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Five problems with The Psychedelic Handbook by Rick Strassman

by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

August 26, 2024



The following material is a condensed version of "What Rick Strassman Got Wrong.


PSYCHEDELIC CHEERLEADERS?

If organizations like MAPS1 are cheerleaders for psychedelics, as Strassman suggests, then organizations like the FDA are jeerleaders! They look only for downsides in drugs, and so ignore the millions worldwide who are suffering silently behind closed doors thanks to America's blanket dismissal of time-honored medicines. If a drug can be misused by a white American teenager at one dose, in one context, then it must not be used by anyone at any dose, in any context. It's hard to imagine a more anti-scientific premise than this, nor one more likely to lead to unnecessary suffering around the world: that anonymous suffering for which the FDA never takes responsibility. This, of course, is also an anti-democratic premise, as it turns local sheriff deputies into the morality police and convinces the public to sacrifice American freedoms on the altar of the Drug War. It also leads to the election of dictators insofar as it removes millions of minorities from the voting rolls, which one suspects is the true purpose of the Drug War in any case.


LSD?

Strassman implies that Richard Nixon was interested in public health when he outlawed psychedelics. Wrong. He was actually interested in removing radicals from the voting rolls by charging them with felonies. If he had been interested in public health, he could have recommended the use of niacin or Thorazine to quickly bring an end to those "bad trips" that Drug Warriors love to talk about. Besides, the TV networks never covered positive uses of drugs in the '60s, while yet doing their best to outdo each other in making a big thing out of an atypical drug overdose. And neither television nor magazines talked about positive uses of psychedelics. In short, the whole power of the mainstream worked to make sure that such drugs as LSD were always portrayed in a negative light.


DRUGS OF ABUSE?

Strassman keeps using the phrase "drugs of abuse" uncritically. But there are no drugs of abuse in the Drug Warrior's sense of that term. The problems of drug use are always caused by a lack of education, and corrupt drug supply, which are two conditions that are caused by prohibition, not by drugs. We did not have thousands of kids dying in the streets when opium 2 was legal in America. Young people are dying of opiates because of a lack of education combined with a totally unregulated drug supply. We could wait for human psychology to change and for everyone to become a Christian Scientist... or we could recognize that the Drug War is murderous folly and must be ended at once. And yet Strassman tells us that he still is unsure about re-legalizing Mother Nature, i.e., ending substance prohibition? Please!


HOPE TRAUMA?

Strassman implies that "hope trauma" is a problem inherent in psychedelic use, whereas the failure to achieve transcendent psychedelic states is usually connected with the use of the antidepressant drugs that were created by reductive materialists. The other principal cause of "hope trauma," or failure to have breakthrough psychedelic journeys, is the materialist outlook of the user, who expects that psychedelics should work just like aspirin: one simply takes the drug and lets the substance do all the heavy lifting.


PSYCHEDELICS V. ENTHEOGENS?

Strassman prefers the term "psychedelics" over "entheogens," and this is understandable from a materialist point of view. He wants us to approach a marvelous world scientifically, that is to say with the mind set of Dr. Spock of Star Trek, constantly reminding oneself, as Richard Dawkins suggests when it comes to evolution, that there is "nothing to see here" except the inevitable dreary outcome of cause and effect. In this view, the psychedelic drug experience is merely a case of the mind observing its own inner workings, divorced from all connection with nature as a whole. It has nothing more important to tell us than that silly dream you had after eating too much ice cream. But that's a metaphysical conclusion about such "trips," not common sense or logic.

This is why I believe that we should NOT insist on any one word (neither psychedelic nor entheogen nor hallucinogen) but that everyone should use the word that accords with their own metaphysical understanding of the world. I prefer the word entheogen, because it highlights the godsend potentials that we are ignoring when we outlaw drugs like MDMA 3 and psilocybin. An atheist may take exception to the apparent etymological nod to a deity, but for me the word merely connotes the intimation of the existence of higher beneficent powers about which it is impossible to be specific. I do not feel that the term "entheogens" implies that I worship a Caucasian God with a long white beard ensconced upon a cumulus cloud alongside cherubim and angels. But at the same time, I feel a deep conviction that there is far more at play here, something "more deeply interfused," than simple neurological cause and effect, which seems to be the default outlook of those who plump for the term "psychedelic."

I also find it hard to care about the rights of atheists when the Drug War is outlawing my religion. Let them legalize my entheogenic religion first, and maybe THEN we can talk about your right not to believe in it!

Besides, the motivation behind Strassman's preference for the term "psychedelic" resembles for me the motivation behind the modern scientist's willful blindness about the benefits of drugs: they refuse to recognize the obvious, like even the most overwhelming feeling of sudden enlightenment. They don't want to be biased, so they try to abstract themselves and their feelings out of the equation. So they shout in effect "I'm not listening" as the voice of ancient truths bellow, determined to believe only what they see under a microscope, determined that feelings do not matter in the scientific world. And thus the term "psychedelic" becomes problematic: it enthrones this myopic and passion-free materialism 4 as the baseline for further studies of psychedelics, with the working assumption being that there is "no there there" in the psychedelic experience, no greater truths to learn, no understanding of the human condition or of universal connectedness, no understanding of a greater reality of any kind.

It seems, however, that psychedelic drugs have to be believed in in order to work, or to work properly. If that's true, then approaching them dispassionately in the name of science is a huge mistake -- or is it a strategy on behalf of atheist materialists to exonerate their own existential pessimism about life with the help of a self-fulfilling prophecy: i.e., by making such drugs fail by failing to believe in them?



Author's Follow-up: October 11, 2024

picture of clock metaphorically suggesting a follow-up




With all due respect, if Rick really feels that "drugs" like DMT are just too dangerous for people, he should really stop writing books. Instead, he emulates Michael Pollan in trying to have it both ways. He wants to make money by exciting people about these substances while at the same time encouraging the police to continue cracking heads. Strange! America puts alcohol on a golden pedestal and then outlaws all possible competition. It's a faux morality. They turned simple prohibition into Prohibition writ large and now the prisons are overflowing. And Drug Warriors want it that way. Because the people jailed by this idiotic and unprecedented prohibition are "others" -- that one seldom meets -- and the fact that their inner-city landscapes have been turned into no-go zones by Drug War incentives seems to leave Rick and Michael cold.

Michael, for his part, freely uses the substances of his choice, while yet insisting that the average American is not capable of doing that safely (which will certainly be true if we follow the Drug Warrior's advice of failing to speak honestly about psychoactive substances). Michael is, in fact, the Leona Helmsley of the Psychedelic Renaissance. Drug laws are for the little people -- and that has, indeed, always been the case. Drug laws are designed to push around a certain kind of person -- and Michael can rest easily, knowing that he's not that kind of person -- especially since he has hedged his bets by signaling (albeit deep into his "Change Your Mind" book at page 405) that he does not believe that even Mother Nature's medicines should be freely available -- as they have always been until American politicians saw that they can destroy unwanted aspects of democracy (starting with the fourth amendment) by fearmongering about the kind of substances that we refuse to understand.

As for Rick, he reminds me of those police officers in the Leslie Nielsen movies who force a crowd to "move back" in order to protect them, thereby causing them to fall off of a cliff. Does he not realize that outlawing DMT is leading determined users to manufacture the drug themselves using highly toxic and dangerous chemicals? How safe is THAT, exactly?






Notes:

1: Three Problems With Rick Doblin's MAPS DWP (up)
2: The Truth About Opium by William H. Brereton DWP (up)
3: How the Drug War killed Leah Betts DWP (up)
4: How materialists lend a veneer of science to the lies of the drug warriors DWP (up)


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.





  • 'Intoxiphobia' by Russell Newcombe
  • Addicted to Addiction
  • America's Blind Spot
  • Beta Blockers and the Materialist Tyranny of the War on Drugs
  • Canadian Drug Warrior, I said Get Away
  • Disease Mongering in the age of the drug war
  • Drug Dealers as Modern Witches
  • Fentanyl does not kill! Prohibition does!
  • Fentanyl does not steal loved ones: Drug Laws Do
  • Five problems with The Psychedelic Handbook by Rick Strassman
  • Ignorance is the problem, not drugs
  • Intoxiphobia
  • Kevin Sabet and What-About-Ism
  • Marci Hamilton Equates Drug Use with Child Abuse
  • Matthew Perry and the Drug War Ghouls
  • More Weed Bashing at the Washington Post
  • Oregon's Incoherent Drug Policy
  • Partnership for a Death Free America
  • Stigmatize THIS
  • The problem with Modern Drug Reform Efforts
  • What Goes Up Must Come Down?
  • Why Kevin Sabet is Wrong
  • Why Kevin Sabet's approach to drugs is racist, anti-scientific and counterproductive
  • 'Synthetic Panics' by Philip Jenkins
  • Blaming Drugs for Nazi Germany
  • Brahms is NOT the best antidepressant
  • Clodhoppers on Drugs
  • Disease Mongering in the age of the drug war
  • Even Howard Zinn Reckons without the Drug War
  • Five problems with The Psychedelic Handbook by Rick Strassman
  • In the Realm of Hungry Drug Warriors
  • Intoxiphobia
  • Michael Pollan on Drugs
  • Noam Chomsky on Drugs
  • Open Letter to Francis Fukuyama
  • Opium for the Masses by Jim Hogshire
  • Psilocybin Mushrooms by Edward Lewis
  • Psychedelic Cults and Outlaw Churches: LSD, Cannabis, and Spiritual Sacraments in Underground America
  • Review of When Plants Dream
  • Richard Rudgley condemns 'drugs' with faint praise
  • The Drug War Imperialism of Richard Evans Schultes
  • The End Times by Bryan Walsh
  • What Andrew Weil Got Wrong
  • What Carl Hart Missed
  • What Rick Strassman Got Wrong
  • Whiteout
  • Why Drug Warriors are Nazis
  • 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
  • David Chalmers and the Drug War
  • 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 Bernardo Kastrup reckons without the drug war
  • I've got a bone to pick with Jim Hogshire
  • In Praise of Thomas Szasz
  • Materialism and the Drug War Part II
  • Open Letter to Dr. Carl L. Hart
  • Open letter to Wolfgang Smith
  • Unscientific American: the hypocritical materialism of Elon Musk
  • 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




    Saying "Fentanyl kills" is philosophically equivalent to saying "Fire bad!" Both statements are attempts to make us fear dangerous substances rather than to learn how to use them as safely as possible for human benefit.

    Anyone who has read Pihkal by Alexander Shulgin knows that the drug warriors have it exactly backwards. Drugs are our friends. We need to find safe ways to use them to improve ourselves psychologically, spiritually and mentally.

    It's just plain totalitarian nonsense to outlaw mother nature and to outlaw moods and mental states thru drug law. These truths can't be said enough by us "little people" because the people in power are simply not saying them.

    The DEA has done everything it can to keep Americans clueless about opium and poppies. The agency is a disgrace to a country that claims to value knowledge and freedom of information.

    It's "convenient" for scientists that their "REAL" cures happen to be the ones that racist politicians will allow. Scientists thus normalize prohibition by pretending that outlawed substances have no therapeutic value. It's materialism collaborating with the drug war.

    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.

    The proof that psychedelics work has always been extant. We are hoodwinked by scientists who convince us that efficacy has not been "proven." This is materialist denial of the obvious.

    It's really an insurance concern, however, disguised as a concern for public health. Because of America's distrust of "drugs," a company will be put out of business if someone happens to die while using "drugs," even if the drug was not really responsible for the death.

    Don't the Oregon prohibitionists realize that all the thousands of deaths from opiates is so much blood on their hands?

    Americans believe scientists when they say that drugs like MDMA are not proven effective. That's false. They are super effective and obviously so. It's just that science holds entheogenic medicines to the standards of reductive materialism. That's unfair and inappropriate.


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






    Feedback on my first legal psilocybin session in Oregon
    What Rick Strassman Got Wrong


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    Copyright 2025, Brian Ballard Quass Contact: quass@quass.com

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