Addiction Therapy in the Year 2100
by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
June 9, 2019
(a philosophical satire written to encourage a complete rethinking of our modern attitudes toward addiction and its treatment)
SCENE: 12 adults seated in a circle.
JOHN SMITH: My name is John Smith and I’m a miserable wretch.
[GROUP MEMBERS TITTER RELUCTANTLY, FINALLY BREAKING OUT INTO FULL-BLOWN LAUGHTER]
SMITH: What? What’s so funny?
[LAUGHTER CONTINUES]
LEADER: You’ll have to forgive us, Johnny boy, but you must not get around much these days.
SMITH: What do you mean? I thought the whole point of addiction therapy was for me to find the protestant God of the Bible.
LEADER: Oh, yeah?
SMITH: Or at least a reasonable facsimile thereof.
[LAUGHTER RESUMES]
SMITH: That’s why I started out with the customary self-abasement and grovelling.
LEADER: That is so 21st century of you, dawg. The point of modern therapy is simply to SHOW YOU GOD – or “at least a reasonable facsimile thereof,” as you put it.
SMITH: What?
LEADER: Everything else follows from that point, bruh: self-respect, respect for others, temperance, you name it.
SMITH: And just how do you intend to show me God?!
LEADER: Earth to Smith: Americans stopped criminalizing Mother Nature over fifty years ago!!!
SMITH: Meaning?
LEADER: Meaning we have amassed a whole pharmacy worth of psychoactive plants and fungi with which we can now ceremonially lead you on a voyage of inner discovery…
SMITH: Yeah?
LEADER: …after which you’ll see the folly of addiction – always assuming, of course, that you enter our program in good faith, committed to learning from Mother Nature.
SMITH: Oh.
LEADER: Get it?
SMITH (reluctantly): Well… I guess…
LEADER: Good.
SMITH: All I can say is that the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous is probably rolling over in his grave right now.
LEADER: To the contrary, the legendary Bill W. was a big fan of treating addiction with LSD therapy…
SMITH: Really?
LEADER: Until a corrupt politician by the name of Richard Nixon criminalized the substance in his effort to crack down on hippies.
SMITH: Oh.
LEADER: That’s right: “Alcoholics be damned,” said Nixon, “as long as I can get my own back against Timothy Leary!”
SMITH: Fair enough, I guess, but…
LEADER: Yes?
SMITH: I still don’t get how you’re gonna make me see God.
LEADER: As far as the specifics of the process, I’d better turn you over to our team pharmacologist, Terence McKenna VIII. Terence?
TERENCE: Well, jefe, the precise combination of plants that we use is a trade secret, of course, kind of like the 11 herbs and spices still used to this very day by KFC.
LEADER: True dat. (Love me some KFC.)
TERENCE: But I can give you a random list of some of the big-hitters in our line-up of therapeutic plants.
LEADER: Proceed when ready.
TERENCE: We’ve got Acorus calamus, Amanita muscaria, Anadenantherea peregrina, Ariocarpus retusus Scheidw, Atropa belladonna, banisteriopsis caapi, Boletus manicus Heim—
LEADER: Enough, dawg. We don’t want to provide a shopping list for our competitors in the therapy biz.
TERENCE: Not to worry, bruh: these substances are useless (yea, even deadly) when used in the wrong doses…
LEADER: I heard that.
TERENCE: …or in the wrong set and setting.
JOHN: But then why are we sitting around in a circle?
LEADER: So you guys can get acquainted before we start our plant-guided rituals next week.
JOHN: Oh.
LEADER: Speaking of which, why don’t you introduce yourself again?
JOHN: OK.
LEADER: But this time, go easy on the self-abasement, would ya?
JOHN: Will do.
LEADER: I think we can take it as a given that we all have much to learn from our plant friends. No need to dwell morbidly on that fact during this introductory session.
Ten Tweets
against the hateful war on US
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.
NOW is the time for entheogens -- not (as Strassman and Pollan seem to think) at some future date when materialists have finally wrapped their minds around the potential usefulness of drugs that experientially teach compassion.
Before anyone receives shock therapy -- or the right to assisted suicide -- they should have the option to start using opium or cocaine daily -- in fact, any drug that makes them feel that life is worth living again.
I can't imagine Allen Ginsberg writing "Howl!" while under the influence of mood-damping drugs like Inderal and Prozac -- but then maybe that's the point: the powers-that-be do not want poets writing poems like "Howl!"
Prohibitionists will me that we're all children when it comes to drugs, and can never -- but never -- use them wisely. That's like saying that we could never ride horses wisely. Or mountain climb. Or skateboard.
This is why it's wrong to dismiss drugs as "good" or "bad." There are endless potential positive uses to psychoactive drugs. That's all that we should ask of them.
David Chalmers says almost everything in the world can be reductively explained. Maybe so. But science's mistake is to think that everything can therefore be reductively UNDERSTOOD. That kind of thinking blinds researchers to the positive effects of laughing gas and MDMA, etc.
Only a pathological puritan would say that there's no place in the world for substances that lift your mood, give you endurance, and make you get along with your fellow human being. Drugs may not be everything, but it's masochistic madness to claim that they are nothing at all.
Today's drug laws tell us that we must respect the historical use of sacred medicines, while denying us our personal right to use them unless our ancestors did so. That's a meta-injustice! It negatively affects the way that we are allowed to experience our world!
I'd like to become a guinea pig for researchers to test the ability of psychoactive drugs to make aging as psychologically healthy as possible. If such drugs cannot completely ward off decrepitude, they can surely make it more palatable. The catch? Researchers have to be free.
Click here to see All Tweets against the hateful War on Us
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