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Dogmatic Dullards

why scientists are the slow kids in the class when it comes to drugs

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher





February 23, 2025



I recently asked myself the following question:

Why is the western world so far behind the curve when it comes to common sense? Why are we so slow in recognizing the obvious?

It wasn't until the 18th century that we realized that ultimate realities could not be explained in human words, something that tribal people had known for millennia. It wasn't until the 20th century that we transcended Cartesian dogma long enough to admit that animals felt pain, a fact that the average person had never even thought to question. And we are still behind the curve in the 21st century. Scientists of our time claim to see no benefits in drugs that have been called panaceas in the past, some of which have inspired entire religions.

Are these scientists kidding us? Why are westerners always the slow kid in the class when it comes to the things that really matter in life?

Let me suggest at least the beginning to a possible answer. It has to do with epistemology. It was always a mistake to assume that the understanding of non-quantitative phenomena could be grasped and described using the inherently fallible and eternally incomplete communication medium called human language. I write here just to get the ball rolling on this topic, mind, because this is a new train of thought that I am developing here.

I would add, however, that this is far from a "merely philosophical" issue. For the Drug War itself is justified based on the support that it receives from the kind of dogmatic dullards that I have described above, the many scientists who are dogmatically blind to both common sense and the testimony of saints and psychonauts alike. These are the folks who know all about chemical pathways and neuronal mechanisms in the brain but do not have the first clue about holistic medicine. This means that they can only sign off on a drug by finding a specific way that it treats a specific condition. In other words, they are applying a materialist standard to non-western medicine, which is a kind of pharmacological imperialism. This is how they get away with slowing down the drug approval process: they ignore the benefits that drug-induced positivity has on overall health, demanding instead that the drug demonstrate a specific ability to fix specific problems separately and in a causally identifiable manner.

Even if a drug is approved for treating condition A, those suffering from conditions B or C are out of luck until researchers find funding and time to go back to the lab and prove the existence of a separate causally relevant chemical pathway for THOSE ailments as well. This is what I call "death by a thousand approvals." It is the way that the FDA ensures that the few psychoactive medicines that pass the drug approval process will only have a marginal effect on the drug market. Not only is the newly approved drug still denied to most sufferers, but many of them will not be able to afford it thanks to the high price point created by the economics of the situation.

Again, this is all super relevant because this dogmatic foot dragging helps the DEA and the FDA keep godsend medicines out of the hands of the suffering. This injustice is all the more outrageous in light of the fact that the drugs in question often grow at our very feet and some of them have even inspired entire religions.

I fear we may need to start handing out dunce caps to modern scientists until they realize that they are totally out of touch with reality when it comes to the subject of drugs. Nor am I being mean here. If I were being mean, I would suggest that the scientists' lack of common sense was a result of cowardice, of their craven desire to toe the line when it comes to the Drug War ideology of substance demonization. But that's not what I am saying here. I am merely suggesting that such scientists have been misled by a slavish adherence to the obsolete and inhumane tenets of behaviorism, that their reductive approach is inappropriate for the study of mind and mood medicines altogether.

But what can we expect? It was always a category error to place materialist scientists in charge of mind and mood medicine in the first place.

Materialism




In "The Varieties of Religious Experience," William James demonstrated how materialists are blind to the depth and meaning of psychological states of ecstasy and transcendence -- or in other words the states that are peculiar to mystics like St. Teresa... and to those who use psychoactive substances like laughing gas. The medical materialist is dogmatically dismissive of such states, which explains why they can pretend that godsend medicines that elate and inspire have no positive uses whatsoever:

"To the medical mind these ecstasies signify nothing but suggested and imitated hypnoid states, on an intellectual basis of superstition, and a corporeal one of degeneration and hysteria. Undoubtedly these pathological conditions have existed in many and possibly in all the cases, but that fact tells us nothing about the value for knowledge of the consciousness which they induce."


And so materialist scientists collaborate with the Drug War by refusing to see glaringly obvious drug benefits. They acknowledge only those benefits that they believe are visible under a microscope. The Hindu religion would not exist today had materialist scientists held Soma to such a standard. But that's the absurd pass to which prohibition eventually brings us in a society wherein materialist science is the new god: scientists are put in charge of deciding whether we are allowed to imagine new religions or not.

This materialist bias is inspired in turn by behaviorism, the anti-indigenous doctrine of JB Watson that makes the following inhumane claim:

"Concepts such as belief and desire are heritages of a timid savage past akin to concepts referring to magic."

According to this view, the hopes and the dreams of a "patient" are to be ignored. Instead, we are to chart their physiology and brain chemistry.

JB Watson's Behaviorism is a sort of Dr. Spock with a vengeance. It is the perfect ideology for a curmudgeon, because it would seem to justify all their inability to deal with human emotions. Unfortunately, the attitude has knock-on effects because it teaches drug researchers to ignore common sense and to downplay or ignore all positive usage reports or historic lessons about positive drug use. The "patient" needs to just shut up and let the doctors decide how they are doing. It is a doctrine that dovetails nicely with Drug War ideology, because it empowers the researcher to ignore the obvious: that all drugs that elate have potential uses as antidepressants.

That statement can only be denied when one assumes that "real" proof of efficacy of a psychoactive medicine must be determined by a doctor, and that the patient's only job is to shut up because their hopes and dreams and feelings cannot be accurately displayed and quantified on a graph or a bar chart.





  • A Quantum of Hubris
  • Assisted Suicide and the War on Drugs
  • Behaviorism and the War on Drugs
  • Beta Blockers and the Materialist Tyranny of the War on Drugs
  • Common Sense and the Drug War
  • Constructive criticism of the MAPS strategy for re-legalizing MDMA
  • David Chalmers and the Drug War
  • Dogmatic Dullards
  • Every Day and in every way, you are getting more and more bamboozled by Drug War propaganda
  • Five problems with The Psychedelic Handbook by Rick Strassman
  • How AI turned William James into a Drug Warrior
  • How Bernardo Kastrup reckons without the Drug War
  • How materialists turned me into a patient for life
  • How Scientific Materialism Keeps Godsend Medicines from the Depressed
  • I've got a bone to pick with Jim Hogshire
  • In Praise of Thomas Szasz
  • Materialism and the Drug War
  • Materialism and the Drug War Part II
  • Open Letter to Dr. Carl L. Hart
  • Open letter to Wolfgang Smith
  • Science News Unveils Shock Therapy II
  • The Inhumanity of Drug Prohibition
  • The Poorly Hidden Materialist Agenda at Scientific American
  • Unscientific American: the hypocritical materialism of Elon Musk
  • What Can the Chemical Hold?
  • Why Scientists Should Not Judge Drugs
  • William James rolls over in his grave as England bans Laughing Gas
  • Without Philosophy, Science becomes Scientism





    • Ten Tweets

    against the hateful war on US




    When we outlaw drugs, we are outlawing far more than drugs. We are suppressing freedom of religion and academic research.

    The Drug War is a crime against humanity.

    Big pharma drugs are designed to be hard to get off. Doctors write glowingly of "beta blockers" for anxiety, for instance, but ignore that fact that such drugs are hard -- and even dangerous -- to get off. We have outlawed all sorts of less dependence-causing alternatives.

    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.

    Opium could be a godsend for talk therapy. It can help the user step outside themselves and view their problems from novel viewpoints.

    Our tolerance for freedom wanes in proportion as we consider "drugs" to be demonic. This is the dark side behind the new ostensibly comic genre about Cocaine Bears and such. It shows that Americans are superstitious about drugs in a way that Neanderthals would have understood.

    I can't believe that no one at UVA is bothered by the DEA's 1987 raid on Monticello. It was, after all, a sort of coup against the Natural Law upon which Jefferson had founded America, asserting as it did the government's right to outlaw Mother Nature.

    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.

    SSRIs are created based on the materialist notion that cures should be found under a microscope. That's why science is so slow in acknowledging the benefit of plant medicines. Anyone who chooses SSRIs over drugs like San Pedro cactus is simply uninformed.

    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.


    Click here to see All Tweets against the hateful War on Us






    The New Common Sense Way to Improve Mind and Mood
    Why Scientists Should Not Judge Drugs


    Copyright 2025 abolishthedea.com, Brian Quass

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