In "The Doors of Perception,1" Aldous Huxley frets that the transcendent states produced by drugs like mescaline are so enticing that some users might be tempted to remain isolated in their ecstatic states continually, never more taking part in the everyday world of sober reality. I would like to respond to that concern in this short essay.
First, I would point out that there are worse things than spending one's life in a hermit-like state of ecstasy. Much of the violence in today's world is due to the fact that young males in particular are not comfortable staying at home and minding their own business. They are easily encouraged by demagogues to go downtown and smash things on behalf of various causes. Even those who are constitutionally immune to such cynical admonitions will still feel the need to escape their hometown lest they begin climbing the walls. This pathological restlessness on the part of Homo sapiens is what French philosopher La Bruyere was thinking when he wrote: "Ce grand malheur, de ne pouvoir être seul 2" -- i.e., "This great evil, to not be able to be alone."
Drugs like mescaline can help people be alone. That is, they can help make people comfortable in their own skin. How? By helping them see that the wonders of the world are nearby and do not require travel. In fact, when wisely used, drugs like mescaline could be the long-sought-for answer to that post-war poser: "How are you gonna keep them down on the farm?" ANSWER: By encouraging the strategic use of reality-enhancing drugs like mescaline to remind them that the grass is just as green here on the farm as it is anywhere else.
Consider the following effects of morphine as described in the short story "A Tale of the Ragged Mountains" by Edgar Allan Poe.
"In the meantime the morphine 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.3"
How are you gonna keep them down on the farm? ANSWER: By making the farm beautiful in their eyes! By making them see the farm through the eyes of a child! And drugs can do precisely that.
As with any activity, there are those who will overdo it. There are those who love the alcoholic state so much that they seek inebriation 24/7. We call these people drunkards. (Incidentally, there would be no drunkards in the world were we able to use all drugs wisely for the benefit of humanity, assuming that such knowledge were made available on a practical basis to those with an alcoholic disposition.)
In a free world, we would learn the precise threats posed to actual people by specific drugs and educate and prescribe accordingly. We will not save everyone from themselves - but that is no reason to outlaw drugs.
Social norms and education will keep most people on the straight and narrow with regard to all risky activities, drug use included. The idea that drugs pose a unique risk in this regard is sheer drug-warrior dogma and is disproved by the fact that most people use drugs wisely4, even today, in an age in which the Drug Warrior does everything they can to make drug use as dangerous as possible. How? By refusing to teach safe use, refusing to regulate product, and refusing to make all drug options available so that the user can make a free and informed choice of drugs based on their specific situation, including their goals in life, their stage of life, their priorities in life, their genetics, their biochemistry, etc. - in other words, all the specifics that the Drug Warrior dogmatically ignores in preference to idiotically claiming that drugs are bad per se outside of all context.
The extreme attractiveness of these altered states is precisely why they hold such potential, Aldous. nuclear war 5 would be unimaginable in a world in which everyone was happy just to be alive and to rejoice in the world around them. Sure, this can and will be taken to extremes by certain individuals, those who will overdo it and so live out of touch with everyday realities and their fellow human beings. But that is a concern common to all risky activity, that some people will overdo it. That should go without saying. The real headline about drugs like mescaline is that they can help the average responsible human being to live a fuller, more enjoyable life, a life, moreover, in which they are inoculated against the "hate virus" that is always being propagated by demagogue politicians around the world.
To repeat: The compelling nature of such drug use is what makes it so wonderful. We should not lose track of this fact by adopting the Drug Warrior practice of focusing lopsidedly on downsides only. To paraphrase Shakespeare, "Dost thou think, Mr. Huxley, because some people are irresponsible, there shall be no more mescaline and phenethylamines?"
"Nearly every American has the financial means to drink all day long, remaining intoxicated throughout his waking hours. Yet very few people choose to do this, and perhaps the reason is too obvious to need stating: They have more important things to do. They have responsibilities to employers, family members, friends, and neighbors." --Jacob Sullum, from Saying Yes: In Defense of Drug Use, p. 986
Author's Follow-up:
May 08, 2025
In "The Concept of Nature," Alfred North Whitehead wrote the following:
"In the presentation of a novel outlook with wide ramifications, a single line of communications from premises to conclusions is not sufficient for intelligibility. Your audience will construe whatever you say into conformity with their pre-existing outlook.7"
This is a precept that I must keep in mind, given that the idea of using drugs for human benefit is, unfortunately, a very novel mindset indeed in 21st-century America. I must therefore attempt to answer the kneejerk objections that will occur to the reader who has been brainwashed from grade school in the substance-demonizing ideology of the War on Drugs, above all by the censorship of all positive reports of drug use in the media.
But answering such objections is like peeling an onion. I might say, for instance, that folks will use drugs like morphine wisely -- but then I must remember that the Drug War has taught Americans that wise use is not even possible. I must then back-pedal and start arguing about the hitherto understood fact that human beings need not be eternal children with respect to the psychoactive nature of the world that they inhabit, that they can actually teach and learn and benefit from knowledge based on real-world experience.
But even if the brainwashed reader cannot wrap their heads around the fact that drugs like morphine 8 and mescaline can actually be used wisely -- and that is indeed a "big ask" in this age of cradle-to-grave Drug War propaganda -- they should at least be comforted by the fact that many phenethylamines are inherently non-addictive -- although, of course, in some sense, any substance at all can be addictive for somebody in some circumstance. A quick search of the Web just now tells me that some people out there are actually addicted to butter.
I guess the readers just have to ask themselves: do they prefer gun violence 9 , unhappiness and nuclear war 1011 , or would they prefer that we use psychoactive substances as wisely as possible for the benefit of humanity? I would like to think that most people would prefer the latter, but then who knows? Drug warriors prefer that we chronic depressives commit suicide 12 and/or fry our brains with ECT rather than to use drugs, so we cannot count on them to "work with me here" as I try to stave off nuclear annihilation with a common sense approach to substance use.
The Petpedia website says that "German Shepherds need to have challenging jobs such as searching for drugs." How about searching for prohibitionists instead?
If Fentanyl kills, then alcohol massacres. The problem is drug prohibition, not drugs.
I'd like to become a guinea pig for researchers to test the ability of psychoactive drugs to make aging as psychologically healthy as possible. If such drugs cannot completely ward off decrepitude, they can surely make it more palatable. The catch? Researchers have to be free.
NOW is the time for entheogens -- not (as Strassman and Pollan seem to think) at some future date when materialists have finally wrapped their minds around the potential usefulness of drugs that experientially teach compassion.
What attracts me about "drug dealers" is that they are NOT interested in prying into my private life. What a relief! With psychiatry, you are probed for pathological behavior on every office visit. You are a child. To the "drug dealer," I am an adult at least.
I thought mycology clubs across the US would be protesting drug laws that make mushroom collecting illegal for psychoactive species. But in reality, almost no club even mentions such species. No wonder prohibition is going strong.
How would we even KNOW that outlawed drugs have no positive uses? We first have to incorporate them in a sane, empathic and creative way to find that out, and the drug war makes such a sensible approach absolutely impossible.
This is the problem with trusting science to tell us about drugs. Science means reductive materialism, whereas psychoactive drug use is all about mind and the human being as a whole. We need pharmacologically savvy shaman to guide us, not scientists.
William James knew that there were substances that could elate. However, it never occurred to him that we should use such substances to prevent suicide. It seems James was blinded to this possibility by his puritanical assumptions.
Outlawing substances like laughing gas and MDMA makes no more sense than outlawing fire.
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