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Hello? MDMA works, already!

An open letter to Dr. Jessica Maples-Keller, principal investigator for the 'MDMA Plus Exposure Therapy for PTSD' at Emory University

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

September 6, 2024



Dear Dr. Maples-Keller1:

As a chronic depressive retiree, I take exception to the glacially advancing way that drugs like MDMA are being studied today.  Such meds work in an holistic manner and should not be subject to materialist criteria for "efficacy." They work. Everybody knows it. This requirement for scientific proof is really just a way to slow down re-legalization of such drugs and to make sure that it will have as little impact as possible on pharmaceutical companies if and when it finally occurs.

Thanks to this willful ignorance on the part of science, I will be DEAD long before institutions like Emory ever get around to "proving" that MDMA might be effective in some way for me.  

And so I will not be eligible for your trials, on the grounds that I merely am depressed and do not "have" PTSD. And yet I obviously have PTSD in a philosophical sense. EVERYBODY has PTSD to some degree: that's what neurosis is all about: it is the ingrained subconscious memorization of counterproductive emotional responses engendered by incidents in the past (whether the triggering conditions are consciously remembered or not).

And yet everyone plays along with the idea that a board-certified PTSD has nothing to do with me -- and that's just a materialist bias, thanks to which we reify conditions like PTSD as things in themselves. This is convenient for drug makers because it gives them endless markets to exploit: as many markets as we decide to devise separate and discrete "illnesses" for in the DSM. But this "disease mongering" is based on philosophical assumptions that are sharply at odds with the ideas of holism championed by the Cosmovision of the Andes and the indigenous attitude in general according to which health is a balance of a wide range of factors. Materialists, to the contrary, seek to limit the number of variables in their studies, thereby bolstering their hubristic pretensions for having perfect knowledge about all things. But the price they pay is that their conclusions do not apply to real people in the messy world of intertwined causes and effects, but merely to abstracted stand-ins, denuded of everything that makes them human.

Actually, however, it is common sense that MDMA could help me.  Common sense!  (Just read the standard reports of users and tell me it is not a wish list for busting depression -- not just from the drug use itself but from the health-inspiring benefit of ANTICIPATION of use, something that materialists never consider!) But materialist Drug Warriors would have us MAKE BELIEVE that we do not know that entheogenic medicines work. They demand that real help must be proven scientifically in a very expensive and time-consuming way -- and then only by thinking of MDMA with respect to one single board-certified condition at a time.  This is really just a new way of suppressing the kind of holistic drugs that "only" work according to indigenous peoples -- or according to anecdote, which scientists these days feel free to ignore, even when the use of MDMA promoted unprecedented peace, love and understanding on the dance floors of Britain in the 1990s.

That Camelot was brought to an end when the UK police cracked down on Ecstasy use, after which alcohol became the drug of choice and the dance floors devolved into chaos -- requiring that concert organizers hire special forces troops to keep the peace!!!

And why? Because a 100-pound girl died from dehydration because UK leaders preferred to demonize Ecstasy rather than to teach safe use2.

This is one of many problems with the drug approval process at least when it comes to psychoactive medicine: not only does the FDA ignore glaringly obvious drug benefits as mentioned above, but they never take into account the risks of NOT approving a drug -- which, in the case of MDMA, means, for one thing, the increased use of alcohol.

I am writing this because I received a heads-up from the MAPS organization3 that you were in search of participants for an FDA trial. Notwithstanding the above complaints, such studies as yours are "the only game in town" for people who wish to access MDMA legally for health reasons. However, as I appear to be barred from benefiting from MDMA legally -- at least in this lifetime -- I wanted at least to go on record as deploring the glacial pace of drug re-approval that is keeping a godsend medicine from those in need -- all under the warped idea that the best drug policy is to teach fear and to demonize substances rather than to learn how to use them as safely and as wisely as possible.

Sincerely Yours


PS All drugs obviously have negative potentials. But this is an FDA that approves of brain-damaging shock therapy and of the psychiatric pill mill, thanks to which 1 in 4 American women are dependent on Big Pharma meds for life4. You cannot tell me that their scruples about MDMA safety make sense given this back story, least of all in a country that countenances tens of thousands of deaths each year due to alcohol5, a drug whose use MDMA could help to decrease!

Author's Follow-up: September 6, 2024

picture of clock metaphorically suggesting a follow-up


A reader might complain, "Yes, but we live in a materialist society, so we have to play by the rules of science." To which I say, we need to expose this materialist bias, not pretend that it does not exist. Only by exposing it can we show that the demonization of drugs is not common sense but is rather based on human presuppositions that are open to debate, especially insofar as the US view has never been championed by indigenous communities. If we cannot get the US and its ideological partners to change their dogmatically jaundiced views of psychoactive medicine, then maybe we can at least get them to recognize that the philosophy underlying their hatred is not universally accepted and so get them to stop bullying other countries into hating drugs too, especially when confronted with the observation that doing so is nothing less than pharmacological colonialism.

MDMA/Ecstasy




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"?)

  • America's Blind Spot
  • Canadian Drug Warrior, I said Get Away
  • Common Sense Drug Withdrawal
  • Drug War Murderers
  • Drugs are not the problem
  • End the Drug War Now
  • Feedback on my first legal psilocybin session in Oregon
  • Finally, a Drug War opponent who checks all my boxes
  • Freedom of Religion and the War on Drugs
  • Getting off antidepressants in the age of the Drug War
  • God and Drugs
  • Hello? MDMA works, already!
  • How Addiction Scientists Reckon without the Drug War
  • How National Geographic slanders the Inca people and their use of coca
  • How Scientific American reckons without the Drug War
  • How the Drug War is Threatening Intellectual Freedom in England
  • How the Drug War Outlaws Criticism of Immanuel Kant
  • How the Monticello Foundation betrayed Jefferson's Legacy in 1987
  • How the US Preventive Services Task Force Drums Up Business for Big Pharma
  • I'll See Your Antidepressants and Raise You One Huachuma Cactus
  • Ignorance is the enemy, not Fentanyl
  • Illusions with Professor Arthur Shapiro
  • In Defense of Religious Drug Use
  • Keep Laughing Gas Legal
  • MDMA for Psychotherapy
  • My Realistic Plan for Getting off of Big Pharma Drugs and why it's so hard to implement
  • No drugs are bad in and of themselves
  • Open Letter to Addiction Specialist Gabor Mate
  • Open Letter to Anthony Gottlieb
  • Open Letter to Congressman Ben Cline, asking him to abolish the criminal DEA
  • Open Letter to Diane O'Leary
  • Open Letter to Erica Zelfand
  • Open Letter to Francis Fukuyama
  • Open letter to Kenneth Sewell
  • Open Letter to Lisa Ling
  • Open letter to Professor Troy Glover at Waterloo University
  • Open Letter to Richard Hammersley
  • Open Letter to Rick Doblin and Roland Griffiths
  • Open Letter to Roy Benaroch MD
  • Open Letter to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime
  • Open Letter to the Virginia Legislature
  • Open Letter to Variety Critic Owen Glieberman
  • Open Letter to Vincent Hurley, Lecturer
  • Open Letter to Vincent Rado
  • Open letter to Wolfgang Smith
  • Predictive Policing in the Age of the Drug War
  • Prohibitionists Never Learn
  • Regulate and Educate
  • Replacing antidepressants with entheogens
  • Review of When Plants Dream
  • Science News Continues to Ignore the Drug War
  • Science News magazine continues to pretend that there is no War on Drugs
  • Solquinox sounded great, until I found out I wasn't invited
  • Speaking Truth to Big Pharma
  • Teenagers and Cannabis
  • The common sense way to get off of antidepressants
  • The Criminalization of Nitrous Oxide is No Laughing Matter
  • The Depressing Truth About SSRIs
  • The Invisible Mass Shootings
  • The Menace of the Drug War
  • The problem with Modern Drug Reform Efforts
  • The Pseudoscience of Mental Health Treatment
  • There is nothing to debate: the Drug War is wrong, root and branch
  • Time for News Outlets to stop promoting Drug War lies
  • Top 10 Problems with the Drug War
  • Unscientific American
  • Using plants and fungi to get off of antidepressants
  • Vancouver Police Seek to Eradicate Safe Use
  • Weed Bashing at WTOP.COM
  • Whitehead and Psychedelics
  • Why DARE should stop telling kids to say no
  • Why Rick Doblin is Ghosting Me
  • Why the Drug War is Worse than you can Imagine
  • Why the FDA is not qualified to judge psychoactive medicine
  • Another Academic Toes the Drug Warrior Line
  • Constructive criticism of the MAPS strategy for re-legalizing MDMA
  • Even Terence McKenna Was Wrong About MDMA
  • Getting off antidepressants in the age of the Drug War
  • Hello? MDMA works, already!
  • How Ecstasy could end mass shootings
  • How Logic-Challenged Journalists Support the Drug War
  • How the Drug War killed Leah Betts
  • MDMA and Depression
  • MDMA for Psychotherapy
  • Using Ecstasy in Church

  • Open Letters




    Check out the conversations that I have had so far with the movers and shakers in the drug-war game -- or rather that I have TRIED to have. Actually, most of these people have failed to respond to my calls to parlay, but that need not stop you from reading MY side of these would-be chats.

    I don't know what's worse, being ignored entirely or being answered with a simple "Thank you" or "I'll think about it." One writes thousands of words to raise questions that no one else is discussing and they are received and dismissed with a "Thank you." So much for discussion, so much for give-and-take. It's just plain considered bad manners these days to talk honestly about drugs. Academia is living in a fantasy world in which drugs are ignored and/or demonized -- and they are in no hurry to face reality. And so I am considered a troublemaker. This is understandable, of course. One can support gay rights, feminism, and LGBTQ+ today without raising collegiate hackles, but should one dare to talk honestly about drugs, they are exiled from the public commons.

    Somebody needs to keep pointing out the sad truth about today's censored academia and how this self-censorship is but one of the many unacknowledged consequences of the Drug War ideology of substance demonization.



  • America's Blind Spot
  • Canadian Drug Warrior, I said Get Away
  • Common Sense Drug Withdrawal
  • Drug War Murderers
  • Drugs are not the problem
  • End the Drug War Now
  • Feedback on my first legal psilocybin session in Oregon
  • Finally, a Drug War opponent who checks all my boxes
  • Freedom of Religion and the War on Drugs
  • Getting off antidepressants in the age of the Drug War
  • God and Drugs
  • Hello? MDMA works, already!
  • How Addiction Scientists Reckon without the Drug War
  • How National Geographic slanders the Inca people and their use of coca
  • How Scientific American reckons without the Drug War
  • How the Drug War is Threatening Intellectual Freedom in England
  • How the Drug War Outlaws Criticism of Immanuel Kant
  • How the Monticello Foundation betrayed Jefferson's Legacy in 1987
  • How the US Preventive Services Task Force Drums Up Business for Big Pharma
  • I'll See Your Antidepressants and Raise You One Huachuma Cactus
  • Ignorance is the enemy, not Fentanyl
  • Illusions with Professor Arthur Shapiro
  • In Defense of Religious Drug Use
  • Keep Laughing Gas Legal
  • MDMA for Psychotherapy
  • My Realistic Plan for Getting off of Big Pharma Drugs and why it's so hard to implement
  • No drugs are bad in and of themselves
  • Open Letter to Addiction Specialist Gabor Mate
  • Open Letter to Anthony Gottlieb
  • Open Letter to Congressman Ben Cline, asking him to abolish the criminal DEA
  • Open Letter to Diane O'Leary
  • Open Letter to Erica Zelfand
  • Open Letter to Francis Fukuyama
  • Open letter to Kenneth Sewell
  • Open Letter to Lisa Ling
  • Open letter to Professor Troy Glover at Waterloo University
  • Open Letter to Richard Hammersley
  • Open Letter to Rick Doblin and Roland Griffiths
  • Open Letter to Roy Benaroch MD
  • Open Letter to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime
  • Open Letter to the Virginia Legislature
  • Open Letter to Variety Critic Owen Glieberman
  • Open Letter to Vincent Hurley, Lecturer
  • Open Letter to Vincent Rado
  • Open letter to Wolfgang Smith
  • Predictive Policing in the Age of the Drug War
  • Prohibitionists Never Learn
  • Regulate and Educate
  • Replacing antidepressants with entheogens
  • Review of When Plants Dream
  • Science News Continues to Ignore the Drug War
  • Science News magazine continues to pretend that there is no War on Drugs
  • Solquinox sounded great, until I found out I wasn't invited
  • Speaking Truth to Big Pharma
  • Teenagers and Cannabis
  • The common sense way to get off of antidepressants
  • The Criminalization of Nitrous Oxide is No Laughing Matter
  • The Depressing Truth About SSRIs
  • The Invisible Mass Shootings
  • The Menace of the Drug War
  • The problem with Modern Drug Reform Efforts
  • The Pseudoscience of Mental Health Treatment
  • There is nothing to debate: the Drug War is wrong, root and branch
  • Time for News Outlets to stop promoting Drug War lies
  • Top 10 Problems with the Drug War
  • Unscientific American
  • Using plants and fungi to get off of antidepressants
  • Vancouver Police Seek to Eradicate Safe Use
  • Weed Bashing at WTOP.COM
  • Whitehead and Psychedelics
  • Why DARE should stop telling kids to say no
  • Why Rick Doblin is Ghosting Me
  • Why the Drug War is Worse than you can Imagine
  • Why the FDA is not qualified to judge psychoactive medicine


  • Notes:

    1: Jessica Maples-Keller, PHD Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences (up)
    2: How the Drug War killed Leah Betts (up)
    3: MAPS: Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (up)
    4: Good Chemistry: The Science of Connection, from Soul to Psychedelics (up)
    5: Deaths from Excessive Alcohol Use in the United States (up)







    Ten Tweets

    against the hateful war on US




    Why does no one talk about empathogens for preventing atrocities? Because they'd rather hate drugs than use them for the benefit of humanity. They don't want to solve problems, they prefer hatred.

    Drug War propaganda is all about convincing us that we will never be able to use drugs wisely. But the drug warriors are not taking any chances: they're doing all they can to make that a self-fulfilling prophecy.

    When people tell us there's nothing to be gained from using mind-improving drugs, they are embarrassing themselves. Users benefit from such drugs precisely to the extent that they are educated and open-minded. Loudmouth abstainers are telling us that they lack these traits.

    I personally hate beets and I could make a health argument against their legality. Beets can kill for those allergic to them. Sure, it's a rare condition, but since when has that stopped a prohibitionist from screaming bloody murder?

    There are endless creative ways to ward off addiction if all psychoactive medicines were at our disposal. The use of the drugs synthesized by Alexander Shulgin could combat the psychological downsides of withdrawal by providing strategic "as-needed" relief.

    There are endless drugs that could help with depression. Any drug that inspires and elates is an antidepressant, partly by the effect itself and partly by the mood-elevation caused by anticipation of use (facts which are far too obvious for drug warriors to understand).

    We should be encouraging certain drug use by the elderly. Many Indigenous drugs have been shown to grow new neurons and increase neural connectivity -- to refuse to use them makes us complicit in the dementia of our loved ones!

    Google founders used to enthuse about the power of free speech, but Google is actively shutting down videos that tell us how to grow mushrooms -- MUSHROOMS, for God's sake. End the drug war and this hateful censorship of a free people.

    Today's Washington Post reports that "opioid pills shipped" DROPPED 45% between 2011 and 2019..... while fatal overdoses ROSE TO RECORD LEVELS! Prohibition is PUBLIC ENEMY NUMBER ONE.

    We need a scheduling system for psychoactive drugs as much as we need a scheduling system for sports activities: i.e. NOT AT ALL. Some sports are VERY dangerous, but we do not outlaw them because we know that there are benefits both to sports and to freedom in general.


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






    Constructive criticism of the MAPS strategy for re-legalizing MDMA
    Science News magazine continues to pretend that there is no war on drugs


    Copyright 2025 abolishthedea.com, Brian Quass

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