How Drug Warriors Deny Me the Pursuit of Happiness
an open letter to trolls and materialists
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
April 22, 2025
In 1987, the Reagan DEA stomped onto the estate of Monticello and confiscated Thomas Jefferson's poppy plants in violation of everything that he stood for, politically speaking1. When I complained about this outrage in the comments section of a YouTube video about Jefferson, I received a reply scornfully stating that our revolutionary ancestors did not fight about their right to "drugs," thank me very much, the implication being that my concerns were of a trivial and whining nature. It is hard to imagine a more misguided comeback in the history of the YouTube comment section. The idiocy of this reply should be apparent to all. The troll might just as well have said, "Our forefathers were not fighting about stamps or about tea..." to which the response would be: "No, not exactly, but they were certainly fighting about issues related thereto. "
"The right to chew or smoke a plant that grows wild in nature, such as hemp (marijuana), is anterior to and more basic than the right to vote." --Thomas Szasz, from Our Right to Drugs, p xvi2
Our forefathers were presumably fighting about personal liberty, and there is no greater suppression of personal liberty than to control how much one is allowed to think and feel in life - and if that feat is accomplished by outlawing the kinds of medicines that have inspired entire religions, then the abolition of such prohibitions is the most important political cause of all time. The hater attempts to disguise this fact by dismissing psychoactive plant medicines as mere "drugs,3" the politically created epithet designed by racist tyrants for this very purpose: to belittle the substances that those politicians planned to outlaw for the purposes of disempowering their opposition: especially, liberals and minorities. If our patriot ancestors did not specifically tell us that they were fighting in the name of keeping Mother Nature legal, it was only because they never imagined in a million years that any government would have the hubris and the tyrannous overreach to claim to outlaw Mother Nature in the first place. King George III may have been mad, but even his harshest critics never imagined him to be that mad.
And yet this incomprehensible and blockheaded scorn for the most important freedom of all - the freedom to control one's own mind and mood - is not just to be found in conservative Internet trolls, it is the party line of the liberal mainstream. This is why organizations like Mad in America4 and Surviving Antidepressants5 make so little progress in combatting the psychiatric pill mill 6 - because they deliberately censor free speech about the psychologically obvious benefits of outlawed medicines78, the drugs whose outlawing allowed Big Pharma to render 1 in 4 American women chemically dependent in the first place9. They believe that merely to mention such substances constitutes advocacy of their use by specific people in specific situations.
And why would such alleged advocacy be wrong, assuming it truly existed? Apparently, because we are supposed to listen to materialist doctors when it comes to treating what ails us, psychologically speaking. And who are these materialist doctors? They are the same people who turned us into lifelong patients in the first place10! They are the same people who, in fealty to Drug War ideology, pretend to see no benefits whatsoever in the endless list of psychoactive medicines whose use America has unscientifically outlawed a priori, in advance of all study and research. Meanwhile, the apparently gullible readers that these sites are "protecting" from free speech are subject to TV ads for Jim Beam bourbon targeted specifically at young people - and to ads for Big Pharma 1112 drugs whose officially recognized side effects include death itself13.
How do we account for these two attitudes, both of which see no far-ranging problem with the outlawing of a vast pharmacopoeia of psychoactive substances?
The YouTube critic is merely a hater whose ignorance has been leveraged for political purposes by racist politicians, through a combination of censorship (of all positive drug uses) and the kind of newspeak that has transformed the original neutral term of "drug" into the moralistic putdown par excellence14. The latter organizations, however, have been hoodwinked by another means: namely, their acceptance of the ruinous assumption that materialist scientists are the experts when it comes to matters of mind and mood medicine. The fact is that it has always been a category error to place materialists in charge of mind and mood. This is easily proven by the argumentum ad absurdum. We have merely to notice that the materialists that we have thus placed upon a pedestal are dogmatically blind to all the glaringly obvious benefits of so-called "drugs" thanks to their reductionist and behaviorist focus. This is clear when materialists like Dr. Robert Glatter tell us that they are unsure whether even laughing gas 15 can help the depressed16. Laughing gas: a substance whose use transports users to a kind of heaven, according to accounts published in "The Varieties of Religious Experience" and "The Will to Believe" by William James17.
The materialists are clearly gaslighting 18 us19 by channeling Dr. Spock from Star Trek when they tell us that drugs that inspire heavenly experiences have no therapeutic value whatsoever. Au contraire, they tell us: such substances must be subjected to endless expensive studies under a microscope, to find out if they "really" work, and then in connection with only one specific pathology at a time as specified in the disease-mongering DSM. (Cui bono in that case? Answer: the materialists, of course.) And what about the desire to use psychoactive drugs in the absence of pathology? Ironically, that desire itself is treated as a pathology in the DSM. As a young person, I was threatened with being pathologized as an addictive personality20 merely because I protested the niggardly nature of the starkly limited pharmacopoeia of psychiatry. If you want your world view to succeed, just pathologize the heretics.
This is not science, it is rather the privileging of an anti-indigenous world view, one which cynically ignores all obvious emotions. This is, in fact, what I call pharmacological colonialism: the attempt to judge holistic medicine through the purblind lens of a materialist microscope. This is the approach that the Drug Warriors like, of course, because it makes drug approval a very fraught and time-consuming business - whereas, absent the materialist outlook, it would be glaringly obvious that any drug that inspired and elated had potential positive uses - when used at some doses, for some reasons, in some circumstances, etc. (in other words, when one considers the endless contextual factors that Drug Warriors refuse to even discuss in their one-size-fits-all diatribes against "drugs" in general). This is especially clear from the fact that the Hindu religion owes its very existence to the use of a drug that inspired and elated - from which it follows that the suppression of such drugs constitutes the suppression of the religious impulse itself2122. So the problem is not merely that this category error has had the effect of withholding godsend medicine from those with pathologies that have been reified for the sake of materialists by the DSM. It is worse than that. The problem is that the category error has outlawed our most fundamental right to experience the divine as we understand that term23.
This is why I say that the Drug War is not just an injustice, it is a meta-injustice. It affects how and how much you are allowed to think and feel about your world. It does this not just by denying you the vast psychoactive pharmacopoeia that we know today, but also the many drugs that have yet to be discovered, either in nature or in the lab, substances that can inspire and elate, especially when used in common sense protocols for that purpose. Materialists cannot even fathom the possibilities here, however, since they view human beings as interchangeable widgets amenable to one-size-fits-all pills for human problems24 - whereas in a free world, we would embrace the stereotypically indigenous mindset which seeks to use any and all substances for positive purposes in highly individualized but psychologically obvious protocols - obvious to anyone who has not been blinded to common sense by the inhumane behaviorism of JB Watson25.
But the potential benefits of drugs are obvious to anyone who has read the substance user reports from "Pihkal26" or "The Varieties of Religious Experience27" - or who merely reflects on the fact that the Hindu religion owes its existence to the use of a drug that inspires and elates. Only purblind materialists could ignore all this information and so make the mad claim that they alone are able to tell us what "really" works for us in this life, both psychologically and metaphysically speaking.
It is to protest such enormous presumption that I write this essay. Both the troll and the materialist ignore the most obvious and important thing in the world: the fact that how I feel about this life of mine colors everything that happens in that life - and determines the extent to which I can respond productively to those events. When your drug laws unconscionably deny me medicines that could focus my mind and make me want to thrive, it is tyranny, whether your motive in so doing is ignorance or a dogmatic belief in the passion-free tenets of behaviorism. Thomas Jefferson was certainly rolling in his grave when the DEA confiscated his poppy plants in violation of the Natural Law upon which he had founded America, a nation that championed the pursuit of happiness in its very Constitution28. But Drug Warriors and their many collaborators, witting and otherwise, want to have it both ways: they want to have Benjamin Franklin and Marcus Aurelius without opium , Sherlock Holmes and Robin Williams without cocaine 2930 , and the Hindu religion without Soma 31 - and, of course, Thomas Jefferson without poppy plants.
I neither seek nor desire pity from readers, but I feel that I have to become slightly autobiographical at this point to drive my point home. For the fact is that I awoke in a somewhat depressed mood this morning and was thereby infuriated by drug prohibition. That may sound like a non-sequitur to some. But I hold that anyone whose performance in life is dampened by unproductive depression should be furious about the Drug War, which outlaws all drugs that can inspire and elate - in other words, the very kinds of drugs that not only beat depression, but which have inspired entire religions. It is one thing to feel down when one feels that there is no help for it. Then one can resign oneself stoically to the status quo and be silent. But when one reflects that the braindead and anti-scientific ideology of drug prohibition has barred one from using precisely the medicines that would help one based on simple common sense... then one is furious, and justly so.
Just imagine, experiencing disabling depression while yet realizing that America has outlawed the kinds of drugs that inspired the following user reports in "Pihkal" by chemist Alexander Shulgin32:
"I experienced the desire to laugh hysterically at what I could only describe as the completely ridiculous state of the entire world."
"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."
Seen in this light, drug prohibition is nothing less than a crime against humanity33. It is not just that I myself have to go without such meds, either, but folks who walk up to emergency rooms declaring themselves to be desperately depressed are denied such substances as well. America would literally prefer that such people commit suicide than for them to use something that might really work34. That is just the sorry pass to which we have been brought as a nation by the superstitious ideology of substance demonization.
And how does the DEA raid on Monticello 35 appear in light of the above quotations?
Answer: as a symbolic coup against personal empowerment and the right to control one's own thoughts and thought processes. The coup had its origins in the previous outlawing of opium 36 , of course, the panacea par excellence, in 1914 with the Harrison Narcotics Act, but the DEA raid of 1987 gave the government a chance to show that it meant business when it came to running interference between human beings and Mother Nature -- in defiance both of common sense, simple humanity and natural law.
American legislation is thus denying me the power of self-improvement, and this in a country that promised me the right to pursue happiness. And why are they denying me sovereignty over my mood and mental state, than which no sovereignty is more basic or important? Based on what world view?
Answer: they have embraced the anti-scientific idea that drugs are bad per se and can be demonized wholesale, without regard for circumstances. In other words, the American Drug Warrior is merely grunting the words "Drugs bad" in the same way that our paleolithic forebears had grunted the words "Fire bad," and for the same reason: to declare in the face of common sense that a godsend substance must be banned if it can be risky in the hands of the uninformed. According to this superstitious mindset, a drug that can be misused even in theory by white young people at one dose for one reason in one circumstance must not be used by anybody at any dose for any reason in any circumstance.
It is impossible to think of a dictum more likely to bring about unnecessary suffering - not just for Americans but for people worldwide - for those who suffer in silence behind closed doors so that American young people can be safe with respect to the drugs about which we refuse to teach them. This superstitious "drugs bad" mindset has inspired a prohibition that kills thousands every year in inner cities, it has destroyed the rule of law in Latin America, and it has now even ended democracy in America, after having first thrown millions of minorities in jail for that very purpose.
AFTERWORD
The amazing thing is, even drug-friendly authors like Carl Hart37 and Alexander Shulgin38 are blinded to the obvious by materialist triumphalism. They claim that those ecstatic drug user reports noted above tell us nothing about ways to treat depression - as if we depressed folks are from another planet and do not respond to the same psychological incentives as "normal" human beings. This is yet another outrage, to realize that even the friends of drug re-legalization 39 are going to lecture you to "keep taking your meds" rather than to use godsend drugs in psychologically obvious ways, as if we were actual adults rather than materialistic widgets that respond autonomically and predictably to one-size-fits-all nostrums.
There is nothing more clear to me in my life than that I could benefit immensely from drugs which would give me inspiring breaks from introspective sobriety, especially the variety of phenethylamines synthesized by chemist Alexander Shulgin, which can inspire music appreciation and deepen one's love for nature, not to mention for one's fellow human being. I take it as a kind of insult when materialists imply that such effects would not help me. They apparently believe that I would have found no benefits from using Soma, 40 either, the drug whose use inspired the Hindu religion. They either think of the depressed as showroom dummies or else as interchangeable widgets amenable to one-size-fits-all interventions of materialist science - which is a self-interested opinion, to put it mildly. This is yet another proof that it is a category error to put materialists in charge of mind and mood medicine: the fact that they can see none of the glaringly obvious benefits for the depressed in using drugs that inspire and elate and seek rather to tranquilize us and render us drug-dependent instead with philosophically problematic biochemical interventions.
Thanks but no thanks, Carl and Alex. I would rather be "cured" of my depression unscientifically by using the kind of godsend medicines that have inspired entire religions.
Before anyone receives shock therapy, they should have the option to start using opium daily instead and/or any other natural drug that makes them feel good and keeps them calm. Any natural drug is better than knowingly damaging the brain!!!
Imagine someone starting their book about antibiotics by saying that he's not trying to suggest that we actually use them. We should not have to apologize for being honest about drugs. If prohibitionists think that honesty is wrong, that's their problem.
We throw people out of jobs for using "drugs," we praise them for using "meds." The categories are imaginary, made up by politicians who want to demonize certain substances, but not cigs or beer.
It is a violation of religious liberty to outlaw substances that inspire and elate. The Hindu religion was inspired by just such a drug.
Countless millions suffer needlessly in silence because of America's fearmongering about drugs.
The Cabinet of Caligari ('62) ends with a shameless display of psychiatric triumphalism. Happy shock therapy patients waltz freely about a mansion in which the "sick" protagonist has just been "cured" by tranquilizers and psychoanalysis. Did Robert Bloch believe his own script?
The fact that drugs have positive uses for human beings is a psychological corollary of Husserl's phenomenology and Whitehead's philosophy of organism.
Drugs like opium and psychedelics should come with the following warning: "Outlawing of this product may result in inner-city gunfire, civil wars overseas, and rigged elections in which drug warriors win office by throwing minorities in jail."
More materialist nonsense. "We" are the only reason that the universe exists as a universe rather than as inchoate particles.
I agree that Big Pharma drugs have wrought disaster when used in psychotherapy -- but it is common sense that non-Big Pharma drugs that elate could be used to prevent suicide and obviate the need for ECT.
Before anyone receives shock therapy, they should have the option to start using opium daily instead and/or any other natural drug that makes them feel good and keeps them calm. Any natural drug is better than knowingly damaging the brain!!!