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Addicted to Christianity

by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

October 14, 2019



People tell me that opium , heroin 1 and cocaine 2 3 are bad for me. Why? Because they cause dependence. But this is sheer hypocrisy. I've been on Effexor4 for 25+ years, and my shrink tells me I can never get off it because it's far too addictive. Meanwhile, it's frying my brain and keeping me from trying new psychedelic therapies - and not even coming close to lifting my daily depression. Yet no one's screaming bloody murder about my plight. No, no. In my case, I have to be a good little boy and keep taking "my meds" for a lifetime.

But if dependence is not wrong, as psychiatry now insists (in action, if not in word), then I should have been free to "choose my OWN addictive poison" 40+ years ago when I began subsidizing Big Pharma 5 6 fat-cats with my monthly prescription purchases. I would have opted for opium at that time, to give me peace of mind and an occasional rest from reality and perhaps even a little artistic inspiration of the kind obtained from the drug by Poe and Lovecraft, rather than flattening out my emotional responses with SSRIs to turn me into a socially acceptable Babbitt. While it's possible that I might have become addicted to opium , by using it more frequently than directed, at least my opium addiction could have been kicked in theory. Besides, psychiatry has no leg to stand on when it comes to criticizing an opium addiction, considering that it makes no scruples about addicting the world to SSRIs.

Really, it's a no-brainer: do I want to be addicted to a substance that fogs my brain - or do I want to use a natural substance once grown by Thomas Jefferson and used by Benjamin Franklin, a substance which, for all its shortcomings, occasionally gives me great visions?

As for me in my house, I would have used opium .

I end with this paraphrase of a Christian song title because the only possible rationale that I can see for preferring SSRIs to opium is the fact that opium occasionally provides what the Puritan would consider a "high," and that is a no-no in the puritan world. This is why the War on Drugs is a war on religion - because the Drug Warrior's goal is to keep the rest of the world from accessing spiritual states that the warrior believes to be at odds with Christianity.

Indeed, this is how the whole Drug War started in 392 C.E., when the first Drug Warrior, Emperor Theodosius, outlawed the Eleusinian Mysteries7 because he saw them as a threat to Christianity. The psychedelic kykeon was helping folks like Plato and Plutarch to see the light - and this was blasphemy for religious imperialists who believed that the only true light was Christianity itself.

Author's Follow-up: January 9, 2024

picture of clock metaphorically suggesting a follow-up

This was written almost five years ago, when I was still a greenhorn. Couldn't have been more than 61 years old at most! The basic point is still unanswerable and can be summed up in the following question: "Why is it that's okay to take big pharma meds daily -- and it's even my DUTY to do so as a chronic depressive ('take your meds') -- and yet I can be thrown in jail if I use opium 8 daily instead?"

There is no logical or medical reason -- the reason is political, financial and puritanical -- and materialistic too, when it comes to that. Check out my many essays on that latter topic.

By the way, Ignaz Semmelweis, I can relate!



Notes:

1: Lee Robins' studies of heroin use among US Vietnam veterans Hall, Wayne, National Library of Medicine, 2016 (up)
2: Sigmund Freud's real breakthrough was not psychoanalysis DWP (up)
3: On Cocaine Freud, Sigmund (up)
4: How Drug Prohibition makes it impossible to get off of Effexor and other Big Pharma drugs DWP (up)
5: How Drug Company Money Is Undermining Science Seife, Charles, Scientific American, 2012 (up)
6: Why Is Biopharma Paying 75% of The FDA’s Drug Division Budget? LaMartinna, John, Forbes, 2022 (up)
7: The Eleusinian Mysteries: A Gateway to the Afterlife in Greek Beliefs (up)
8: 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




    If we can go overseas to burn poppy plants, then Islamic countries should be free to come to the United States to burn our grape vines.

    These are just simple psychological truths that drug war ideology is designed to hide from sight. Doctors tell us that "drugs" are only useful when created by Big Pharma, chosen by doctors, and authorized by folks who have spent thousands on medical school. (Lies, lies, lies.)

    We don't need people to get "clean." We need people to start living a fulfilling life. The two things are different.

    M. Pollan says "not so fast" when it comes to drug re-legalization. I say FAST? I've gone a whole lifetime w/o access to Mother Nature's plants. How can a botanist approve of that? Answer: By ignoring all legalization stakeholders except for the kids whom we refuse to educate.

    Imagine if there were drugs for which dependency was a feature, not a bug. People would stop peddling that junk, right? Wrong. Just ask your psychiatrist.

    Now drug warriors have nitrous oxide in their sights, the substance that inspired the philosophy of William James. They're using the same tired MO: focusing exclusively on potential downsides and never mentioning the benefits of use, and/or denying that any exist.

    Drug Warriors never take responsibility for incentivizing poor kids throughout the west to sell drugs. It's not just in NYC and LA, it's in modest-sized towns in France. Find public housing, you find drug dealing. It's the prohibition, damn it!

    Why does no one talk about empathogens for preventing atrocities? Because they'd rather hate drugs than use them for the benefit of humanity. They don't want to solve problems, they prefer hatred.

    There is an absurd safety standard for "drugs." The cost/benefit analysis of the FDA & co. never takes into account the costs of NOT prescribing nor the benefits of a productive life well lived. The "users" are not considered stakeholders.

    We're living in a sci-fi dystopia called "Fahrenheit 452", in which the police burn thought-expanding plants instead of thought-expanding books.


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






    Review of When Plants Dream
    It's the Psychedelics, Stupid!


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

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