A bunch of brainstorming notes that you'll only want to read if you hate medicalization and drug prohibition and think that an ethical discussion of assisted suicide for the depressed must include a discussion about drug prohibition
You've been warned
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
May 12, 2026
I have a conference coming up on May 29th in which I have been invited to share my thoughts on American drug attitudes with a small group of forensic psychiatrists who approach the field from a Szaszian perspective.1 Today I wanted to do some brainstorming for that upcoming event but I find that my mental sky is full of nothing but harmless altocumulus clouds. Not a storm in sight. Maybe if I started with an outline. Hmm...
It's ironic. Even this writer's block of mine (or this speaker's block) reminds me of my ultimate contention about drugs: namely, that we should be using them as wisely as possible for the benefit of humanity rather than condemning them wholesale by saying "Drugs bad" in the same ignorant manner in which our prehistoric ancestors once derided the frightening phenomenon of fire. For anyone familiar with the vast motivating potential of a free pharmacopoeia (and especially the laboratory and fieldwork of Alexander Shulgin and Richard Schultes, respectively) will know that there exist substances whose wise use could grant me precisely those concentrative propensities that are currently so conspicuous for their absence. Nor should this come as a surprise to any of the hundreds of millions of potential readers who are addicted to "their morning cup," for they merely need to extrapolate from their personal experience with caffeine to assure themselves of the plausibility of my claim.
My harangue should probably begin with a preemptive disclaimer so that I can avoid "putting my foot in it." I am going to have some harsh things to say about antidepressants, and for all I know, these gentlemen are prescribing these drugs for their patients. I will therefore need to state what I always hoped was implicit in my writings: that I concern myself with normative philosophy, about the way that the world should be, and I have little to say about how people should act GIVEN the world as it actually IS. And yet even this is not entirely true. I believe, for instance, that we should not be using shock therapy -- to say nothing of assisted suicide -- for the depressed in a world in which we outlaw substances that could make those "modalities" unnecessary. Whether this logic should apply to prescribing antidepressants is a question for which the answer is less obvious. Assuming as I do that antidepressants have at least some value in addressing depression (albeit at the huge cost of lifetime dependency and the more or less random mucking about with brain chemistry), is it better to give the depressed no antidepressants at all? One could make arguments on either side depending on such factors as: the extent to which one values independence from the state, the extent to which one feels that drug re-legalization is somewhere on the horizon, etc. One potential solution to this dilemma is to let the "patient" make the decision about use based on a full awareness of the facts, above all of the potential for a lifetime of dependency.
After this disclaimer, I would focus on the case of Claire Brosseau, the depressed Canadian who is demanding the "right" to assisted suicide. I would argue that any debate about the propriety of assisted suicide for the depressed must involve a debate about the propriety of drug prohibition. I would maintain that this is obvious, and that anyone who denies the fact is simply unaware of the potential benefits of the many medicines that we are not allowed to use to raise Claire's mood -- to say nothing of the many medicines that we are not even allowed to CREATE thanks to so-called "designer-drug" legislation. If the ethicists in Claire's case are aware of such drugs and yet unwilling to use them, they should explain that reluctance so that it can be debated, rather than assuming the existence of some self-explanatory drug-hating baseline in light of which their refusal to truly help Claire would be deemed to make sense. I should then provide my own explanation for the roaring silence about drug prohibition: namely, the idea that drug efficacy must be established by scientists and can never be established by user reports or by historic use or even by arguments based on psychological common sense. This is why ethicists can see no connection between outlawing drugs and the denial of time-honored medicine: because as far as they are concerned, drugs are only medicines when the passion-free Dr. Spocks of modern science have said so.
The Brosseau case is the canary in the mine, showing us that there is something wrong with the very air that North Americans breathe when it comes to drugs. There is something very wrong with the premises from which these "experts" are working if they cannot see the relevance of drug prohibition to Claire's case. How else do we account for the fact that these "experts" believe that there are no drugs that could help Claire? How else do we account for the fact that they refuse to "call out" drug prohibition for the problems that it is causing, even when the result of those problems could be death itself? And yet these experts are hardly alone in failing to recognize any links between drug prohibition and real life. This failure to connect the dots is also seen by those activists who are fighting to end gun violence in inner cities, when they fail to recognize the fact that drug prohibition brought gun violence to inner cities in the first place. It is seen in the organizations that fight to end mass shootings, when they ignore the fact that drug prohibition outlaws drugs that inspire compassion and so suggest therapeutic ways to end mass shootings. It is seen in the organizations that fight Alzheimer's, when they ignore the fact that drug prohibition outlaws drugs that can dramatically improve mental focus, some of which can actually grow new neurons in the brain. The question then becomes, why? Why are all these links being ignored?
And the answer is my next talking point: the fact that the depressed are not considered stakeholders in the debate about drugs. As a result, the vast majority of Americans believe that drug use is unnecessary and dangerous, and this includes most of those who profess to be enemies of the Drug War. They believe that the Drug War would be great if it actually worked. It has failed to do so in their view, it has failed to stop people from using drugs, and so these "activists lite" want a new approach. I should emphasize at this point how far this is from my own view and the fact that Thomas Szasz would support me in this view. He was, indeed, one of the very few writers who understood that drug prohibition was fundamentally wrong, first and foremost because it represented the outlawing of the human being's right to heal. Not that the depressed are anywhere close to being the sole stakeholders in this debate about drug prohibition: other affected victim groups include pain patients, poets, philosophers, and those young people whose lives will be ruined by the legal system that treats drug users like cattle, herding them through overcrowded courtrooms with the help of plea deals and threats and then, after coercing them to confess to crimes that they may have never committed, outfitting them with ankle bracelets that were originally designed for psychopathic serial killers.
Let me return at this point to the modern belief that doctors are the authorities when it comes to mind and mood medicine. This belief is a major talking point in and of itself. Many seeming progressive leaders, like Obama, say that they want a science-based approach to drugs, but this is naive at best, Machiavellian at worst. It is naive because science is political in the age of the Drug War. Any findings about the abstract dangers of drugs serves to strengthen government-enflamed hatred of drugs among the people, and this is the same government that has a National Institute on Drug Abuse, not a National Institute on Drug Use. In other words, the government is dedicated to showing drugs in a negative light, and since they control the funding dollars, the entire system is political. Even if it were not political, we would scarcely be better off. The reductive paradigm of modern science renders scientists blind to all obvious benefits of drug use, prompting them instead to look under microscopes to see if a drug is "really" working, i.e., working in such a way as to flatter some trending theory about biochemical causation. This is why it's always front-page news when a scientist says something that everyone already knew, that a time-honored drug actually has some good uses. Scientists are the slowest kids in the class when they find themselves under the twofold strictures of reductionism and politics. You show them a suicidal person laughing under the influence of N2O, and scientists effectively tell us: "No, that person is not laughing advisedly. They are not REALLY being cheered up," which, of course, is not a medical statement at all, but rather a metaphysical claim about the supposed ontological truth of reductive materialism.
Of course, scientists should have the right to study any substance on earth. They should be raising long-overdue hell about the fact that they do not have that right, that so much of Nature's Bounty is off-limits to them thanks to a meddling government. My point is merely this: that scientists have no qualifications for the job of deciding whether use of any given psychoactive substance is right or wrong for any given person. To be qualified for that job, they would have to weigh costs and benefits, and to do that, they would have to place a precise value on things like appreciating a sunset or being able to breathe freely at long last. They can tell us about the risks of drug use in the abstract, but they have no standing whatsoever when it comes to telling if drug use makes sense for a specific person in a specific situation in real life.
Editor: You'll also want to include your thoughts on philosophical censorship in this speech of yours, especially the fact that drug prohibition shuts down the philosophical project of William James, whose use of laughing gas gave him a whole new philosophy about consciousness and reality. Speaking of which, if I were you, I would dilate at full upon the way that drug prohibition effectively shields Immanuel Kant from legitimate criticism, insofar as the Sage of Konigsberg assumed the existence of a one-size-fits-all consciousness, whereas William James subsequently discovered that, and I quote:
Our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different.
Editor: In short, give 'em hell, Brian, you've got this!
Notes:
1: Thomas Szasz is the American philosopher who waged a lonely war against the allied evils of drug prohibition and medicalization in the last half of the 20th century. The fact that "Szaszian" is still flagged as a spelling error in Windows 11 reminds me of the sad fact that his ultimately common sense views about the evils of drug prohibition and medicalization are still marginalized and willfully ignored by the American mainstream. (up)
Did the Vedic People have a substance disorder because they wanted to drink enough soma to see religious realities?
The Drug War brought guns to the "hoods," thereby incentivizing violence in the name of enormous profits. Any site featuring victims of gun violence should therefore be rebranded as a site featuring victims of the drug war.
I'm going to get on the grade-school circuit, telling kids to say no to horses.
"You think you can handle horses, kids? That's what Christopher Reeves thought. The fact is, NOBODY can handle horses!!!"
At best, antidepressants make depression bearable. We need not settle for such drugs, especially when they are notorious for causing dependence. There are many drugs that elate and inspire. It is both cruel and criminal to outlaw them.
Just saw a People's magazine article with the headline: "JUSTICE FOR MATTHEW PERRY."
If there was true justice, their editorial staff would be in jail for promoting user ignorance and a contaminated drug supply.
It's the prohibition, stupid!!!
I'm told antidepressant withdrawal is fine because it doesn't cause cravings. Why is it better to feel like hell than to have a craving? In any case, cravings are caused by prohibition. A sane world could also end cravings with the help of other drugs.
The scheduling system is a huge lie designed to give an aura of "science" to America's colonialist disdain for indigenous medicines, from opium, to coca, to shrooms.
The massive use of plea deals lets prosecutors threaten drug suspects into giving up their rights to a fair trial.
Self-medicating has always been the most basic of human rights, until the medical industry demonized the practice for obvious financial reasons.
The DEA has done everything it can to keep Americans clueless about opium and poppies. The agency is a disgrace to a country that claims to value knowledge and freedom of information.
I have a conference coming up on May 29th in which I have been invited to share my thoughts on American drug attitudes with a small group of forensic psychiatrists who approach the field from a Szaszian perspective.1 Today I wanted to do some brainstorming for that upcoming event but I find that my mental sky is full of nothing but harmless altocumulus clouds. Not a storm in sight. Maybe if I started with an outline. Hmm...
(up)