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Why the Drug War is Worse than a Religion

by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher





December 29, 2020



As a white kid who grew up listening to so-called black music in the '70s (not just the crossover hits of Labelle but the deep album cuts such as "Isn't it a Shame" and "Somewhere Over the Rainbow") I would occasionally experience the awkward phenomenon of having my white friends snicker or break into what for me was unwelcome parody when I made the mistake of playing one of my favorite soul hits during a get-together at my place.

Update: May 05, 2025

It actually made them uncomfortable to hear singers expressing so much emotion. Sure, they had grown to like "Lady Marmalade," but when Labelle really let herself go, emotionally speaking, on such lengthy ballads as "Isn't it a Shame," complete with melodious moaning and impassioned scatting, my white friends began to squirm in their seats like so many grade-schoolers, despite the fact that their college days were already long behind them.

In that reaction, I think we can see the real motivation behind America's Drug War: the white man's insistence that we all be as emotionally restrained as he is, that we "let ourselves go" a little, perhaps, in the same way that my friends could find it in their hearts to enjoy "Lady Marmalade," but that we never really truly "shake it like we mean it" in this life, as Labelle most obviously did in "Isn't it a Shame?" It strikes me, moreover, that this "white reaction" to soul music is "all of a piece" with the Caucasian preference in Shakespearean times for behavior to be "meet" and "seemly" and to not offend the sensibilities of the community with any emotional excesses. In short, the white race, if we must call it so, has placed such a premium upon thought (which is, indeed, the very touchstone of its own existence, according to Descartes) that it has come to fear any forays into the long-since unfamiliar lands of unbridled emotion.

With this backstory in mind, the Drug War may be seen as the enforcement, not simply of a religion, but of a whole way of "being in the world," a whole way of approaching life. We must be aggressive and ambitious, yes, and so the use of caffeine is not only legal but encouraged. However, we must not be TOO aggressive or ambitious (after all, that would not be "meet" and "seemly" and it might even empower the user to promote the overthrow of the uptight status quo) and so the use of cocaine 1 2 3 must be punished. In this way, the Drug War turns Aristotle's Golden Mean into the law of the land. "Dance if you must," it cries, "but never, never, shake it like you really mean it." Of course, even the Drug Warrior agrees that occasional self-forgetfulness is necessary in this life, and so we are free -- and even encouraged -- to use alcohol and beer. However, we must never achieve this self-forgetfulness with the help of a substance that inspires us to question the very thought-centric nature of the society in which we live (and so psychedelic use will be punished). Americans have to be uptight by law, and the last thing that the Drug Warrior wants is for us to realize through substance use that there are other perhaps more satisfying ways of seeing the world.

We can say then that modern drug law is designed to legally oblige Americans to be "uptight" (or "meet" and "seemly" as Shakespeare would have called it) and to have only those thoughts and feelings that are not quite passionate or novel enough to rock the boats of the thought-obsessed powers that be. And so the Drug War is far worse than the mere establishment of a religion, for in such an injustice, the tyrant may be appeased with a mere outward show of obedience. No, the Drug War tyrant is far more ambitious: he insists that we FEEL the way that he wants us to feel (namely uptight) on penalty of law.



EDITOR'S NOTE March 30, 2022: The substances that we ban today actually inspired entire religions. One of the earliest human religions, the Vedic which gave rise to Hinduism, was inspired by Soma, a psychedelic concoction created from the bounty of Mother Nature. Plato's views of the afterlife were inspired by the psychedelic kykeon at Eleusis. The Mesoamericans sought divine guidance from sacred mushrooms.

Thus the Drug War is not only the outlawing of specific religions, but it's the outlawing of the very source and fountainhead of religious feeling itself, and so the Drug War is religious tyranny twice over.



Author's Follow-up: December 15, 2024

picture of clock metaphorically suggesting a follow-up


Of course, the above argument has been made before, absent the 20th-century specifics. It is really just a gloss on Nietzsche's distinction between the Apollonian and Dionysian outlook on life4.




Author's Follow-up:

May 05, 2025

picture of clock metaphorically suggesting a follow-up




This distaste for excessive passion helps explain why Americans do not recognize the category error that is implicit in placing materialist scientists in charge of mind and mood medicine. Materialists are behaviorists when it comes to psychology and are therefore blind to the glaringly obvious benefits of drugs as expressed in anecdote, history and plain common sense. This is why materialist Dr. Robert Glatter could question the power of laughing gas to help the depressed in Forbes magazine in 20215 -- without having been laughed out of his job. It is absurd to suggest that laughing gas might not be beneficial for the depressed, a drug that inspires views of heaven itself. Even the editors at Readers Digest know that "Laughter is the best medicine." But then if materialists were to admit laughing gas 6 to the category of beneficial substances, they would be forced by dint of logical consistency to admit opium 7 and phenethylamines as well. It is therefore in everybody's interests that we put Dr. Spock of Star Trek in charge of mind and mood medicine. In doing so, we flatter materialists and give them work -- albeit in a psychological and religious field for which they have no qualifications -- meanwhile flattering the hoi polloi viz their unbounded faith in "science" to conquer all.

Common sense, on the other hand, would tell us an inconvenient truth: namely, that there are obvious potential beneficial uses for all drugs that inspire and elate. Indeed, the Hindu religion owes its existence to the use of a drug that inspired and elated, from which it follows that the outlawing of drugs is the outlawing of religion -- nay, of the religious impulse itself.



Notes:

1: What the Honey Trick Tells us about Drug Prohibition DWP (up)
2: Sigmund Freud's real breakthrough was not psychoanalysis DWP (up)
3: On Cocaine Freud, Sigmund (up)
4: Nietzsche and the Drug War DWP (up)
5: Can Laughing Gas Help People with Treatment Resistant Depression? Glatter, Dr. Robert, Forbes Magazine, 2021 (up)
6: Forbes Magazine's Laughable Article about Nitrous Oxide DWP (up)
7: The Truth About Opium by William H. Brereton DWP (up)


Religion




The Hindu religion was created thanks to the use of a drug that inspired and elated. It is therefore a crime against religious liberty to outlaw substances that inspire and elate.

Prohibition is a crime against religious freedom.

William James found religious experience in substance use. See his discussion of what he calls "the anesthetic revelation" in his book entitled "The Varieties of Religious Experience."

The drug war is a meta-injustice. It does not just limit what you're allowed to think, it limits how and how much you are allowed to think.

The Drug War violates religious freedom by putting bureaucrats in charge of deciding if a religion is 'sincere' or not. That is so absurd that one does not know whether to laugh or cry. No one in government is capable of determining whether the inner states that I achieve with psychoactive medicine are religious or not. This is why Milton Friedman was so wrong when he said in 1972 that there are good people on both sides of the drug war debate. WRONG! There are those who are more than ready to take away my religious liberty and those who are not. If the former wish to be called 'good,' they will first need a refresher course in American democracy and religious freedom. They need to renounce their Christian Science theocracy and let folks like myself worship using the kinds of substances that have inspired entire religions in the past. Until they do that, do not expect me to praise the very people who have launched an inquisition against my form of experiencing the divine.

There would be no Hindu religion today had the drug war been in effect in the Punjab 3,500 years ago.

"They have called thee Soma-lover: here is the pressed juice. Drink thereof for rapture." -Rig Veda



  • Addicted to Christianity
  • America's Puritan Obsession with Sobriety
  • Drug Testing and the Christian Science Inquisition
  • Freedom of Religion and the War on Drugs
  • Heroin versus Alcohol
  • How the DEA determines if a religion is true
  • How the Drug War Banned my Religion
  • Libertarians as Closet Christian Scientists
  • Meister Eckhart and Drugs
  • Psychedelic Cults and Outlaw Churches: LSD, Cannabis, and Spiritual Sacraments in Underground America
  • Take this Drug Test
  • The Christian Presuppositions of the Drug War and Why They're Important
  • The Church of the Most Holy and Righteous Drug War
  • The Drug War = Christian Science
  • The Drug War as Religion
  • Using Ecstasy in Church
  • Why the Drug War is Christian Science Sharia
  • Why the Drug War is Worse than a Religion





    • Ten Tweets

    against the hateful war on US




    Ug! Fire bad! There were 4,731 fire-related deaths in America in 2023. Learn more at the Partnership for a Death Free America.

    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.

    To understand why the western world is blind to the benefits of "drugs," read "The Concept of Nature" by Whitehead. He unveils the scientific schizophrenia of the west, according to which the "real" world is invisible to us while our perceptions are mere "secondary" qualities.

    I looked up the company: it's all about the damn stock market and money. The FDA outlaws LSD until we remove all the euphoria and the visions. That's ideology, not science. Just relegalize drugs and stop telling me how much ecstasy and insight I can have in my life!!

    Americans think that fighting drugs is more important than freedom. We have already given up on the fourth amendment. Nor is the right to religion honored for those who believe in indigenous medicines. Pols are now trying to end free speech about drugs as well.

    All drugs have positive uses at some dose, for some reason, at some time -- but prohibitionists have the absurd idea that drugs can be voted up or down. This anti-scientific notion deprives the modern world of countless godsends.

    Psychiatrists keep flipping the script. When it became clear that SSRIs caused dependence, instead of apologizing, they told us we need to keep taking our meds. Now they even claim that criticizing SSRIs is wrong. This is anti-intellectual madness.

    Science knows nothing of the human spirit and of the hopes and dreams of humankind. Science cannot tell us whether a given drug risk is worthwhile given the human need for creativity and passion in their life. Science has no expertise in making such philosophical judgements.

    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.

    Doc to Franklin: "I'm sorry, Ben, but I see no benefits of opium use under my microscope. The idea that you are living a fulfilled life is clearly a mistake on your part. If you want to be scientific, stop using opium and be scientifically depressed like the rest of us."


    Click here to see All Tweets against the hateful War on Us






    The Drug War as a Greek Tragedy
    Childish Drug Warriors


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    Thanks for visiting The Drug War Philosopher at abolishthedea.com, featuring essays against America's disgraceful drug war. Updated daily.

    Copyright 2025, Brian Ballard Quass Contact: quass@quass.com

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