The world has been so thoroughly bamboozled by Richard Nixon's jaundiced view of so-called "drugs" that it cannot begin to visualize anybody "getting high" for any but the most selfish and irresponsible of reasons. This is a shame, because the philosophical mindset of the Western world was chiefly established by folks who got high. In fact, these people not only got high, but they considered their moments of inebriation to be the best and (ironically) the most real moments of their lives. I'm speaking, of course, about the famous alumni of those long-running Eleusinian mysteries (circa 1600 b.c.e. to 392 c.e.), wherein a psychoactive substance (probably ergot) was used to put the participant in touch with immortality and the meaning of life1.
Socrates' belief in forms, Aristotle's belief in catharsis, Plutarch's belief in an afterlife: these were not just armchair philosophies based on abstract premises: these were truths that were confirmed to the ancient Greeks and Romans upon drinking the psychedelic kykeon. {^The fact that we modern humans disdainfully refer to such profound experiences as "getting high" betrays our puritan distaste for improving our consciousness with the help of Mother Nature's bounty.}{ This distaste might have originally been justified on religious grounds, perhaps under the assumption that such a psychedelic intervention was somehow an affront to the deity, but in these modern agnostic times, we have no such religious excuse for ignoring the therapeutic value of drug-induced ecstasy.
Unfortunately, our puritan biases are so ingrained that it took the disingenuous bluster of only one determined law-and-order politician, namely Richard Nixon, to revive our contempt for any pharmacologically altered state of consciousness. (Almost overnight, truth seekers became scumbags, should they attempt to fathom the world with the help of natural psychoactive substances.) And thus Richard Nixon forced us by law to "just say no" to almost 2,000 years' worth of compelling evidence for the therapeutic value of psychedelic drugs, forcing the depressed wisdom seeker to rely instead on legal drugs that fogged the mind rather than illuminating it.
But then Nixon was not the first despot to tell us to "just say no" to drug-induced mental clarity and cosmological insight. {^The Eleusinian mysteries were shut down in 392 c.e., not because they were a long-running fad that had finally run its course, but because the Christian emperor Theodosius saw the popular mysteries as a challenge to Christian orthodoxy - more proof that the modern Drug War represents the establishment of a de facto religion, albeit a materialist religion that takes a dim view of Mother Nature and of its potential role in improving human consciousness.}{
Author's Follow-up: July 31, 2023
Of course, I was still a kid back in 2019 when I wrote this, so I can be forgiven for overlooking William James. He's the American philosopher who told us that:
"No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded. How to regard them is the question--for they are so discontinuous with ordinary consciousness."
That was written over 150 years ago. Scarcely 70 years later, the American government started outlawing all the substances that could tell us about other forms of consciousness. How do legislators get away with ignoring history like this and turning "users" into criminals?
America is insane: it makes liquor officially legal and then outlaws all the drugs that could help prevent and cure alcoholism.
I have dissed MindMed's new LSD "breakthrough drug" for philosophical reasons. But we can at least hope that the approval of such a "de-fanged" LSD will prove to be a step in the slow, zigzag path toward re-legalization.
Philip Jenkins reports that Rophynol had positive uses for treating mental disorders until the media called it the "date rape drug." We thus punished those who were benefitting from the drug, tho' the biggest drug culprit in date rape is alcohol. Oprah spread the fear virally.
The best step we could take in harm reduction is re-legalizing everything and starting to teach safe use. Spend the DEA's billions on "go" teams that would descend on locations where drugs are being used stupidly -- not to arrest, but to educate.
So much harm could be reduced by shunting people off onto safer alternative drugs -- but they're all outlawed! Reducing harm should ultimately mean ending this prohibition that denies us endless godsends, like the phenethylamines of Alexander Shulgin.
Now the US is bashing the Honduran president for working with "drug cartels." Why don't we just be honest and say why we're REALLY upset with the guy? Drugs is just the excuse, as always, now what's the real reason? Stop using the drug war to disguise American foreign policy.
It's interesting that Jamaicans call the police 'Babylon,' given that Babylon denotes a society seeking materialist pleasures. Drug use is about transcending the material world and seeking spiritual states: states that the materialist derides as meaningless.
We should hold the DEA criminally responsible for withholding spirit-lifting drugs from the depressed. Responsible for what, you ask? For suicides and lobotomies, for starters.
People magazine should be fighting for justice on behalf of the thousands of American young people who are dying on the streets because of the drug war.
Well, today's Oregon vote scuttles any ideas I might have entertained about retiring in Oregon.
America is insane: it makes liquor officially legal and then outlaws all the drugs that could help prevent and cure alcoholism.
