why materialist drug researchers are blind to obvious drug benefits
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
August 12, 2025
The idea that we should "follow the science" when it comes to drugs is wrong for at least two reasons. This is because science has both a political and a metaphysical bias in the age of the Drug War.
Science today has a political bias insofar as almost all drug research in America is undertaken with a political purpose in mind: namely, to prove that drugs are dangerous. This is why we have a National Institute on Drug Abuse rather than a National Institute on Drug Use. When we put drug approval in the hands of scientist, therefore, we are essentially telling them: "Go on then, folks: find some scientific reasons for us that this drug that we're studying is dangerous in the abstract."
No wonder that prohibitionists like Kevin Sabet tell us to "follow the science." They know perfectly well that science today is in the business of demonizing holistic-acting drugs by holding them to materialist standards: by picking them apart under a microscope and looking for downsides outside of all context. Any substance in the world can be pilloried in this way, if we choose to consider drug downsides outside of context. The use of aspirin has been linked to 3,000 deaths a year in the United Kingdom alone1. Politicians could teach us to hate and fear aspirin with the help of an aspirin-bashing media campaign, one based solely on facts -- albeit facts taken outside of all context. We never see such media campaigns against aspirin for the simple reason that no one in the moneyed world has any incentive to bankroll them. This reluctance on the part of the powers-that-be would disappear, however, in a world in which aspirin use was associated with Blacks, Hispanics and hippies.
Science also has a metaphysical bias insofar as government drug researchers (like most scientists today) are behaviorists when it comes to human psychology. This means that they will dogmatically ignore all merely "obvious" benefits of drug use, insisting instead that drug efficacy must be determined by looking under a microscope in search of quantifiable data. Such materialists do not care that laughing gas makes me laugh or that Soma inspired the Hindu religion or that the wise use of phenethylamines could keep sad sacks like myself from killing themselves. No, no! The materialists want me to use a drug that "really" works – which is to say, a drug that works in conformance with materialist ideology and expectations. (This is what I call "pharmacological colonialism," an attempt to lend a veneer of science to the xenophobia of the Francisco Pizarros of the world.) This means that all the obvious holistic benefits of drug use can be ignored out of hand. Why? Because materialists do not care what drug users think or feel. They want to know what's going on with drug users at the molecular level. And so materialists like Dr. Robert Glatter2 ask metaphysical questions like, "Can laughing gas REALLY help the depressed?", failing to recognize the once-obvious truth that "laughter is the best medicine," that feeling good helps, and that feeling good has positive knock-on benefits, both physical and psychological, in people's lives (to say nothing of the fact that William James3 himself told us to study chemically altered states to learn about human perception, the mind-body problem, and the nature of reality writ large).
In other words, science is enormously biased when it comes to the study of mind and mood medicine. They are in the business of "gaslighting" the public about all positive drug effects, simply pretending that they do not exist. This is why I keep reminding the reader that it was always a category error to place scientists in charge of mind and mood medicine in the first place.
Who are the real judges, then, when it comes to establishing the efficacy of psychoactive medicines?
Why, the drug users themselves, of course.
Alexander Shulgin4 had the right idea when he performed clinical trials of godsend phenethylamines that emphasized user reports rather than chemical pathways. Unfortunately, he himself did not realize the full significance of his own protocol. In his technical notes in Pihkal, he makes it clear that the godsend drugs that he was studying could not be considered antidepressants in and of themselves -- not until they had been modified in such a way that they would work in a one-size-fits-all manner, presumably without producing excessive emotions, and preferably while rendering the user dependent for life on the meds in question. This is understandable given that Shulgin was in the pay of pharmaceutical companies, whose ultimate goal is making money, not curing "illnesses."
Shulgin should have gone with his instincts and focused instead on what worked for individual human beings rather than on what worked for drug companies. When we ignore the profit motive and focus on healing instead, we clearly see the way forward when it comes to therapeutic drug use. We need thousands of additional Pihkal studies in which folks of all kinds can be trialed on a wide variety of phenethylamines, beta-carbolines (and an endless array of other drugs, alone and in combination) to see what actually works for them and according to them -- and in what circumstances it works, in what circumstances it fails, etc. etc... you know: all the details that the Drug Warrior dogmatically ignores by insisting that drug use is somehow bad in the abstract, without regard for circumstances.
In the future, human beings will be able to plan their own wise and therapeutic drug use based on user reports from such Pihkal-like studies. As more and more demographics try out specific drugs in search of specific outcomes, a body of data will be amassed thanks to which advised drug use will be increasingly easy for the hoi polloi. In such a world, we will educate people who want to improve their mind and mood -- educate them, rather than barbarically arresting them for the modern political crime of self-medicating.
Let me close this essay now with a relevant observation from Jeffery A. Singer from his 2025 book entitled Your Body, Your Health Care:
"Restoring patient autonomy and the right to self-medicate will be a challenging task. Like most precious things, it requires perseverance and commitment. Like all precious things, it is worth the effort."5
Author's Follow-up:
August 12, 2025
When some people tell us to "follow the science," they simply mean that we should be completely honest about all drugs -- and to that extent, at least, it is, indeed, laudable to "follow the science." However, the Drug Warrior has something very different in mind when they tell us to "follow the science." They mean that we should accept the verdicts about drugs that are provided by scientific government agencies whose very jobs -- whose very raison d'etre -- is to prove that drugs are dangerous. And how do these agencies accomplish this political goal? Not by lying about drugs exactly, but rather by focusing with lopsided exclusivity on the downsides of drugs in the abstract, outside of all context, meanwhile completely ignoring all the glaringly obvious benefits of drug use: benefits made obvious by history, anecdote and psychological common sense. With such politicized bias in place, we could demonize any drug. Aspirin kills 3,000 a year in the UK alone and could easily be pilloried as unconscionably dangerous6. If modern politicians decline to scare us about aspirin use, it is only because they have no motive for doing so. And why not? Answer: because white Drug Warriors value aspirin just as much as do Blacks, Hispanics and the Chinese.
Unfortunately, the situation is even worse than this analysis might indicate. Most scientists these days are materialists -- which means that they are behaviorists when it comes to mind and mood medicine. As such, they are already primed to ignore the common sense benefits of drug use for dogmatic reasons. They prefer to focus instead on the quantifiable data that they glean from looking under a microscope. (You say laughing gas works wonders for you? That is just the kind of subjective report that our behaviorists pride themselves on ignoring!) This means that, even in the absence of political pressure, these scientists are more than willing to gaslight the world about the obvious benefits of drug use. This is why materialist Dr. Robert Glatter wrote an article in Forbes magazine in 2021 in which he expressed doubt that laughing gas could help the depressed7! Laughing gas! He could only make such a foolish avowal because he was busy looking under a microscope -- rather than listening to the laughter of the actual occasional users of that godsend substance -- a substance which William James himself conjured us to use in order to learn about the nature of religion and of reality writ large8. Psychological common sense tells us that laughing gas has positive uses -- as for instance in helping us avoid backsliding on our plans to get off of antidepressants by giving us a gas-inspired vacation from the psychological downsides of that process.
Drug prohibition is a crime against humanity. It is the outlawing of our right to take care of our own health.
To say that taking SSRIs daily is better than using opium daily is a value judgement, not a scientific one.
Americans heap hypocritical praise on Walt Whitman. What they don't realize is that many of us could be "Walt Whitman for a Day" with the wise use of psychoactive drugs. To the properly predisposed, morphine gives a DEEP appreciation of Mother Nature.
Scientists cannot tell us if psychoactive drugs are worth the risk any more than they can tell us if free climbing is worth the risk, or horseback riding or target practice or parkour.
"In consciousness dwells the wondrous, with it man attains the realm beyond the material, and the peyote tells us where to find it." --Antonin Arnaud
So he writes about the mindset of the deeply depressed, reifying the condition as if it were some great "type" inevitably to be encountered in humanity. No. It's the "type" to be found in a post-Christian society that has turned up its scientific nose at psychoactive medicine.
Addiction thrives BECAUSE of prohibition, which limits drug choice and discourages education about psychoactive substances and how to use them wisely.
"Judging" psychoactive drugs is hard. Dosage counts. Expectations count. Setting counts. In Harvey Rosenfeld's book about the Spanish-American War, a volunteer wrote of his visit to an "opium den": "I took about four puffs and that was enough. All of us were sick for a week."
Drug prohibition represents the biggest power grab by government in human history. It is the state control of pain relief and mental states.
Suicidal people should be given drugs that cheer them up immediately and whose use they can look forward to. The truth is, we would rather such people die than to give them such drugs, that's just how bamboozled we are by the war against drugs.
Drug prohibition is a crime against humanity. It is the outlawing of our right to take care of our own health.