Two things that Aldous Huxley got wrong about drugs
comments inspired by the 1959 lecture series entitled The Human Situation
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
June 30, 2025
In almost all writing about drugs and enlightenment, it is taken for granted that there is a clear distinction between drug-aided mystical states and those that come from a presumably "sober" mind. Most drug pundits forget that human beings, organically speaking, are biochemical creatures and so their acts are ALWAYS catalyzed by, caused by and/or correlated with chemical reactions: that is to say, their acts are always drug-inspired in the most literal sense of that term. Strictly speaking then, there is no such thing as a drug-free mystical experience. Even Aldous Huxley1 himself failed to appreciate this fact, one which has profound implications when it comes to the philosophy of drug use. Huxley's oversight is odd, for he himself comments on the extraordinary variability of the human species compared to other species, particularly when it comes to morphology, a difference which he credits for producing (or at least explaining) the wide differences in personality between person and person. But Huxley fails to acknowledge the vast differences between persons when it comes to biochemistry, a fact which follows almost apodictically from the morphological difference. Only in acknowledging these internal biochemical differences can we understand the differences between William Blake and Joe Public, between Meister Eckhart and Babbitt.
Blake and Eckhart possessed biochemistry that readily facilitated mystical visions. They were not drug-free visionaries - it is simply that their drugs were apparently built-in, built in to their own digestive system. I say "apparently built-in" because there is always the chance that they may have ingested substances that we would demonize today as "drugs" but which they considered no more causatively defining than we would consider caffeine or tobacco. We assume thanks to our prohibitionist mindset that Blake and Eckhart would have seen their ingestion of psychoactive substances as being somehow foreign to some imagined drug-free quest for enlightenment and so would have informed us of any such use on their part, but this is to assume that these mystics shared our drug-war biases in the first place, that drugs/chemicals are a separate thing distinct from life and not rather an integral part of daily experience, an experience which is ultimately shaped, not by any one drug or chemical, but by a vast system of inputs of widely disparate natures in an inherently holistic world.
As mentioned, this long overlooked fact - that Homo sapiens are ALWAYS "on drugs" - has profound implications. First and foremost, it reminds us of the folly of drug pundits trying to tell us what we need in life in order to gain enlightenment and other benefits. It is enormously presumptuous of them. Alan Watts demonstrates this presumption when he opines that we "should" not need to use psychedelic drugs more than once, ideally, because one merely needs to be shown the way, after which the "sober" body can always follow successfully. But what does Watts know about my personal biochemistry (my so-called "sober" body) and how far it falls short of the default vision-friendly biochemistry that he seems to possess? He may as well tell headache sufferers that they should only use one aspirin because he, Alan, has never required two. Human beings, as Huxley reminds us, are the most variegated species on earth, and yet somehow our moralizing "experts on mystical states" believe that we all have the self-same biochemistry and biochemical potential. This is ultimately the idea behind drug prohibition, that because our sober upstanding citizens, given their personal biochemistry, do not feel the need for a certain substance (or even for enlightenment itself), then nobody can or should need such things. In short, the Drug War is all about ignoring the differences between persons --- a blindness that Huxley shares in part thanks to his implicit assumption that default body chemistry is the same, person to person.
Much of the positive poetic sensibilities of Whitman could be explained with reference to an occasional use of opium on his part - but even if we assume that Whitman foreswore the drug entirely, he still wrote while he was on "drugs," insofar as we all do EVERYTHING while on drugs. We are, in a sense, all biochemical systems. Seen in this light, the use of drugs by the hoi polloi can be viewed as a highly understandable attempt to become Walt Whitman or Meister Eckhart for a day: it is an attempt to adjust one's own body chemistry such that we too can see beyond the veil with the great mystics of yore.
Speaking of presumption, Huxley shared (and even epitomized) the jaundiced view of the west when it comes to drugs. Consider the following citation from his 1959 lecture series entitled "The Human Situation."
"A great many other drugs have been used [to gain enlightenment] — hashish, opium , and what not — most of them extremely harmful but some of them naturally occurring drugs which open up the consciousness to the visionary experience and which appear to be relatively harmless to the physiology and not to be addictive in any way."
"Most of them extremely harmful"?
Why is it that the westerner's first reaction when faced with drugs like opium is to completely ignore all their ENORMOUS psychological, physical and spiritual benefits and to judge them instead based on their worst possible misuse by uneducated young people - young people whom we refuse to educate about safe use? If westerners cannot see a way to use these drugs safely in their western world, then there is something wrong with their western world, not with drugs. Drugs are not extremely harmful in and of themselves, our policies toward drugs make them so. Young people were not dying on the streets from the use of opiates when opiates were legal in America, it took drug prohibition to bring about that dystopia, by refusing to teach safe use, refusing to regulate product and refusing to allow for true drug choice.
Harmful? How harmful? When used at what dose for what reason in what circumstances? I may as well say that cars are harmful. It is a meaningless observation in the absence of specifics, especially in a world in which the media ruthlessly censors all positive stories about car driving, leaving viewers to conclude that such positive uses do not exist, even though anecdote, history and common sense all say otherwise.
But then Huxley is an elitist when it comes to drug use. Psychedelics for him are good drugs - and yet opium 2 and hashish are evil and should be judged only with regard to their dangers. This is a childish, and an anti-indigenous viewpoint as well: for the moment that we accept that drugs may be pilloried outside of context for downsides, then the western world will be able to veto the use of every single drug in the rainforest on so-called "scientific" grounds. This is how pharmacological colonialism works. The question, therefore, should never be: "Can this drug be misused?" but rather: "How can we use this drug as wisely and safely as possible for the benefit of humanity?"
Yet the westerner is completely oblivious to all obvious drug benefits. Consider these effects of drug use as recounted by Edgar Allan Poe in "A Tale of the Ragged Mountains":
"In the meantime the morphine 3 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."
In a sane world, we would read such drug-use outcomes and respond as follows:
"Wow! This surreal appreciation of the world around us has obvious godsend benefits, in philosophy, in religion, in psychology! We should use this drug wisely, in a non-addictive manner, to help people appreciate the world around them and give them a healthy break from an insular and uninspired life! The strategic use of such drugs could all but end suicide! Wow, wow, wow!!!"
In the age of the drug-war, we have a very different reaction indeed.
We simply mutter that the drug is "extremely harmful" and leave it at that.
What?!
And so we dogmatically frighten ourselves with our Drug War hysteria into doing without all manner of godsend medicines - and then we have the audacity to wring our hands over suicide and shock therapy and school shootings - failing to realize that we have outlawed all substances that could help prevent such things on the grounds that such substances are "extremely dangerous."
Oh, really? Isn't suicide 4 dangerous? Isn't shock therapy dangerous? Aren't school shootings dangerous? Isn't life itself dangerous?
What I am saying here is that we westerners never do a true cost-benefit analysis of drug use; we instead look to pillory drugs by judging them outside of all context as good or bad. The fact that Huxley himself is a cheerleader for this vice demonstrates how completely the drug-war ideology of substance demonization has bamboozled otherwise clear thinkers into reasoning like children.
SUMMARY
The two things that Huxley did not understand are:
1) that ALL mystical experiences are facilitated by drugs (there are no drug-free mystical visions)
and...
2) that no drugs are "extremely harmful" in and of themselves -- they are only made so by bad social policies (chief of which is the counterproductive and inhumane policy of drug prohibition itself)
AFTERWORD
Of course, it is easy to see why America would want to blame drugs rather than social policies. If we turn substances like the coca plant and poppies into bad guys, then we can claim the right to invade other countries in order to fight a "scourge." This is, of course, the ultimate case of self-interested mass denial. We blame inanimate objects for the deadly outcome of our own racist social policies. It is just as if we had found that Americans could not use knives wisely, and so rather than teaching our population how to use cutlery safely, we went around the globe confiscating knives from everybody in the name of eliminating a great "scourge." Knives are "extremely harmful," after all. And if anyone objects, the prohibitionist just steals the moral high ground with the de rigueur comeback: "You would be in favor of outlawing knives too if YOUR loved one had been killed by a knife!"
In "How to Change Your Mind," Michael Pollan says psychedelic legalization would endanger young people. What? Prohibition forces users to decide for themselves which mushrooms are toxic, or to risk buying contaminated product. And that's safe, Michael?
Billboards reading "Fentanyl kills" are horrible because they encourage the creation of racist legislation that outlaws all godsend uses of opiates. Kids in hospice in India go without morphine because of America's superstitious fear of opiates.
Harm Reduction is not enough. We need Benefit Production as well. The autistic should be able to use compassion-enhancing drugs; dementia patients should be able to use the many drugs that improve and speed up mental processes.
But that's the whole problem with Robert Whitaker's otherwise wonderful critique of Big Pharma. Like almost all non-fiction authors today, he reckons without the drug war, which gave Big Pharma a monopoly in the first place.
Kids should be taught beginning in grade school that prohibition is wrong.
I personally hate beets and I could make a health argument against their legality. Beets can kill for those allergic to them. Sure, it's a rare condition, but since when has that stopped a prohibitionist from screaming bloody murder?
Governor Kotek is "dealing" with the homelessness problem in Oregon by arresting her way out of it, in fealty to fearmongering drug warriors.
Folks point to the seemingly endless drugs that can be synthesized today and say it's a reason for prohibition. To the contrary, it's the reason why prohibition is madness. It results in an endless game of militaristic whack-a-mole at the expense of democratic freedoms.
"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."
There are hundreds of things that we should outlaw before drugs (like horseback riding) if, as claimed, we are targeting dangerous activities. Besides, drugs are only dangerous BECAUSE of prohibition, which compromises product purity and refuses to teach safe use.
In "How to Change Your Mind," Michael Pollan says psychedelic legalization would endanger young people. What? Prohibition forces users to decide for themselves which mushrooms are toxic, or to risk buying contaminated product. And that's safe, Michael?