I have trouble believing that any shaman would ever end a healing ceremony by concluding that their client required a gluten-free diet. True, the shaman's suggestions may include dietary habits that just so happen to minimize gluten intake, but the shaman would never believe that digestive complaints were caused solely and exclusively by one single factor, like the presence of gluten. This is very different from the western mindset, where we look for easy answers and so we search for villainous singletons: one particular substance upon which we can blame all that is wrong with our life, and gluten is one such scapegoat that is singled out these days by many modern hypochondriacs from the lineup of the usual controversial substances.
Please don't misunderstand me. I am sure that the ingestion of gluten can be positively correlated with health concerns in certain individuals. What I object to is the reification of gluten intolerance as a concrete physical illness: it is rather just a way that 20th century westerners can make sense of their suffering in a kind of causational shorthand. For the fact is that the discomfort that we associate uniquely with gluten intake can more properly be considered as an outcome of a vast array of life circumstances, including one's psychological outlook. The west, however, tends to consider gluten intolerance outside of all context, as a stroke of destiny with which one has to live for a lifetime, and that one need look no further for the culprit of one's discontents, for it has been caught red-handed, as it were: gluten is the self-sufficient villain of this piece. But life is really not that simple.
Take me, for instance. I used to suffer from stomachaches in my late teens after drinking a lot of milk. But I loved milk shakes and never considered myself lactose intolerant. Actually, the term did not even exist at the time, but the point is that I never considered milk to be the problem. Why not? Because like many teenagers, I was dealing with a lot of issues at the time and it somehow made sense to me (on some subconscious level at least) that my angst could affect my digestion. In fact, I had often noticed a direct correlation between my mood and my digestion during my teenage years. And indeed my apparent milk intolerance disappeared in subsequent years as the teenage angst was replaced by a somewhat more confident outlook on life and its troubles. Now, I could have "come out" in my teenage years as "lactose intolerant," had either of those terms been in public parlance at the time, but such a declaration would have simply disguised the more fundamental nature of my gastrointestinal problems, namely, my poor self-image. Yes, there was a positive correlation between milk drinking and stomach pain back then, but correlation is not cause - and certainly not the "final" cause of Aristotle's philosophy -- except when we seek easy answers to complex problems.
Of course, this is just the way science likes it. By focusing on this one apparent cause, which exists far downstream of many other unacknowledged factors and influences, science can claim both to have discovered a new disease, like gluten intolerance, and the "cure" for that disease, in this case with their prescription of a gluten-free diet for the suffering. And so the myth of all-knowing science is perpetuated, as it claims mastery both in the physical and the psychological realms (which, to materialists, however, are ultimately one and the same). Science, however, continues dogmatically to ignore the most important thing of all when it comes to our health: namely, one's psychological attitudes, about life, about love, and about oneself.
This is no surprise because materialist science considers that consciousness itself is a mere freak, an accident that came along as a result of mindless evolution. Just ask Richard Dawkins, or Neil deGrasse Tyson, for that matter. This, I think, is why we so often hear of doctors being astonished when patients have the nerve to keep living well in spite of being diagnosed as terminally ill based on clear medical facts: because the power of the mind has yet to be calculated and is only now becoming apparent in the usage reports of those seeking healing from entheogens, like psilocybin and ayahuasca. The latest reports I've been reading about psilocybin speak of it curing diabetes, in light of which it would be no surprise at all if a properly guided entheogenic experience could make "quick work" of gluten intolerance as well.
What, then, does the gluten-free proponent have in common with the Drug Warrior? They both are motivated by a search for easy answers. The gluten sufferer tells us that gluten is bad, end of discussion: not bad in this circumstance or that, but simply bad, bad, bad. When it comes to psychoactive drugs, the Drug Warrior tells us the same thing: that drugs are bad; not bad in this or that circumstance, but bad, bad, bad. And the knock-on effects of this childish attitude? We box with shadows instead of combatting the real villains in our lives.
I am not, of course, suggesting that anyone change their diets here and now. If you have associated health issues with gluten, that association is probably real. As Vox magazine reports, "There are, in fact, a tiny fraction of people who have celiac disease or wheat allergies and truly can't eat gluten." But gluten intolerance for most of us is not the same as having blue eyes or red hair. It can be overcome, as can agoraphobia, and fear of heights, and fear of flying... or even lactose intolerance, for that matter. These conditions are life sentences only in the minds of westerners who have yet to learn of the mind-improving powers of psychedelics like psilocybin. Remember, Paul Stamets1 learned to stop his teenage stuttering in just one afternoon thanks to his consumption of psychedelic mushrooms. That's a far better outcome than needlessly embracing one's disability and being proud of it. "My name is Paul St-St-Stamets and I am pr-pr-proud to be a stutterer." We'd be like: "No, Paul, don't embrace your stuttering: rise above it with godsend medicines!"
Now, I have nothing against vegetarians and vegans. They may even be "right" in the metaphysical sense of that word when it comes to the morality of our food selections. But I have noticed that all the gluten-free people I know were (or are) also vegans, and all those vegans were also vegetarians in the past. In other words, there seems to be a trend here. To say that one is gluten-free these days seems to be a statement of personal identity as much as it is a comment about one's personal health-related shortcomings. What identity? Well, it depends on one's point of view. A generous soul might say that a gluten-free person is someone who is particularly careful about their health... whereas a curmudgeon might complain that they are hypochondriacs with a penchant for putting their moral superiority on display whenever the topic of discussion turns to food preferences. I am personally willing to take the sufferer at their word, that their claims of gluten intolerance are meant as statements of fact rather than as coy winks toward a certain sociopolitical outlook, but in that case, I hope they'll also reflect on the fact that digestion is not destiny and that they have the power to change in this age of the psychedelic renaissance.
Author's Follow-up:
May 20, 2025
I don't want to leave the reader with the impression that psychedelics are the only game-changing drugs out there. To the contrary, absolutely any substance that inspires and elates has potential godsend uses for some person, at some dose, in some situation, either when used alone or in combination, etc. etc. etc. (you know, based on all the details that the prohibitionists dogmatically ignore). The wise use of opium 2 -- something that we have been brainwashed to consider to be an oxymoron -- can have wonderful effects, like helping us to appreciate the world around us, as is clear from the following quote from "A Tale of the Ragged Mountains" by Edgar Allan Poe.
"In the meantime the morphine 3 had its customary effect- that of enduing all the external world with an intensity of interest. In the quivering of a leaf- in the hue of a blade of grass- in the shape of a trefoil- in the humming of a bee- in the gleaming of a dew-drop- in the breathing of the wind- in the faint odors that came from the forest- there came a whole universe of suggestion- a gay and motley train of rhapsodical and immethodical thought."4
Meanwhile, the user reports in "Pihkal" by Alexander Shulgin5 speak for themselves regarding the enormous potential benefits of phenethylamines.
"I feel that it is one of the most profound and deep learning experiences I have had."
"An energetic feeling began to take over me. It continued to grow. The feeling was one of great camaraderie, and it was very easy to talk to people."
"I acknowledged a rapture in the very act of breathing."
What's this got to do with gluten?
The point is that we would not be focusing on these substances as being such decisive factors in our lives were we able to take strategic advantage of the psychoactive medicines that would be available to us in the absence of drug prohibition. We would then be able to transcend our simplistic calculus about causation and see that health is created by a whole world's worth of factors, many of which we are completely unaware in our so-called sober life.
To put this another way: Biochemistry is not destiny -- or at least it would not be destiny had racist politicians not outlawed almost all psychoactive medicines in the name of racist fearmongering.
The first step in harm reduction is to re-legalize mother nature's medicines. Then hundreds of millions of people will no longer suffer in silence for want of godsend medicines... for depression, for pain, for anxiety, for religious doubts... you name it.
"In consciousness dwells the wondrous, with it man attains the realm beyond the material, and the peyote tells us where to find it." --Antonin Arnaud
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.
Folks like Sabet accuse folks like myself of ignoring the "facts." No, it is Sabet who is ignoring the facts -- facts about dangerous horses and free climbing. He's also ignoring all the downsides of prohibition, whose laws lead to the election of tyrants.
Drug use is judged by different standards than any other risky activity in the western world. One death can lead to outrage, even though that death might be statistically insignificant.
Some fat cat should treat the entire Supreme Court to a vacation at San Jose del Pacifico in Mexico, where they can partake of the magic mushroom in a ceremony led by a Zapotec guide.
I have nothing against science, BTW (altho' I might feel differently after a nuclear war!) I just want scientists to "stay in their lane" and stop pretending to be experts on my own personal mood and consciousness.
Capitalism requires disease-mongering -- and disease-mongering requires the suppression of medicines that work holistically, that work by improving mood and elating the individual AND THEREFORE improving their health overall.
I hated the show "The Apprentice," because it taught a cynical and hate-filled lesson about the proper way to "get ahead" in the world. I saw Trump as a menace back then, long before he started declaring that American elections were corrupt before the very first vote was cast!
I never said that getting off SSRIs should be done without supervision. If you're on Twitter for medical advice, you're in the wrong place.
The first step in harm reduction is to re-legalize mother nature's medicines. Then hundreds of millions of people will no longer suffer in silence for want of godsend medicines... for depression, for pain, for anxiety, for religious doubts... you name it.