my unanswered question for Philosopher Patrick Grim
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
March 27, 2022
Yesterday, I joined a YouTube chat with Philosopher Patrick Grim arranged by Wondrium, formerly known as Great Courses Plus. I wanted to finally ask one specific philosopher what he thought about the way that the Drug War bars him from studying the effects of plant medicine on human consciousness.
After all, Patrick lectures on the Philosophy of Mind and Body and draws conclusions about the nature of consciousness and ultimate reality. Surely, it would be problematic for him (at very least) to have his study in such a field limited by a government which criminalizes consciousness-changing plant medicines that have inspired entire religions and given users perceived glimpses of an afterlife. For it was the Soma plant medicine that inspired the Vedic religion and the psychedelic-fueled Eleusinian Mysteries that interested Plato in the afterlife1.
So I posted my question -- or rather I tried to. However, the black-listing software that runs behind the scenes at YouTube removed my question shortly after I posted it, giving me the eerie feeling that American prejudices on the topic had been so inflamed by racist politicians that merely mentioning the "Drug War" was now considered hate speech. Fortunately, my question was restored after I brought the ham-fisted digital deletion to the attention of the moderators, and to my surprise, my question was soon put to Professor Grim himself. In paraphrasing my post, the moderator basically asked Grim, "How can we study mind and body in a society where a Drug War keeps us from studying psychoactive plant medicine, given that such substances have inspired entire religions and given saints and philosophers hints of new worlds, etc.?"
Unfortunately, Professor Grim dodged the subject almost entirely. He first cited William James' use of psychoactive substances (such as nitrous oxide), which sounded like a promising start, but then he switched to the topic of human souls (apparently grasping at that topic as to a life vest, since the word "souls" happened to have been used somewhere in the moderator's casual iteration of my drug-war-related question), beginning with the observation that James saw no proof of the soul, then branching out to the modern disbelief in souls, which he apparently shared, saying that there was no reason to believe that such a thing existed, and then tracing the origins of this seeming myth to the insights of Plato (failing to mention, however, that Plato's own ideas on this topic have been ascribed to his participation in the psychoactive mysteries mentioned above).
I asked my question, not hoping to ambush Grim, but rather to clarify my own views about philosophic silence about the Drug War. Were things really as bad as they seemed? I've written to over 100 of America's top philosophers on the topic of the Drug War and never received so much as a single response. I wanted to see if philosophers -- especially ones specializing in "mind and body" -- really felt indifferent to the way the Drug War circumscribed their studies. I was hoping to finally get an answer on the question, rather than to simply be ignored. For I just could not believe that philosophers of the mind could really ignore the Drug War, since to me that would be like Galileo (in some hypothetical modern interview) ignoring the role that the Church played in limiting his astronomical researches.
I don't blame Grim for avoiding the topic entirely, any more than I blame the other 100 philosophers who ignored my letters on the subject -- they've got their jobs to consider -- but I do blame US drug policy, which is so draconian that it not only limits scientific research, but it so frightens researchers (with implicit criminal threats and threats of ostracism) that they dare not even protest those limitations.
This is not a free academia, folks, it's an academia made complicit in its own muzzling.
There's an additional problem with a materialist like Grim remaining silent about the Drug War. It is like a democrat remaining silent about the fact that the republican party has been outlawed (or vice versa). The democrat profits politically from the silencing of his opposition, and so does the materialist. The materialist's "opposition," after all, comes from those who gain practical and ontological insights from the use of psychoactive plant medicine -- and if such use is forbidden, then Grim wins the battle against the spiritualist school by default. No need to argue, his opposition has been silenced.
Discussion Topics
May 24, 2025
Attention Teachers and Professors: Brian is not writing these essays for his health. (Well, in a way he is, actually, but that's not important now.) His goal is to get the world thinking about the anti-democratic and anti-scientific idiocy of the War on Drugs. You can stimulate your students' brainwashed grey matter on this topic by having them read the above essay and then discuss the following questions as a group!
How does drug law hand an unearned victory to materialist philosophers?
How do algorithms work to shut down free speech about so-called "drugs"?
William James called on philosophers to study altered states, and yet Professor Grim refuses to heed this call to arms, or to even acknowledge that this gauntlet has been thrown down by America's greatest philosopher. What does this tell us about the censored nature of philosophy today and how it privileges the philosophy of materialism 2?
Brian explains how Galileo was aware that he was being censored by the Church while philosophers appear to be unaware that they are being censored by drug prohibition and the Drug War ideology of substance demonization. Why the difference? (Hint: don't just follow the money, follow the philosophical zeitgeist as well: the materialist zeitgeist, that is.)
The drug war is the defeatist doctrine that we will never be able to use psychoactive drugs wisely. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy because the government does everything it can to make drug use dangerous.
The outlawing of opium eventually resulted in an "opioid crisis"? The message is clear: people want self-transcendence. If we don't let them find it safely, they will find it dangerously.
"My faith votes and strives to outlaw religions that use substances of which politicians disapprove."
Thanks to the Drug War, folks are forced to become amateur chemists to profit from DMT, a drug that occurs naturally in most living things. This is the same Drug War that is killing American young people wholesale by refusing to teach safe use and regulate drug supply.
The MindMed company (makers of LSD Lite) tell us that euphoria and visions are "adverse effects": that's not science, that's an arid materialist philosophy that does not believe in spiritual transcendence.
Yeah. That's why it's so pretentious and presumptuous of People magazine to "fight for justice" on behalf of Matthew Perry, as if Perry would have wanted that.
"Like Christians burning mosques and temples to spread the word of Jesus, modem drugabuseologists burn crops to spread the use of alcohol." -- Ceremonial Chemistry, p. 48
They drive to their drug tests in pickup trucks with license plates that read "Don't tread on me." Yeah, right. "Don't tread on me: Just tell me how and how much I'm allowed to think and feel in this life. And please let me know what plants I can access."
Oregon's drug policy is incoherent and cruel. The rich and healthy spend $4,000 a week on psilocybin. The poor and chemically dependent are thrown in jail, unless they're on SSRIs, in which case they're congratulated for "taking their meds."
The Drug Warriors say: "Don't tread on me! (That said, please continue to tell me what plants I can use, how much pain relief I can get, and whether my religion is true or not.)"
The drug war is the defeatist doctrine that we will never be able to use psychoactive drugs wisely. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy because the government does everything it can to make drug use dangerous.
