how materialists collude with drug warriors to keep us from using godsend medicine
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
June 6, 2023
In my philosophical review of "Opium for the Masses" by Jim Hogshire1, I took materialists to task for failing to recognize what we pedants would call the potential ontological significance of the opium dream experience -- which is to say the fact that opium dreams may tell us something about reality writ large. It's since occurred to me that the rap sheet for materialists is far longer than this seemingly isolated criticism might suggest. Materialists are, in fact, unindicted co-conspirators in the War on Drugs.
Here's where Shakespeare's Mistress Quickly would blurt out the following challenge: "Make that good!"
To which I reply: "Peace, my lady, give ear and perpend!"
It is the materialist reductionist outlook that keeps us from recognizing the therapeutic value of all sorts of godsend medicines, and not just opium .
Consider the astonishing proposition that such medicines have no therapeutic value whatsoever. How could that be? No positive uses for a drug that Avicenna himself considered to be a panacea? That statement, if it's to have any truth value at all, has to presuppose the ideology of materialism 2.
You see, to the materialist, the proof of efficacy has to reside in molecules and chemicals, not in undeniable anecdotes and human history. You say millions have found opium wonderful and it has inspired great poetry? That means nothing to the materialist. He wants molecular proof that can be added to a PowerPoint presentation, figures that can be quoted in a grant application, objective numbers that can be added to a database. The materialist is deaf to any subjective evidence.
It's this myopic lack of common sense that causes otherwise brainy people like Dr. Robert Glatter to ask silly questions, like "Can laughing gas help people with treatment-resistant depression?", in an article of that title in the June 2021 edition of Forbes magazine. Of course laughing gas can help the depressed, by definition even! The reason Glatter doubts it is because he's a materialist and only accepts reductive explanations of efficacy.
This is why Descartes denied that animals could experience pain, because reductive evidence did not prove it. Sure, dogs will howl when you hurt them, but Descartes tells us that's just noise. Likewise laughing, for materialists like Glatter, is just noise.
The fact is, however, that common sense is not that problematic! Happiness -- drug induced or otherwise -- is happiness. What's more, happiness -- and the anticipation of happiness -- are health-producing.
For this reason, any drug in the world that provides a pleasant feeling can be valuable in treating depression. Any drug in the world. Even opium . Nor is the possibility of dependency a reason to ignore opium , for with opium , dependency might be called a bug, but for modern anti-depressants (upon which 1 in 4 American women are hooked for life), dependency is a feature. This is why doctors keep unabashedly telling such women to "keep taking your meds." We see then the outlawing of opium is based on an aesthetic judgment about what constitutes the good life, not on some scientific evidence that shows us what does and does not actually work for the "user."
It must be remembered, moreover, that the Hindu religion owes its very existence to the use of a drug that elated and inspired. From this fact alone, it follows that the outlawing of psychoactive substances is the outlawing of religion -- nay, of the religious impulse itself3.
Author's Follow-up: June 7, 2023
In "Opium for the Masses," Jim Hogshire includes a section entitled "the Role of Pain in Freedom." I hope Michael Pollan reads this part carefully and that it helps him reconsider his view expressed in "How to Change Your Mind" that outlawing Mother Nature makes any kind of sense in a free society. For if Pollan thinks outlawing marijuana makes sense, he's certainly onboard with outlawing the poppy.
The poppy's central and indispensable position in our civilization makes access to it important, and thus forbidding public access to the poppy is staggeringly cruel. Ceding control of opiates means ceding control of pain relief to the State... which has shown truly morbid interest in inflicting pain and denying its relief in order to effect social change and maintain social control. This is power that free people should never relinquish easily or without a fight.
Again, I call on Michael to repent. Outlawing Mother Nature is a violation of both common sense and natural law. It is a wrong way of looking at the world. The book of Genesis tells us that God's creation is good. The Drug War represents a religious view that Mother Nature is evil until proven otherwise. In orthodox Christianity, however, there are no evil things: only evil people and the evil policies that they create. When we think in terms of evil things, like evil drugs, we go astray and hence the endless downsides of prohibition, including inner-city shootings, civil wars overseas and the suppression and censorship (usually self-censorship) of scientific research. Substance demonization and prohibition is unbecoming of a free country, Michael. Please repent! Teach, don't punish.
Author's Follow-up: February 4, 2025
In the Age of the Drug War, it's a big no-no for regular people to have any ideas about medicines. This is because we all make the assumption that psychoactive medicine is the same as physical medicine and should be governed by the same rules: namely, that our doctors know best. But the use of psychoactive medicines cannot be judged in this way. That is a huge bias. This is why the FDA can get away with telling us that drugs like MDMA 4 have no positive uses, because they evaluate psychoactive drugs the same way that they evaluate physical drugs, without regard for the feelings of the 'patient,' which, however, in the case of mind and mood medicine are of paramount importance.
I can still, however, sense that the behaviorists in the audience are shocked that I would seem to be giving medical advice, so let me state explicitly what would be obvious in a sane world in which we were not all loaded with presuppositions about so-called drugs.
As Alfred North Whitehead reminds us, all English sentences are elliptical. That is, they assume some knowledge on the part of the reader. For instance, if I say, "I love cathedrals," I am really saying that, "I love cathedrals when they exist in appropriate places and are built in a style that I associate with cathedrals," etc.
Just so, when I write that doctors should prescribe opium for the depressed, I have an elliptical statement in mind, which would run something like this:
"Doctors should prescribe opium as appropriate in particular cases based on the depressed patient's psychological predilections and physical sensitivities in order to help them through a variety of creative drug-aided protocols, as opposed to limiting their therapies for the depressed to those suggested by the inhumane philosophy of behaviorism, which denies the importance of actual felt experience," etc.
Any faithful and educated readers of my essays (assuming there were any) would understand my initial spare sentence to mean the same thing as the verbose rendition above. It's true that those who do not bother to learn my overall philosophy of drugs and drug use might reach a wrong conclusion about my intentions, but then they have no business reading philosophy if they are looking only for soundbites. If anyone is to blame for such misunderstandings, it is society and their parents, neither of which taught them any better.
Nevertheless, I hope that the verbose statement just provided will make my meaning clear even to those who cannot be bothered with learning the philosophy with which I approach the whole subject of drugs and drug use.
Author's Follow-up:
April 16, 2025
Of course, doctors should not have to prescribe opium . I am a big boy. I should be able to use it on my own without a prescription. That said, however, in a free world, any friend should be able to recommend the safe use of opium . Materialist doctors have no expertise in the subject of what actually works for people in terms of mind and mood. To the contrary, they have a mental block on the subject thanks to their adherence to the inhumane doctrine of behaviorism, which tells them to ignore all obvious emotional displays and just focus on quantifiable data.
What I am trying to say here is that the utility of opium in fighting depression (for certain people in certain situations) is dead obvious to normal human beings -- but, alas, has to be explained very slowly and carefully to materialists. In their world, you look under microscopes to find out what works, you see. Hell, I could live a whole lifetime laughing and being kind to my neighbors, but they would still tell me that I am not "really" enjoying my life -- at least not until they can prove that using a PowerPoint presentation that would pass muster with the FDA.
Look, it's simple. One enjoys mental freedom and dreaming and one looks forward to such things. Anticipation is health-producing and boosts mood, by definition. Modern drug science is all about gaslighting 5 us into thinking that happiness is not happiness and that drugs that work do not "really" work -- which is a metaphysical statement, by the way, not a logical one. It is a claim about the ontological correctness of the reductionist mindset when it comes to human emotions; whereas, it was always a category error to place materialists in charge of mind and mood medicine in the first place. The proof of that statement lies in the absurdum to which so doing has led us: a world in which materialists can look at us with a straight face and tell us that laughing gas 6 has no positive uses for the depressed7. The truth is that all substances that elate have obvious uses for the depressed -- uses that are limited only by the human imagination.
Americans love to blame drugs for all their problems. Young people were not dying in the streets when opiates were legal. The prohibition mindset is the problem, not drugs.
When Rick Strassman and Michael Pollan call for continued prohibition to protect young people, they ignore the ENORMOUS fact that prohibition has destroyed inner cities around the world. Wake up, guys! Prohibition is evil, not drugs! Ignorance is evil, not education!
The sad fact is that America regularly arrests people whose only crime is that they are keeping performance anxiety at bay... in such a way that psychiatrists are not getting THEIR cut.
Irony of ironies, that the indignant 19th-century hatred of liquor should ultimately result in the outlawing of virtually every mind-affecting substance on the planet EXCEPT for liquor.
Let's pass a constitutional amendment to remove Kansas from the Union, and any other state where the racist politicians leverage the drug war to crack down on minorities.
Drug prohibition is a crime against humanity.
The DEA is gaslighting Americans, telling them that drugs with obvious benefits have no benefits whatsoever. Scientists collude in this lie thanks to their adherence to the emotion-scorning principles of behaviorism.
The Drug War is a religion. The "addict" is a sinner who has to come home to the true faith of Christian Science. In reality, neither physical nor psychological addiction need be a problem if all drugs were legal and we used them creatively to counter problematic use.
Aleister Crowley actually TRIED to get addicted to drugs and found he could not. These things are not inevitable. The fact that there are town drunkards does not mean that we should outlaw alcohol.
"Drugs" is imperialist terminology. In the smug self-righteousness of those who use it, I hear Columbus's disdain for the shroom use of the Taino people and the Spanish disdain for the coca use of the Peruvian Indians.
Americans love to blame drugs for all their problems. Young people were not dying in the streets when opiates were legal. The prohibition mindset is the problem, not drugs.