it comes to psychoactive medicines -- or rather question their ability to analyze them without a western materialist bias13. Had I been notified about the recent FDA meeting a few days earlier, I would have signed up for a three-minute time slot in which I would have done just that. I would have highlighted their extreme bias with such questions as: "How can you nix a drug that brought peace and love to the dance floor in Britain at the same time as you approve electroshock therapy and the widespread use of antidepressants 14, upon which 1 in 4 American women are dependent for life? Some of us would call that the greatest mass pharmacological dystopia of all time." I would have even been so rude as to point out that some prescription drugs advertised on prime-time television list death itself as a potential side effect -- and yet a drug like MDMA 15 which kills literally nobody (except for those whom we have refused to educate about safe use) gets the chop? Really, people?16
Perhaps the clearest sign of the FDA's biased world view is the fact that they insist that a psychoactive drug be approved (or disapproved) for one specific psychological condition at a time. (I've heard of a death by a thousand cuts, but this could be called death by a thousand approvals.) Holistic medicines should not be required to prove efficacy in this glacial manner. The whole point of such medicines is that they improve the person's sense of well-being in general. The amelioration of any one specific pathology (physical, psychological, or both) is just so much gravy. But the FDA demands that these drugs function outside of the context that holism always assumes. The FDA says that drug A must be shown to cause outcome Z. But when drugs work holistically, A may cause C, D and F, and so on, only eventually to cause Z by a string of interconnected actions that are themselves dependent on the attitudes and actions of the "user." So when you take a psychoactive drug out of all context and expect it to show you that A causes Z in a sterile laboratory setting, you are using a biased approach. You are essentially demanding that holistic medicines perform in a non-holistic fashion.
Thanks again for your response! I wish you much luck in your ongoing work to awaken the world to the power of entheogens and psychedelics of all kinds!
PS I was originally going to open this message by granting that materialist science has a role to play in warning us of the downsides of certain drug use. This is obviously true, of course. For instance, science should warn ketamine users of potential urinary trouble that they may experience from long-term ketamine use. But the materialist scientist is apt to overemphasize potential downsides because they study them out of context. For just as holistic drug A causes benefit Z only in certain contexts, so drug A often causes downside Z only in a specific context as well. This is where investigation usually stops, with the researcher concluding triumphantly that "A causes downside Z," with the implication being that the drug should probably not be approved for use. But this is an ethnocentric extrapolation. I think of the shamanic use of tobacco in the Andes, which has not yet been shown to have the same grave effect on bodily health as in the west. Moreover, even if A can cause downside Z, A may also cause upsides E, F and G, which collectively either obviate the effects of downside Z or remove that downside altogether. These are holistic subtleties which materialist researchers tend to gloss over, thereby giving an unearned aura of omniscience to modern science.
I guess you're wondering why I pulled you over. It's because you haven't yet read all the relevant articles on this subject, to wit...
in which freelance writer Kate MacBride gets ahold of the wrong side of the stick in Slate Magazine19, calling out MAPS for the mote in their eye while ignoring the enormous BEAM in the eye of the drug-hating FDA.
The evidence, Kate? The evidence shows that the drug has been used for 50 damn years by hundreds of thousands of people and brought nothing but love and understanding to dance floors -- until Drug Warriors cracked down on the use and ravers switched to alcohol, and the venues became so violent that concert organizers had to bring in special forces troops to keep the peace!
Evidence? The FDA is deaf, dumb and blind to the obvious evidence -- and now makes the metaphysical claim that "real" evidence has to be microscopic -- or be turned to numbers that fit nicely on a spreadsheet. Unnecessary deaths are fine until anal scientists can be properly appeased.
Kate, please, give me something to work with here! MDMA 20 WORKS! THE PROOF IS EXTANT!
Has she never seen the prime-time TV ads in which the side effects of an FDA-approved drug include DEATH ITSELF!? And yet Kate is going to tell us that the FDA is not biased for nixing a drug that creates nothing but peace, love and understanding? See, folks, this is what happens when one is brainwashed from childhood in the drug-hating religion of the Drug War. And how was Kate brainwashed, you ask? In the same way that we all were, by having ALL POSITIVE USE OF DRUGS CENSORED FROM TV, FILMS, MEDIA AND CLASSROOMS!!! All so that we can sleep well at night while embracing the hateful view of Francisco Pizarro himself when it comes to indigenous medicines -- that is, those that work holistically without so much as a "by your leave" from reductionist science!
The FDA is fine with shock therapy in which one knowingly damages the brain! That's Beam City, Kate. That's Beams R US. That's Beams a Billion.
Kate, please, before you write another article that's going to negatively affect my abilities to obtain godsend medicines, please wake up and smell the Drug War!
The FDA approves of brain-damaging shock therapy but will not approve MDMA for soldiers with PTSD. This is the same FDA that signs off on the psychiatric pill mill upon which 1 in 4 American women are dependent for life. This is the same FDA that approves Big Pharma drugs whose advertised side effects include death itself! (Can somebody say "follow the money"?)
The U.S. government created violence out of whole cloth in America's inner cities with drug prohibition -- and now it is using that violence as an excuse to kick the people that they themselves have knocked down.
An Englishman's home is his castle.
An American's home is a bouncy castle for the DEA.
We drastically limit drug choices, we refuse to teach safe use, and then we discover there's a gene to explain why some people have trouble with drugs. Science loves to find simple solutions to complex problems.
Wanna show drug warriors the error of their ways? Legalize all less dangerous drugs than alcohol and then deny work to those who test positive for liquor and confiscate their property if beer cans are found on-site.
Michael Pollan is the Leona Helmsley of the Drug War. He uses outlawed drugs freely while failing to support the re-legalization of Mother Nature. Drug laws are apparently for the little people.
America created a whole negative morality around "drugs" starting in 1914. "Users" became fiends and were as helpless as a Christian sinner -- in need of grace from a higher power. Before prohibition, these "fiends" were habitues, no worse than Ben Franklin or Thomas Jefferson.
The whole drug war is based on the anti-American idea that the way to avoid problems is to lie and prevaricate and persuade people not to ask questions.
Being a lifetime patient is not the issue: that could make perfect sense in certain cases. But if I am to be "using" for life, I demand the drug of MY CHOICE, not that of Big Pharma and mainstream psychiatry, who are dogmatically deaf to the benefits of hated substances.
Here is a sample drug-use report from the book "Pihkal":
"More than tranquil, I was completely at peace, in a beautiful, benign, and placid place."
Prohibition is a crime against humanity for withholding such drug experiences from the depressed (and from everybody else).
Attention People's magazine editorial staff:
Matthew Perry was a big boy who made his own decisions. He didn't die because of ketamine or because of evil rotten drug dealers, he died because of America's enforced ignorance about psychoactive drugs.
The U.S. government created violence out of whole cloth in America's inner cities with drug prohibition -- and now it is using that violence as an excuse to kick the people that they themselves have knocked down.